His Lordship's on parade and Killer Creighton is too, but will correspondents show up for the lizard Oz circus?

 

The pond has decided to describe Major Mitchell as unreadable, indefensible and irredeemable.

Setting aside his usual bout of Zionism, this day the Major decided to go down the Fauci rabbit hole, and there was no way the pond was going with him ...

Fauci deceit doesn’t fit the ABC narrative
Anthony Fauci’s diary reveals he privately doubted the wet-market Covid origin story in January 2020 – yet the ABC continues to defend him.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

The pond should have added tiresome. What next? A treatise on how mad King Donald actually won that election?

State regime media Faux Noise and Sharri - full disrespect - routinely go down the Fauci rabbit hole, but that way lies madness.

Speaking of the mad king, luckily there were other reptiles eager to step forward, and who better to show the way than Lord Downer?

The header: Yes, America is unreliable but we still need it to lead. No one else will; Some politicians and academics say we should have an independent security and foreign policy. I’m not sure what planet they’re living on.

The caption for the snap of a downcast mad king, setting the tone for His Lordship's work: Donald Trump disembarks Air Force One at Morristown Airport. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Photo

Lord Downer spends a bigly four minutes in fulsome praise of the United States, if the pond might take the Miriam-Webster definitions "characterized by abundance", though "generous in amount, extent or spirit" or "exceeding the bounds of good taste" or "excessively complimentary or flattering" or "aesthetically, morally or generally offensive", as in the Congreve sense that His Lordship is inclined to fulsome lies and nauseous flattery ...(here) 

This month is the 75th anniversary of the signing of the ANZUS treaty and the 25th anniversary of the one time Australia has invoked the treaty. It’s served us well. But we should be clear-eyed about America. It is the indispensable power but it is unreliable.
Let’s look at the Americans’ unreliability: they turned up three years late to the First World War. They turned up two years too late to the Second World War. They sided with Nasser against their allies, Britain and France, when they tried to resist the illegal nationalisation of the Suez Canal. They refused to help their close allies during confrontation with Indonesia. They abandoned their allies, the South Vietnamese, in 1975.
They threatened to punish president Bashar al-Assad if he used chemical weapons, then did nothing about it when he did. They did nothing about Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, and more recently they abandoned their allies in Afghanistan, handing the whole country over to the bloodthirsty, extremist and totalitarian Taliban.
Since then, they have imposed tariffs on all of their allies, being particularly vicious towards the Canadians, and they even threatened to invade Greenland.
So yes, the Americans can be unreliable, and expect them to be unreliable in the future. They, after all, have their own political cycles and challenges. What’s more, they have their own social and political culture, which is starkly different in many ways from our own.

Don't be fooled by His Lordship's deployment of a warm wet lettuce leaf in that mild spanking. There was a billy goat butt coming, and here it came...

But for a century or more, the US has been indispensable. Since 1941, it has been the bulwark against extremist totalitarian ideologies. It was central to the defeat of Nazism and fascism in Europe and Japan. More than any other power, the US held back the tide of the equally cruel, illiberal and totalitarian ideology of communism during the Cold War, and finally, it was the Americans, more than anyone else, who liberated Eastern Europe and freed much of the world from the scourge of communism.

His Lordship was so desperate, he had to reach back to that notorious socialistic commie pinko prevert FDR, notorious for thinking the government had a role in governing ... President Franklin D Roosevelt prepares for a radio address. Picture: Supplied FDR Library

It's been a long time since any politician has promised and delivered a new deal, let alone a offer re-burnishing of that old deal (damn you intrusive AI, the pond didn't mean a refurnishing), but time moves on ...

In our own part of the world, it was American intervention and indeed sacrifices that saved South Korea. Although the Americans didn’t save Indo-China from communism, for 10 years they bought the rest of Southeast Asia time to assemble the anti-communist coalition known as ASEAN.
For all its faults and mistakes, America led the world on behalf of liberal democratic societies against extremism and ideology.

At this point His Lordship delivered a classic billy goat ...

But what of today?

Indeed, indeed, and as the talk is of the works of the warrior class, there might be many answers, all of them positive and full of hope for America's role in the world, as envisioned by a part time Faux Noise host, Colonel Vodka...

His Lordship turned to wrestling with Vlad the sociopathic invader:

The great existential struggle against Soviet-led communism has been replaced by a more complex series of threats. They are threefold. First, there is Russia’s attempt to re-establish as much of the Soviet Union as it can, starting with the illegal invasion of Ukraine.
If Russia successfully takes Ukraine, then it will almost certainly move on to other former Soviet republics, particularly in Central Asia. More than that, if it wasn’t for the Americans underpinning NATO, then Russia would almost certainly claim back the three Baltic republics. There is only one country that has the capacity to stop them, and that is the US.
If the US retreated altogether into itself, Russia would prevail. The Europeans have helped the Ukrainians, of course, but because they pocketed a peace dividend after the end of the Cold War and spent their money instead on welfare and windmills, they need America to underwrite their effort.
Russia would not dare attack any NATO country because Vladimir Putin knows only too well that would lead to an earth-shattering reply from the US.
Although Russia is a nuclear power, Putin knows from the Americans that if he were to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, then the Americans would simply devastate Russian forces in and around the periphery of Ukraine.

The pond is always charmed by the notion of "tactical nuclear weapons", but would mad King Donald actually respond to his best buddy, or would General Bonespurs do yet another TACO, and leave the devastated ruins to his best buddy?

Hopefully no-one will have to answer that question ...Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping inspect an honour guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Picture: Alexander Kazakov / AFP

Having finished with Vlad, His Lordship turned to other matters...

Second, there is Iran’s persistent determination not just to become the dominant power in the Middle East, suppressing its Sunni Arab neighbours, but to complete the elimination of the state of Israel. Without the Americans, Iran would achieve its objectives. Since 1948, the Americans have given the Israelis the wherewithal to survive. More than that, the American umbrella has allowed the Gulf states to develop not just their oil and gas reserves, but build modern economies.
Third, there’s China’s determination to rewrite the rules-based international system and reduce the countries of the Indo-Pacific region to little more than tribute states. China claims the whole of the South China Sea and Taiwan. All that stands between China’s ambitions and an independent, open Indo-Pacific region governed by international law is the regional balance of power, and that can only be maintained with the presence of the US.
Go almost anywhere in the ASEAN countries and ask thoughtful people in their foreign ministries or in think tanks whether the region would benefit from the withdrawal of the US from its alliances with Japan, Australia and The Philippines, and closing its bases. They will all tell you they want America to continue to provide the balance of power the region desperately needs. Russia, Iran and China may be very different countries with divergent interests, but they are all supporting each other. Russia and Iran are heavily dependent on the Chinese market for their hydrocarbon exports. They are what finance their war efforts. China is, in effect, the ATM to these countries.

At last His Lordship turned to the elephant in his room:

Much of the antipathy towards America is driven by a dislike of Donald Trump. It would be a major mistake for our country to confuse the personality of the current President with the geopolitical importance of maintaining a strong alliance with the US. President Trump is not the cause of a changing America. He is a symptom of a changing America.

What a relief to Canadians and Mexicans. 

Elbows up Canucks, rest in peace knowing he's just a symptom rather than the actual disease, as the reptiles delivered a most poetic distraction ... Donald Trump walks to board Air Force One. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Photo

His Lordship ended with a flourish ...

During the Cold War, liberal democratic America and its allies faced literally an existential challenge from the communist world. Having prevailed in the Cold War, the US faces no existential threats at all. Consequently, it’s going to be harder to keep it engaged in world affairs, but we, as America’s ally, should do all we can to make sure it remains engaged.
Some politicians and academics mouth a phrase that Australia should have an independent security and foreign policy. Well, I’m not sure what planet they’re living on, but we live in a very tightly interlinked world.
Liberal democracy may not be as threatened as it was during the Cold War, but it still has to be prepared with endurance, patience, courage and perseverance to confront the enemies of freedom. We still need America to lead the way. No one else will. And reflect on the consequences of that.

The pond isn't inclined to reflect, but as the immortal Rowe notes, Ukraine might need to reflect on the consequences of the current administration "leading the way" (and so might anyone being ethnically cleansed from Gaza, the West Bank or southern Lebanon) ...

Before moving to the bonus, the pond should note that the reptiles have at last taken off the gloves.

While the desperate, craven and pathetic Liberal mob led by the beefy boofhead spend their days filching One Nation policies - Coalition denies flag-burning ban an attempt to undercut One Nation as Labor says push has ‘element of desperation’ -  the reptiles have gone on the offensive:

Juicy stuff, more than enough to stir the loins of the hive mind...

The pond will leave the rest to the archive ...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Drugs, deviance’: Questions One Nation frontman will not answer about his past
Warren Pickering rejects explosive historical allegations from his former partner – supported by his own handwritten letters – just weeks before Victoria’s state election.
By Jamie Walker

But the pond does regret that the archive unhappily failed to save a couple of graphic inserts which show the lizard Oz graphics department at its finest ...

The lizard Oz goes full tabloid dirt disher!

The pond should also give an honourable mention to simplistic Simon:

How ‘bond vigiliantes’ have put profligate Canberra on notice
An interest rate freight train is hurtling towards the federal government.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

Just because the pond has assigned the bulk of him to the archive doesn't mean the pond wasn't impressed by that recycling of that classic Jimbo collage at the top of his piece...

What a classic it is, up there with Albo looking uncertain, hesitant ...

If you can't remember seeing that in the pond, you've been a derelict herpetology student.

And with jihad awards done, the pond could move on to Killer Creighton of the IPA.

Rather than his usual beat - how strange he didn't match the Major on misrepresenting Fauci - Killer this day tried his hand at economics, with a standard visual atop his piece ...

Some might find the tendency of the lazy reptiles to repeat themselves endlessly a tad unnerving...

... but the pond thinks its exactly what the hive mind wants. Mindless repetition ...

Hey nonny no, on with Killer:

The header: Why GDP is no longer an accurate measure of living standards; GDP evolved from one useful measure of largely private sector economic production into economics’ universal scoreboard.

The caption for the artwork which made the pond wonder if Frank got residuals, because he frankly should: Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers. Sources: iStock and Supplied. Artwork by Frank Ling.

Killer could only manage three minutes of actual economics, which some might find a relief ...

With the budget well in the rear-view mirror, Jim Chalmers has increasingly become chief putter of lipstick on the Australian economic pig. The Treasurer and his small army of media and political advisers – and perhaps the bulk of his 1600-odd staff at the Treasury – must dread the drip feed of conventional economic statistics. And so it was last week when the latest national accounts showed gross domestic product grew 0.4 per cent in the three months to the end of June, to finish the full financial year up 2.1 per cent.
According to the Treasurer, this demonstrated the economy’s robustness and resilience, as every set of figures always has for every treasurer. But they were a dismal set of results. The quarterly “growth” was propped up by government spending while private investment didn’t increase at all. Per-person output barely rose and it is still lower than in June 2022, having shrunk in 10 of the past 16 quarters.
But the bigger problem is the ongoing obsessive focus on GDP. Twelve years ago I wrote GDP was “a harmless artefact of a bygone era and at worst a ruse underpinning the fallacy that bureaucrats can measure and politicians can control economic activity”. People cite GDP, which is increasingly made up of government spending, without even understanding it; and its shortcomings have become even more glaring as a measure of anything useful.
GDP has evolved from one useful measure of economic production decades ago into the universal yardstick against which almost everything else is judged: debt, greenhouse emissions, productivity and even sharemarket and housing values.
I’m not the only sceptic. Barely a day goes by when some politician or analyst decries the relentless increase in debt to GDP somewhere in the world. “We’re becoming Argentina” is the warning.
It’s a funny claim given Argentina defaulted in 2001 when its debt to GDP was about 60 per cent. Meanwhile, Japan’s ratio now exceeds 250 per cent and America’s 100 per cent. Britain’s debt-to-GDP ratio has roughly doubled over the past 40 years to around 95 per cent.
This all sounds rather scary but using government interest repayments as a share of GDP or national financial wealth paints a dramatically less alarming picture, according to economists Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen in their recent paper, Why Care About Debt to GDP?
“While the debt-to-GDP ratio has recently surpassed levels of indebtedness not seen since World War II, the interest-to-GDP ratio reached comparable levels during the 1985-1995 period. Most strikingly, the debt-to-equity ratio appears to show no clear trend and, if anything, has recently fallen to below-average levels,” they write.

In classic reptile fashion, while Killer was busy invoking his 12 year old thoughts, the reptiles didn't bother with a link, though it was easy enough to find, and it showed how true Killer has stayed true to his past ...

And while the reptiles did provide a link to the lizard Oz editorialist blathering on and sounding just like Killer ...

... the reptiles studiously avoided the obvious link.

The one thing they didn't provide a link to?

That paper by Berk and van Binsbergen, Why Care About Debt-to-GDP?, which is easy to find in pdf form...

The reptiles' resolute refusal to allow anyone trapped in the hive mind to actually leave is irritating on many levels, not least because it always brings the lyrics of Hotel California to mind (no need to expand the suffering by repeating them) ...

There came a final image, with a caption suggesting that Jimbo was working harder with lipstick than mad King Donald, and the likes of Scott Bessent, Kevin Hassett and Howard Lutnick glossing up the American economic pig ... Jim Chalmers has increasingly become chief putter of lipstick on the Australian economic pig. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP Image

Could it have been a story featuring Jimbo without a snap showing him downcast, defeated and gloomy?

More to the point, is it the job of the Treasurer to talk down the Australian economy? The pond supposes that at some points it might be handy to label Australia a banana republic, but these days that's what lizard Oz columnists are for ...

Different measures produce very different narratives. In another recent study, When GDP Misleads, released in June, Stanford economist Charles Jones and Philip Trammell argue against using real GDP per person as a proxy for living standards.

How hard would it have been for the reptiles to provide, or for Killer to insist on, a link showing his source, especially as it's easy to find in pdf outside any paywall, When GDP Misleads: Inferring Living Standards from the Value of a Statistical Life.

If the pond had shown this sort of carelessness as a first year university student, it would have flunked out even more than it did ...

And so to a final bout of GDP bashing, with the pond leaving it to correspondents to judge this bee buzzing in Killer's noggin - what a relief it isn't vaccines, face masks or Fauci:

GDP per capita has been used to show how Europeans’ living standards have shrunk below even those of Alabama, the poorest US state. Yet if your chosen measure implies life in impoverished, fentanyl-riddled Mobile is superior to that in Barcelona, it tells us more about the statistical poverty of GDP per capita than living standards.
Using a broader method of analysis related to the value of a statistical life, based on individuals’ willingness to pay for a small reduction in mortality risk, the two economists find that lifetime welfare in the US has increased more than fivefold since 1940. Conventional GDP-based measures, by contrast, imply living standards have around doubled since then.
Their assessment suggests conventional GDP-style measures may have massively understated improvements in living standards.
Remember, more purchases of goods and services is “good for GDP”. Yet the modern smartphone has replaced the camera, video recorder, encyclopaedia, street directory, calculator, music player, alarm clock, torch, diary, newspaper and countless other devices that previous generations purchased separately. Free digital services that millions of people now use every day generate no economic output at all. “A natural implication of this structural transformation (toward such services) is that measured GDP would likely be substantially higher if we had never made the structural transformation.”
This should be the death knell of GDP as a measure of living standards. And that’s before we even consider the rapid march of artificial intelligence through the economy. Jones, one of the world’s top economic historians, argues AI is likely to become the most transformative technology of the modern era, but it won’t appear in GDP per capita.
Technological capability can advance at breathtaking speed while measured productivity and GDP rise only gradually. Artificial intelligence seems likely to magnify that phenomenon.
Imagine if every household has access to a highly capable AI tutor, accountant, software engineer, travel agent, translator and preliminary medical adviser at little or no cost.
Perhaps GDP has gradually become something it was never intended to be. It has evolved from one useful measure of largely private sector economic production into economics’ universal scoreboard, a statistic expected simultaneously to measure output, prosperity, living standards and even social progress. There are far better measures for all those other things.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute for Public Affairs.

There are better measures?

On those Killer was silent, but the pond can think of a few...there'll be much social progress for the bots ...

Steve takes to the piano again, as you might be inclined to do when living in Vlad the sociopath's Russia ...