In which the bromancer manages to be more offensive than usual, with lesser gang member Joe and Dame Groan reduced to supporting roles ...

 

The pond woke to news of yet another climate report, saying yet again the same thing ...

No need to waste time on the lizard Oz click bait video that leads off that collage. 

There are plenty of non-paywall sources, including the Graudian and the WMO's Earth's climate swings increasingly out of balance ...

Naturally this coincided with news of a political party taking up the lizard Oz's position on climate science, coal, and nuking the country, in an EXCLUSIVE ...

Might as well now call the lizard Oz "Pauline's paper", so faithfully does she replicate all that the reptiles have pushed for over the years ...

It makes the sort of mealy-mouthed attempt by ancient Troy to swing back to the centre all the more insufferable ...

Really, ancient Troy, you lurk in a far right rag that's desperate to be populist, and urge a return to some mystical centre?

The pond would have sent him off to the intermittent archive forthwith, but it's being moody and downright unreachable this morning, and anyway, who cares for this sort of blather?

Apparently ancient Troy still hasn't worked out that the far-right, xenophobic, nativist and grievance-based lizard Oz has been a wrecking ball for decades.

And speaking of far right weirdos, the bromancer was in top form this day, which is to say sounding like a complete prat ...

The header: A nuclear Iran means Trump’s Mid-East war is a just one; Those who are reflexively anti-American have no appreciation for the moral good of American power.

The caption for the hair blowing in the wind: US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Picture: Saul Loeb / AFP

Ye ancient fraudulent Augustinian cats and howling fundamentalist tyke dogs, not this last refuge for the desperate ...

Though it may lurch into utter catastrophe – if Donald Trump destroys all of Iran’s energy infrastructure and the Iranians attack all Gulf Arab energy infrastructure and desalination plants that they can reach with their drones, remaining missiles and regional proxies – the US and Israel’s war against Iran nonetheless is probably a just war.
Of course, if waged with sufficient incompetence or confusion, as Trump exhibits, that would affect questions of morality.
The key is Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. In taking extreme measures to avoid new nations acquiring nukes, Trump stands squarely in the tradition of all US presidents since Harry Truman.
In 1945, only the US possessed atomic weapons. Today eight nations do – the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. That we’ve avoided nuclear war, restricted the number of nuclear weapons states to eight and prevented terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons is a triumph for the human race, and above all for the benign exercise of American power.
The two most unstable and dangerous nuclear states are North Korea and Pakistan. Both have nuclear weapons partly because of historic Chinese complicity in proliferation.

Um, it's just North Korea and Pakistan? What about Israel, Russia, the United States, three incredibly unstable and dangerous nuclear states? What about Israel's notorious attempt to help South Africa nuke up?

Um, didn't the notorious liar advise only months ago that they'd completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program?

He did, he did, with the reptiles themselves regurgitating the news straight from Tulsi's lips ...

Couldn't the bromancer simply admit that there hasn't been a war he hasn't loved in his war mongering way, without trotting out distractions and silly, deeply inapplicable Catholic theology?

US President Bill Clinton; US President Harry Truman

The urge to distract is so naked, so opportunistic, that the pond for a nanosecond felt embarrassed for the bromancer ...

Bill Clinton in 1994 was on the brink of taking military action to destroy North Korea’s nuclear program. He consulted Australia and wanted our support. The action was explicitly not going to attempt regime change and Washington had elaborate plans to communicate this to Pyongyang and Beijing. Clinton was forestalled by the “peace activism” of former president Jimmy Carter making a high-profile visit to Pyongyang just when Clinton would otherwise have struck.
Today, North Korea has perhaps 60 nuclear weapons and has developed intercontinental ballistic missiles that can deliver them to the US or indeed to Australia.
Was it really more moral for the US not to engage in military action against Pyongyang’s nuclear establishment, so that today one of the most bizarre dictatorships in human history has the physical power to wreak catastrophic damage over large parts of the planet?
Israel famously destroyed nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria. The whole world is safer as a result. The US persuaded many countries, friends and foes, to forswear nuclear weapons plans. It bombed and threatened Libya into abandoning its nuclear program. Famously, Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union broke up but was persuaded to get rid of them in exchange for security guarantees from the US, Britain and Russia.
As late as the late 1960s Australia had considered acquiring its own nuclear weapons. One reason we didn’t was because we sheltered under the warm embrace of America’s extended nuclear deterrence. If any nuclear power attacked us with nuclear weapons it could fear retaliation in kind from the Americans. Those who are reflexively anti-American have no appreciation for the moral good of American power.

He's wanting to blather about the moral good of American power right at the moment that Benji is indulging in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, with the full approval of said American power? Benjamin Netanyahu reacts while visiting the area destroyed by an Iranian ballistic missile. Picture: Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images

The bromancer worked himself up into a lather about nukes, as if stuck in Dr Strangelove land ...

A lot of countries were talked out of seeking nuclear weapons, including South Africa and Brazil. The US convinced two key Asian allies, South Korea and Taiwan, to ditch nuclear weapons programs because they would be protected by US security guarantees.
If the US alliance system unravels, nuclear proliferation will accelerate. South Korea and Japan could both be expected to seriously consider acquiring nukes. Japan could probably produce a nuclear weapon in a month if it wanted to.
If Saudi Arabia loses faith in the US, it’s reported to have an agreement with Pakistan to acquire nukes quickly. Other Arab states also could make the move. Certainly without active, powerful American opposition, nuclear arms would spread.
Among existing nuclear powers, China is producing new nuclear weapons at a record rate, adding perhaps 100 new nukes a year. Russia has abandoned the treaty constraints that the late Soviet Union had negotiated with Washington.
The theory of a just war is one of the most important ethical contributions Christianity has made. Theologians who abandon this theory are abandoning reality and centuries of authoritative Christian teaching.
A just war must involve a just cause, be a last resort, have a realistic chance of success and be conducted by proportional means; that is, the harm allowed by waging it must not be greater than the harm caused by the enemy.
War itself is subject to rules, for example not intentionally attacking civilians. Proportionality means if someone punches you in the head you’re entitled to defend yourself but not to shoot them dead. Proportionality is conceptually tricky, however. The response must be proportionate to the credible threat, not just to the aggressor’s action.

Civilians? What cheek, what nerve.

Despite the bromancer's devotion to word salads, and despite the misinformation offered up by AI bots, this photo is real ...

The reptiles tried another distraction...

A man cleans a billboard featuring Iran’s late supreme leaders Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (l) and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (c) next to newly elected supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. Picture: Tauseef Mustafa

Following that attempt to exploit the image of some mad mullahs, it became the pond's sad duty to advise that the bromancer is not in good standing with the Catholic church, has failed to follow its essential precepts, and does not adhere to the Church's essential teachings, and perhaps should be subject to canonical penalty ...

...The pope’s criticism of the war was more pointed on Sunday when, during his weekly Angelus prayer in St Peter’s Square, he renewed his appeal for a ceasefire. He described the death and suffering caused by the conflict as a “scandal to the whole human family”.
He said he had been following the situation with dismay. “We cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of so many people, the defenceless victims of these conflicts. What hurts them hurts the whole of humanity,” the pope said. “I strongly renew my appeal for us to persevere in prayer, so that hostilities may cease and the way may finally be paved for peace.”
Leo, who was elected pope in May last year after the death of Pope Francis, has so far been cautious over his engagement with Donald Trump. He has relied instead on his college of cardinals to directly criticise the US’s decision to go to war in Iran.
Earlier this month, Cardinal Domenico Battaglia in Naples addressed an open letter to “the merchants of death” profiting from weapons’ sales, while the Washington DC cardinal Robert McElroy said the conflict “fails to meet the just war threshold for a morally legitimate war”. (Graudian)

Sorry, Pope, sorry Cardinal, you have a heretical cuckoo lodged in your bosom ... preaching hate and falsehoods, a merchant of death, so to speak ...

Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Tehran has been attacking Israel, the US, the West generally, Sunni Arabs and its own dissidents relentlessly and murderously. It’s the chief state sponsor of terrorism. It created Hamas and Hezbollah, two of the sickest, most sadistic terrorist groups the world has known. It sponsors proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq to mount missile attacks on a long list of enemies. It assassinates critics in its diaspora. And it’s pursuing nuclear weapons.
That satisfies, in my view, the just war criteria.
There are in truth very few real pacifists. Jesus himself was not a pacifist, meaning someone who objects to any use of force. He uttered threats filled with violent imagery against those who abuse children. He himself used force to throw money lenders out of the temple. He refused to respond violently, or allow his followers to respond violently, to attacks on his own person.
That is an option of heroic virtue open to an individual. But not in defence of others. If a murderer tried to kill your children, would you intervene with force or ask a policeman to do so? If so, you’re not a pacifist.
Most claimed pacifism is hollow moral posturing that simply pushes hard moral decisions to the adults in the system.
Nuclear weapons pose an exquisite moral dilemma. If they can’t discriminate between civilians and combatants, can their use ever be moral? But if the threat of their use deters war, that surely is moral.
Our historic moment lacks moral adults. We’ve never needed them more.

Always contemptible...always projecting, and without a shred of irony or any awareness of his hypocrisy or his rampant stupidity ...

And so to the lesser member of the Kelly gang's report on the war ...

The header: Donald Trump’s campaign teeters on brink of economic catastrophe; The US has pulled back from its strike threat claiming the Strait of Hormuz will re-open ‘soon’ under joint US-Iranian control, but Tehran still holds the world’s oil lifeline hostage.

The caption for the clown imagining he's Churchill: US President Donald Trump waves before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House on Friday. Picture: AP

Joe attempted a more balanced perspective, though being a reptile, there are the usual sins ...

The US military campaign against Iran faces its most dangerous moment, with the world on the brink of a genuine economic catastrophe over the stand-off in the Strait of Hormuz.
Donald Trump says he will “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants – “starting with the biggest one first” – unless the regime reopens the waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
The 48-hour deadline the US President gave Tehran in a Truth Social post was scheduled to expire at 7.44pm on Monday, Washington time (10.44am AEDT on Tuesday).
But the US President extended this window period for another five days at 7:23am on Monday, Washington time, (10:23pm AEDT on Monday), when he posted on Truth Social that the US and Iran had “very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.”
“Based on the tenor and tone of these in depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period.”
After raising the stakes, the US President quickly de-escalated.

Um, he quickly changed one set of lies for another set of lies, so that reptiles in the lizard Oz could say he de-escalated ...

But he never gets called out, inside you get this sort of AV distraction, Sky News host James Macpherson says “productive conversations” have occurred between the US and Iran as the Department of War has been instructed to postpone strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.

King Donald has always traded on the way the mainstream media acts like all day suckers, and is always keen to placate the markets and settle the nerves.

That's why you never get to see stories about the counter-bluffs ...

The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has pushed back against reports suggesting any ongoing negotiations with the United States, stating clearly that “no dialogue exists between Tehran and Washington.” The statement, published by the judiciary-linked Mizan News Agency, directly challenges recent remarks made by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Just wrap it up Joe ... take your time, but just finish it ...

He said on Monday (Tuesday morning AEDT) that the Iranian regime had initiated the talks with the US about ending the war and his administration was “very willing to make a deal”.
If negotiations prove successful, Trump says the Strait of Hormuz will be “open very soon” and he would like to see the vital shipping route operate under joint US and Iranian control.
But the next five days still loom as the most crucial in the military campaign so far, with the potential for the world to see how far Trump is willing to go and how much Iran is willing to endure.
If he makes good on his threat, fuel, energy, information technology systems and water desalination infrastructure across Gulf nations risk being drawn far more seriously into the conflict, an outcome that would both heighten and extend the economic pain from the still unfolding hostilities.
The war is on the verge of a tipping point. Iran has already launched strikes on critical energy infrastructure in the region. This includes its attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG terminal - estimated to have taken out about 17 per cent of the country’s LNG export capacity - in response to Israel’s strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field.
The regime has shown no reluctance to embrace escalation and in recent days attempted to launch missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint UK-US military base in the Indian Ocean, 4000km away.
Already the Iranian Foreign Ministry has denied being in talks with Washington, saying there was “no dialogue” with the US and rejecting Trump’s claims of productive discussions.
Tasmin, the semiofficial Iranian news agency controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that the US President had backed off his threat to target Iranian energy sites within 48 hours “after Iran’s military threats became credible.”
Trump’s instinct is to engineer a sense of crisis as part of his political modus operandi.
The tactic allows him to create opportunities and new solutions by maximising US leverage and raising the stakes.
But this approach has not worked with Tehran so far. Escalation has been part of Iran’s strategy since the conflict began on February 28. Its asymmetric strategy has been to maximise the political and economic pain of the conflict on America and the rest of the world.
A US strike on Iran’s power facilities may give the regime another excuse to turn up the dial and embrace a new level of extremism as it fights for survival.
Of course, Trump may be trying to raise the stakes in a bid to create an offramp by providing an incentive for negotiations – including with the Gulf states – but the regime has, so far, shown zero interest in talks.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has demanded reparations, assurances against future aggression and recognition of the country’s legitimate rights as the key conditions of any settlement.
The problem is Trump’s ultimatum not only puts pressure on Tehran, it also puts pressure on him to make an agonising decision in the event he is rebuffed. If Tehran stares him down without consequence, it will risk undermining his credibility and define the limits of his tolerance for escalation.
Confusion already exists regarding the circumstances that led to Trump’s decision to extend his 48-hour deadline for another five days.
The unfolding crisis now reveals how much Washington’s war aims have shifted. Success for America hinges on the US reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a sign the terms of the conflict are being controlled too much by Tehran.
It also reveals a US President veering from one position to another.
Trump on Friday said America was “getting very close to meeting our objectives” but threatened a major escalation the very next day through his 48-hour ultimatum.
Last week, Trump rebuked Israel for targeting Iran’s South Pars gas field and publicly distanced himself from it in a Truth Social post, declaring that “no more attacks will be made by Israel” on the site – unless Iran struck Qatar first.
Days later, Trump threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants in the kind of infrastructure-destroying escalation against which he had only just warned.
This casts doubt over what the US endgame in Iran is.
While the US has certainly weakened the Iranian regime, Trump’s threats of escalation suggest he no longer believes he can simply withdraw and declare victory while Tehran retains control over one of the world’s most vital waterways.

The pond would have liked to spend some time with Rowan, desperately trying to blame it all on the Chinese  ...

Meanwhile, speaking of surveillance states in action ...

Okay, the pond just wanted a break before wrapping up proceedings with the traditional Tuesday groaning ...

The pond confesses that it went the screen cap route because it's feeling tired ... there's only so much bromancer the pond can take before the boiler bursts and hot steam vents.

Besides, there's nothing whatsoever that Jimbo could do that would stop Dame Groan from embarking on a groaning, while shouting to the world "we'll all be rooned, and before Easter at that" ...

The misguided forward guidance issued by governor Philip Lowe in 2022 that interest rates would not rise until 2024 was a major misstep.
But whether these events had anything to do with how the bank was structured was never made clear. Chalmers was keen to be seen to be doing something and was attracted to the idea of the separate monetary policy board, particularly since he would be able to make his own appointments.
New appointees with known dovish views on interest rates had a clear appeal.
The Treasury secretary would continue to have an ex officio position on the board, unlike in other countries. This remains a contentious feature.
In the end, a compromise was made and the terms of the old board members were rolled over. But Lowe was not reappointed for another term – this had been common practice in the past – and Chalmers was able to make his own appointment of the new governor, Michele Bullock.
While Bullock has spent her entire professional career at the bank, she was mainly involved in the payments side rather than interest rate setting. Chalmers is proud that the heads of most of the key economic and financial agencies are women.
A key recommendation of the report was “the RBA should have dual monetary policy objectives of price stability and full employment, with equal consideration given to each”. Unsurprisingly, this was generally interpreted as meaning that equal weight should be given to inflation and full employment, although one of the panellists claimed this was not the intention.

The pond only bothers with this because Dame Groan has a cult following, and they will be undoubtedly pleased to discover that they get their information from Sunrise ... Sunrise host Nat Barr has claimed Labor is 'spending like crazy' following a second consecutive rate hike by the Reserve Bank of Australia, as Jim Chalmers defends government spending and points to global volatility.

There's 22 seconds of your life that's been saved by a screen cap ...(have the reptiles gone fully Daily UK Snail?) ... and you can now waste it on the groaning ...

Of course, it doesn’t make any sense to impose a strict equal weighting between the two factors. For one thing, the inflation goal is stipulated as a target band while unemployment is measured as a continuous variable. How would an equal weighting even work? And what if inflation is 20 per cent and unemployment is 4 per cent? Should the bank be giving an equal weighting to the two factors? Or what if inflation is 2 per cent and unemployment is 12 per cent?
In other words, the value of the variables matters when it comes to sound decision-making.
The principal means whereby this potential conflict between the two objectives is resolved is through recurring communication between the Treasurer and the RBA governor. It goes by the name of Statement on the Conduct of the Monetary Policy. An updated statement was released in July 2025.
In the past these statements have endorsed the central role of controlling inflation. This latest statement is less clear about the primacy of inflation targeting, with considerable discussion about the meaning of full employment and the need to achieve this outcome. The change is subtle but it’s there.

There came a final snap, The misguided forward guidance issued by governor Philip Lowe in 2022 that interest rates would not rise until 2024 was a major misstep. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And there came a final groaning, though it avoids making the obvious point. 

Until Dame Groan is put in charge of the RBA, or even better, made Treasurer, or perhaps both, we can never be free, we'll all be eternally doomed to being rooned ...

The words are as follows: “The Monetary Policy Board and Government agree that the Monetary Policy Board’s role within this is to focus on achieving sustained full employment, which is the current maximum level of employment that is consistent with low and stable inflation.”
Another instruction from the Treasurer to the governor was that she should hold media conferences after each meeting of the monetary policy board.
This now occurs, although it’s not clear whether this initiative is proving to be worthwhile, from the perspective of the bank or the Treasurer. The conferences too often turn into word salad versions of lectures on macroeconomics while the governor does everything to avoid implicating the government in the inflationary process.
The release of the most recent consumer price index figures raises the important question whether the monetary policy board took the wrong path last year by giving too much weight to unemployment and too little weight to inflation. Inflation is now clearly travelling well outside the target band, which is not the pattern in most advanced economies.
That last week’s decision of the monetary policy board was split, 5-4, has only added confusion to the process. Given that credibility is critical to the effective operation of central banking, this new way of doing things looks like a clear negative, particularly as names are not attached to the votes, as is the case in the US.
There is no doubt that Chalmers regards the changes to the RBA as one of his finest achievements, having struggled to get the necessary legislative changes through the parliament. Whether they really are a case of beneficial reform is an unanswered question at this stage. The early indications are not favourable.

Not favourable? Quelle surprise. Even by the old biddy's dismal standards, that was dull stuff.

Meanwhile ...

... or perhaps a just TACO carrying out a just Cotija, like many cheese-eating surrender monkeys? Who can say? Who can tell?