In which Polonius goes Wilcox, while the Angelic One and the Canavan caravan honour Queensland's Norwegian Blue pollie...

 

The pond has done its best to avoid the lizard Oz jihad, but this is the pond's Sunday meditation, and Polonius's prattle has led the way these last few years.

Sadly, inevitably he is now, in his prim, ponderous, clucking and tut-tutting way, all in on the jihad, and the pond had no way around it...

But at least the topic allows the pond to do a brief Tootle flashback. 

Remember this? The Australian defends 'insulting' Bill Leak cartoon

Oh how they loved freedom of expression back then, how devoted they were to it ... 

Five years on, Bill Leak’s cartoon remains spot-on
If only outrage at Bill Leak’s cartoon were matched by outrage at the neglect and abuse of Aboriginal children. (that's a lizard Oz archive link)

Oh they were all in on cartoonists' rights to push boundaries and exercise free speech and be as tasteless as they liked ...

Now please allow the pond to parse the Wilcox cartoon that's got her into hot water, at least in la la hive mind land and with rabid Zionists...

What's anti-Semitic about that? (There's a reason must of the rags have run the story with 'anti-Semitic' in scare quotes).

It slags off special interest groups with obvious reasons for calling for an RC, with shilling lawyers leading the way for obvious reasons. 

It mocks sporting types and Labor has beens and it defames dogs who don't want to mention the Gaza genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Below the astro-turfing it shows Chairman Rupert leading the way for a bunch of unsavoury characters interested in making political hay, marching to Benji's drum beat (and has be been drumming, or what?)

The 'toon studiously avoids any Jewish stereotype or meme, while mocking the notion of 'grass roots' in favour of jihadist astro-turfing.

No wonder special interest groups and lobbyists and unsightly rags of the lizard Oz jihad kind took a fence and the gate too, and yet there are good reasons to tread warily with a RC, as outlined by Michael Bradley in Crikey ... (sorry, paywall)

Okay, the pond has done as much preliminary sanitation spadework as might be needed.

Now for that Polonial prattle ...

The header: Three strikes? Nine’s papers march to the beat of leftist drum, Could Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald be heading for a hat-trick in reverse after it listed Cathy Wilcox’s cartoon titled ‘Grass roots’ in its “best cartoons” category.

The caption: The Cathy Wilcox cartoon that featured in the Nine newspapers and online.

The old routine, the usual slur: label something as being leftist and that's all that needs to be said.

And yet, it will be noted in Daanyal Saeed's timeline for Crikey (sorry paywall) that the Nine rags and in particular the AFR were front and centre of promoting calls for an RC:

And so on and note how the SMH and the AFR feature, while Saeed seems to studiously ignore mentioning by name the lizard Oz jihad.

Speaking of that jihad, on with Polonius:

Could Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald be heading for a hat-trick in reverse? On January 7 it listed Cathy Wilcox’s cartoon titled “Grass roots” in its “best cartoons” category. Arsen Ostrovsky, who was injured in the terrorist attack on the Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on December 14, has described Wilcox’s work as an “unadulterated form of Jew hatred”.
In her artistic statement against a royal commission into the massacre, Wilcox listed those who are supporting a “Royal Commission Now!” movement. Standing on a box containing grass, they are depicted as lawyers, business people, open-letter writers, sports greats, Labor has-beens and, wait for it, “dogs”, with a canine holding a bone declaring “Don’t mention the war”. This is a reference to the Hamas-Israel conflict following Hamas’s brutal invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023 – an implied criticism of Israel.
This group is being held up by those who appear to be Rupert Murdoch, Jillian Segal, John Howard, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Sussan Ley and David Littleproud. Marching behind with a drum sounding “boom, boom” is Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The message is clear: Australian lawyers, business people, open-letter writers, sporting greats and current and former politicians who support a royal commission are marching to the drum of the leader of the Jewish state of Israel – along with dogs.
To be fair, the SMH and The Age (which also carried the cartoon) have published letters critical of Wilcox’s cartoon. But it has not withdrawn the work.

And why should it? To be fair, there are arguments against an RC. 

Just to finish off that Bradley piece:

At this point, the reptiles slipped in a snap to make sure the hive mind knew who to blame, The controversial cartoon of Cathy Wilcox remains online.

Polonius carried on:

Late on January 7, commentator Mike Carlton, a vehement critic of Israel, posted on X: “It’ll be interesting to see … if the editors of the SMH and The Age back Cathy Wilcox and this cartoon; or will they turn to jelly beneath the howls of rage and the deluge of abusive emails from the Israel lobby?”
As far as I can determine, only one member of the group of six advocates of a royal commission is Jewish. But the leftist Carlton reckons that support for this cause is part of a conspiracy organised by what opponents of Israel call “the Israel lobby” or “the Jewish lobby”. No other religious or racial group in Australia is referred to by such a sneering “lobby” reference.
Last Thursday, News Corp’s tabloids carried an opinion poll by Melbourne-based research firm Fox & Hedgehog. It indicated that 54 per cent of Australians supported a royal commission with 19 per cent opposed and 27 per cent neutral or unsure. Jews comprise less than 0.5 per cent of the Australian population. Enough said.
At the time of writing, Wilcox’s cartoon remained on Nine’s website. Not so the article by Ahmed Ouf published in the SMH and The Age on December 23. Titled “I went to Bondi and hugged people who’d never spoken to a Muslim before”, Ouf wrote of his visit to Bondi Beach in the week beginning December 21. It is not clear how he knew whether the Jews he met at the murder site had ever spoken to a Muslim before. It would be difficult to live in Sydney or Melbourne without speaking to Muslims – or Christians, Buddhists, Hindus or nonbelievers.

The reptiles offered another visual distraction, Ahmed Ouf’s piece lacked judgment and was out of place. Picture: Tim Hunter

Polonius was now in full frothing and foaming mode and seemed to have forgotten the 'toon that so offended him, with new targets in his sights:

Ouf’s self-important piece lacked judgment and was out of place. After all, he was not the story and some of the victims had yet to be buried. Soon after publication, Nine retracted the piece “out of respect for the Jewish community” and apologised for “any distress its publication caused”.
No doubt “any distress” would have increased when it was revealed that Ouf had contested the seat of Blaxland in western Sydney, which is held by Labor frontbencher Jason Clare, at the May 2025 election – running as a Muslim Votes independent.
It also was revealed that Ouf supported the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement aimed at debilitating Israel.
Ouf received 19 per cent of the primary vote and failed to defeat Clare, whose vote increased after the distribution of preferences. So did the vote for Labor frontbencher Tony Burke in Watson. In one of the few revelations in Niki Savva’s book Earthquake, Burke told the author he believed the Albanese government would be returned at the 2025 election but “was convinced he was about to lose his once-safe seat of Watson”.

And some reptiles will still try to tell the world that this isn't about politics and scoring a political edge, as opposed to being concerned for the victims, their families and friends and the wider community: Dr Jamal Rifi opposed the concept of a Muslim party. Picture: John Feder

It's just another chance to slag off the Islamics, and hope that the RC will help continue the relentless lizard Oz jihad, so that more subscriptions can be sold (do they even pretend to be selling tree killer editions these days?) ...

I never believed that this would occur and wrote on these pages on July 6, 2024, in support of Dr Jamal Rifi, who opposed the concept of a Muslim party since he believed that “Australia is well served by the different parties that exist”.
The evidence suggests there is widespread support in Australia for a royal commission into the Bondi terrorist attack. Ideally such an inquiry should date back to the explosion of anti-Semitism at the Sydney Opera House demonstration on October 9, 2023 – which took place before Israel initiated its defensive war against Hamas.
NSW Police maintained that chants of “Where’s the Jews?” were heard. Others, myself included, heard “Gas the Jews”. But there’s little difference in intent. No demonstration has heard chants of “Where’s the Muslims?” – or the Christians, or the Buddhists or the Hindus.
Presenting ABC Radio National Breakfast this week, Barbara Miller queried independent MPs Allegra Spender and David Pocock as to whether there should also be a royal commission into Islamophobia. Neither agreed. Spender, who at times has been a critic of Israel, made the hard point that “the Jewish community is a community that lives behind security fences in a way that no other part of our community does”.
Apparently Miller was not convinced. On January 8, she told opposition frontbencher Jonno Duniam a “fair number” of ABC RN Breakfast listeners “don’t think a royal commission is a good use of time and money”. Quelle surprise. It is the far left (including some RN listeners) along with radical Islam that is at the forefront of anti-Semitism. If Nine offers a column to Miller to present her leftist views on this issue it will complete its reverse hat-trick.

It's the far left at the front? And no mention at all of the far right?

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see their comrades in arms...

And so to the bonus, and to more pleasant times with the Angelic one...

The header: Vale, Ron Boswell, a true politician of the people; The former National Party senator was not every political and general know-all’s idea of a great man, but he was.

The caption: What you saw was what you got from Ron Boswell, delivering his valedictory speech in the Senate in 2014. Picture: Gary Ramage

Back in the day in Tamworth, the pond was always reminded that it was wrong to speak ill of the dead.

But those who said it routinely spoke ill of the dead - Stalin, Hitler, all that mob ...

The pond decided if you happened to chance on a d*ckhead (*google bot approved), you had every right to speak ill of them...

Take Ron. Someone, please take him. Okay, grim reaper, if you must.

He wasn't a d*ckhead on the grand Adolf scale, but he did his best to ruin the planet for everyone ...and he found a home in the AFR for it, peddling his folksie humbug cornball braces-wearing image ... (that's an archive link)..

And again (that's an archive link):

And so on and on and on, always keen to f*ck the planet (*google bot approved), and he was also a terrible bigot and hater. See this page for his thoughts on gay marriage.

Inter alia:

Madam Acting Deputy President Crossin, I understand we are debating your bill today. I find it a very serious debate. In fact, to me it is one of the most serious debates that we have ever had to face in this parliament, because it will fundamentally affect the way Australia reacts as a society. In my party, one of the basic philosophies is that the family is the basic unit of society and without a family you do not have a society. I cannot imagine a more severe attack on the family than undermining marriage. It is what the whole of our society is based on. It is what the whole of society over centuries—probably from the start of man—has been based on: a man and a woman getting together to procreate children and for those children to stay together under the care of a mother and a father. Without that, what do you have? What is society? That all stands before us. Fortunately, the Marriage Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2012 is not going to get through, but I have been around long enough to know that this is only the first attempt.
But what I want to say to you, Madam Acting Deputy President, is: yes, in the inner city suburbs of West End, South Brisbane and Redfern, there might be a bit of support for this, but there is certainly no support for it out in the western suburbs among the blue-collar workers, where the families are strong. Among the different communities, whether they be Catholic, Muslim or Jewish, it is an anathema. It is an anathema with my party. Senator Bishop said that he has not been lobbied very much. I can tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President, that I have not been lobbied at all except to say to me, ‘You stand up strongly for the basic unit of society, which is marriage and the family.’
I believe we now stand at the brink. We have to make a decision. Do we as a society turn away from everything we know and everything that our society is based on—the ideal that the family has been based on for thousands of years—or do we go the other way? Do we say, ‘Near enough is good enough, because it does not really hurt anyone, it does not cost anything and people want to do it; why not?’ and allow gay marriage and just give up on the ideal that the family is the basic unit of society and it gets there through marriage? We know from experience that the whole of the family—a marriage between a man and a woman—allows children to live in a safe, protected environment where they are allowed to grow into adults and pass strong values on to their children. The family is a continuum. We know this from experience, and therefore we continue with that ideal and look to uphold it.
I believe people have not thought this through. I think people in Australia do not give a lot of thought to these important issues, and we as members of parliament have to. From a distance, the issue of gay marriage looks a lot like other issues for Australian voters. From the outside it looks like it does not harm anyone, does not affect any individual who does not engage in it and does not seem to harbour any cost to the taxpayer or any other organisations. It seems relatively harmless—a relaxation of laws and conventions. If it does not hurt me and it does not hurt them, who does it hurt? It hurts society—that is who it hurts—and people have not thought it through.
What happens when the conventions are relaxed? What happens after the conventions have been removed? Marriage is based on a man and a woman, for the reason of having children. Two men and two women cannot conceive without some outside assistance. Marriage is not just a convention or a mere formality; it is a mechanism that was created by society to bring two sexes together and create a foundation of moral, social and legal protection and stability. Without this foundation, we are risking the lot. Like all things that have a foundation, society has a foundation. What is it based on? What is society based on? A man and a woman getting together, having children and then, in a broader sphere, an outer family of cousins, uncles and aunties, all providing support for the family, and that family fighting like crazy to make sure their kids get a good way of living, a good education and sometimes even the parents backing them into a home—people standing up for their family. The family is what people give their children. They send them to expensive schools and make great sacrifices for them because they believe in the family.
People think, ‘How does it affect me—a man marrying another man?’ If it is made legal they think it will not have an impact on their lives. But they have not considered the real harm that homosexual marriage can bring about, and there are three big harms in legalising homosexual marriage. It abolishes a child’s birthright to have both a mother and a father. Marriage includes the right to start a family. Under article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to marry comes with the right to start a family. If two men are legally able to marry, they obtain the absolute right to have a child via surrogacy. After gay marriage is legalised, a child can henceforth be brought into the world without ever having the right to a mother and father. Sometimes this happens inadvertently—through desertion or death—but it is not something we plan for; it is not something we want.
Same-sex marriage says that a mother or a father does not matter to a child—and it does. Two mothers or two fathers cannot raise a child properly. Who takes a boy to football? Who tells him what is right from wrong? What does he do—go along with the two mums? How does he go camping and fishing? Yes, there might be some attempt by one of the mothers to fill in as a father figure but it will not work. It is defying nature. And what about a young girl changing from a teenager into a young woman? Is it fair to say to her, ‘You don’t have a mother; your mother can’t take you shopping’ or to not be able to help her understand how her body is changing? What are we trying to do here? Why are we trying to defy what has been the right thing for hundreds of thousands of years? What suddenly gives us the inspiration to think that we can have gay marriage and it will not affect anyone?
I say to the people who very narrowly think this through or who do not think it through: it is more than saying, ‘It doesn’t hurt me; it doesn’t cost anything.’ It is a lot more than that. Once you have gay marriage in law, you have normalised the law, you have normalised homosexual marriage in law, which forces the normalisation of homosexual behaviour in the wider culture—
Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—
Senator BOSWELL: I will not be drawn in, Senator—especially in the school curriculum. I ask the people of the Western Suburbs: if you have gay marriage and it is legal, how can a teacher discriminate between normal marriage and gay marriage? He has to explain both as part of the curriculum. How can a teacher explain one part of the law but not the other?
So I ask these people who think it does not hurt me: do they want their children to be taught about gay marriage?
Senator Hanson-Young: Why not?
Senator BOSWELL: That is the question—why not? You do not find it objectionable from your side of politics. My side of politics finds it abhorrent and does not want any part of it.
But that is what we have to face up to, because these things are like a salami slice. You start off thinking, ‘It doesn’t hurt anyone.’ Then: ‘Oh, little Freddy’s got to go listen to why homosexual marriage has nothing wrong with it. Why is nothing wrong with it? Because it’s legal. This parliament has made it legal.’ I say to the people: do you want that for your children? Some of you will not object. Some will think it is a good thing. Certainly the progressive left will think it is wonderful. But I do not think they will think it wonderful in the western suburbs—the people who rely on the ALP to defend their jobs through the unions. That is why they are there. They are not there to have their kids taught about homosexual marriage versus traditional marriage. That is going to happen the very day this legislation gets in. Once you legalise something, you cannot discriminate against it. It is happening already in America, where homosexual marriage became law and the next thing in Massachusetts was the teachers teaching about homosexual marriage and traditional marriage.
I want to quote from the Australian Education Union. This is what the teachers said: ‘If Australia normalises homosexual marriage, the Australian Education Union’s 2006 gender identity policy would be implemented. Homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and the intersexed need to be normalised. All curricula should be written in non-heterosexist language.’ I suspect the Greens would not see any objection to that but I suspect the Labor people would go into meltdown, because this will be out there. This is what the teachers union have said—and why shouldn’t they? If it is legal, they have to teach it. If it is legal, it has to be taught. You cannot just pick out what you want to teach and not teach.
If homosexual behaviour is legalised then schools will have to treat homosexual behaviour and marriage on the same basis as heterosexual behaviour and marriage. Parents will no longer have the right to object to these teachings. All conscientious objection to both gay marriage and the normalisation of homosexual behaviour in the school curriculum would be abolished. That is what those people who think, ‘It doesn’t hurt me, it doesn’t cost me; if it doesn’t, let’s just let it go through’ are opening up. Let’s think a bit deeper because it is your society, your Australia that you are playing with.
I ask people, particularly from the Labor Party—and I admire the people who have had the courage to stand up over there: do you want your children to go into classrooms that give equal weight to heterosexuals and homosexuals? I do not think many of them do. There will be a few who support the Greens and think it is wonderful, but they are hugely in the minority. John Howard, whose views I admire and respect, said last year:
Changing the definition of marriage, which has lasted for time immemorial, is not an exercise in human rights and equality; it is an exercise in deauthorising the Judaeo-Christian influence in our society, and anybody who pretends otherwise is deluding themselves.
I agree with him. We are told there will be certain legislation that will respect churches and that, if they do not want to perform certain marriages, they will be excluded, but it does not take long for the antidiscrimination committee, instrumentalities, the Greens and GetUp! to start to wage a campaign.
If business or the churches object to hosting homosexual marriage or to blessing them, they will be hit. They will put up a defence, but it will only last for a certain time. They will be crushed by the anti-discrimination laws. We have already seen it happen in countries such as Denmark. The churches will have no choice but to facilitate homosexual marriage. We might push it out three years, four years or five years, but it will happen in the end. We have seen it happen with the abortion laws. You cannot walk away from them. You have to offer it or if you do not offer it then you have to find someone who will do the job. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that any church situated in a member state where same-sex marriage is legal must marry same-sex couples or be found guilty of discrimination. It will happen here.
Marriage is a social institution with a biological foundation. All society does with marriage is to reinforce this biological fact, to keep men with their mate and then help raise their children. Society merely recognises that marriage is the most important relationship in nature and works to reinforce it. It has no right to reinvent marriage. Politicians have no right to redefine marriage, only to reinforce the biological purpose of marriage. I recall when there was discrimination—when there was huge discrimination—that I had a phone call from a certain minister who said, ‘We have just had a request for a gay doctor to bring his gay partner in and practice in a certain country community. We thought you would object, that you were the person most likely to object. If you let it go, it will go through.’ I said, ‘I could not possibly object to that, that would be discrimination.’ I think it was in 2008 that Warren Entsch brought in, or agitated through the party, that all forms of discrimination be removed. There is absolutely no discrimination against gay people other than the discrimination between heterosexual and same-sex marriage. Frank Brennan, the former chair of the National Human Rights Consultation Committee, said:
I think we can ensure non-discrimination against same-sex couples while at the same time maintaining a commitment to children of future generations being born of and being reared by a father and a mother.
His political masterstroke was to defeat Pauline Hanson in the Senate in 2004. He did it by organising numerous small groups. He got together the hunters, fishers and farmers to organise their preferences. It was like herding feral cats, but he did it.

And so on - you can never shut a bigoted politician when he's riding a favourite hobby horse - and the pond quoted Ron at such length to show why the pond will cheerfully speak ill of the dead, especially loathsome bigots dressed out in folksie garb, laden with climate science denialism.

Now on with the Angelic one's obituary:

This week a great and very good man died. Former National Party senator Ron Boswell was not every political and general know-all’s idea of a great man, but he was.
As Liberal Party elder John Howard said of him this week, “Ron’s battle with Pauline Hanson in 2004 symbolised his commitment to an open and tolerant National Party.”
However, although Ron’s defeat of Hanson was his most notable political achievement, unlike many contemporary seemingly conservative politicians he was a true small-C conservative. He never waded into the ever-shifting shallows of popular causes.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap and a caption: Senator Boswell’s political masterstroke was to defeat Pauline Hanson in the Senate in 2004.

That's it, that was his masterstroke?

The last time the pond checked Pauline was still waltzing into the Senate wearing a burqa while Ron is doing a Norwegian blue parrot imitation and pushing up daisies.

Carry on Angelic one, celebrate the bigot:

He was grounded in the fundamental beliefs: freedom and the family, especially the importance of the natural family. When the forces of conservatism had caved in to popular causes purporting to be about individual freedom, he knew that it was a strong nuclear family – mother, father and kids – that fostered the co-operation and individual resilience that was the only true bulwark against ideological domination by government. He realised that eventually this led to a corrosion of individual freedom and national weakness and uncertainty. The idea that “the government should fix it” was not in Ron’s lexicon.

The reptiles quickly interrupted with an AV distraction:

National Party Stalwart and former Queensland senator Ron Boswell has died at the age of 85. He passed away at his Brisbane home surrounded by family. Mr Boswell served as a senator from 1983 until retiring in 2014. He acted as the Nationals' senate leader for 17 years and the Father of the Senate from 2008. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he will be remembered for his passion for his state and country.

Apparently Ron was a cosmopolitan, or so the Angelic one suggests:

Ron was a supporter of multicultural Australia, but unlike many other politicians he did not wave the multicultural flag without doing too much to support the people it encompassed. I remember particularly the Vietnamese contingent who were prominent at his farewell from politics in 2014.
The main thing that made him different was his ability to stay in touch with the people he represented. As he stated in his autobiography, he was very much of the view that politicians had moved too far away from the people they were supposed to represent. I think we all feel this and it affects many issues, even the current furore over a royal commission.
My view of Ron is as a friend and an outside journalistic view. Ron had no “image”. You got what you saw. Sartorially speaking, he was frankly a bit of a mess. His tie askew and shirt usually partially flapping outside his trousers, he always called you “mate”, and what with being somewhat overweight for long periods and possessing eyes that were not exactly aligned, he could easily be mistaken as an Australian politician in the Les Patterson mould. He often liked to talk about his humble beginnings as “a paintbrush salesman”.
However, Ron’s interests were wide-ranging, from supporting scientist Alan Mackay-Sim’s groundbreaking work on adult stem cells, to speaking out about the persecution of Christians in Syria, and helping some to leave. He had an acute sense of where the truth of an issue really lay.

It seems he also spared time for the ladies, no doubt happy to share a lamington or a pumpkin scone with them, Ron Boswell arrives at the LNP International Womens Day lunch at the Tattersall's Club in Brisbane in March 2015. Picture: Mark Cranitch

The Angelic one loved the way that Ron did his best to do down research of an un-Catholic kind:

On the stem cell issue his support of MacKay-Sim’s research into mature stem cells was crucial and should be counted as an achievement as important as the defeat of Hanson.
Initially, the script trotted out to the media and the public at large was that stem cells harvested from human embryos had almost magical qualities. They could be coaxed into any type of tissue and this would cure diseases from Alzheimer’s to cancer and replace damaged nerves and tissue in victims of paralysis. The public was bombarded with images of famous people who were paralysed after an accident, and embryologist Alan Trounson’s embryonic stem cell research was granted $40m.
However, embryonic stem cells didn’t work the way they were supposed to and, worse, they had to be harvested from live human embryos, which was highly unethical, as was the next solution: cloning embryos and harvesting their cells. Nevertheless, Australia passed laws legalising this and Ron was appalled.
However, behind the scenes, Mackay-Sim in Queensland had already developed a technique to harvest one’s own cells from nasal cells. This would allow for successful auto transplants and regeneration. It was part of world-first research, but in all the clamour over embryos almost no politician was interested in adult stem cell research – except Ron.
He went in to bat for Mackay-Sim and managed to secure funding for him to continue with his work. This research has led to the development of better techniques for transplant, especially for spinal cord repair. Meanwhile embryonic stem cell research has little to show for it. Trounson later decamped to California and greener grant pastures.

Judge the man by the company he kept and the causes he took up, sayeth the pond, as the reptiles provided visual evidence, Senator Ron Boswell with Alan Jones at the No Wind Farm Rally on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra in June 2013.

Apparently news of the parrot's disgrace has yet to reach the Angelic one or the lizard Oz hive mind, as the Angelic one finished with a flourish of Latin:

In my opinion this was one of Ron’s outstanding achievements. Despite his at-times shambolic appearance and old-fashioned Queensland speech, Ron could see when it was the so-called smart people who were bamboozled and confused by clever PR.
He understood the science, which isn’t all that difficult but a lot of people, including politicians, were simply too uninterested or too careless of the ethical implications to see what was happening with embryonic stem cell research and allowed themselves to be misled by what has been dubbed “Frankenscience”.
Along with his other good points, Ron was a very warm-hearted person. After the death of his son he brought up and educated his grandson and was a hands-on grandfather, involved in his grandson’s schooling and the trends in education of all young people.
Along with other politicians I have known I’ve had Ron over to dinner a couple of times. I remember the panic when we had to make sure we had a sturdy, well-constructed chair for the senator’s large bulk. We knew Ron did not expect haute cuisine with his favourite rose, but who else but “Bozzie” would turn up at the front door not with wine but with a huge Cryovac bag full of crabmeat?
Vale Ron, a great man, a good Christian. Requiescat in pace.

If only hell existed, so that the pond might add best wishes to the wayward rogue, in the hope that he  requiescats in inferno ...

And so to a bonus for those who haven't had enough of Ron ...

Yes, the old rogue brought out the Canavan caravan, in the Currish Snail.

Why not celebrate it, if only for the sake of the pond's deep north correspondents ...

This is how the Canavan caravan proudly tweeted it ...

This is the archive link:

Opinion: Ron Boswell’s unkempt appearance belied his political savvy
Ron Boswell was not the most fashionable senator going around, but he could outsmart career politicians, writes Matt Canavan.
Matt Canavan
3 min read

And for those too lazy to head off to the archive, this is the Canavan caravan, fuelled by coal and bigotry:

The curious thing about this is how Tamworth's shame features prominently, as if keeping the company of drunken, rolling in the gutter rogues was a virtue ...

It got so extreme that the reptiles in the final snap featured a glowering Barners, and only the back of the Queensland blue parrot's head ...

Phew, that's more than enough. especially given the bushfires and floods that have been raging and surging around the country.

Just time left for more than a few 'toons ...

In which the pond sends its herpetology students to the archive, and finds non-Ophidian ways to fill the page ...

This is where the reptile jihad has led the country, or more particularly the Adelaide Festival, especially now that the 'Tiser is just a wretched outpost of the Murdochian empire in a one rag town (where are you now Don Riddell? Long gone).

As the Board responsible for the Adelaide Festival organisation and all Adelaide Writers’ Week events, staff, volunteers and participants, we have today advised scheduled writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah that the Board has formed the judgment that we do not wish to proceed with her scheduled appearance at next month’s Writers’ Week.

Whilst we do not suggest in any way that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, given her past statements we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.

And:

We understand these Board decisions will likely be disappointing to many in our community. We also recognise our request to Dr Abdel-Fattah will be labelled and will cause discomfort and pressure to other participants. These decisions have not been taken lightly.

And:

We hope to see you at Adelaide Writers’ Week.

The Adelaide Festival Board

Good luck with that Jake. 

You know some think there should be more to Chinatown than jihads?

Adelaide Writers Week in disarray as more than 40 writers boycott over Board’s ‘censorship’ of Randa Abdel-Fattah

Helen Garner, Melissa Lucashenko and Zadie Smith are among the more than 40 writers to have withdrawn from Adelaide Writers Week in the last 24 hours.

Actually after that story the total on the tape of withdrawing writers climbed to well over 50. 

And there was this:

Abdel-Fattah responded with a strongly worded statement condemning the Adelaide Festival Board’s decision, calling it, ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre. What makes this so egregiously racist is that the Adelaide Writers Festival Board has stripped me of my humanity and agency, reducing me to an object onto which others can project their racist fears and smears.

‘The Board’s reasoning suggests that my mere presence is “culturally insensitive”; that I, a Palestinian who had nothing to do with the Bondi atrocity, am somehow a trigger for those in mourning and that I should therefore be persona non grata in cultural circles because my very presence as a Palestinian is threatening and “unsafe”.’

Well yes, astonishing bigotry and hatred, or possibly abject cowering fear that the Zionist lobby would swim into action.

Poor old Louise Adler. How did she end up in that diabolical pigs breakfast?

Back in the day she was scribbling for the Graudian:

The special envoy’s plan is the latest push to weaponise antisemitism in Australia, as a relentless campaign pays off

The omissions are as important as the inclusions in Jillian Segal’s plan, which is guilty of overreach

... and copping heaps for it from the Zionist lobby, intolerant of wayward Jews.

Those eggs are now shattered, and there's no putting that lumpy Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Oh Adelaide, oh Adelaide, what a miserable, wretched small-minded town you are. You always talk the talk, but it's the great aunts on the verandah that walk the walk, sitting in the same bigoted chairs they were sitting in last year.

Well, it's not the pond's business model to further the lizard Oz hive mind hysteria, and notably the matter wasn't featured at all in the hive mind.

The only note came well down the page in Mass author exodus throws Adelaide Writers' Week into crisis. (that's an archive link).

Perhaps the reptiles were too sheepish at seeing their jihad in action, so they had to disappear the story way down the page.

And there'll be nothing else from the Australian Daily Zionist News this day, especially when the jihad  decides to call in King Donald for help:

EXCLUSIVE

Trump ‘watching’ Albanese amid concerns over PM’s pro-Palestine history

The US will be watching amid concerns about the Australia Prime Minister’s impartiality and years of government ‘apathy’ towards the fears and concerns of the Jewish community.

by Elizabeth Pike

Oooh, scary stuff, King Donald watching us, perhaps ready to give us a Venezuela burn. 

But aren't we too busy planning to invade New Zealand, which after all was once proposed as an Australian state, and badly needs help eradicating that accent, and replacing it with a politically dinkum correct one?

And isn't he too busy watching his minions murder US citizens in the streets, and then making up porkies about it?

Please permit the pond to pike that story and sent it to the archive.

At the same time, it's not the pond's business to focus on what goes down in King Donald's kingdom.

Yet that's what's happening as a result of the current Australian Daily Zionist News jihad.

The rag has become unreadable and unreproducible, and so the pond turns to The Atlantic to read a story of ICE murder...

First the Shooting. Then the Lies.

The Trump administration has perfected the smear campaign. (that's an archive link)

Spoiler alert:

...The blatant lies about Minneapolis serve several purposes. They perpetuate the false narrative that federal agents are in constant peril and therefore justified in using lethal force at the slightest hint of danger. They assure federal agents that they can harm or even kill American citizens with impunity, and warn those who might be moved to protest Trump’s immigration policies of the same thing. Perhaps most grim, they communicate to the public that if you happen to be killed by a federal agent, your government will bear false witness to the world that you were a terrorist.

This approach, of course, is quite familiar to communities that have been dealing with police abuses for as long as there have been professional police forces. In 2000, then–New York City Mayor and future Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani justified the killing of the Haitian American Patrick Dorismond by police by quipping that he was “no altar boy.” Embarrassingly for Giuliani, whose capacity for shame was overestimated even then, it turned out that Dorismond had literally been an altar boy. Dorismond’s mother responded to the campaign to justify her son’s killing with an observation that continues to haunt me decades later.

“They kill,” Dorismond said, “and after that, they kill him the other way—with the mouth.”

Taking Good’s life wasn’t enough. The moment she died, it became imperative for the administration to also destroy her memory.

It didn't take long for the killer to get outed, and for there to be a flood of other stories, but by then the pond had moved to The New Yorker ...

Aftershock; In the wake of his assault on Venezuela, Trump sounds like he wants to launch a blitz across the Western Hemisphere. Robin Wright writes about what the aggressive ambitions of his "Donroe Doctrine" mean for U.S. foreign policy and the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. (that's an archive link)

Spoiler alert:

...In his Inaugural Address a year ago, Trump pledged that his Administration would “measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” His proudest legacy, Trump said, would be “peacemaker and unifier.” He has already blown that goal.

Heck, with the pond reduced to a few pigeon droppings from the reptiles at the lizard Oz, how could they compete with the news from a declining, decadent empire, the emperor in the last stages of senility and dementia, and all the more dangerous because of that, as minions of the Miller, JD and Kennedy kind jostle for influence and increasingly extremist policies?

It's all so weird, so remote, and yet so present.

The pond was reminded of the sense of distance explored in a Kafka story about the building of the great wall of China ... (here in 11 parts)

Against whom was the great wall to provide protection? Against the people of the north. I come from south-east China. No northern people can threaten us there. We read about them in the books of the ancients. The atrocities which their nature prompts them to commit make us heave a sigh on our peaceful porches. In the faithfully accurate pictures of artists we see the faces of this damnation, with their mouths flung open, the sharp pointed teeth stuck in their jaws, their straining eyes, which seem to be squinting for someone to seize, whom their jaws will crush and rip to pieces. When children are naughty, we hold up these pictures in front of them, and they immediately burst into tears and run into our arms.

But we know nothing else about these northern lands. We have never seen them, and if we remain in our village, we never will see them, even if they charge straight at us and hunt us on their wild horses. The land is so huge, it would not permit them to reach us, and they would lose themselves in empty air.

And again, a little amended ...

....Our land is so huge, that no fairy tale can adequately deal with its size. Heaven hardly covers it all. And Washington DC is only a point, the imperial palace only a tiny dot. It’s true that, by contrast, throughout all the different levels of the world the emperor, as emperor, is great. But the living emperor, a man like us, lies on a peaceful bed, just as we do. It is, no doubt, of ample proportions, but it could be merely narrow and short. Like us, he sometime stretches out his limbs and, if he is very tired, yawns with his delicately delineated mouth. But how are we to know about that thousands of miles to the south, where we almost border on the Mexican drug cartels? Besides, any report which came, even if it reached us, would get there much too late and would be long out of date. Around the emperor the glittering and yet mysterious court throngs—malice and enmity clothed as servants and friends, the counterbalance to the imperial power, with their poisoned arrows always trying to shoot the emperor down from his side of the balance scales. The empire is immortal, but the individual emperor falls and collapses. Even entire dynasties finally sink down and breathe their one last death rattle. The people will never know anything about these struggles and sufferings. Like those who have come too late, like strangers to the city, they stand at the end of the thickly populated side alleyways, quietly living off the provisions they have brought with them, while far off in the market place right in the middle foreground the execution of their master is taking place.

There is a legend which expresses this relationship well.

The Emperor—so they say—has sent a message, directly from his death bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun. He ordered the herald to kneel down beside his bed and whispered the message into his ear. He thought it was so important that he had the herald repeat it back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of the verbal message by nodding his head. And in front of the entire crowd of those who’ve come to witness his death—all the obstructing walls have been broken down and all the great ones of his empire are standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of stairs—in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forward easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvelous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace. He will never he win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the courtyards the second palace encircling the first, and, then again, stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally did burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes.

That’s exactly how our people look at the emperor, hopelessly and full of hope. They don’t know which emperor is on the throne, and there are even doubts about the name of the dynasty. In the schools they learn a great deal about things like the succession, but the common uncertainty in this respect is so great that even the best pupils are drawn into it. In our villages emperors long since dead are set on the throne, and one of them who still lives on only in songs had one of his announcements issued a little while ago, which the priest read out from the altar. Battles from our most ancient history are now fought for the first time, and with a glowing face your neighbour charges into your house with the report. The imperial wife, over indulged on silk cushions, alienated from noble customs by shrewd courtiers, swollen with thirst for power, driven by greed, excessive in her lust, donated $40 million by Amazon, is always committing her evil acts over again. (Damn you Jeff Bezos, damn you Amazon, the pond won't even pirate it)

And so on... and the pond is left in this remote portion of the empire, left nibbling at the leftovers in the lizard Oz, while the current jihad continues at a frenzied pace.

The bromancer has been MIA since 27th December, but when he returns no doubt he'll be part of the ongoing jihad.

Nattering "Ned" was last seen on 19th December, in that outing making sure that a terror tragedy would be treated as a political battle. 

Presumably they're only away to rest and gather strength before rejoining the jihad.

But in the meantime, what's left for the pond?

B*gger all (*google bot friendly).

To be fair, the reptiles started the Saturday with a recognition of another world by having this story atop the digital edition ...

One dead, three missing in 46C heat as fire rains down hell on tourism towns

Jacinta Allan has declared a disaster as three people remain missing, one person died and entire towns were wiped out by devastating bushfires tearing across central Victoria at unprecedented speeds.

By John Ferguson, Euan Kennedy, Anthony Galloway and Lydia Lynch

The pond drove through some of those disaster areas just a week or so ago, and can't help brooding about the suffering caught up in that horror, but what's this talk of "unprecedented speeds"?

There's a whiff of climate change in that wording, and yet once again the usual reptile brigade of climate science denialists were MIA.

Still, hat tip to that quadrella of reptiles doing the story. Not one mention of "climate", a singular feat.

Instead of any of tthat there was yet more of the jihad, though they also brought in a Pom to add to and diversify the fear and the loathing with a new angle...

Hijabophobia draws a veil over criticism of Iran

One writer defines it as ‘hostility to the hijab’. The Oxford Handbook of European Islam defines it as ‘rejection of the hijab’.

By Brendan O'Neill

Columnist

Give that man a gig with the English cricket team.

The pond simply can't stomach it, can't go there, but recognises its duty to diligent herpetology students, so here's a couple more sent to the to the archive, where they can be studied at leisure ...

Resolute PM meets the popular will – and backs down

Anthony Albanese’s authority and leadership have been injured and he may bear the political scars for the rest of his term.

By Simon Benson

Political analyst

The stench of the gloating was stupefying, while garrulous Gemma was decidedly grating ...

Saddle up for another year of galloping hypocrisy

Australia is facing a reckoning of the heart and soul. We have conflated freedom of speech with freedom from consequences. Since when did we allow hypocrisy to go unchallenged? It feels like the stench of it is everywhere.

By Gemma Tognini

Columnist

The Adelaide Writers' Festival has found out where blind adherence to the reptile jihad can lead, but the pond has done its duty. The archive links are there for anyone wanting to frolic with fear and loathing ... and the pond will do its best to get back in the reptile saddle tomorrow for a Sunday meditation.

Instead of all that, yesterday the pond the pond was only touching the surface of potential ways to waste time on YouTube. 

Speaking of hamster posters, always churning to keep hits and revenue burning, there's always Meidas Touch, though some will find the incessant braying a tad wearying. 

And if you want a late arvo time waste opportunity, that's when Colbert, Kimmel and the rest of the gang kick in.

 

The pond usually finds something to watch on The Daily Show, even if it's just a send-up of a nonentity of the Benny Johnson kind ... 

                           

 Then there's The Good Liars, who've been around for yonks ... 

                            

 On a more solemn level there's Pod Save America ...

                           

Once you go down these rabbit holes, the logarithms are determined to make sure you never leave. 

Almost every major news brand offers clips, thereby making the original lamestream redundant.

France 24, MS NOW, the WSJ, the ABCs here and there, CNN, PBS, Al Jazeera, CBC, The Independent, the Graudian, the Beeb, 7, 9, 10, on and on and on, a mindless field of endless distractions. 

Heck, even the lizard Oz occasionally tries, only to be singularly inept and out of place, trapped behind an ancient, increasingly irrelevant paywall model. 

And once you start wandering you can end up in strange places. 

The pond long ago stopped gaming, and finds tats a turn off, and yet somehow ended up watching penguinzO, a channel which boasts 17.6 million subscribers and routinely scores up to a million hits.  

As well as flogging soap for a living and having an early life crisis about turning 30, he offers all kinds of bait to maintain the churn.

      

He's an influencer, don't ya know.

 

You can also see old laggards like Don Lemon, still struggling for relevance and a spot in the sun.

The pond never thought anything of Lemon in his prime, but he's got over a million subscribers and regularly scores over a half million hits ... helped by recycling other content, in this case taken from Freedomnews.TV, and in this case worth watching because of the way one man talks to a bunch of bewildered ICE goons ...

   

Oh more than enough already. 

The main problem of course is that if you link to one offering, it will be immediately supplanted by a new offering. 

Hamsters gotta do what hamsters do, and people with too much time on their hands gotta watch the hamsters do their thing.

Hamsters gotta keep that wheel turning, clicks gotta keep coming ...

Hits generate revenue, eyeballs gotta stay fixated ... 

The pond is doing its best to shake the addiction, though it's a bit like crack and hard to shake. 

Just give the pond an old-fashioned 'toon, and the pond will call this day done...

In which the lizard Oz's current jihad strikes again, and the pond is left with a Groaning, King Donald, editorials, Jack the Insider and YouTube links ...

 

The reptile jihad in the Australian Daily Zionist News is picking up even more steam - how is it possible? - with cartoonist Cathy Wilcox the latest target of the jihaders.

As this branch of the lizard Oz is under a prohibitorum, the pond can only provide an archival link to Nine accused of trivialising mass murder as chair urged to investigate 'Jew-hating' cartoon.(that's an archive link).

Luckily the pond is in a deep ratings dive, so no one has noticed the appearance of the cartoon here, but the pond was proud to feature it, and will feature it again if the fuss continues.

In related jihad news, the creation of an RC has ensured that the reptiles are in full 'howling at the moon' mode.

In other news, the draft terms of the RC advises that the Australian Government has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of anitsemitism.

Inter alia, the wiki on the IHRA working definition included these comments:

In March 2005, Brian Klug argued that the definition's examples proscribed legitimate criticism of the human rights record of the Israeli Government by attempting to bring criticism of Israel, and criticism of Israeli actions and criticism of Zionism as a political ideology into the category of antisemitism and racially based violence towards, discrimination against, or abuse of, Jews.
In December 2016, David Feldman wrote: "I fear this definition is imprecise, and isolates antisemitism from other forms of bigotry." He also said: "The text also carries dangers. It trails a list of 11 examples. Seven deal with criticism of Israel. Some of the points are sensible, some are not." He added: "Crucially, there is a danger that the overall effect will place the onus on Israel's critics to demonstrate they are not antisemitic."
In February 2017, a letter signed by 243 British academics, who asserted that the "violation of the rights of Palestinians for more than 50 years" should not be silenced, contends "this definition seeks to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism" and raised concerns about muddying the definition of anti-Semitism and restricting free debate on Israel.
In July 2018, Antony Lerman wrote: "investing all in the IHRA working definition of antisemitism is just making matters worse. This is the time to take the path to working with other minority groups, civil society organizations and human rights bodies to confront antisemitism within the context of a wider antiracist struggle, not to perpetuate the notion that Jews stand alone."He later stated that "the case against IHRA is so strong" that "the fundamental principle [is] that IHRA is so flawed it should be abandoned".[93] In August 2019, he wrote: "The vagueness of the 'working definition' of antisemitism has licensed a free-for-all of interpretation, delighting opponents of Palestinian demands for equal rights." (footnotes at the original).

Is it anti-semitic to note this example of the egregious and outrageous behaviour of the current government of Israel?

And so endlessly on.

Of course asking the mendacious Minns to help out in this matter would be a fool's errand ...

Never mind, the pond reserves the right to criticise the ethnic cleansing policies of the current government of Israel, and to continue to reference Haaretz, such as its thorny discussion of the government's recognition of Somaliland (archive link) as a state, which came to entirely the wrong conclusion (at least for the hive mind)...

 ...supporting Somaliland independence should strengthen the argument for Palestinian recognition. Palestine doesn't even raise the problem of secession, and international law has repeatedly affirmed its right of self-determination. Palestinians have longed for statehood for decades. If countries will be recognizing Somaliland, there should be no question about recognizing Palestine – and no excuses.

Enough of all that, but the prohibitorum leaves the pond with very little to do.

Once upon a time, this part of the year - with sizzling heat waves and alarming bushires - would have produced a splendid bout of climate science denialism, with attacks on climate science zealots and blind worship of the wonders of sweet, dinkum, innocent Oz coal. The Riddster would have popped up to explain the reef was in tremendous shape, and the Bjørn-again one would have blathered on endlessly that (a) there's nothing to worry about and (b) a little technology investment will fix what ails ya.

At this point, the pond would take anything.

But the reptiles are now such a one trick Daily Zionist News that not even the current climate calamities break through the monolith of the hive mind.

Correspondents might have thought the Minneapolis murder by an ICE officer would have featured, but it was well down the digital page, and came from "agencies", at which point it's wiser to read those "agencies" at a hundred other sources.

This means that old favourites such as Our Henry are no longer to hand, as in Albanese's grudging acceptance reveals much about our PM ...(that's an archive link for addicts)

The desire to bring down the government by using the massacre is overt, and all the pond can do is pluck a few pompous cherries from the morass ...

...The pressure exerted by public opinion became more extensive, broader, more continuous, and more insistent – surging to near-irresistible levels when shocking failures of policy and administration were exposed, as they were with devastating clarity during the Crimean War.

A crucial intellectual shift accompanied these developments. Thomas Hobbes’s assertion in Behemoth (1680) that “the power of the mighty hath no foundation but in the opinion and belief of the people” had long been a maxim of English political thought. But public opinion now came to be understood as a decisive check on the conduct of public affairs between elections, weighing constantly on the minds of ministers and parliamentarians alike.

Its function, wrote William A. Mackinnon in 1828, in the first monograph ever devoted to the subject, was to act as “the government of the government”; and nothing short of untrammelled accountability could hope to satisfy it. Concealment therefore became steadily less acceptable. As Walter Bagehot observed in 1867, the new spirit of the age was “not only the toleration of everything, but the examination of everything”.

Little wonder, then, that nearly 400 royal commissions were established in the 70 years from 1830 to 1900 – almost five a year – laying the groundwork for sweeping reforms of both policy and administration. Those reforms were central to sustaining public trust in, and the legitimacy of, the British state during a period of convulsive transformation.

How to make RCs sound incredibly dull.

And just how low could the pompous pundit go? 

Why he even cites a notorious war criminal and mass murderer approvingly ...

Whether the intensity of the public reaction to the savagery at Bondi has durably disabused Albanese of that calculation remains to be seen. But Henry Kissinger was right to observe that what distinguishes great leaders is “not simply physical power but strength reinforced by moral purpose”.

The pond wondered if the hole in bucket man would produce a sermon explaining the moral purpose of Watergate and the bombing of Cambodia, and the elongation of the war in Vietnam for Tricky Dick's political purposes, but was as usual disappointed.

Luckily Dame Groan was to hand, and the pond seized on her offering ...  

The header: Someone needs to tell the Treasurer Jim Chalmers he’s dreamin’; The May budget is likely to contain more measures to extract more revenue from the wealthy. A cut to the capital gains tax ‘discount’ is on the cards.

The caption for the smirking snap of a lad later to be shown in his usual downcast mode: Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Okay, the old grump is as boring as batsh*t (*google bot approved) this day, but the pond had to feature something, even day old reheated biddy musings:

I have always thought that the acronym for the Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, MYEFO, sounds a bit like a nasty disease. The doctor leans forward and informs you that you have been diagnosed with a bad case of MYEFO, and the prognosis is not good.

The MYEFO for 2025-26 was released in the week after the killings on Bondi Beach on December 14. This was always the Treasurer’s plan, and he was sticking to it. He could have changed the release date; there have been times when MYEFO was released in January. But the fact that very few people were paying attention was a plus, not a negative.

Consistent with his messaging in respect of every milestone economic release, Jim Chalmers boasted about his responsible economic management as evidenced by the latest MYEFO. You have to hand it to him; he’s not backward in patting himself on the back.

“We’ve been able to make the budget better still. That’s because of the difficult but responsible decisions we’ve taken to bank all the upward revisions to revenue. Because of those efforts, we’ve been able to get the deficits down in every year. We’ve been able to get debt down every year.”

But as I sit at my computer with the MYEFO tables in front of me, I wonder what planet he’s living on. Has he really caught the disease called MYEFO?

Let me take the last sentence first: we’ve been able to get debt down every year. Take government net debt, for example. In 2023-24, it was $491bn. This financial year, it will be $587bn. In 2028-29, the projection for net debt is $755bn. In other words, net debt has gone up, not down.

The pond stifled a yawn, and managed to muster a note that yet again Satan's little helper was pictured in downcast mode:

Labor’s goal of achieving a balanced budget has been pushed back as the federal budget is now expected to remain in deficit for up to a decade. Treasurer Jim Chalmers revealed the biggest drivers for this change after he handed down the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook on Wednesday. Interest on government debt, NDIS, defence, medical benefits, and the Child Care Subsidy were noted as the fastest-growing major payments. Meanwhile, a decrease in tobacco tax revenue and a decline in immigration are complicating the treasurer's job.

The aged biddy kept on berating the wretch:

Perhaps the Treasurer was referring to gross debt. But here the story is the same. In 2023-24, the figure was $907bn. It will come in at $993bn this financial year and will top $1.2 trillion at the end of the forwards, in 2028-29. Someone probably needs to tell Chalmers he’s dreamin’.

A similar story applies to the (headline) cash balance. This financial year, we are expecting a deficit of $59bn, which is 2 per cent of GDP; next year, it is expected to be around $63bn or 2.1 per cent of GDP. And bear in mind here that the earnings of the Future Fund are now incorporated in the budget figures.

The Treasurer is not expecting the budget to return to surplus for 10 years – that’s right, for a decade. This will inevitably add further to government debt. Projecting successive deficits for a decade is simply impossible to square with the definition of responsible economic management.

The semantic game that Chalmers plays is to choose a counterfactual (a base that suits him) and to claim that “things have improved”. And by playing the game of creative accounting by putting large chunks of government spending off budget, he then makes self-serving, but fatuous, claims.

For example, the small improvement to the underlying cash balance relative to the March budget (one of Chalmers’s chosen counterfactuals) is offset by higher off-budget spending. This shows up in the headline cash balance, which is worse than the March budget. Not surprisingly, this result is not highlighted by the Treasurer.

Chalmers also makes some further heroic assumptions, particularly in relation to low rates of real spending growth in the future. This financial year, real government spending will rise by 4.5 per cent; it grew by 5.5 per cent last financial year.

The size of government (government payments as a percentage of GDP) has grown from 25.1 per cent in 2023-24 to 26.9 per cent this financial year. Leaving aside the Covid years, this is one of the largest proportions over the past 50 years.

We are now expected to believe that annual government spending will grow by only 1.7 per cent on average for the next 10 years, notwithstanding several elections occurring in that time frame. In other words, it completely lacks credibility.

There is in fact a strong case for Chalmers simply to be upfront about the true state of the budget. Every serious economic commentator can see through the ruses he uses to hide the deteriorating fiscal position and burgeoning government debt. He has no intention of reducing the size of government. He’s no Paul Keating, more Jim Cairns. And just wait until the Prime Minister has his way with the introduction of universal childcare, which will add many billions of dollars to annual government spending.

The reptiles managed to drag in petulant Peta, and this time Satan's little helper was shown in quizzical, pursed lips mode ... Sky News host Peta Credlin exposes Jim Chalmers boasting about the 2025-26 MYEFO, saying Labor’s problem is “addiction to spending.” “Chalmers boasted that this was some sort of economic wizardry,” Ms Credlin said. “The reality is, is that there’s still debt and deficit as far as the eye can see.”

The pond never thought this conventional, dry as dust assault on Jimbo would have to pass for reptile entertainment, but with the current jihad all the go, these are desperate times ...

In the meantime, Chalmers is doing handstands trying to convince us that government spending is not a factor in the uptick in the inflation rate or the likelihood of an increase in the cash rate early this year.

He misinterprets the tact of Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock. But here are her words. “What we’ve been saying for some time is that total demand, which is private and public together, has been above the level of supply in the economy; the ability of the economy to supply what is being demanded, and that’s what’s driving inflation.” The bank clearly does take government spending into account when making its decisions.

The monthly inflation figures, released this week, provide little comfort to Chalmers. The trimmed mean figure was above the bank’s target band. Much now hangs on the quarterly CPI figure, due at the end of this month, in terms of the direction of interest rates.

The challenge for Chalmers is where to secure additional revenue given his obvious reluctance to do the hard yards to reduce the size of government. Notwithstanding the minor income tax cuts announced in last year’s March budget, the reality is that revenue from income tax will fill an increasing space in the revenue requirements courtesy of bracket creep.

But this will be insufficient, which is why the Treasurer is seeking out new sources of revenue, targeted particularly at those on higher incomes and with wealth.

Having botched his first attempt to impose a tax surcharge on large superannuation balances, he is now in position to achieve a modified outcome on this score. The May budget is likely to contain more measures – Chalmers will claim these as “reforms” – to extract more revenue from the wealthy. A cut to the capital gains tax “discount” is on the cards.

The key problem is that high-income earners already pay the lion’s share of tax revenue and measures that increase the tax burden on them run the risk of creating perverse incentives to work hard, save/invest and stay in the country.

But, one way or another, a bigger size of government must be funded. The Labor Hawke/Keating days are a distant memory.

Nothing new there with which to greet the New Year, but at least it's done, and the pond has tucked the first Groaning under its belt. No doubt further bouts of tedium and nausea will follow.

And King Donald is an ongoing distraction, with Seth Meyers (YouTube link) featuring this gorgeous snap ...

It came in handy a couple of times ...

(More on YouTube distractions below)

Sadly the local reptiles outsourced the King Donald job to the WSJ, but these days it's any port in a storm for the pond ...

The header: Trump’s Greenland gambit: A gift to Putin? Trump’s threat to use military force against NATO ally Denmark over Greenland has sparked warnings the alliance could collapse entirely.

The caption for the mad monarch: US President Donald Trump, alongside (L/R) Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth. Picture: AFP

It was just a two minute read, so the reptiles said, but the reptiles dressed it up with a few snaps:

Americans are trying to figure out Donald Trump’s goals in Venezuela, but spare a thought this week for Greenland. The President has good strategic instincts about the world’s largest island, so it’s regrettable that his interest is devolving into a self-defeating exercise in US bullying.

“We need Greenland,” President Trump said on Air Force One this weekend. “It’s so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.”

The US does need to hedge against future Russian and Chinese inroads in the Danish territory. Nearby are vital submarine lanes, and the island hosts US missile-defence radars that protect the homeland. Beneath the ice are reserves of rare-earth minerals. Liberals booed Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton in 2019 when he suggested buying the island, but he had a point.

The caption for the first interrupting snap: Members of a packing crew in Nuuk, Greenland. Picture: Getty Images

The pond should bite its tongue, and avoid suggesting that this was what News Corp had voted for, and now they were in full FAFO mode ...

Yet the operative word was buy – a free agreement among the US, our NATO ally Denmark, and Greenland’s 56,000 people. This week presidential adviser Stephen Miller, in one of his familiar beat-the-press showdowns, declined to rule out military force: “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”

A White House statement Tuesday said President Trump is considering several options, including use of the military.

The invasion talk is probably Trumpian bluster to prod a negotiation to buy the island or end up with some other expanded US presence. But even the suggestion of force is damaging America’s interests across the Atlantic.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was candid that “if the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything will come to an end,” including NATO. The truth of that statement is what makes military action from President Trump hard to take seriously.

But feuding with friends over Greenland is giving Vladimir Putin another wedge to divide America from Europe to his benefit. That means less US leverage for driving a good and durable Ukraine settlement.

Nothing precludes President Trump from shoring up America’s position on Greenland, including mining to reduce US reliance on China. A bipartisan statement from US lawmakers this week noted that Denmark has accepted “every request to increase our military presence on the island.”

There came another interrupting snap: Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the leader of the Demokraatit party and the Prime Minister of Greenland. Picture: Getty Images

The WSJ reptiles were alert, and possibly even a tad alarmed ...

The US could restore its larger military footprint on Greenland from the Cold War – and perhaps ensure enduring access even if Greenland someday changes its political relationship with Denmark.

President Trump could also continue leveraging US relationships as a force multiplier in the Arctic. An under-appreciated Trump Administration achievement is a deal last fall to build 11 icebreakers with Finland.

The Danes spent 3.2pc of their economy on defence last year, up from 1.15pc in 2014, so they can contribute. These alliances are better for US interests than grabbing a new territory – and its domestic politics – against the will of the locals.

President Trump has enough on his hands elsewhere that the Greenland spat may blow over. But Mr. Miller’s line in the same interview that the world is “governed by power” and force is revealing. The left is deploying absurd false equivalences to accuse PresidentTrump in Venezuela of violating international law, which exists only as long as civilised nations exist. Western military power is indispensable.

But the corollary is that successful US presidents don’t reduce America’s role in the world to might-makes-right. Maybe the Greenland affair is merely what now passes for online MAGA entertainment. But President Trump would help his own cause in every hemisphere if he dropped the invade-Greenland routine.

The Wall Street Journal

Poor old chastened Wilcox was reduced to doing the "peace/piece" routine, a staple for 'toons in recent times ...

Meanwhile Jack the Insider did try to offer a local reptile perspective, only to insist that the narcissistic man baby was just doing business as usual ...

The pond decided to strip him of his illustrations, what with time being short. Anybody wanting them can head off to the archive link ...

Donald Trump wants Greenland just because it’s there

The US has been asserting its strategic, economic and political interests in Latin America for more than a century. Venezuela is nothing new.

Jack the Insider

Usually the pond pays no attention to Jack the Insider, but these are desperate times, and the pond turned to him to do a bit of normalisting just because it was nothing new for the hive mind, and he was there ...

President Donald Trump is always treated differently. This was confirmed in the mainstream media who would have us believe that Trump’s military action in Venezuela on Saturday was an isolated attempt by the US to assert itself in the western hemisphere.

Earlier this week, The New York Times excitedly proclaimed via vague superlatives that the US military action in Venezuela was “Washington’s most overt attempt in decades to carry out regime change in Latin America”.

This sort of commentary is driven by an anti-Trump fixation with history not quite erased but sent to the back of the room.

The US has been asserting its strategic, economic and political interests in Latin America for more than a century. It has continued to do so by soft and hard diplomacy and clandestine subterfuge during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

A coup in Honduras in 2009 where a democratically elected president was forced from power by the Honduran military, did draw criticism from the Obama administration but the US did not intervene or extend sanctions. US allies in Latin America regarded the Obama response as tepid.

More pertinent is the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s clandestine operation in Venezuela known as Money Badger, which commenced in 2013 and was ramped up during Trump’s first term. Initiated during Obama’s second term, Money Badger ultimately led to the indictment of Nicolas Maduro for which the former Venezuelan president could now face a lifetime in a US federal prison.

When the immense economic wealth and industrial capacity of the US emerged through the Gilded Age, it became a superpower on the rise, although it remained coy on expansion beyond the continental US.

In April 1898, US Navy battleship the USS Maine was sunk in Havana Harbour, precipitating the Spanish-American War.

The war lasted less than four months with theatres in the Caribbean and the Pacific. At its conclusion, the US emerged victorious and with colonies of its own in Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico and The Philippines. The end had finally come for the crumbling Spanish empire in the western hemisphere, and it vacated the region never to return.

Since then the US has actively engaged in regime change, occupying Nicaragua in 1912 as part of the Banana Wars, seizing Veracruz in Mexico in 1914, establishing a military regime in Haiti in 1915, and supporting military coups often involving CIA black operations in Guatemala in 1954, the Dominican Republic in 1961, Ecuador in 1963, Brazil in 1964, Chile in 1970 and so on until the invasion of Panama and the arrest of military leader Manuel Noriega in 1989, which presumably was the reference point in The New York Times.

The rationale for US engagement in Panama was similar to that of Venezuela. At least overtly, it was democracy and drugs. Obviously, the strategic importance of the Panama Canal could not be overlooked, nor can Venezuela’s enormous oil resources.

It must be said that Panama today is a democratic success story post-US intervention. Noriega was convicted of racketeering, drug trafficking offences and money laundering. He spent 17 years in a US federal prison and died in custody in Panama City in 2017 after receiving three 20-year sentences in Panama for his role in extrajudicial killings.

Students of American history have battled with the meaning and purpose of the Monroe Doctrine for almost as long as it has been in existence.

Its initial intent was to restrict the push of European power in the western hemisphere but it has been used to justify mutually exclusive concepts of isolationism and interference in sovereign nations. The foreign policy dictum was written by then secretary of state John Quincy Adams during James Monroe’s presidency. Monroe referred to it in his State of the Union address in 1823.

In the early 19th century, the then superpowers of Europe – Great Britain, Spain and France – held sway. The Monroe Doctrine explicitly set a thus far and no further line in the sand in terms of the colonisation of the Caribbean and Latin America.

The Monroe Doctrine might be open to broad interpretation but the Trump administration has adhered to its principles with the military action in Venezuela and the arrest of Maduro and his wife.

That action has not, as many have opined, brought an end to international law, ushering in global chaos based on the old rough rules of diplomacy that might is right.

Similarly, subsequent threats made by President Trump towards Venezuela’s neighbour, Colombia, which produces more cocaine than anywhere else in Latin America, should be taken seriously. Colombia has significant oil reserves, too, which must give the government led by economist Gustavo Petro a shudder. Often mischaracterised as Colombia’s Maduro, Petro, an economist and leftist, was elected fair and square in 2022.

But it is the continuing vigorous rhetoric over the enforced annexation of Greenland from the Trump administration where logic has taken a holiday. This is the Monroe Doctrine defenestrated with logic hurled out the window immediately afterwards.

Beyond the bluff and bluster, Trump and his urgers in the White House claim Greenland is a crucial strategic land mass. But through the Cold War, the US had seven military bases in the Danish autonomous region. It has since abandoned all but one. The other argument is that Greenland’s rare metals are there for the taking but Greenland’s autonomous government has welcomed exploration by the US and received only silence in reply.

The only way a potential US annexation of Greenland does make sense sits in another element of US history: expansionism. West of the Appalachians, the US has subsumed vast tracts of land by act of war, treaty, purchase and by annexation, forced or otherwise. US military action in the frozen Arctic land mass, a quarter the size of Australia, would plunge the world into chaos for no good reason other than a kind of reinterpretation of Sir Edmund Hillary’s rationale for scaling Mt Everest; that Trump wants Greenland because it’s there.

Make of that what you will ...

Finally, the lizard Oz editorialist was also keen on normalising King Donald, again peddling the bizarre notion that somehow the gilt gold clad emperor might mean Vlad the Sociopath harm ...

Yes, by way of reptile magic, we've gone from the WSJ's "gift to Putin" to "Putin humiliated".

The pond was fatigued at this point and decided on a screen cap ...

It's a wonder there's still a war in Ukraine, what with King Donald being such clever foe for Vlad the Sociopath (if you happen to wander down the lizard Oz editorialist rabbit hole of delusion).

Speaking of rabbit holes, following a recent note by a pond correspondent, the pond thought it should confess to assorted rabbit holes it occasionally goes down on YouTube ...

The Russia Media Monitor is always worth a laugh if you like the company of sociopaths, while the Daily Beast Channel features Michael Wolf rabbiting on endlessly (some might think tediously), and there's Mediaite doing its usual business looking at the disunited states media mess. (The pond also has a soft spot for the Beeb's Steve Rosenberg's survey of Russian papers, though he's been on holydays and is inclined to play the piano at the drop of a hat).

With the Young Turks now aged and well past prime, having been caught selling out to try to widen their sphere of influence, these are three who turn up regularly, even if you haven't subscribed to their channels.

It's more a matter of having your insistent, dumb logarithms ruin your day.

All three are relentless posters - you have to keep hamster wheel churning to make a living - and all three use other sources for recycling and to maintain the flow of content, though Kyle does this by speeding up the other content, perhaps to avoid a copyright strike, or perhaps just because he's bored ...

Kyle's channel is labelled Secular Talk and this is a typical rant - the pond uses the word advisedly - which reuses other content like sea food extender ...

Then there's the David Pakman show, as referenced by the pond's correspondent ...this time recycling Megyn Kelly so you don't have to watch the original ...

Lastly - there are so many others but enough already - there's Keith Edwards, an indefatigable poster ...

And there's always The Bulwark, which has taken to live streaming and everything else to keep the clicks happening ...

The pond doesn't recommend any of this, the pond is just following up a pond correspondent comment.

The only upside the pond can see is that by definition almost anything is better than the lizard Oz in its current jihad mode ...