In which the bromancer resorts to prayer and Dame Groan goes back to ancient times in search of Dr. Jimbo ...

 

After the bliss of a walk down Smith Street and a Vietnamese style pancake in Richmond, the pond decided it was well over mad King Donald and his lunatic ways, but how could the pond sweep aside the bromancer, sent in by the reptiles to contemplate and deal with the mess?

The header: What next in Iran? It’s a good time to pray; With a fragile ceasefire nearing its end, stark choices face the US and Iran — and missteps now could reshape global security and trade.

The caption for the mad king looking bemused, or possibly bewildered, or contemplating a heaven he'll always be denied: Donald Trump’s decisions in the coming days could determine the war’s trajectory. Picture: Getty Images

Prayer? That's the bromancer's answer to it all? It's a good time to pray?

The reptiles were so astonished that they didn't attempt any visual distractions, and instead allowed the bromancer to let loose a four minute existential spray, beavering away at a mad King Donald dilemma which apparently could only be resolved by divine intervention:

We are now in the most dangerous and perhaps the most promising few days of the Iran war. This is evident in the US Navy boarding and seizing Iranian cargo ships and the supposedly non-existent Iranian navy firing on international tankers that tried to transit the Strait of Hormuz, some even apparently with what they thought was Iranian permission.
The ceasefire ends on Wednesday. Several outcomes are possible. Donald Trump could announce a grand bargain in principle that opens the strait while negotiations are finalised. The US would suspend its blockade of Iranian ports. Alternatively, Trump could announce he thinks a deal is close and so the ceasefire continues, but so does the US blockade and Iranian actions keeping the strait closed. Third, the Iranians could capitulate, giving up their 60 per cent enriched uranium and agreeing never to block the strait again. That’s total US victory. Fourth, Trump could end the ceasefire and resume bombing, with Iran resuming attacks on Gulf Arab oil infrastructure. Then it’s a question of who can endure pain longer, Trump or Tehran.
Finally, the US could accept some crippling concession, such as Iran down-mixing its enriched plutonium to make it less dangerous and allowing Iran, perhaps in partnership with the US, to charge tolls on ships navigating the strait.
Trump has often raised this last possibility, suggesting the US could charge international ships a fee to escort them militarily through the strait. That would be devastatingly bad because it would commit the US, for the first time in its history, to a policy of international piracy. It would irretrievably repudiate the doctrine of freedom of navigation that the US Navy, more than any other institution in the world, upholds. This benefits the US and the entire globe. It’s the most basic of security “commons” that the US has underwritten with the support of all its allies and most other nations as well. The precedent for other nations then to charge fees for what was previously innocent passage through straits or even international waters that simply abut their territories would be colossally damaging.
Such an outcome is just possible, however, because it’s one of the few formulations that would allow both Trump (albeit fraudulently) and the Iranians to claim victory.All outcomes are possible and all, except total US victory, are very troublesome for the world.

Total US victory? Perhaps by wiping Iran off the map entirely? Nothing like a genocide to warm the cockles of the hive mind.

At this point, the bromancer dared to be so bold as to roll his trousers up, walk upon a beach and perhaps devour a peach.

You see, gasp, he's been highly critical:

I’ve been highly critical of the way Trump has waged this conflict. His often grotesque language and social media posts have the whole world worried about his stability, have destroyed public support for the military campaign and made it impossible for allies to actively engage with his campaign because it has been at the political level so incoherent, changing and abusive of allies and innocent third parties (such as the Pope).

Um, no mention of the role that the Emeritus Chairman played in setting this folly in motion?

Perhaps that's a little too close to the bromancer bone. Do carry on:

Trump also declined to task the US national system to take all manner of preparatory actions that would have strengthened its position in the war, from elementary moves such as filling up the US oil reserve before the war began, to retaining in service the last US de-mining ships, to rapidly developing cheaper counter-drone capabilities instead of so wantonly using up scarce supplies of missiles and interceptors. Most important, perhaps, because he wrongly thought the war would be quick and easy, Trump didn’t convince the American people of its importance or win even a smidgin of bipartisan support, or secure social licence for a period of sacrifice and difficulty. This is where Trump’s personal performance is so important and so destructive.
Nonetheless, and here is the most important consideration of all, it’s overwhelmingly in the interests of humanity that the US and Israel triumph in this war against Iran. The Iranian threat through nuclear, missiles, proxy forces and terrorists, combined with its savage killings of its own people, mean the campaign was not disproportionate.
Indeed, so far the US and Israeli bombings, aimed carefully at military targets, have killed far fewer Iranians than the Iranian government has done this year alone in suppressing protests.
More troubling is the question of whether Iran represented an imminent threat. Iran has consistently attacked Israel, the US, Western societies such as Australia, its Arab enemies and its own citizens, but it has done so mostly using proxies and clandestine agents in a way that often falls just below the level that would provoke an immediate military response.

It wouldn't be the bromancer without a little tyke blather about a just war, though truth to tell, there's not the slightest indication that the mad king is interested in justice for the Iranian people:

This reality goes a long way towards meeting the criterion that a threat must be imminent before military action is morally defensible. On balance therefore, and although it’s not absolutely clear, you can make a good case that the war was justified, which is one reason the Albanese government and the federal opposition both supported US actions initially. However, Trump’s wild and self-contradictory statements and the lack of obvious and necessary preparatory actions have clouded the moral case.

Clouded the moral case? Oh dear, the bromancer couldn't even come at the just war carry-on that Our Henry and Polonius peddled to the hive mind with their prattle.

But wait, don't despair, the bromancer still has it in him to celebrate the deeds of Kegsbreath:

The US blockade of Iranian ports, in a war in which Iran itself is blockading the whole strait except for vessels linked to its commercial gain, is morally, militarily and strategically sound. In fact the US should have done this weeks ago because, with minimum violence, it cuts off the revenue Iran needs to pay its soldiers and to keep its government going.
There is obviously now deep division within the Iranian government, though the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps clearly still has the upper hand. Regime collapse is just possible and would be the best outcome. Blockading the ports seems to put Tehran under more pressure than the bombing campaign did. But for most of the war so far the US tolerated Iran closing the strait but simply allowed Iran to let its own oil go to market on various ships.
This was one of many US misjudgments. However, the US embargo nonetheless has big risks. Would the US board and take custody of a Chinese ship trying to transport oil through the strait? Not only that, despite all the happy talk about opening the strait by force, even the US Navy won’t sail in the strait itself. So the blockade has to be conducted from outside the southern entrance to the Persian Gulf. It is resource-intensive and unsustainable in the long term.
What next? If you believe in the power of prayer, now’s a good time.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Prayer? That's the best the bromancer's got? 

But what if the Islamics got the right god? What if it's the Jews' main non-trinitarian man? What if Christ is indeed just a minor prophet and a naughty boy? What about the Hindus or the Buddhists?

Who to pray to, and what sign prayers have been any use in the past, with prayers not having noticeably shorted a couple of world wars and lots of minor ones?

Luckily Wilcox had a prayer to hand ...

And so to the rest of the reptile rabble, and with the best will in the world, after all that, the pond simply couldn't summon up the strength to go into simplistic Simon raging at pigs ...

Where are our governments in the fight against the feral pig plague?
Of all the things Australians love to boast about, this probably isn’t one of them— there are now more feral pigs roaming our vast continent than there are humans.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

Perhaps simpleton Simon could get hold of a gun, and head outback with other shooters determined to tackle the pigs? (YouTube link, warning, rampant night time pig killing. Beware what your logarithms might throw up - and just be aware it's more Tamworth than Tamworth).

It was off to the intermittent archive with him, and ditto away with Geoff chambering another round ...

Grim Jim spinning up a whirlpool in sea of red
The Treasurer has mastered the art of fiscal spin, but behind the budget curtain lies a sea of red ink that threatens to expose the government’s economic management.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

The only reason the pond offers a teaser trailer for Geoff is to draw attention to the photo at the top of the piece ...

You see? 

That snap of Jimbo in despair.

It's a classic reptile offering, featuring Jimbo looking downcast, perhaps a tad sullen, a battered and defeated man.

Now guess what snap the reptiles featured at the top of this day's Dame Groan outing, cheek by jowl with Geoff?

The header: ‘Anti-economist’ Treasurer Jim Chalmers fails on spending, inflation and real wages; Jim Chalmers’ approach to looming crises hark back to a failed predecessor from the 1970s. It could be a long road back.

The caption for exactly the same snap, recycled endlessly on a loop of doom: Treasurer Jim Chalmers ‘distrusts markets and thinks government intervention and spending can produce superior outcomes’. Picture: Martin Ollman

Talk about predictable, but that's why the pond didn't bother with Geoff firing off shots.

Why settle for second best, when you can get a classic Dame Groan in peak "we'll all be rooned" form?

These are tricky days for any treasurer. The economic implications of the conflict in the Middle East are unclear and the degree of uncertainty is extremely high.
Even if there is an early resolution to the war, which looks unlikely, there will be a hit to our economic growth rate with headline inflation increasing. Certain sectors of the economy will be particularly hard hit, including agriculture, tourism and potentially parts of mining. Asian refineries will be able to supply Australia only as long as the flow of crude oil keeps up to accommodate overall demand. In the event of any shortfall, expect countries to cater for their own needs well ahead of ours.
It’s not necessary to have studied economics at university to be a good treasurer. Some of our best treasurers never went near a university economics course.
The principle of opportunity cost, that the cost of doing A is the cost of not doing B, just makes sense to them. Similarly, the central role that incentives play in driving behaviour is obvious, as is the scope for government as well as market failure. The need for budget discipline is self-evident lest the cost of excessive spending leads to inflation and imposes a burden on future generations.
Sadly, our current Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is not one of those people who simply gets it. Indeed, he is essentially an anti-economist who, Sisyphus-like, is trying to transform the Australian economy from Canberra. He distrusts markets and thinks government intervention and spending can produce superior outcomes.

And at this point the pond has to ask exactly what is the demographic the reptiles and Dame Groan are aiming at, prompted by this still ... Dr Jim Cairns, also ‘way out of his depth’.

Are there any younglings whatsoever that have the first clue about Dr. Jimbo?

The pond can recall the times when the pond was living in Windsor and would head off to the Prahran markets, and see Dr. Jimbo sitting at a humble table, flogging his books.

But the pond is of an age. Are the reptiles really only interested in ancient times and ancient audiences?

Dame Groan possibly thought this was a killer reference, but she might just as well have referenced Jack Lang feuding with the banks in his Lang plan.

What on earth is the point, save to establish that you have to be old to stay in touch with this ancient chook's ranting.

Even Dame Groan had to admit that she was wandering a long way back ...

We need to go back a long time to identify another anti-economist who held the position of treasurer: another Dr Jim. Jim Cairns was also a politician way out of his depth who took the reins at a critical time – an oil shock, rising unemployment – and made a complete hash of it. We may be about to see history repeat itself.
In many ways, Chalmers has been one of the luckiest treasurers ever. Escaping from the clutches of Covid, commodity prices have soared and the terms of trade have recorded historical high levels. But unanticipated revenue has been quickly spent, often on very low-value ends.
Forget the nonsense that Chalmers spouts about the Labor government saving $112bn; it has saved nothing and has spent even more. The figures tell the story.
On-budget spending is up by $160bn since Labor took office. Payments as a proportion of GDP have gone from 24.3 per cent to 26.9 per cent. Then there is the explosion in off-budget spending. The now more meaningful figure is the headline cash balance, which shows a deficit of around $63bn next financial year. This compares with Chalmers’ preferred measure, the underlying cash balance, of minus $34bn. It also needs to be pointed out that government debt has risen by more than $100bn during Chalmers’ term in office and is now approaching $1 trillion.
When Chalmers left Australia recently to confer with finance ministers around the world, he made the astonishing claim Australia “is better placed and better prepared” than many countries.

If comparing Jimbo to Dr Jimbo is the best Dame Groan can do, then truly these are desperate times for an aged and out of touch hive mind, compounded by a completely meaningless snap which illustrates three fifths of f*ck all (*google bot approved): Asian refineries will be able to supply Australia only as long as the flow of crude oil keeps up to accommodate overall demand. Picture: Eddie Russell

Is Dame Groan's text so bland and boring that a snap of gas guzzlers in a queue to guzzle gas is the best they can do?

Isn't the reptile joke that it's EVs that have to line up for hours to access a charger?

Dame Groan was keen to absolve mad King Donald of any responsibility for the dismal state of the world, the sort of shufty that the reptiles love to perform, a quick peep before moving back to the main blame game ...

Carry on groaning ...

Was this some sort of joke? We have one of the lowest number of days of liquid fuel reserves among advanced economies; he has used up what fiscal headroom we could now have by his constant overspending; and domestically sourced inflation was a clear problem well before Donald Trump pulled the trigger. Chalmers, the anti-economist, had previously demonstrated his muddled thinking when he declared spending hundreds of millions of dollars on cost-of-living measures would miraculously reduce inflation. Higher interest rates have been one of the outcomes.
One of the important roles the treasurer plays is to block the unachievable ambitions of the spending ministers. The most successful treasurers have kept a close watch on the spending ministers as well as examining the policies they propose. On this score Chalmers is a failure, largely going along with the damaging and expensive ambitions of too many other cabinet ministers, including Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
The fact Chalmers can even talk about the care economy shows he completely misunderstands this role. In his world, uncapped spending on social welfare will lead to higher living standards. Demand-driven, non-means-tested programs have become almost universal, leading to runaway spending and an inability to forecast future outlays.
It’s not just the National Disability Insurance Scheme that’s out of control; think aged care, childcare and other badly designed programs.

It's as if the long years of Tory rule had nothing to do with the current state of affairs, and then came the bog standard reptile fear of EVs and renewables and all that jazz, with Satan's little demonic helper in the thick of it ... Energy Minister Chris Bowen has seized on the fuel crisis sparked by the conflict in the Middle East to declare the government must keep ­electrifying the nation and build Australia’s sovereign capability through renewables. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Then it was to the closing Dame Groan gobbet of despair.

How many times can she scribble that we're all rooned, how many ways can she spin her sorry tale of woe? 

Sadly by this stage in her anti-economist career, there aren't that many, it's the predictability that's the feature, not a bug ... 

The responsible way to look at government spending on social welfare is that budget affordability is the key. A strong economy with solid productivity growth is the means whereby taxpayers can afford to help the more disadvantaged in society.
Another area of profound weakness is Chalmers’ misunderstanding of the labour market. He thinks real wage gains simply can be mandated and workers will enjoy the benefits without any downside. The fact he is part of a government arguing for a “sustainable real wage increase” at the annual wage review at the Fair Work Commission makes the point. Without any increase in productivity, there is no sustainable way real wages can be increased, but Chalmers thinks these things can be imposed. The timing of this intervention couldn’t be worse.
Without a coherent economic framework, Chalmers’ response to war-induced economic difficulties is likely to be ill-advised and ineffective. His instinct will be to ditch any budget plans for real savings – note here the difference with reprioritisation – and to pour money into pump-priming the economy through more handouts. The minor tax reforms in the budget will be piecemeal and designed to shift attention away from the loose fiscal settings.
Chalmers may have the gift of the gab but the fact per capita income has gone backwards during his term is really all you need to know. He has abandoned the lessons of the Hawke-Keating era where a limited government role was accompanied by market forces largely determining the allocation of resources.
It will be a long road back from the ill-effects of having an anti-economist at the helm.

It reminded the pond of the sort of litany you get in a Catholic mass, with the high priestess blathering about productivity and pump-priming and handouts and so on and so forth, and then expecting a response from the hive mind. Et cum spiritu tuo ...

The immortal Rowe preferred to take to the high seas, and he at least gave mad King Donald a commanding role ...

And as EVs and renewables and all that jazz have been mentioned, the pond realises that it didn't provide an update on the EV running time for the return trip between Melbourne and Sydney.

Unfortunately, the timing was skewed because the pond stopped not just for charging but at other places it likes - the sweet little town of Euroa for coffee, the submariner town of Holbrook for a visit to the IGA, a genuinely odd rustic barn of a supermarket, and Gundagai, just because it's there, a dinkum reminder of Jack O'Hagan.

Boosted by listening to a four part podcast about the arrival of the Samurai and the Shōgun in medieval Japan, the pond was looking to an eleven and a half hour trip, a bit longer than usual but not so bad.

There was NIL competition for chargers, save for one bunch fairly close to Sydney that was full. All the pond did was drive on to the next set of chargers, where there was no competition whatsoever.

It was looking good. And then the pond hit Sydney.

First the motorway was clogged to the brim, full of cop and ambulance party hats attending multiple gas guzzler collisions. No way through there ...

Then the pond followed navigator Google's suggestion to get off the main road - never a good idea - and took a back way through Canterbury Road. 

You guessed it, two more gas guzzlers had decided to collide and clog the road.

At this point the pond's schedule was shot, but it wasn't the fault of the EV. It was the fault of the gas guzzlers, wanting to live out J. G. Ballard's Crash. What they needed was a little of the accident avoidance tech that comes standard in EVs.

In short, EVs are fine for distance travel. If you want to ease range anxieties, pay more for a fast charging vehicle with good range (these days the speeds and the ranges on offer are remarkable, but there's a premium involved). 

If you want to save money for local city stuff, get a little suburban EV runabout.

These days you can get one cheaply, with the pricing on a par with gas guzzlers. If your interest in cars has gone, stick to public transport - trains and light rail and trams and even some buses are electric, and it's all good.

Forget the reptiles. There's a reason this is in the news ...

Along the way, the pond did score one visual souvenir, from Euroa, a town better known for its magnificent magpie statue.

This one seemed to summarise what the pond would experience as soon as it plunged back into the hive mind...

Yes, it was a sense of impending ...r,r,r,rage ...

Of course it isn't what it seems on the surface ...

In 2026, RAGE will proudly present its inaugural Recycled Art Exhibition - a major celebration on the war on waste tapping into the creativity, innovation, and talent thriving in our communities. (Here)

Judging by their limited range of illustrations, the reptiles are also in to recycling, and that's why it seems worth reviving this immortal Rowe ... go electric younglings, you only have the hive mind to lose...