In which prattling Polonius leads the way, and denialist Jennie and the Bjørn-again one arrive to save the day (but mebbe not the planet)...

 

The pond would like to have begun this day by reporting on the reptile review of the Melania movie, but alas, the pond couldn't find hide nor hair of it in the lizard Oz.

Sadly this means some will likely end up at the one star review by Xan Brooks for The Graudian ...Trump film is a gilded trash remake of The Zone of Interest or at the Beast, Trust Me, ‘Melania’ Is an Unbelievable Abomination of Filmmaking or perhaps Marina giving the red carpet and Bezos a Hyding ...From ICE to Melania’s black carpet, are Trump’s techlords getting pangs of buyer’s remorse? Not to forget Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic. (And why did it take over a month and a half for the venerable Meade's Weekly Beast to return? Them's ABC holyday hours).

On the upside, prattling Polonius turned his gimlet eye on King Donald this weekend and he turned out to be charmingly irrelevant, out of touch and useless, even allowing for having to file before the latest follies, like the arrest of Don Lemon and yet another Epstein files dump designed to conceal whatever really went down...but with immense amounts of titillation that's sent everyone into a frenzy.

Never mind, it's meditative Sunday, so no reason to get knickers in a knot...

The header: FDR Democrat presidency shows how Republican Trump administration is part of one tradition – America First; It’s important for Australians to recall that Donald Trump is part of a deep tradition in the US whereby a commitment to isolation is superseded on occasions by international commitments. (The pond added an intermittent archive link for those who wanted to try Polonius's links).

The caption featuring King Donald and a movie which can only be mentioned in passing: Donald Trump – this week at the premiere of movie Melania – projects strength and unpredictability but the reality of US failures in South Vietnam and Afghanistan makes it clear US allies shouldn’t rely too much on alliances with Washington DC. Picture: Allison Robbert/AP

This week Polonius indulged in a four minute ramble which showed he wasn't up to the task at hand, namely dealing with a flailing, failing authoritarian government led by a man clearly in physical and mental decline ...

How did Polonius cope?

By heading back to the safety and the comfort of the past ..

There are about three years left of President Donald J. Trump’s time in the White House. But it is unlikely that he will repeat such an egregious error as the comment he made to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo at Davos in Switzerland late last week.
Asked about the NATO alliance, Trump said the United States has “never needed” NATO. He added “they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did – they stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines”.
This was profoundly wrong. Such NATO nations as Britain and Denmark suffered considerable fatalities and casualties on the frontline. As did Australia, a NATO partner, which suffered 47 deaths and over 260 wounded. The Australian Defence Force’s involvement is well depicted in Aaron Patrick’s recently released book, The Last Battle (Macmillan Australia, 2025).
In time, Britain and Denmark made strong objections to the President’s comments. And Trump made what is probably best depicted as a non-apology apology. He described the 457 British servicemen and women who died in the Afghanistan campaign “as among the greatest of all warriors” – and left it at that. Well, it was better than nothing.
Trump is invariably abrasive and self-centred. But, as an America First nationalist, he is not unusual.
It’s important for Australians to recall that Trump is part of a deep tradition in the US whereby a commitment to isolation is superseded on occasions by international commitments.
I was reminded of this on January 24 when listening to ABC Radio National’s Saturday Extra presented by Nick Bryant. It being the summer break, an interview was replayed that took place with Lowy Institute director Michael Fullilove, who comments widely on Australian-American relations.

He's still hate listening to the ABC? The reptiles didn't help by forking over a couple of stills to help Polonius wander back down mammary road, Franklin D. Roosevelt; Michael Fullilove

 

It's not as if Polonius didn't have recent events he could have scribbled about ...

But Polonius, always an expert at avoidance, was determined to escape into ancient times ...

On February 15 last year, Fullilove compared Trump unfavourably with the Democratic Party’s president Franklin D. Roosevelt. He stated: “Franklin Roosevelt took America out of that period in the 1930s of isolationism and nativism and, of course, one of the groups that he fought against was called America First.”
Fullilove said that FDR had a broad interest in the forces of democracy succeeding and was interested in what happened in Europe and Asia. He added that “many of those impulses … President Trump clearly does not share”.
This overlooked the fact that, speaking in Boston in October 1940, FDR declared that “American boys are not going to be sent to any foreign wars”. At that time the foreign war was between Britain and its dominions (eg, Canada and Australia) and the Nazi-Fascist Axis. At the time, the US was neutral, Germany and the Soviet Union were allies due to the Nazi Soviet Pact (of 1939-41), and France had been defeated.
The US entered the Pacific War against Japan after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. As it turned out, Germany and Italy declared war on the US on December 11, 1941 and the US responded the same day.
By the time the US entered the European/African theatre, the war could have been lost were it not for the courage of the Allies led by British prime minister Winston Churchill and with important contributions made by Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and some others.
It was much the same with World War I when Democrat Woodrow Wilson was in the White House. The US declared war on Imperial Germany in April 1917 and US forces did not see battle until the end of October.
Germany surrendered on November 11, 1918. The war could have been lost in 1914, 1915 or 1916.

Could have?

What lust for weird alternative history is this?

It's the sort of stuff you might turn into a movie like It Happened Here, but what's it got to do with the giddy fascists currently in charge of the disunited States?

The reptiles kept insisting that Polonius stay stuck in the past, like the ancient desiccated coconut fuddy-duddy he is, From left, British prime minister Winston Churchill, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin seated together during the Yalta Conference, 1945.

The pond felt the urge to liven up proceedings with a toon ...

That's better, a little rage, as Polonius kept wandering back in time ...

During World War II, US forces played an important role in defeating Germany’s forces on the western front, with Soviet forces succeeding on the eastern front. But, as with WWI, Germany could have prevailed while FDR led an officially neutral nation.
Certainly, the US preserved the peace in Western Europe after 1945. But not before FDR essentially caved in to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the negotiation leading to Germany’s surrender.
As Adam B. Ulam wrote in his 1968 book, Expansion and Coexistence: “World War II had begun as an attempt by the West to prevent Germany’s goals of domination of Eastern Europe and the consequent destruction of European balance of power; within two years of the war’s end, those aims had been achieved by the USSR (Soviet Union).”
US forces protected Western Europe during the Cold War until the collapse of the Soviet Union. But FDR’s diplomatic weakness prevailed over Churchill’s warnings about Stalin’s iron curtain up to then.
Trump projects strength – along with an unpredictability – not exhibited by the Democratic Obama and Biden administrations. But the reality of US failures in South Vietnam and Afghanistan sends a clear message that it is foolish for US allies to rely too much on alliances with Washington DC. Even though the US has supported the likes of South Korea since 1951 and Taiwan – up to now, at least.

The reptiles interrupted again, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney distanced himself from Trump without mentioning his name. Picture: Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press/AP

Elbows up, Canada, things could be worse ...

And so to a bone to pick with the reptiles.

This was Polonius's next par, with link ...

Prime Minister Mark Carney, of the left-of-centre Canadian Liberal Party, won plaudits from Trump Derangement Syndrome types for his speech at the World Economic Forum – where he distanced himself from the US President without mentioning his name. Carney warned about the great powers, but soon after signed off on a new strategic partnership with China.

It reminded the pond of why the pond so loathes the "keep them inside the hive mind" tactics the reptiles deploy with their links.

If you followed that link, you landed on a Dow Jones story. 

Dow Jones?! The home for TDS types?

The best the pond could find in reference to DTS types was this ...

...Traders have largely shrugged off Trump’s threats about a 100 per cent tariff on Canadian imports over trade dealings with China, said David Rosenberg, head of Toronto-based market strategy firm Rosenberg Research. 
Nevertheless, Trump’s tone matters, Rosenberg said, noting that Trump referred to Carney on Truth Social as “governor” as opposed to prime minister. Rosenberg said this doesn’t bode well as the US launches a formal review later this year of the US-Mexico-Canada trade treaty, or USMCA, at which time trade analysts expect the Trump administration to push for further concessions from Canada.
“The fresh round of name calling signals a clear deterioration in goodwill and an early preview of how the USMCA renewal talks may unfold,” Rosenberg said. “The message is that Ottawa should not expect a conciliatory process.”
Dow Jones

It was just a bait and switch tactic, anything to keep mug punters inside the hive.

Meanwhile, Polonius was wrapping things up, pretending that it was just business as usual ...

Half a century ago in Australia, anti-communist Catholic BA Santamaria and anti-communist Jew Frank Knopfelmacher were strong supporters of the Australian-US alliance.
But they also maintained that Australia could not rely on the US and advocated a substantial increase in defence spending.
At the moment there are mutual benefits in the Australia-US alliance. But a US president might not see it this way in the future.
The Republican Trump administration has not changed the US in any permanent way with respect to foreign policy. Rather, it is part of one tradition – America First. This prevails and then wanes over time – even within presidencies. FDR demonstrates the point.
It’s important that the US’s allies stand up within their respective alliances. In this sense, the leaders of Britain and Denmark, among others, were correct in reminding Trump what their military had done in Afghanistan. It might diminish his America First commitment, for a while at least.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

How gormless, how insipid, how dull, but the pond must accept the blame attached to the delusion that Polonius might attempt to deal with the here and now ...

Say that again?

The Republican Trump administration has not changed the US in any permanent way with respect to foreign policy. Rather, it is part of one tradition – America First. This prevails and then wanes over time – even within presidencies. FDR demonstrates the point.

Tell him Marge ...

Now there's a difference. Foreign policy conducted on the basis of having your c*ck bitten? (Allegedly, *google bot aware).

Maybe JFK? Slick Willy? Pity Polonius filed too late to answer that one.

And now for a few visual distractions ...

Well it's Sunday, why not a 'toon or three, and as for the rest of the reptile pack, talk about a complete waste of time.

Dame Slap still had Linda buzzing around in her noggin ...

She got her AO. Now Kristina Keneally owes two women an apology
Kristina Keneally has been awarded an AO but refuses to apologise to Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown, whose careers and health were destroyed by false allegations she helped weaponise.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Will this deeply weird obsession never end?

It means Dame Slap is beyond the valley of the incredibly tiresome and completely unreadable.

And the pond found it incredibly easy to send Dimitri off to the cornfield archive as he tried to do a pale Dame Groan-lite imitation ...

Labor ‘vision’ blind to harsh reality of debt/deficit disaster
As federal debt approaches $1 trillion, the commonwealth has quietly amassed more than $400bn in off-budget investment funds, borrowing heavily to intervene in markets while productivity stalls, living standards fall and interest costs surge.
By Dimitri Burshtein

The bouffant one got caught up in the current fuss, but the lettuce had had more than enough of that yesterday ...

It’s Christmas for Albanese: How One Nation became the ‘unofficial’ opposition
The Liberals and Nationals are not only in complete disarray, they’re delusional if they think simply changing leader will dig them out of a political abyss of their own making.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

These days the poor lad is forced to go beyond his usual 2 minute spurt up to an amazing virile 6 minutes, but the pond will only note one thing ... the way the illustration showed just how much the PhotoShop skills at the lizard Oz need a refresher course ...

No wonder there was no credit for that snap of that hastily pasted on ill-fitting Santa headgear... as if things weren't bad enough reading about the pastie hastie ...

The pond realises that grating Gemma has something of a cult following, but the pond simply couldn't go there ...

Why Labor wants your baby with strangers, not grandma
The parent trap: Labor must restore choice of childcare
Labor claims institutionalised childcare gives babies a better start. No data supports it. A parent-led revolution is demanding subsidies that let families care for their own children.
By Gemma Tognini

Granted, the irony is rich, what with the rag every other day of the week deploring taxpayer subsidies for bludgers and ne'er do well scroungers, but garrulous Gemma probably loves the trad wife thing, as a way to get filthy rich on a "right for thee, if not for me" basis ...

But all those dismissals left the pond short of a column, or even a Whitlam government.

Luckily denialist Jennie was on hand ...

The header: Energy security must be treated as national security; It’s not clear how the Albanese government will tackle gas shortages in a few years’ time, even though LNG remains an indispensable part of our energy mix for households and industry.

The caption for the snap of a grim-looking Satan's little helper: It’s ironic that Labor’s change of heart was announced by Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who opposes gas as a transition fuel. Picture: Martin Ollman / NewsWire

That allowed the pond to note other stories, such as this one in the Graudian ...

All so we could grok some deep fake porn ... 

Now take it away Jennie ...

Labor’s decision to implement a gas reservation scheme in 2027 is a welcome commitment. It’s been a long time in the making, having been rejected by the Gillard government and after years of campaigning by the Australian Workers Union. As it was an in-principle commitment, final judgments will depend on the outcome of negotiations and the details of the proposed scheme.
It’s ironic that Labor’s change of heart was announced by Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who opposes gas as a transition fuel, excluded it from Labor’s capacity investment scheme, and told international audiences at COP that fossil fuels had no future in Australia. Are we to believe that reality has ­finally dawned?
Australia is the second-largest exporter of LNG, yet forecasts warn of structural east coast gas shortages on peak demand days in 2028 and more broadly from 2029. Our regulation of gas markets is dysfunctional and has failed to protect our national interest.
A prospective gas reservation of between 15 and 25 per cent will apply only to contracts struck after Bowen’s announcement. Current contracts, under which 75 per cent of our gas production is exported as LNG, are excluded on the grounds of “sovereign risk”. These contracts start to expire from 2031, but in the meantime gas shortages threaten.
It suits Bowen’s agenda to focus on “sovereign risk” to avoid dealing with uncontracted gas sold on international spot markets. In 2024, these sales comprised around 25 per cent of our exports, enough to cover forecast shortages. It’s in our national interest for uncontracted gas to be redirected to meet domestic needs by the use of export controls and/or export levies.
Gas supply has to be affordable as well as reliable. Since LNG was exported from Queensland in 2015, domestic prices have tripled. They need to be decoupled from international prices. The benefits are obvious when comparing prices with Western Australia, where reservation applies.
In 2025, export gas was produced for around $6.50 per gigajoule and exported at an average of $17.00. Before 2015, average domestic spot prices were under $5, they were around $10 from 2017 to 2021, and are currently around $14. By comparison, the average contract price in WA is just over $7.

The reptiles helpfully slipped in a meaningless visual distraction, Workers say they are ‘going to have a future’ under a federal government plan to keep Tomago smelter open, but details remain scarce.

The pond's only complaint was that there were no snaps of whale-killing windmills ...

Cutting the domestic price of gas is a must, as manufacturing industry remains at risk. It would also reduce the overall cost of energy and ease inflationary pressures in the economy. The declining competitiveness of our trade-exposed industries saw Qenos and Oceania Glass join the companies that closed their doors. Many others, like the Tomago smelter, are struggling to remain operational.
It’s not clear how the Albanese government intends to tackle gas shortages in a few years’ time. The energy ministers at their December meeting agreed to draft legislation “to provide AEMO with last resort powers in the east coast gas market to help prevent the realisation of structural shortfalls”.
This followed recent criticism by the Victorian Auditor-General of the Energy Department’s failure “to have fully considered risks in its planning, nor to have factored in contingencies should risks arise”.
It begs the question as to whether, behind closed doors, there’s another plan in the making. Was it just a coincidence that the Victorian government recently gave the go-ahead for Viva Energy’s gas terminal at Corio Bay, which includes a floating LNG ­terminal with regasification and storage facilities?
At his press conference, when asked if the construction of import terminals was now redundant, Bowen’s response was curious: “There’s no state building an import terminal at the moment, I’m afraid. There’s been some talk of LNG import terminals in Port Kembla and Geelong but they are not under construction.”

The reptiles could, along with Jennie, spot tankers all over the shop, An LNG tanker arriving in Gladstone Harbour. A report says navigating the 31km shipping channel into Geelong’s Corio Bay could be ‘challenging’. Picture: Mike Richards

In her final gobbet, Jennie remained determined to gas the country ...

Was the minister unaware that Squadron Energy had completed the construction of Port Kembla terminal in December 2024 and that the Corio Bay terminal is awaiting federal environmental approval? It’s listed on the EPBC’s portal, deferred until September 30, and now under “active ­consideration”, pending a final ­decision.
Until the Albanese government rules out importing LNG, that door remains wide open. Importing refined fuel has exposed our vulnerability to potential disruption of supply chains. This mustn’t be repeated with gas. It remains an indispensable part of our energy mix for households and industry, meeting the needs of power-­hungry growth industries like data centres and to firm renewables.
The times require the incorporation of strategic risk in energy planning, and a coherent integration of energy with industry policy. The Perdaman Urea Plant, under construction near Karratha, shows the benefits of this approach, combined with WA’s gas reservation. Gas will be used as both a feedstock and the main energy source for producing urea fertiliser. Our reliance on imports will be reversed as new export markets open. It shows the importance of gas in sustaining manufacturing.
Importing LNG would make a mockery of Labor’s recent commitment to gas reservation. In troubled times we need to be mindful that energy security is ­national security.
Jennie George is a former ACTU president and Labor member for Throsby.

Here, have a break ...

And now there's just room to slip in a serve of Bjørn-again mania ...

Here the pond would like to start by noting the inane, incessant repetition that the Bjørn-again one indulges in ...

This is from February 2020 and We don’t have money to burn on green mania; The costs alone make the drastic ‘solution’ to climate change wishful thinking. Taxpayers just won’t cop it in the lizard Oz. (*archive link).

The pond had to archive it, but the effort was worth it, so one line could be seen in context:

... By far the most practical policy, with the most impact, is a dramatic increase in investment in low and zero-carbon energy innovation.
That’s because, for decades to come, solar and wind energy will be neither cheap enough nor effective enough to replace fossil fuels. Today, they make up only 1.1 per cent of global energy use and the International Energy Agency estimates that even after we spend $US3 trillion ($4.47 trillion) more on subsidies, they will not even reach 5 per cent by 2040. Innovation is needed to bring down the price of green energy. We need to find breakthroughs for batteries, nuclear, carbon capture and a plethora of other promising technologies. Innovation can solve our climate challenge.

Familiar to the point of nausea?

Back to the future ...

The header: Net-zero revolt has begun: We need to pivot from making energy more expensive to innovation that will make green energy cheaper; Britain’s slide from energy powerhouse to price pariah emphasises the losing argument that climate action justifies exorbitant costs and making power unaffordable for millions.

The caption for the truly terrifying snap of whale killing windmills, with a warning to anyone travelling the Hume to watch out for their carcasses: Today, wind is the primary source of electricity generation in the UK, contributing roughly a third of the country’s total supply. But many wind farms are in Scotland, meaning the region generates far more power than it requires and needs to transmit some south, where most of the demand is. The current infrastructure isn’t sufficient to transport all that power. Picture: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News

It was only the standard very short 3 minute read, but what a good excuse to swerve to the Graudian... 

 Now to begin the Bjørning, roughly equivalent to a shining ...

A new pragmatism is infusing the climate debate in the West, driven by voters weary of soaring energy bills and annoyed by increasingly hysterical and patronising climate rhetoric. From Washington to Westminster, Berlin to Canberra, the political class is confronting a simple truth: aggressive net-zero mandates are delivering present economic pain for unmeasurable and far-off climate gain.
The starting shot might have been the US election of Donald Trump, but the clearest warning comes from the United Kingdom. The UK’s net-zero law, enacted in 2019, committed the country to zero emissions by 2050. It was hailed as bold leadership, but the reality has been economic sabotage. Industrial electricity prices surged 124 per cent between 2019 and 2024 – quadruple the US increase – leaving the UK with the highest rates in the Western world at 26.63 pence ($0.53) per kilowatt-hour.

The reptiles naturally rolled out expert climate scientist Danica to help the Bjørn-again one ... Sky News host Danica De Giorgio says UK Labour’s green energy plan is an “ominous sign” for Australia. Ms De Giorgio said the UK’s green energy plan could cost £350 billion. “Looks like the UK is going broke and backwards as well in its race to renewables.”

Ominous sign? Haven't we had enough of them already?

Back to the coal mine with Bjørn...

And the Labour government’s renewable-heavy plans will only inflate costs further. At a recent parliamentary hearing, top energy executives laid bare the facts. Chris Norbury, CEO of E.On UK, testified that even if wholesale prices were to plummet to zero, consumer bills would remain just as high as today, due to escalating policy-driven expenses.
Reform UK, now leading national polls and poised to form the next government, first demanded an end to net-zero targets, condemning their design and cost. The Conservatives, staring at electoral oblivion, hastily followed suit, pledging to repeal the Climate Change Act. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reportedly preparing to delay or dilute key green commitments to curb voter revolt.
Even the Tony Blair Institute, hardly known for climate scepticism, now urges suspending carbon taxes on gas to slash energy prices through 2030, prioritising cheap power over emission cuts like the US and China do.
The UK’s plight is no isolated incident – it’s a harbinger of a retreat from the global net-zero experiment recently championed by politicians even in blue US states and across Europe, as well as further abroad.
In Australia, the conservative Liberal Party has abandoned the promise of net zero in 2050, and will instead prioritise lower energy prices. Germany’s far-right AfD is now leading national polls, railing against “elitist” green burdens and vowing to halt decarbonisation. Japan’s new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, prioritises nuclear revival for energy security over aggressive renewables.

What's interesting here is how limited the Bjørn-again one has become.

Away from the lizard Oz, search for this post and you'll find it in Facebook, on X and in LinkedIn, and six days ago in the Zambian Sunday Times ...luckily hidden behind a paywall so it didn't pollute the environment too much ...

He really has been sent into the provinces, but what a silly rag - apparently they haven't woken up to the terrifying power of whale-killing windmills.

The reptiles showed how to do it when they interrupted with another snap, one of those entirely useless collages for which Emilia shamelessly took credit, featuring ... you guessed it, not just a bunch of denialists, but also ... windmills! Increasingly, Western leaders are realigning on net-zero commitments. From left, US President Donald Trump, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, former British PM Tony Blair, Liberals leader Sussan Ley and WAS Liberal MP Andrew Hastie. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella

Brownie reports for recognising the terrifying impact of whale-killing windmills Emilia. Ever thought of heading to Zambia to share your skills? 

Even the EU is rolling back environmental laws, watering down sustainable finance rules amid farmer protests and deregulation pushes. Its climate promises for 2040 were watered down and, crucially, the promises can be further loosened if it – inevitably – ends up having a negative impact on the EU’s economy.
Corporations who sold the world on their green credentials are retreating too: Wells Fargo abandoned its net-zero promise in March 2025, while BlackRock exited the Net Zero Alliance in January, citing political backlash against ESG investing.
This broadening dissent mostly doesn’t dismiss the reality of the climate issue, but insists that we shouldn’t deny the climate policy costs either: net zero will cost hundreds of trillions of dollars and deliver benefits much smaller. Moreover, even if all rich countries were to cut to zero emissions by mid-century, the climate models clearly show the impact would avert less than 0.1C of the projected warming by the end of the century, while imposing 8-18 per cent hits to GDP already by mid-century.
It is now becoming clear that the rosy claims of green growth or just modest costs from a forced green transition are no longer plausible.
Instead, if green politicians truly do believe climate action justifies exorbitant costs and making power unaffordable for millions, they now have to make that argument openly. And this is a losing argument. The UK’s slide from energy powerhouse to price pariah emphasises this.
Enter philanthropist Bill Gates, whose recent memo ahead of the COP30 climate summit calls for a strategic pivot. He lays out three tough truths: climate change is serious but “will not lead to humanity’s demise” or the end of civilisation; temperature is not the best progress metric, and; health and prosperity are our best defences against it.

There was one final interruption ...Journal Editorial Report: Saving the planet falls back to earth.

Amen to that, well-played Bill the talking Mr "STD" Clippy (allegedly), Tony Bleagh, Nige and King Donald ...

And so to the final gobbet and that always present sense of déjà vu.

See if you can spot the incessantly repeated mantra ...(the pond has done its best to help)

This means shifting from obsessive emission cuts, which have shaped climate and energy policy across the UK, Europe, and other Western countries. Instead, Gates highlights, we need to focus on what boosts human welfare most. For the world’s poor, that means tackling hunger, poverty and disease directly. This will help people live much better lives and improve their resiliency in a warmer climate. For rich nations, it means addressing jobs, education, immigration, defence and energy head-on.
To respond to climate change smartly, we need to pivot from making energy more expensive to innovation that will eventually make green energy cheaper: investing in R&D to achieve breakthroughs like more advanced nuclear, carbon capture and geoengineering, and far more efficient green energy generation and storage, rather than driving up all energy prices while subsidising today’s intermittent and uncompetitive renewables.
Politicians still peddling painless green transitions must now defend the indefensible: unaffordable energy for negligible impact. The net-zero era is fracturing. It is time for honesty, innovation and policies that serve people the best.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of False Alarm and Best Things First.

And that, thank the long absent lord, was that. 

What a disgrace the rag is, how shamelessly, nauseatingly repetitive the Bjørn-again one is ...

A few last 'toons ... and the pond encourages you to think of the lizard Oz as an executioner, amazingly full of narcissistic self-pitying creatures ...

And now for the weekly update ...even as fresh follies emerge on an hourly basis from this fascist regime ...

In which the lettuce loses hope, compounded by the presence of the Lynch mob and the dog botherer ...

 

Amazing really.

The reptiles have sunk so low that early this weekend, there wasn't any "news" - even hive-mind skewed "news" - at the top of the page, but rather a dog bothering opinion piece yammering on about the need to be at one with the hive mind.

Yes, the dog botherer even trumped the little to be proud of saga still giving the lettuce the shivers.

And further down the page came this, which evoked Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts ...

At least that provided a sign of just how desperate the reptiles were to try to get vulgar youff to give the rag a go ...

Oh FFS ...

In a rare move, Ree’s column appears outside The Australian’s digital paywall, a sign of the substantial potential audience for her words.

Talk about pathetic, needy desperation. 

"In a rare move"? 

Sheesh, that paywall model must really be suffering, and as for lowering the demographic of the rag to below sixty? Is that why they stuck the lying rodent, now out of power since 2007 - 2 bloody OO bloody 7 - at the top of the page?

Still, it could have been worse, they could have reverted to Ming the Merciless ...

At the end, the new Nikki Gemmell made a heartfelt plea ...

...I find myself writing about something different. About learning to live inside the tension between what might have been and a tentative curiosity for what still remains possible.
I’d like to explore that some more, here, from time to time. Will you accompany me?

Nah, sorry, sweet Charlotte, you do realise the company you're now keeping? Can't you smell the stench of the sewer as you inspect your navel and gather your fluff?

Regrettably, the chance of the pond ever going near your scribbles again is between nada and nil and nihil and zero squared.

So it was back to Sarah and the devastating news for the lettuce that its hopes for an early win had been reduced to just the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...

What was remarkable was the way that the reptiles littered Sarah's piece with snaps of the creationist young earth spawn, who had shown he hadn't got the ticker, but who lingered in the air like a bad smell ...

“An individual of his abilities and principles has much to contribute on the front lines of our fight for the promise of Australia and to ensure that our best days lie ahead.
“My colleague and friend is a great asset to the Liberal cause, with formidable strengths and an unwavering commitment to serving our country.”
While momentum is building towards a leadership challenge, most Liberal MPs who spoke to The Australian said it was unlikely a spill would be triggered by Mr Taylor or his supporters at Tuesday’s partyroom meeting as the former opposition Treasury spokesman did not yet have the numbers.
Mr Hastie said he made his decision after consulting with colleagues and “respecting their honest feedback to me, it is clear that I do not have the support needed to become leader of the Liberal Party”.

See, the hastie pastie was the featured item in the AV distraction, Sky News contributor Jaimee Rogers discusses Andrew Hastie's bowing out of the leadership race for the Liberal Party. “Andrew Hastie has confirmed this afternoon that he won't be contesting the Liberal Leadership as he doesn't have the numbers,” Mr Rogers said. “The Coalition is fractured. The Nationals are no longer formally part of the arrangement. Polling is soft. “When an opposition is distracted by itself, it can't do the job voters expect it to do and that is hold the government to account … Without unity, you simply cannot function as an effective opposition.”

On and on Sarah blathered ...

“On this basis, I wish to make it clear I will not be contesting the leadership,” Mr Hastie said in a statement released a day after he and three other Liberal MPs met with Mr Taylor face-to-face in Melbourne.
The only conservative powerbroker not present was frontbencher Michaelia Cash, who was in Melbourne but has kept her distance from the leadership debate ahead of a looming preselection battle. Senator Cash did not respond to questions from The Australian over whether she was invited or made aware of the Melbourne meeting.
Mr Hastie’s announcement came as Ms Ley – who has fiercely defended her position since the disastrous Coalition split she blames entirely on Mr Littleproud – revealed the interim arrangements for her shadow cabinet.
While temporarily distributing the portfolios left empty by the Nationals who resigned as part of the split, Ms Ley warned she would announce a permanent shadow ministry before the second parliamentary sitting week, starting on February 9.
Several Nationals MPs said Ms Ley’s statement and language was clearly intended to give a “timeline” for the Coalition to reunify, with Mr Littleproud late on Friday declaring he expected the two parties to “discuss the issues in a constructive matter” next week.
The statement was released half an hour after Mr Hastie announced he would exit the leadership race, leaving Mr Taylor as the sole conservative leadership candidate, but Nationals sources said the timing was a coincidence.
It follows Mr Littleproud dramatically declaring that the ­Coalition could not come back together while Ms Ley remained leader, in an unprecedented intervention that sparked concern from Nationals while infuriating Liberals, who agreed the move had hardened support for Ms Ley.

... and once again it was the man without ticker who appeared in the AV distraction, Liberal MP Andrew Hastie has announced he will not be contesting for the Liberal Party leadership. He claims he does not have the support needed to become the leader. This bombshell leaves Liberal MP Angus Taylor as the main running contender.

The lettuce was in full melt down mode. 

Anyone the lettuce talked to carefully explained that the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way wasn't the brightest bulb in the barn or the sharpest set of shears in the shearing shed, so Susssan had a fair chance of limping on ...and nothing Sarah said could lift the lettuce's spirits ...

Despite this, most Nationals MPs believed a change in Liberal leader was necessary in order reunify the Coalition given the degree of bad blood in recent weeks, but few have even privately expressed a preference for who that might be.
One Nationals MP said a final impasse could emerge before the Coalition reunified, warning Mr Littleproud may make the reappointment of the three Nationals shadow ministers who were asked to resign after breaking cabinet solidarity a condition.
Liberal sources said Mr Taylor – who ran against Ms Ley in last year’s leadership ballot – still needed to peel off two or three MPs who had indicated their support for the current leader, while allies of Mr Hastie warned their colleagues not to expect they “automatically” transfer their votes to Mr Taylor after a bruising week of negotiations.
But moderate MPs said the fact Mr Taylor was the conservative candidate as opposed to the more controversial Mr Hastie paved the way for negotiations.
“Taylor is obviously more ­appealing than Hastie so now that we know Hastie is out of the picture discussions can happen,” the MP said.
While Mr Hastie has previously made clear his openness to taking on the leadership, Mr Taylor has refused to weigh in, citing shadow cabinet solidarity.
Mr Taylor’s supporters believe a leadership spill is increasingly likely to be forced late next week or the following week, after Mr Hastie’s departure allowed the former treasurer to canvass support more openly across the party room.
They estimate the numbers in favour of a spill currently mirror the 25 to 29 votes Mr Taylor secured against Ms Ley in last year’s leadership ballot, but argue momentum will now build around a challenge.
Some Moderate MPs still believe Ms Ley can survive a challenge, but they conceded that Mr Taylor was more likely to peel off votes from the centre than Mr Hastie.
Mr Taylor and his backers have yet to lock in the precise timing of a spill, nor have they settled when frontbench resignations – including his own – would begin to fall into place.
Ms Ley’s performance in the next sitting weeks would also have a bearing on timing, sources said.
“Does Sussan (Ley) stabilise and we get some clean air or make progress on interest rates? Or is it a disaster and the polls get worse and we don’t cut through on the interest rate problem? That’s what will decide the spill and timing around that,” one MP said.
Supporters of Ms Ley and Mr Hastie argued Mr Taylor should resign from the frontbench immediately if he is launching a challenge.
“He was caught red-handed yesterday,” one Liberal MP said.
“If Angus has any honour at all, he’ll resign,” another said.
It’s understood that Mr Taylor’s pitch as leader will be that the threat facing the party from Labor and One Nation is existential and that he will return the Liberals to a centre-right party.
The Liberal party room will meet for the first time since the Coalition split last week and the subsequent Liberal leadership speculation on Tuesday.

That's it? The lettuce will have to wait until Tuesday, and even then it's likely to be a dud, and little to be proud of will have even less to be proud of?

To be fair, Sarah - in the spirit of the reptiles' relentless recycling program - also got a column out of it, best dealt with in a couple of gobbets ...

Why did the pond bother? 

It was just more titillation, and the vague hope that the beefy boofhead would pull it off, and thereby consign the coalition to the wilderness for years ...

Good luck to the lettuce, the pond says, with the help of the immortal Rowe ...

And now a comedy item from Crikey ... (sorry, paywall)

Hopeless romance: Could you imagine a more romantic Valentine’s Day activity than this? One Nation’s newest parliamentarian Barnaby Joyce, together with One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, is hosting a New England branch dinner on February 14, promising “an evening of good food, strong company, and straight-talking politics about Australia’s future”.
The MP’s new party even wrote a little poem to go along with its Facebook invite: “Roses are red, violets are blue, this Valentine’s Day, New England has a date lined up just for you.”
Tickets are $95 per person, and if you don’t have a date, don’t worry: the post specified it’s okay to “bring your partner, bring a mate, or come solo”. —AN

They even had a poster ...

Will Tamworth's shame never end? 

Not Westies, not the once proud home to the greatest tower of ice that ever was?

It's going to be a tough weekend, with the likes of the bromancer and nattering "Ned" no shows, so the moment the pond saw that the reptiles had tried to slip the Lynch mob through on a Friday arvo - like a dump of Epstein documents - the pond knew its weekend duty.

No stone must ever be left unturned in defaming the academic reputation of the University of Melbourne, and so the pond celebrated yet again at the sight of this splash... 

Huzzah, because no matter who turned up in the weekend hive mind, room had to be found for the Lynch mob ...

The header: Two dead Americans and a fractured right: why Minneapolis could be Trump’s breaking point; The unfolding Minneapolis drama can be seen as a sign of the robustness at the heart of the US experiment.

The caption for the wisely uncredited, remarkably hideous collage, deployed in the splash and then unfurled in the full column: How Donald Trump lost conservative America.

Only the Lynch mob could perform the mental gymnastics and sleight of hand required to turn murder in the streets into a triumph of American democracy, and spend a bigly nine minutes in the performance ...

Someone must have been telling lies about Martha K’s housekeeper, for one morning she disappeared without doing anything wrong. Martha K, my mother-in-law, lives in a Texas independent living facility. A few months ago, Marcella, her housekeeper, vanished. Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were cruising.
An instinctive, mostly non-voting (Americans have the right not to), conservative all her life, Martha K now had a lived experience of Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. She didn’t like it. The federal government, under Republican control (all three branches), has rarely felt more present in her life.
The progressive potential to ­exploit this disquiet, as Trump goes into his political twilight, is enormous. Democrats are mostly failing to do this; Kamala Harris, to my mother-in-law’s bemusement, remains popular. Instead, it is elements of Trump’s base, especially among MAGA-leaning intellectuals, that are starting to query their leader’s approach.
Minnesota has been Texas on steroids. The Trump team has nursed a grievance against the blue state for its stoking of violence following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Within two years, nearly half of its capital city’s police department had quit. So much for Democrats having their back. Instead, they campaigned to defund the cops and turned a blind eye to massive welfare fraud among the state’s Somali community.
Trump still blames Xi Jinping (for Covid) and Governor Tim Walz (for post-Floyd riots) that ­ruined his election prospects.

Note the clever way that the Lynch mob makes it personal, as the reptiles slipped in a snap of one of the victims, but preferred a dumpster dive to a snap of the lesbian victim (who after all was just a woman of the wrong kind): Alex Pretti was shot by a federal officer in Minneapolis last week. Picture: Michael Pretti via AP; People gather on top of dumpster in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Picture: Stephen Maturen / Getty Images via AFP

The Lynch mob warmed to the cleansing task at hand ...

Minneapolis is hardly the centre of illegal immigration. Los Angeles County has an estimated 1.1 million illegal immigrants, New York 600,000. Minneapolis has a paltry 34,000. All are deep blue but this small midwestern city – about the size of Canberra – has form with Trump.
Trigger-happy ICE agents, deployed to Minneapolis by the President, have met iPhone-happy progressive activists and killed two of them (Renee Good and Alex Pretti).
Trump loyalists have defended ICE’s “self-defensive” actions. Jacob Frey, the city’s mayor, has told ICE agents to “get the f..k out of Minneapolis”.

Now in the best NY Times both siderist style, there are always two sides to every issue, two ways to interpret anything. 

See how the Lynch mob handles the job:

There are two ways to interpret these events. The first sees in them signs that the Trump presidency is now in decline. That all second terms loose crisis and end in failure. That any two-termer will experience the rejuvenation of his opponents and fracturing of his base. This latter phenomenon is especially important to grasp.
The second, which I will come to, sees in this Minnesota winter less evidence of a fading administration, and more a reassertion of competition, sometimes violent, but recurrent and unavoidable given America’s foundational character.
This is not a reason to be cheerful, more a reason to be realistic.
Minneapolis and cracks in the MAGA ICE
Even before Alex Pretti died, Republicans were beginning to question the wisdom of Trump’s targeting of Minneapolis. With the 37-year-old male ICU nurse now dead, fissures have widened. Some GOP politicians have gotten twitchy: ICE agents have now killed two US citizens (not illegal aliens) who were exercising their First Amendment right to assembly. Aren’t Republicans proud defenders of such rights against their federal abridgement?
How far the deceased were peaceable in the moments before they were shot remains hotly contested. For what it is worth, I believe my own eyes on this: both were victims of excessive force, by agents of the national government. America’s 250th birthday this year will feature prominently the brave rebels who targeted invading British red coats. Minneapolis has put the GOP on the wrong side of that history and its impending commemoration. Alex Pretti was shot for exercising his Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The more intriguing response on the right has come from its intellectuals. To some, Trump has imbibed a version of the identity politics he condemns in his progressive opponents. This disquiet has been forcefully directed against senior White House aide Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who have backed ICE as warriors in a culture war against “domestic terrorists”.
“Fire Kristi Noem into the Sun,” declared the conservative Jeffrey Blehar at National Review. “At a minimum, the DHS secretary should immediately become the least visible member of this administration.” “No, no, Noem,” pleaded Commentary magazine.
For sure, there are still MAGA activists who will admit no doubt. They continue to caste the crisis in the language of identity politics. The ideological transitioner, Naomi Wolf, who started left and has now moved right, was especially critical of female protesters: “The smiles you see on their faces now say it all: white women long for all out combat with ICE – who tend to be strong, physically confident, masculine men – because the conflict is a form of physical release for them.”

The reptiles, still ignoring the first victim, slipped in a snap of ICE Barbie, and never mind the cruel way that King Donald snubbed her in his usual North Korea style cabinet meeting, as a sign he was displeased with his minion: Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Picture: Al Drago/Getty Images/AFP

The incredibly realistic Lynch mob carried on ...

The “conservative truth-teller” Erik Erickson posted on his social media that “An AWFUL is dead after running her car into an ICE agent who opened fire on her. Progressive whites are turning violent. ICE agents have the right to defend themselves.” In this twist on left-wing intersectionality, an AWFUL is an Angry, White, Female, Urban, Liberal.
Elon Musk, quite used to firing things into the air, drew a long bow on Minneapolis. “Liberal women,” he wrote on X, “will divorce their husband and only let him see his children once a month, then cry about how ICE hurts families.”
Isn’t the reduction of all human phenomena to race and gender the preserve of the progressive left? Shouldn’t conservatives prioritise individual rights and liberties and relegate the salience of group identity?
The usually Trump-sympathetic blogger Richard Hanania, one of the architects of MAGA’s anti-DEI push, found all this exasperating. “So we’ve already tossed individual liberty and federalism out the window. I thought conservatives were also against attacking people on account of their race, or at least not attacking white people on those grounds.”
Yuval Levin, the most incisive conservative commentator in America today, has been clear: “Trump and his team are beginning to pay a price for their wilful blindness to both the dynamics of American public opinion and the logic of the American constitutional system.”
Lyndon B. Johnson dolefully said, “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite (on Vietnam), I’ve lost America.” I think the same about Levin, Trump and Minneapolis. The popularity of Trump’s election pledge to get the Mexican border under control, and his great strides in doing so, has been squandered in the snow and ice of this midwestern city.
This has less to do with the seemingly inevitable violence of ICE’s pursuit of illegals than it has with the adoption of a psychological approach grounded in identity rather than of law and order. The latter should be the right’s bread and butter; leave grievance and victimology to your left-wing ­opponents.
This column has long argued that Trump has little interest in building a lasting, new kind of conservatism. He doesn’t think in left-right terms. Despite the endurance of a left-right spectrum, as old as the French Revolution, to help us understand political differences, in the Age of Trump, a horseshoe might be more accurate.
Donald Trump has always tested the traditional spectrum: a rich man who speaks for a working class, right-wing on lots of cultural issues but with no real feel for conservatism, wants a restoration of American greatness without building a durable majority to do it, demands Greenland be decolonised, while toppling a left-wing dictator in Venezuela.
Where do we locate these characteristics on the left-right axis? How about his embrace of identity politics? Here, we need a horseshoe. Trump and too many of his lieutenants have become identitarians. In their urgency to beat opponents, they have adopted their tactics and psychology. This portends an intense period of intra-GOP conflict as Trump’s presidential clock ticks down.
Conflict is basic to American political development

Conflict?

That's an incredibly polite way to refer to civil war and murder in the streets and racism, but never mind, as the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction, Joe Kelly is on the ground in Minneapolis as protests continue against the presence of federal border control agents in the city.

The Lynch mob, keen to maintain his status, dragged in "identity politics", as well as said civil war ...

This gloomy interpretation of what Minneapolis portends – a resort by both sides to, rather than a transcendence of, identity politics, the fracturing of Republicanism, and the squandering of Trump’s electoral capital – needs a wider context. This does not rely on the “well, they had a Civil War, so how bad can this episode really be?” question. But the greatest bloodletting in American history is hard to ignore in any assessment of contemporary turbulence.
Abraham Lincoln’s Union forces killed close to 300,000 Confederate rebels between 1861 and 1865. Trump will fall some way short of this. He will likely not match Bill Clinton either. In 1993, the Democratic president sent the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms into a religious compound, killing 76 US citizens. The bloody end to the Waco siege makes ICE depredations today seem small.
Ilhan Omah, a US congresswoman from Minnesota, was attacked while denouncing ICE at a town hall on Tuesday. Charlie Kirk died at the hands of a progressive assassin last year. In 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina brutally beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane on the US Senate floor. 1963: JFK blown away. What else do I have to say?

It seems that violence is cleansing and cathartic, and all to the good. If, for example, one of the Lynch mob's students went plumb loco and plugged the dude, why it would be just an experiment in American democracy. 

On the other hand - there are always two interpretations to hand - it might just be a senseless murder, much like two people gunned down in the streets by faceless masked goons roaming the range.

Pick your poison, the pond is sure the Lynch mob will treat it as an excellent academic exercise.

And so to celebrate violence as the way forward:

Violence has always been a feature of American political development. The experiment that has been run since 1776 is enduringly ideological – the United States is an idea. Conflict over what the idea is and how it is to be realised is unavoidable. Indeed, the wonder is how little violence infects the system given its ideological character.
The ideological experiments of the 20th century, from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR to Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, killed millions of their own people. For all its faults, America remains a better power than any alternative.
Autocratic regimes fell, while America’s disputatious democracy became the greatest power in world history. The separation of powers, on which the US constitution is built, gave it a durability, taking it from global irrelevance at its beginning, to the system on which the world turns today. When the various crises of the moment interpose, we should remember that longer record of success.

Eventually the reptiles managed to get in both victims, though only by way of posters, Posters of Alex Pretti and Renee Good who were fatally shot by federal agents in recent weeks. Picture: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images/AFP; A man stands at the memorial site for Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Picture: Jaida Grey Eagle

It turns out that killing someone is apparently just a form of "moral contestation":

We are too quick, especially in Australia, to indict moral contestation as culture war. An America unwilling to fight over its culture would be an immeasurably smaller place. This writer has not spent his entire adult life studying a Canberra-style technocracy. The United States is the working out of the human condition. It is meant to be messy, sometimes bloody, unwaveringly compelling.
This is not an excuse to wallow in Minneapolis as some sort of blood sacrifice for a contested idea. It is a request to place the tragic dynamics of that city in a wider context. Two large forces are in tension: the power and appeal of immigration as basic to American national character and the forces seeking to make that immigration subject to the rule of law. It would be more remarkable were there no geographic locus to this conflict. It just happens to be in Minnesota.
Finally, consider that, rather than Minneapolis representing the failure of American federalism, we may be witnessing an intense moment of its fulfilment. Competition between branches and levels of government is not a flaw but a feature of the US system. Edward S. Corwin, the famous constitutional scholar, said the constitution was “an invitation to struggle” over who controls foreign policy. Why does this city implicate foreign policy? Because the progressive ideology and activism of Minnesotans intends to alter how the state attracts and assimilates immigrants. Minnesota has a de facto foreign policy – forbidden by the constitution – but one which it is in competition with the federal government over.
Governor Tim Walz’s parallel diplomacy (or “paradiplomacy”) has become a feature of how American federalism invites a struggle over immigration policy. The formal levers of power are in the president’s hands, but he must adapt them (and there are signs this week that he will) for local consumption. Federal supremacy is something that must be fought for rather than assumed. It creates an environment for competition which, at its worst, spills blood on American streets. But, at its best, represents an enduring American capacity to argue over where power should lie.
Neither my mother-in-law, nor any of her neighbours, ever heard from Marcella (32) again. A woman desperate to contribute to American society, who cleaned the bathrooms of Americans when their fellow citizens would not, is now, in Martha K’s conservative mind, emblematic of Donald Trump’s overreach.
That Trump inhabits a system that will allow him to recalibrate is, again, evidence of a systemic robustness, rather than of existential crisis, at the heart of the American experiment.
Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

And there you have it. 

It's all splendid evidence of "systemic robustness" for a country that keeps its colonialism and fascism to a decent level ...

As for that "invitation to struggle"?

What a pity that the name Mein Kampf is already taken. 

It would have been the perfect title for this piece, as the Lynch mob's struggle helped the University of Melbourne maintain its reputation for academic excellence, in a Germanic sort of way ...

And so inevitably to the dog botherer, if only because the reptiles made such a feature of the wretch so early in the weekend, with the lying rodent front and centre.

But before turning to the dog botherer - a rough equivalent of having to fix a blocked toilet - the pond would like to recall yet again Liam Kenny's howl of pain in Junkee way back in 2013:

Chris Kenny is my dad. On one of the Sky News political analysis programs he hosts, he has replied to the Chaser joke, lamenting that if his children were ever to Google his name in the future, this is the kind of filth we would stumble across.
Heaven forbid.
Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”.
And it’s a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online?

Sorry Liam, absolutely nothing's changed, and he's still blathering on endlessly, as in this tedious ten minute outing ...

You see sweet Charlotte? This isn't the rag for you, this is a rag dedicated to dinosaurs ...

The header: How can Australia be ‘one and free’ again?; How did we get here? Since October 2023, Australia has been riven by hate, anger and violence – and we urgently need leaders to turn the tide and restore our unity.

The caption for the wisely uncredited collage, featuring an uncredited lying rodent: As Australia’s social cohesion splinters, grievance politics is tearing us apart.

Anyone expecting anything unifying should leave the room immediately.

This is just another dog botherer litany, a set of whines and moans, deeply pathetic, and only remarkable in that the reptiles were so desperate that they put this at the top of the "news" section ...

Just five years ago, in response to claims that referring to our country as “young and free” insulted Indigenous Australians, then prime minister Scott Morrison officially changed the second line of our national anthem to “for we are one and free”.
Given unprecedented levels of hatred, divisiveness and even violence in our national debate, we are faced with the confronting question of whether the new line is even more misleading than the original.
Since the atrocity in Israel on October 7, 2023, we have seen more than two years of vicious antisemitism coming initially from Islamist extremist elements before reanimating neo-Nazi groups. After 26 months of threats, graffiti, vandalism, and firebombings of Jewish homes, businesses, childcare centres and synagogues, as well as regular political protests chanting for the annihilation of ­Israel, we saw the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil when 15 people were shot dead at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration last month.
One and free? Ask the parents who send their children to Jewish schools to spend their days behind razor wire and armed guards.
One and free? Ask the families who gathered in Hyde Park last Monday to celebrate Australia Day only to be abused by a man in a T-shirt showing an Indigenous flag modified to include the clenched fist of a black power salute. “I hope the white genocide does happen,” he said, “because you guys are c. ts, f. k your flag, f. k this genocidal country.”
On the same day in Melbourne a young woman with a small Australian flag responded to taunts by saying, “I can be proud of my country.” A man wearing a keffiyeh shouted that this country is “funding a genocide” in Palestine.
“What about all the Indigenous people that are still dying in custody?” he shouted. “What about the fact that this country is built on stolen land? You don’t give a f. k? What does that mean? You’re a f. king piece of shit racist, good thing you’re standing in the shade because I know that you’re so white you don’t belong here, you’re European, this is Indigenous land, you’ll f. king burn.”
Toxic, divisive stand-offs
This is more than an isolated incident. It reflects the grievances, divisions and erroneous self-flagellation that has become commonplace in our country, mirrored not just in radical protests but also in our national debate, especially on publicly funded media.
Indigenous affairs, the Middle East, #MeToo feminism, transgender activism, climate change, the renewables rollout – a range of topics trigger toxic and divisive stand-offs.
In Canberra, hyper-partisanship has fuelled personal (and false) attacks against leading figures, numerous parliamentarians have left their parties, the Coalition split twice inside a year, and the tone of debate sinks ever lower.
A true public square no longer exists, media is polarised, and social media algorithms constantly reaffirm prejudices. The Adelaide Writers Week became so confuzzled about who could and could not speak that the whole event was cancelled.
Despite a national cabinet process during the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw an each-state-for-themselves mentality prevail, with citizens barred from crossing state borders even for urgent medical treatment or to see their dying loved ones.
Illogical restrictions, lockdowns, curfews and vaccine ­mandates were imposed, and protesters were hit with brutal policing – in Victoria they fired rubber bullets.
In my lifetime I have not seen more division, or a greater lack of social cohesion. Many of us wonder what national values or symbols our country can unite around.

Here's one thought.

Any notion of cohesion won't come via the dog botherer, the hive minds at the lizard Oz, or the ratbags at Sky Noise down under - the entire business model relies on division - nor will it be the relentless desire to return to little Johnny's era ... Former PM John Howard arrives at a candlelight vigil in Bondi late last year, a week after 15 innocent people were gunned down. Picture: Tom Parrish

Every so often, the pond wonders why it bothers, then perks up at the thought that tomorrow might bring prattling Polonius and fresh bouts of climate science denialism.

In the meantime ...

“I am not as pessimistic as that,” former prime minister John Howard told Inquirer. Howard sees the fissures, but offers a broad, his­torical perspective, and one that stems from first-hand experience through crises such as the Port ­Arthur massacre, 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the Bali bombings.
“I think the biggest single failure of the past several years was the failure of the government to give moral leadership after the terrible antisemitism displayed at the Opera House after October 7,” Howard critiques. “If the Prime Minister had responded strongly, say by ringing (then opposition leader) Peter Dutton and suggesting a joint press conference to ­condemn antisemitism, I think the nation would have responded ­better. The government failed to give the moral leadership. Governments can always give the lead, they can always set the tone.”
There can be little doubt the Opera House debacle shamed Australia, and the soft response from politicians and authorities gave tacit encouragement to subsequent escalation.
Police made much of expert advice that at the Opera House nobody chanted “gas the Jews” – yet they failed to comprehend that “f. k the Jews” and “where’s the Jews?” amounted to the same vilification and hate speech.
At that protest we also saw an Israeli flag burned, and “Allahu Akbar” chanted along with, tellingly, “shame, shame, Australia.”

All par for the Australian Daily Zionist News, with appropriate images designed to set off the hive mind, An Israeli flag is burned on the forecourt of The Sydney Opera House in Sydney following the outbreak of war between Israel and Palestine. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

It was the reptiles that let clap happy fundie loon SloMo back out of his bag, with the inevitable results ...

But that's the reptile business model.

Fear, hate, loathing, anger, division and then doing the Orwellian thing of making it sound like that's what they deplore ...

Unity through hared, two minute hate sessions directed at the common enemy, creating a forced communal ecstasy ...

...a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting ...

And here's how it's done ...

Here was a gathering threatening Jews, celebrating the slaughter of innocent Israelis by the bloodthirsty Islamist terrorist of Hamas, and denouncing Australia – yet it was met with relatively mild ­condemnation and led to no police charges.
The only arrests police made were to take two men parading Australian and Israeli flags out of harm’s way. Surely this is a case study in how inaction can ­foster hatred and undercut social cohesion.
On Australia Day most people were at the beach or at a backyard barbie celebrating the day in our traditionally laconic fashion, but the protests for and against the day were increasingly strident and hateful, uniting on only one point – antisemitism. The “Invasion Day” rallies were infused with pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli aspects, a bizarre concoction of grievances that saw chants about “always was, always is Aboriginal land” interspersed with chants for “intifada” and the elimination of Israel.
At the opposing “March for Australia” protests, far right activists and neo-Nazis took control, and one man was arrested for allegedly declaring that Jews are the nation’s worst enemies.
Authorities seem to have no trouble arresting alleged extreme right antisemites (and nor should they) but they seem very timid when it comes to arresting Islamist hate preachers or those demanding intifada.
This is particularly disturbing given we have seen the human cost of a globalised intifada at Bondi. There is a sense of a two-tiered justice system, which undermines public faith and further threatens cohesion.
Speaking on antisemitism in ­Israel this week, former prime minister Scott Morrison explored the origins of the angst, and he pinpointed the replacement of individual moral agency by grievance and identity politics.
“When failure is moralised as systemic injustice, liberal norms collapse. Individual responsibility is excused in the name of grievance and institutions – universities, cultural bodies, media and even religious organisations – that become infected with this culture become seeding grounds for those who wish to destroy the very liberal society they are supposed to nourish and protect.”

Then came an image to remind correspondents that Dame Groan has been screeching about the weevils of furriners for years in the lizard Oz, Protesters join the March for Australia in Sydney on Australia Day. Picture: NewsWire / Christian Gilles

And so to the rest of the litany, and if it wasn't bad enough that the lying rodent had featured, the dog botherer made sure the demographic stayed well over 70 by dragging in Blainers ...

This is an acute observation that applies to many of the hot-button issues that have metamorphosed into toxic debates.
When grievance and identity trump all, even the facts seldom matter, as the abusive protester in Melbourne articulated – if you do not see the systemic injustice that he does, then you are less than human, you are ripe for hatred.
We see this absolutism in so many debates. Protesters still yell for Indigenous land rights decades after the Mabo decision and resultant legislation have delivered rights so powerful that 45 per cent of the continent is under native title administration.
So what is it that the protesters want, all of Australia ceded? It is absurd, of course.
Esteemed historian Geoffrey Blainey agrees about high levels of divisiveness and the toxicity of public debate, and points to the role of education.
“The universities have much to answer for,” he told Inquirer.
“My opinion is that probably social cohesion has been low and the maladies you define have been high on previous occasions,” Blainey assesses, referencing the turmoil and drought of the 1890s, and also the Depression years.
“We won’t know for years whether this is the worst of times, but it could well turn out to be true.”
Overall, Blainey, like Howard, looks to history to keep pessimism at bay. “Human crises of one kind or another sometimes carry the seeds for a period of revival, whether we see the seeds at present I doubt,” he said.

Keep pessimism at bay? 

The entire business model of the lizard Oz - of the dog botherer in this outing - is to dwell on pessimism, gloom and doom, and brood about difficult, uppity indigenous people, Elders burned an Australian flag as thousands of protesters gathered at Queens Gardens in Brisbane to protest against Australia Day. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

How soon before the litany turns to climate science denialism?

Soon enough, though some might think too soon, with so much more division and hate to offer ...

“Political parties, left or right, usually revive after periods of trauma, our political history since the 1890s tells us this.”
Politicians are often their own worst enemies, undermining trust with the public, and this is only ­getting worse. Many voters have become highly sceptical of government following the Covid pandemic overreach, the refusal to call a royal commission, and the clear double standards where authorities were heavy-handed in enforcing intrusive laws and shutting down vaccine mandate protests in ways they never countenance for an anti-Israel or anti-Australia Day protests.
When voters are told repeatedly by both sides of politics for many years that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy while electricity prices rise to record levels and the renewables rollout creates enormous pain for regional communities, it does not build trust.
I noticed a Sydney public transport bus this week sporting the ­signage, “This is a zero emissions bus” – a blatant lie given this ­machine is about 20 tonnes of metal and plastics fuelled by electricity that often comes from coal-fired generation.
Howard sees climate change as a dividing line. “There is a lot of extravagant language being used about climate change,” he said, “but I think more and more people, and I’m one of them, are starting to wonder why we are giving away natural advantages that providence gave us, for diminishing returns?

So tiresome, and so predictable, March for Australia and Invasion Day protesters clash outside Melbourne’s Parliament. Picture: Brendan Beckett

Will "zealots" get a run?

How did you doubt?

“Why should we give up the advantage of cheap energy, why should we deny to poorer nations of the world the abundant energy resources we possess?”
The hard left maintains its climate catastrophism, but Howard is right – increasingly mainstream and regional Australians see only lies and the infliction of pain for no discernible gain. Yet protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion feel sufficiently emboldened to blockade train lines and disrupt coal ports, preventing companies and workers from going about their lawful business. They also feel no compunction about blocking traffic across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and elsewhere, creating enormous inconvenience for tens of thousands of fellow citizens.
The doomsday scenarios that inspire these zealots are often mouthed by politicians from the governing parties; political rhetoric has consequences.
The Indigenous voice debate created a schism in 2023 with both sides of the argument failing the honesty test at times (some on the yes side claimed this was only a minor constitutional change, while the no side pretended the Uluru statement was 26 pages long). And over the past five years the Brittany Higgins case and the #MeToo campaign stretched credulity, eroded faith in authorities, and ended careers long before the truth began to come out.
This is the Americanisation of our political debate, the descent into personal attacks. It is amplified by a postmodern disdain for objective fact – “your truth” being all that matters; and as with most detrimental aspects of public debate, it is worsened and coarsened through social media.
It is daunting to contemplate where all this is heading. We need to remind ourselves that the sound and fury often comes from a radicalised few, and the mainstream disposition can be very different.

 Oh FFS ... the Americanisation of our political debate?

He's writing for an American owned corporation, with its owner caring so little for Australia that he gave up his citizenship for a mess of shekels.

Then came a snap of a man who sounded very much Nick Fuentes, and so King Donald, and so Faux Noise adjacent, Brandan Koschel, arrested and denied bail over alleged hate speech at Sydney’s March for Australia rally on Australia Day earlier this week.

Then it was back to the litany, with more little Johnny, more climate science denialism, and more SloMo, and by this stage, the pond just wanted it to end ...

Howard makes this point about our increasingly fractious national day. “I think the most significant thing about Australia Day is the polls, and how there is a massive increase in support of the current day,” said the former prime minister. “You are seeing the silent majority, the decent middle, revolting against the noisy opponents.”
If that trend continues, dare we hope for a “relaxed and comfortable” Australia Day in the future? Tony Abbott’s optimistic history of Australia is a runaway bestseller, so maybe there is a growing appetite for the national story.
Might we again celebrate what unites us? Might we dare to be proud of a nation that is the envy of most, and which works hard to right its wrongs and provide fairness for all?
Can we find away to re-establish a pluralistic public square, even when the media is polarised, people disappear into digital media silos, and the ABC is increasingly a plaything of the green Left? Democracy depends on informed debate, so it is hardly surprising that the degradation of our national debate has coincided with the splintering of our political class, the disenchantment of voters, and a decline in support for the major parties.
We used to come together to help each other in national disasters. When Cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin at Christmas 1974, people in the southern states took Territorian refugees into their homes.
Now, when bushfires or floods destroy homes and lives, we regularly endure the grotesque and inane spectacle of climate alarmists pretending Australian policies have worsened the impact, even as volunteers risk their lives in the aftermath. Such heartless nonsense should be argued out of the conversation but too many unthinkingly amplify it.
This week, when Morrison made a timely and thoughtful contribution to the debate about tackling Islamist extremism, he was denigrated by the National Imams Council as reckless and Islamophobic. And Labor’s Anne Aly accused him of using the Bondi massacre to sow discourse (she meant discord).
It is a bleak outlook and there is a distinct shortage of intellectual integrity and moral clarity.
If the benign and successful ­nation of Australia cannot find common cause for pride and celebration, there can be no hope for any sovereign entity.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese talked the talk on Australia Day. “A nation built with care and compassion, aspiration and determination,” he said, “A nation whose strong heart beats with courage, kindness and that abiding Australian instinct for fairness.”
Easily said, but what has he done to foster than purpose? What has he done to make us “one and free”?
The entire country got behind Australia II in 1983, when every landlubber professed some knowledge of winged keels and spinnakers. And perhaps the high point of national cohesion and self-regard came in 2000 when the Sydney Olympics were spectacularly efficient, entertaining and friendly.
Perhaps we could aim to nurture a resurgence of national cohesion and purpose by 2032 for the Brisbane Games.
Six years to find some common ground and shared aspiration, to root out the extremists, the disrupters and the aggrieved.
It can be done. History shows it should be done. But it will take leaders, and none of them yet are standing up.

Actually if the dog botherer wants a spirit of unity, via sport, here's a thought ...

Boycott the World Cup ...

History shows such boycotts can be done ... but it will take genuine willpower to tackle a truly damaging Faux Noise cult by giving up a football cult ...

And so this day's reptile studies are done, and the pond can only offer one consolation.

There could be worse ways of wasting time and money ...