In which a number of honourable mentions are capped by Dame Slap carrying on jihading ...

 

With mad King Donald's ongoing war in the middle east a spectacular mess, and with too many convolutions to track on an hourly basis, the lizard Oz editorialist felt the need to emit a squawk this day ...

Oh dear, so much for the war with China, and as for mad King Donald, put it another way ...

Shades of Sideshow Bob...

And now, thanks to the intermittent archive currently working, the pond decided to make a series of honourable mentions, on a thanks but no thanks basis ...

New tax on gas could backfire spectacularly
Australia’s proposed gas tax threatens to break our word with key trading partners
Australia’s gas belongs to Australians and we have the right to tax it any way we like, but it comes at a cost.
By Saul Kavonic

As a heads up, Saul is credited by the reptiles as: Saul Kavonic is head of energy research MST Marquee

Head off to the company website, and you'll see this in Saul's CV... He has worked in commercial and strategy roles at Woodside Energy, Australia's largest oil and gas company ...

Thanks but no thanks, but the pond is happy to put it another way ...

Also deserving of intermittent archive honourable mentions ...

Butler’s NDIS plan lets kids down
Mark Butler is walking away from children who have serious needs
For many without supports, their autism or development delay is a barrier to participate in everyday life.
By Amanda Camm

Amanda's credit ran ... Amanda Camm is the Queensland Families Minister.

The reptile trick here is to run countless numbers of articles and stories bashing the NDIS as out of control, a disaster for the economy, even worse than renewables, and then just as the hapless government attempts to do something about it, drag in a deep north ministerial toad to deplore said attempts.

In a similar vein ...

Our ‘lifeboat’ for those most in need is sinking
‘Lifeboat’ for those most in need is sinking with rorting, inefficiency and buck-passing
Parliament unanimously backed a national scheme built around fairness, dignity and choice – with significant ambition.
By John Della Bosca

This was an even more cunning reptile ploy, as the reptile credit explains, John Della Bosca is a former Labor politician who led the campaign for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

It's the old reptile ploy of getting 'em coming and getting 'em going. Don't do anything, and its a disaster; do try to do something, and it's a disaster.

Moving along, the pond would have liked a reptile excuse to segue to the Wilcox of the day, but whatever ...

And so to the first sign of the season, a bit like listening to the Delius tone poem, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.

Come on down Jason ...

Let’s recommit to the nation our Diggers defended
We must never abandon the Australia our soldiers defended
Our political class have treated freedom as a limitless resource that can be extended to its enemies without consequence.
By Jason Thomas

Um, actually Jason, the Australia early diggers defended was inclined to racism, misogyny, bigotry, and a full on war between tykes and proddies, together with assorted other malfunctions and mistreatments of minorities (fancy being a gay in the the war years in Tamworth?).

Some of those aspects of "freedumb" needed to be abandoned ...though it has to be said that the reptiles at the lizard Oz still valiantly attempt to defend those ancient times, what with the war on China by Xmas a daily torment ...

For the record ... Jason Thomas is director of Frontier Assessments.

And if you head off to Jason's website, you're served a word salad which begins this way ...

Dr Jason Thomas specialises in geo-political, field-based assessments in complex operating environments to assist with due-diligence, capital raising, feasibility studies and early works of major projects and humanitarian operations. 
Jason has a specific interest in complexities of cross-border projects or those located near porous international boundaries. He develops locally tailored approaches to establishing stable community and political relationships to protect a project’s commercial value. 

A teaser trailer will explain why the pond gave the Jason game away early ...

There you go ... all that blather about a cohesive Judaeo-Xian democracy, and talk of Islamist-influenced utopias and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, Jason did mention George Orwell, for which the pond is profoundly grateful, because the pond had promised to itself that the first time it came across a George reference, it would run T. S. Eliot's rejection letter for Animal Farm (click on to enlarge):

(The story at the Graudian: It needs more public-spirited pigs': TS Eliot's rejection of Orwell's Animal Farm)

Does it have anything to do with Jason bleating about Judaeo-Xians and kicking atheists and secularists to the kerb? 

Nah, but it's really funny to read the words of a conservative English ponce who simply didn't get a classic bit of writing ...

And so to the reptile treat of the day, courtesy Dame Slap ...

The header: You can teach people to count ... but you cannot make them think; Critics who tally story numbers to attack this newspaper have missed the point entirely.

The pathetically defensive caption for an uncredited, truly pathetic collage: The truth matters. And we said so. When did the left get so timid about challenging those who wield power over us?

Dame Slap is one of the sturdiest (and some would say silliest) reptile jihadists of them all. 

She was conducting jihads on climate science long before she donned a MAGA cap and stepped into the New York night life to celebrate the arrival of a mad king, thereby giving free rein to a whole new world of jihads.

The Dame particularly dislikes uppity women, especially if they have an Islamic hue, but today she spent a bigly five minutes being curiously defensive about the jihadist lizard Oz ...

There is a new fad among critics of this newspaper. They count how many stories we run on a particular topic and claim the final sum as a scoop of proven wrongdoing. Some have gone even more granular, counting words. Lost in the bloomless fields of accounting, their exercise is misguided. Perhaps purposely so.
The best one can say is they can count – though that’s up for debate. But they sure can’t think.
Famous for being unfairly sacked by the ABC, Antoinette Lattouf claimed a journalistic coup recently by counting how many stories this newspaper has run about Israel-hating extremist academic Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Working with a data analyst and mathematician, Dr Robert Bean, Lattouf thinks she struck journalistic gold: their counting exercise found this newspaper ran 412 unique articles mentioning Abdel-Fattah – which apparently was “more than Nine Newspapers, ABC News Online, The Guardian and Australian Community Media’s Canberra Times, Newcastle Herald and Bendigo Advertiser COMBINED”.
With a Trumpian flourish like that, Lattouf and Dr Bean might be in the running for the Walkley’s new award for bean counters of the year. Except on our count Abdel-Fattah was mentioned only 268 times during the relevant period.
Double counting by the intrepid counters aside, the bigger point is: so what? Thinkers will notice why our coverage differs from other media outlets. Unlike most other media organisations, we take antisemitism seriously. If you’re at a loose end, Antoinette, count the number of stories we ran from Australians calling for a royal commission into antisemitism.
As an aside, before it folded in early 2025, the group co-chaired by Malcolm Turnbull – Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission – caught the counting bug too just weeks before the voice referendum. When it was clear the Yes side would not prevail, the group released research about how many pieces News Corp outlets ran supporting the No case to suggest wicked bias. As it turned out, the more interesting number was the 9,452,792 Australians (or 60.06 per cent) who voted against the constitutional change. They did so for sound reasons that The Australian and other News Corp outlets explored in far greater detail than all other news outlets combined. (No caps needed for emphasis.) We call this public interest journalism.

What's funny about this? You don't need to count numbers to realise that the lizard Oz routinely conducts jihads and one of their leading jihadists is Dame Slap.

Why bother disputing it? Why not wear it as a badge of honour? If you're going to carry on like a Taliban extremist or a ratbag mad mullah, why not just own it?

The problem with the counters is they don’t understand what really counts. Lattouf’s maths scoop failed to expose inaccuracies in our coverage or make a case that reporting about Abdel-Fattah was not in the public interest.
Instead, Lattouf regurgitated Abdel Fattah’s belief that “being a woman who is Palestinian and Muslim makes her a prime target for The Australian”. That sort of fatuous argument finds friends in the knee-jerk world of identity politics.
In the serious world of public interest journalism, being a woman who is Palestinian and a Muslim does not warrant any more scrutiny and – importantly – any less scrutiny than any other ethnic or religious background.

She squawks and bleats and protests too much, though that is the jihadist way.

The reptiles once again reminded the hive mind of the subject of one of their never-ending jihads - a jihad which incidentally the pond has largely ignored because it's been so angry and over the top: Coverage of academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has become a focal point in media criticism debates. Picture: AAP

Dame Slap used this chance to carry on with the jihad, regurgitating all the reptiles standard jihad talking points...

This newspaper reported on Abdel-Fattah’s behaviour – which included leading children’s chants of “intifada” hate speech at a protest at Sydney University, and updating her Facebook profile with the image of a parachutist in the colours of the Palestinian flag a day after Hamas terrorists parachuted into Israel to murder and kidnap hundreds of civilians.
The paper ran news stories on her circa $900,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Australian Research Council, on her bragging about how she “bends the rules” on her grant and on her exclusion – then inclusion – at Adelaide Writers Week. All this was most certainly in the public interest.
The fact that Macquarie University took no action against Abdel-Fat­tah, that the ARC decided her grant was in order and the Adelaide Festival board decided to cave to pressure and re-invite her to speak at the 2027 Adelaide Writers Week, all of which we faithfully reported, invites more questions about our educational and cultural institutions. It turns out that readers were very interested to learn about how tax dollars are spent and the laughably hypocritical culture of writers festivals.
The only thing the counters have revealed is that Abdel Fattah owes The Australian a note of thanks. She is no longer an obscure academic. After all, what’s the point of all that bleating about Israel if no one hears you?
Amanda Meade at The Guardian likes to count too. After the Australian Press Council decided against this newspaper concerning a complaint by former ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold, Meade counted how many words – apparently 4000 – we wrote putting our case that the press council got it woefully wrong.

The pond was exceptionally pleased to see the venerable Meade get a mention.

She must really have stuck in Dame Slap's craw, and what a chance to provide a link to The Australian throws 4,000-word tantrum at press council ruling as Drumgold waits for just one" sorry.

Of course another Dame Slap jihad was at the heart of it ...

When the press watchdog ruled that Murdoch’s broadsheet published three misleading, unfair and inaccurate articles about the former ACT prosecutor Shane Drumgold, The Australian responded by having a tantrum.
We say tantrum because the newspaper published on Thursday an extraordinary 4,000-word riposte, including a front-page story, a timeline, two comment pieces and a thundering editorial questioning the Australian Press Council’s competence and integrity.
This railing against the umpire is all the more bizarre, given News Corp effectively controls the APC as a majority member which pays up to 70% of its annual $1.7m budget.
The columnist Janet Albrechtsen wrote all three pieces that were criticised, although the Sydney bureau chief, Stephen Rice, shares a byline on one. Of Albrechtsen’s role, the council said it was “a significant omission” not to disclose the writer’s role in the inquiry into the Bruce Lehrmann trial for which Drumgold was the prosecutor.
In 2024, the ACT supreme court ruled Walter Sofronoff’s extensive communications with Albrechtsen gave rise to an impression of bias against him during the inquiry into the Lehrmann trial. The judge found Sofronoff’s 273 interactions with Albrechtsen gave the impression he “might have been influenced by the views held and publicly expressed” by her.
Drumgold complained to the council that three pieces written by Albrechtsen after the ruling misrepresented the findings. The APC ruled in Drumgold’s favour despite a last-ditch attempt by the Oz to change its mind.
When The Australian received the preliminary adverse finding it responded by commissioning two independent legal opinions. The council said the legal opinions were not relevant and it was only judging whether the publication had breached its editorial standards.
Drumgold responded to The Australian’s dummy spit with a post on LinkedIn: “Who needs the truth, when you have a whole newspaper … Sorry seems to be the hardest word.”

So when Dame Slap wrote the words "we wrote putting our case", she's deflecting from the real problem. It was she that wrote all three pieces judged to misrepresent the findings.

That's what happens when you're a jihadist intent more on ideology and theology than on giving someone a fair go, or admitting an error.

The reptiles decided this would be a good point to fling in a snap of the victim, Shane Drumgold. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Jihadist Dame Slap carried on bleating ...

It was telling that a journalist chose to count our words rather than read them. The substance of the matter was simple – should journalists and newspapers meekly kneel before the press council when they know a council ruling is wrong?
The truth matters. And we said so. When did the left get so timid about challenging those who wield power over us?
Of course, at the heart of this counting-as-journalism fetish is a discomfort with the nature of our news, analysis and opinion pieces. If Lattouf or Meade agreed with the stories, they wouldn’t have their calculators out. Most important, if these critics could find something genuinely wrong with our reporting – inaccuracies, for example, are always a good place to start – they would surely go hell for leather on that front. Instead, to borrow a phrase from Paul Keating, each has reduced themselves to a human abacus.
The most recent number-counting exercise to try to justify a claim this newspaper has done something dreadfully wrong concerns our reporting on the serious allegations about white art gallery workers intervening in the artworks of Indigenous artists and concealing that intervention.
The Australian’s “white hands on black art” investigation into the APY Art Centre Collective was high-quality journalism. Based on numerous sources, the 2023 investigation included a disturbing video showing a white staff member from APYACC-affiliated art centre Tjala Arts painting on the canvas of award-winning Indigenous artist Yaritji Young.
It’s understandable that groundbreaking investigations that question the status quo will raise the ire of vested interests. But these were matters of profound public interest for everyone involved in the Indigenous art world and beyond.
The reporting has proven deeply inconvenient for many at the centre of the allegations, and for institutions that carried out their own reviews.

It was a relief when the reptiles decided this would be a good time to con hive mind suckers out of a few shekels to keep the Murdochian clan in their accustomed US citizen lifestyle ...

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Yaritji Young paints Tjala Arts centre
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That provided Dame Slap with a chance to regurgitate another favourite reptile jihad. 

The Dame has always been up for a little bashing of uppity blacks, so why not indulge in her favourite pastime?

The APYACC was expelled from the Indigenous Art Code in 2023. Its state funding was suspended. An independent investigation by the National Gallery of Australia, into 28 paintings that were going to be shown at the APYACC exhibition at the NGA, excluded the video from its investigation because the relevant artwork was not part of the exhibition, before deciding all the paintings met its provenance standards. The SA government has still not released the findings of a tri-government inquiry. However, APYACC’s state funding has been restored.
Those who are deeply uncomfortable with The Australian’s investigation have failed to show concern for the truth. A partisan website launched last week to coincide with the APYACC exhibition makes wild claims about the white hands investigation, focusing on the volume of stories. The APYACC’s catalogue, on sale in the NGA’s gallery, carries an essay claiming, in effect, that the white hands on black art investigation might have been timed to defeat the voice referendum. This is a crazy conflation of two very serious matters.
In the end, readers will decide what matters. They read The Australian because we run important stories, not comfortable ones. They focus on substance, not numbers. For the record – to save our critics some time – this piece is 1253 words.

Oh that must have hurt, there's a lot of smarting and cheek-burning going on in that epic bout of defensiveness. 

How tough it is to be a jihadist and cop all those slings and arrows and word counts.

That noted, by the pond's count, Dame Slap's piece was 1249 words too long. 

Just a few words would have sufficed: The reptile jihad continues ...

And so to the Rowe of the day ...

And speaking of Orwellian ...

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Luckily Wilcox had a prayer to hand ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

You see? 

That snap of Jimbo in despair.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carry on groaning ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In which the pond goes Latin mass before turning to Lord Downer, the onion muncher and Major Mitchell ..

 

The pond isn't going to go into the funeral it attended, which was a private affair in the form of a Catholic communion mass, but did want to note one aspect of the service.

But first an anecdote. A long, long time ago, in a Tamworth far away, wreathed in the mists of time, the pond attended St Dominic's Catholic school, run by Dominican nuns in what was then obligatory full penguin gear. (Later the site was sold, the building demolished and the space turned into a car park).

After lying about sins in confession to get a quick 'all clear' from a mysterious priest tucked away behind a screen ("disobedience" was always handy, as was in later times "impure thoughts") and saying the odd cleansing Hail Mary, students were obliged to attend mass at the next door St Nick's.

One time after the priest had stuck a wafer on the pond's tongue (a feat involving some dexterity) a wafer fragment got stuck in the pond's teeth. 

Wandering back to the pew, the pond began to poke at this disagreeable bit of wafer with a finger in an attempt to dislodge it... when whack, a nun's hand delivered a sharp blow to the pond's cheek, the sound reverberating through the church.

Then she she leaned in, face contorted in anger, hissing words to the effect: "Don't you ever dare touch the body of Christ".

At that cheek-reddening, flesh-bruising moment, the pond was enlightened. 

This wafer was no symbolic token gesture, this wafer was the actual body of Christ. 

The pond was committing an act of flesh-eating cannibalism, of the same genus as all those cannibal stories that littered children's adventure fiction. 

It was ... transubstantiation. (The official word for the concept came later to the pond. If you've never been there, you'll probably never get it.)

Let no filthy, grubby paw, or digit, get in the way of the magical moment when a priest put Christ's flesh on tongue, and the recipient gobbles down actual human flesh with pious relish.

Fast forward, and in the funeral service the pond was aghast, shocked and disturbed to see the priest passing out wafers to the grubby, grasping paws of the congregation. Then they could stuff the wafers in their mouths by themselves. 

It was still flesh eating, but it was somehow prosaic and sordid, entirely without magic.

The last funeral communion mass the pond attended had been in pre-Covid days, and apparently this variation was introduced as a way to help deal with Covid.

The pond urgently wanted the opinion of Robert Kennedy on this, but he was too busy attending to a raccoon penis. Still the pond wondered whether mixing a little Ivermectin into the holy water might not have been a better solution, thereby allowing the priest to still deliver magical wafer direct to tongue. 

The pond thought of that Dominican nun, now probably long dead, and wondered how she might have coped with this new age of heresy.

Eventually a sullen pond began to mutter the responses under breath in best Mel Gibson style - "Et cum spiritu tuo", "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi, miserére nobis", and so on, proving that years of indoctrination can survive a long time, and that while you can take an ex-Catholic out of the church, you can't take the church out of the ex-Catholic. (You are with Mel, JD, in a love of the Latin mass, aren't you?)

And speaking of heretics, it's time for reptiles filling the hive mind of the lizard Oz with odious, grubby thoughts...

Today it's all about the war and mad King Donald and the bumbling incompetence of him and his minions, and naturally the reptiles were out and about looking for excuses and people to blame.

Lord Downer led the way ...

The header: Progressive left backs our enemies, kills our economy; The policies of the left are driven by its ideology. They’re driven by the vibe.

The caption for an image designed to terrify the hive mind: Iranian women part in a rally to pay tribute to women killed during the Middle East war, in Tehran. Picture: AFP

Progressives kill the economy? Be fair, no progressive could manage the amount of damage inflicted on the world economy by mad King Donald and his minions, by way of tariff wars and meaningless wars of choice.

But Lord Downer is never inclined to be fair, he's more inclined to be relentlessly stupid ...

If ever you wanted evidence that the progressive left has taken over most of the key institutions of the Western world in recent years, have a look at how the West has reacted to the Iran war. First, much of the progressive left in the liberal democratic world clearly hopes that a brutal autocracy such as Iran’s wins the war against America and Israel.
The progressive left hates Donald Trump more than it loathes the Iranian theocracy. The left doesn’t care that Iran, especially through its proxies, has been at war with Israel since 1979. When the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps massacred 40,000 people at the end of last year and early this year, the progressive left didn’t care, just as it doesn’t care about the estimated 150,000 people who have been killed in the Sudan civil war and the 12 million displaced. It doesn’t care about rockets being fired on behalf of Iran into Israel daily. All it cares about is the horror of Israel defending itself. As is said of the ABC’s international reporting, “no Jews, no news”.
Secondly, the Iran war has demonstrated how utterly self-defeating Western energy policies – driven by the intense advocacy of the progressive left – have been over the past two decades.
Nowhere has this fecklessness been truer than in our own country. Instead of urging the Iranians to agree to American demands to end arming and directing proxies in the Middle East, desist from developing ballistic missiles and other weapons to threaten their neighbours, and to abandon their nuclear program, what does the Australian government do? It urges de-escalation. That’s it. Not consistent condemnation of Iran, but implicit neutrality. We all know why. It’s about domestic politics.

And what would crusader Lord Downer have us do? Hie off to the strait to join the crusade in all its folly? Quick, another snap designed to terrify the hive mind into fear and submission ... Supporters of the Iran-backed Houthi movement brandish their weapons as they rally in solidarity with Iran and Lebanon in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on April 17. Picture: AFP

Terrifying, but warrior Lord Downer is made of stern stuff, and didn't wilt ...

President Trump isn’t popular, so the war is not popular. What is more, there are all those left-wing voters in parts of Sydney and Melbourne who hope Iran will be able to see off the Americans and the Israelis. So the Prime Minister and his ministers are very careful not to be too supportive of our ally, who is the guarantor of the security of the Western world and way of life.
The Iran war has also laid bare the absurdity of the energy policies Australia has been pursuing for the past 20 years. Despite the tens of billions of dollars poured into renewables, still 92 per cent of Australia’s energy consumption comes from fossil fuels. But the progressive left – in particular, the Labor Party and the Greens – has spent two decades railing against fossil fuel exploitation in Australia. It has given an impression that Australia is enjoying an energy transition of great rapidity, and this is going to generate cheaper energy. We will also reduce global temperatures.

Ah, the old fossil fuel routine, but the pond has done enough celebrating of the joys of EVs. 

Quick, instead produce another image designed to terrify the hive mind ... Iranian women brandish their rifles as they take part in a rally to pay tribute to women killed during the Middle East war. Picture: AFP

It would take more than a few women to deter His Lordship, but what with the war being a bit of a mess, he soon had to veer off into all sorts of thickets and weeds ...

Anybody with a practical bent of mind will be interested in the results. Not only have we contributed precisely nothing to abating global temperature but, alarmingly, the level of productivity in the Australian energy sector has declined by about 30 per cent over the past 20 years. That means we require substantially more capital investment for the same level of output. No wonder Australia’s electricity prices have increased by about 60 per cent in that period.
Well, as soon as the Strait of Hormuz was closed, reality struck home. We’re still hugely dependent on fossil fuels, and the energy transition has made energy more expensive, and we have had literally no impact whatsoever on the climate over the past 20 years.
Not surprisingly, corporates have been reluctant to invest in searching for and developing oilfields in and off Australia, as well as being restricted in their capacity to drill for gas.
What is extraordinary is that our governments, dominated by the progressive left, have discouraged the development of known exploitable onshore and offshore oilfields.
Let’s take two examples. Recently, the Queensland government announced it would give approval for the development of the Taroom Trough oil and gas field. This is the first development of an oilfield in Australia in 50 years. Yet for years the progressive left has wanted to leave it untouched. Secondly, and more dramatically, Santos has discovered a vast oil and gas field known as Dorado off the coast of Western Australia. Santos estimates this contains about 150 million barrels of oil, so it’s a sizeable deposit. It’s roughly the equivalent of Australia’s current total annual production of oil. If the Dorado deposit were exploited, it would give Australia significantly greater self-sufficiency in oil.
So why hasn’t Santos gone ahead and invested in the exploitation of Dorado?
The answer is illustrative of everything that’s wrong with the progressive left approach to energy policies. Santos have just weathered years of litigation to get the Barossa gas field off the coast of the Northern Territory up and running. It has been bogged down in litigation, driven by the Environmental Defenders Office, which gets $2m a year in funding from the federal Labor government.
Ultimately, Santos held off these challenges, but at substantial cost to the company. More than that, this litigation damaged Australia’s reputation as a country to invest in.
At the same time as discovering the Dorado oilfield, Santos also discovered an oil deposit in Alaska. The company decided it was far less risky and therefore far more profitable for its shareholders to proceed with the Alaska project.
There you have it. As a result of the policies of the progressive left, we failed to develop millions of barrels of oil offshore in Australia, oil, which would have given us genuine energy security.
So for the past four years, we’ve had a federal government opposed to fossil fuels, and suddenly it’s crying crocodile tears about a shortage of oil supplies because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Prime Minister is burning up fossil fuels flying to Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia, begging them not to withdraw their supply of fossil fuels to Australia.
By the way, it’s not as if they would. The trips are just a political stunt.
That’s the progressive left for you. Policies are driven by its ideology. They’re driven by the vibe, not Australia’s tradition of practical policymaking.

Driven by the vibe? This hapless old antique is as ancient as The Castle, but without the first clue as to how to do comedy ...

The pond's mission this day is simply to line up a few reptiles for the pleasure of correspondents.

Sadly the pond couldn't spot the Caterist early in the morning and so had to settle for the onion muncher, a truly wretched and depressing thought ...

The header: PM’s begging tour exposes fuel security ignorance; As prime minister, I reluctantly accepted the official advice that efficient global markets meant that maintaining 90 days’ supply of liquid fuels onshore was no longer necessary. But now it’s critical.

The caption: Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (left), Crown Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah (centre) and Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese walk after their official luncheon at Istana Nurul Iman in Bandar Seri Begawan on April 15. Picture: AFP

The pond hopes such onion muncher appearances aren't going to become a regular feature of the lizard Oz.

With his time as lickspittle sycophantic stooge in service to Viktor Mihály Orbán now over, the suck might now think he's out of a job, and in his narcissist way, turn to the lizard Oz to maintain his feeble attempt at relevance ...

Is he going to keep turning up in the lizard Oz to rabbit on in ways that will please other authoritarians? Is that the sort of punishment the reptiles are lining up for the hive mind? 

The on-again, off-again reopening of the Strait of Hormuz doesn’t mean that Australia can take fuel security for granted. This is actually our second wake-up call about over-reliance on global supply chains and we can’t afford to go back to sleep once more, as we did after the first.
As prime minister, I reluctantly accepted the official advice that efficient global markets meant that maintaining 90 days’ supply of liquid fuels onshore was no longer necessary. The global scramble for masks, surgical gowns and vaccines during the pandemic made it obvious that, in an emergency, it would be every country for itself.
In its wake, the Morrison government asked the Productivity Commission to consider our supply chain vulnerability but – remarkably – its report hardly mentioned fuel security, even though no country on Earth is as dependent on fuel imports.
The Prime Minister’s begging tour around Asia, shows just how exposed we are to any disruption in global fuel supply. The month’s supply of petrol, diesel, avgas and jet fuel that we supposedly had at the start of the Iran war included only about three weeks’ worth that was actually onshore. The rest was cargoes at sea that, in extremis, could be sunk, or possibly diverted to other destinations in the event of a major threat to shipping.

Of course the joke is ...

Never gets old that one, but of course the narcissist is more interested in posing as relevant by having a snap of himself, preening into the void ... Tony Abbott. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

Why is the lizard Oz filled to the brim with deadbeat ancient politicians who proved completely useless when in power?

Who knows, it's just a matter of getting through it ...

Iran’s denial of freedom of navigation through the Strait did not interfere with the actual delivery of refined products to Australia so much as the delivery of crude oil to the Asian refineries we buy from. Even so, the pump price of diesel in Australia almost doubled, about 10 per cent of our servos ran out of some or all stock due to panic buying, airlines started to cancel flights, and ports, mines and farms suddenly had to reconsider their operations.
While the Albanese government gave assurances that supplies were guaranteed until May, there could be no assurances beyond that because friendly countries (such as Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia) could not be sure of their own stock, and unfriendly ones (such as China) had already suspended deliveries.
The Prime Minister’s “fuel diplomacy coup” in securing two extra deliveries, each of 100 million litres, sounded impressive but actually constituted less than two days’ total Australian consumption. What’s more, it bordered on deranged for the government to insist that further electrification was the long-term solution to the fuel crisis, even while the PM was pleading for extra petrol and diesel.
Here’s the key point: a conflict in East Asia – such as Beijing attempting to coerce Taiwan – would not just close down deliveries of crude oil; it would close down the deliveries of refined products too.

Naturally there's a snap of the deviant to blame - not mad King Donald, but another miscreant, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

And then it's on to the usual blather about oils and whatever you do don't mention renewables or alternative sources of energy, because this is a bear with little by way of brains, having always been a few knights short of a BBQ ...

There would be no question of being able to trade security of gas supplies from Australia for security of fuel supplies from Southeast Asia because the moment hostilities in East Asia were imminent, the shipping lanes carrying 50 per cent of the world’s trade would shut down.
It would take months for protected convoys to be arranged, even if the tankers and container ships could be procured to sail in them; and that’s assuming Australia and its allies had the requisite naval strength.
It’s worth noting that the US did not even try to counter the closure of the Strait of Hormuz either by landing troops at key choke points or by escorting ships through. It was the US’s counter-blockade of Iran’s ports, doing to Iran what it was doing to others’ shipping, that might have created a breakthrough.
Countries such as Britain and France, that might once have considered forcing the Strait, were adamant they could only secure the passage of shipping once hostilities had ceased. In other words, the task of protecting shipping seems to have become much harder in the era of smart mines and drone swarms. Which makes it more important than ever not to be dependent on just-in-time deliveries for the essentials of daily life.
It’s crystal clear what Australia now needs to do to avoid massive domestic upheaval when the next supply crisis comes, as it almost inevitably will.
First, we need to build the 90 days of fuel reserves onshore that the International Energy Agency mandates. Much of this could be done by assisting large fuel users to expand their private storages.
Second, we need to resume exploration, extraction and refining of crude oil here. The development of new fields, such as Queensland’s Taroom Trough, needs to become an urgent national priority rather than being bogged down endlessly, as would normally now be the case, in environmental assessments and activist lawfare.
Third, we need to expand our capacity to defend and maintain sea lanes via a more capable navy, a recreated Australian National Line, and detailed contingency planning with our military partners.
While it’s quite likely that the US made no formal request for Australian military assistance, given the last-minute nature of its decision-making, once it became clear that hostilities were likely, Australia should have volunteered to help. There’s no doubt the RAAF could have made a significant contribution to the US and Israeli air campaign to destroy the Iranian war machine, had the Albanese government been able to overcome its visceral antipathy to President Donald Trump, tilt against Israel, attachment to the fantasy of “international law”, and fondness for military announcements that make no appreciable difference to our near-term military capability.
Resuming our strategic intimacy with America and accepting that our ongoing need for fossil fuels should trump climate concerns will almost certainly be too much for the ideologues in the current government. Immediate crisis averted, the PM will insist nothing really needs to change – even though almost everything does.

The pond almost regrets that Orbán went down. 

What a relief it was to have the onion muncher abroad, doing his authoritarian suck, rather than being at home doing his mad King Donald suck ...

Here the pond should pause to note that not all the reptiles were sounding triumphant.

The lizard Oz editorialist was sounding quite glum and uncertain ...

Oh dear, King Donald should stop complimenting himself and claiming victory for the umpteenth time?

That surely can't stand. Quick, wheel in Major Mitchell, Zionist in chief for the Australian Daily Zionist News, to compliment King Donald and claim victory for the umpteenth time ...

The header: Iran’s media cheer squad can’t stomach Trump’s success; Donald Trump’s language is erratic, and the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is not without risk. But the truth is that in the first six weeks of the war, Iran has sustained heavy setbacks.

The caption for a snap of the deeply weird, possibly demented, certainly barking mad king: President Donald Trump dances at a roundtable event last week. Picture: AP

Trump's success? 

Only in the richly perverse world of Major Mitchell would a reptile try on that sort of clowning.

So much winning, the pond doesn't know where to begin, but the Major does ...because it's all the fault of weevils and white ants, and if you believe that, you qualify for the Major's "paranoid delusion" award of the week ...

Yes, just like Lord Downer, when in doubt, blame the meejia ...

Reporting about the Iran war is so coloured by media hostility toward US President Donald Trump that almost none of it reflects the truth about Iran’s military frailty, economic malaise or currency collapse.
When Trump responded to Iran’s decision to block the Strait of Hormuz and charge a toll on boats seeking safe passage by deciding that the US could do that too, few journalists thought that it was fair enough, or would even work.
The ABC regularly gives equal airtime to US claims and Iranian denials, even though Iran has lied about its weapons ambitions for decades.
Old leftie reporters on social media who claim the Iranian nuclear program is an Israeli lie should wonder why at last week’s talks in Islamabad the Iranians refused to delay their nuclear program for more than five years. And why possess uranium enriched to 60 per cent if not for weapons?
Trump was wrong not to anticipate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps would try to cause maximum global economic damage by shutting the Strait of Hormuz.
National Review reported on March 14 that General Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, had warned Trump about Hormuz before the war started on February 28.
Journalists have a duty to hold Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to account for failures. But journalists also have a duty to report the truth, and the truth is Iran and its Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies are either on their knees or completely defeated, as is the case in Syria.
The New York Times pretends Trump did not have specific war aims. That’s rubbish. Trump has been saying publicly for more than a decade that Iran’s mullahs should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the timing of the attack was influenced by intelligence suggesting Iran was both rebuilding its weapons stockpiles after the 12-day war the previous June, and was in the process of acquiring hypersonic anti-ship missiles from China.

Liddle Marco? Didn't his contribution amount to a trip to the UFC? US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Picture: AFP

Not that one ... this one, trading on stolen valour, ersatz toughness and boofhead glory ...

 

The Major wasn't worried about any of that.

As usual, he'd managed to rope in assorted weird sources, what with his speciality offering insights via whatever the cat had dragged in ...

Rubio told a press conference on March 2 that Iran was building 100 missiles a month.
“Compare that to the six or seven interceptors that can be built in a month,” he said.
If the US did not attack when it did, Iran would soon have had enough weapons to swamp Israel’s defences and American bases in the region.
In such circumstances, any fair-minded reading of the first six weeks of the war would conclude that Iran had sustained heavy setbacks.
New York Times’ star columnist Thomas Friedman, a supporter of Israel but not of Netanyahu, summed up the approach of much of the media. Speaking on a CNN podcast on April 11, he said he wanted to see the regime in Tehran destroyed but added: “I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings”.
Michael Doran, director of the Centre for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Husdon Institute and a former senior director at the US National Security Council, nailed his assessment of the media and the war in Tablet Magazine on April 14: “Trump has inflicted heavy punishment in return for relatively light consequences, but pundits insist that a masterful Iran is dictating events,” he writes.
Serious journalists in Australia run the line that Iran has Trump on the run.

After that the Major came up with a doozy:

Trump leads a democracy. 

Whatever the status of the banana republic known as the United States is these days, a democracy isn't the first thought that springs to mind.

Kleptocracy, maybe? Has there ever been rule by a bigger bunch of thieves since the days of the robber barons?

Facing midterm elections later this year, he must have an eye on prices Americans face at the petrol pump and in supermarkets. In Iran and Gaza, politicians do not have to care what their people think. Indeed, the survival of their regimes is far more important to them than the wellbeing of their people.
Unlike Western media surrender urgers, expat Iranian analysts thought Trump’s first big mistake was agreeing to a truce and peace talks, which they say gave the Iranians the idea Trump was contemplating backing down on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Now the US media’s Iranian cheerleaders can’t see how a US blockade can succeed, but it is.
Doran’s piece outlines how most of the left media criticism of the war is driven by former Barack Obama and Joe Biden Democrats who were involved in attempts to broker better relations between the US and Iran in 2013 during Obama’s presidency. Doran says the political forces opposing Trump and Netanyahu inside the US are an unlikely amalgam of the globalist left with the isolationist right, including people such as Tucker Carlson.

Again if that's success, the pond would hate to see chaos and losing when it comes to actually achieving the strange conglomerate of aims announced at the start of proceedings, including the freeing of the Iranian people, and the end of the mad Mullahs.

Best drag in ancient politicians of the Obama, Biden kind ot take the blame ... Former president Barack Obama. Picture: AFP

So much easier to look back, rather than focus on the mad King and his delusional minions ...

“Along with a common set of enemies in Trump and Netanyahu, the Progressives and America Firsters share a dislike of American global leadership and the use of military force, and therefore they both excuse the behaviour of America’s enemies while blaming it for any conflict,” Doran writes.
Traditional conservatives see Iran as a revolutionary theocracy “committed to the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of the US from the Middle East”. Conservatives believe Iran, China, Russia and North Korea want to “overturn the American led global order’’.
Former Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan argues Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action stabilised Iranian relations until Trump pulled out in his first term in May 2018. Yet Tehran did not start enriching uranium to 60 per cent until April 2021.
“In other words, Iran made this crucial leap towards weaponisation under Biden, not Trump,” Doran writes.
Biden responded with sanctions relief which “funded missiles, drones and proxies”.
Doran says the Biden administration framed Hamas’s October 7 attack in southern Israel as a Palestinian issue.
“This framing advanced the fiction that America was not involved in the war. It also absolved Iran of any responsibility for the mass atrocities and hostage-taking of its proxy, Hamas, thus allowing the (Biden) administration to preserve its diplomatic outreach to Tehran.”
Iran immediately mobilised its entire proxy axis “in an assymetric war against the American Alliance system”.
Iranian-backed forces launched strikes on US bases in Iraq, Syria and Jordan as well as on US naval vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
“In any previous era … (this) would have been called open war. The Biden administration called it historic peace.”

As often happens with the reptiles, the Major tried to introduce a few billy goat butts, to hint that he wasn't entirely mad ...

They took the form of "of courses":

Of course Trump’s language is erratic. And of course the US blockade of Hormuz does not come without risks, including a possible Chinese response to US attempts to turn back tankers bound for China. 

But these billy goat butts are just window dressing, and so the Major immediately reversed them with another "butt":

But Trump is correct that the world cannot afford to allow a bunch of medieval fanatics to control a major global sea lane and hold the world economy to ransom.

The pond can't quite see the Major's problem. After all a bunch of medieval - actually old testament biblical - are currently in charge of the government of Israel, and holding King Donald to ransom, in pursuit of ethnic cleansing and a greater Israel, but never mind ... we must just hope it'll all work out, in due course ...

What if the IRGC sees the financial logic of Trump’s move and comes back to the negotiating table? By Wednesday, the UN and Trump thought this imminent.
And by Thursday the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were reporting the US blockade seemed to be working. The Jerusalem Post reported intelligence sources believed Iran could survive without oil sales for less than three months.
The Jerusalem Post reported an unnamed Iranian spokesperson suggesting Iran might let all ships pass the Strait of Hormuz if they stuck to the southern Oman side and the US lifted its blockade. Imagine that. A siege – one of the world’s oldest military strategies – might actually work. How will The New York Times frame that as a Trump negative?

Perhaps first see that it works? And then worry about the framing?

Ain't been that much knockdown glory yet.

The Major should hope it isn't just another mad ploy by a desperate King and minions of the Kegsbreath and Kash kind.

And now, as the pond began with a religious service, time to end with a serve of supper (watch out for the wafers) ...

But there is still hope, because surely we can all agree...