The bromancer and Dame Groan firing from the hip, could the far right ask for more?

 

Why does the pond always put the tastiest reptiles last? Why do correspondents always have to wade through a turgid reptile stew to get to the dessert? Not today ...

The bromancer on Pauline and her consort, Tamworth's ineradicable, execrable shame? Straight to the top of the digital world ma ...

The header: A lesson from Germany: Demonising populist parties won’t improve mainstream politics; One Nation’s weakness isn’t extremism but lack of experience in government, lack of policy bandwidth and the tendency of its elected representatives to defect.

The caption for the clowns: One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson and MP Barnaby Joyce during a press conference in the Senate courtyard. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There might be a few stray readers who think the bromancer might be shocked at the triumph of far right, neo-Nazis in Germany.

Foolish readers. The bromancer is on a crusade to give far right extremists and populists a break ...

The slashing victory for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in the German state election in Saxony-Anhalt shows the utter folly of mainstream politics trying to demonise and exclude populist parties. This is true for One Nation in Australia.
German politics has been rendered disfigured and dysfunctional by its long and unsuccessful effort to demonise AfD. It has made the once fringe party stronger while depriving it of the experience of government that would make it more moderate.
Similar dynamics apply here. One Nation’s candidate won the recent Secret Harbour by-election with 39 per cent primary vote. It’s leading national polls across Australia.
All parties should be held accountable for their choice of personnel and policies. But there’s no Australian electorate where 39 per cent of Australians are extremists. It would be insane for the Liberal and National parties to put One Nation last on preferences. If One Nation retaliated, that would be a recipe for Labor to win almost every seat in the country. That’s not democratic
If One Nation were Nazis, there would be no choice but to do that anyway. But they’re not Nazis. There’s nothing at all in Pauline Hanson or Barnaby Joyce that justifies the tag “extreme right wing”.

Indeed, indeed. They are perfect warriors for the lizard Oz's ideological positions. 

How could any of that be extreme right wing? From a fear and loathing of furriners and Islamics to full blown climate science denialism, they're a perfectly rational and reasonable bunch ... if you happen to live in a hive mind.

The reptiles followed up with a snap of Ulrich ... Ulrich Siegmund, lead candidate of AfD, gestures on stage after initial results give the party 44.8 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt state elections. Picture: Sean Gallup / Getty Images

That prompted the pond to look up a profile of Ulrich and his chums ... Ulrich Siegmund, the smiling ‘popular kid’ who propelled the far right to victory in eastern Germany

...The politician advocates, among other things, for a much more restrictive immigration policy, increased deportations and a fundamental shift in state policy. Among his close associates are individuals who were actively involved in the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend (HDJ), an organization banned in 2009 for its “affinity with National Socialism.” The group sought to raise children as “National Socialist freedom fighters” and taught minors what it called “racial science.” One of them is Patrick Harr, the parliamentary group’s press spokesman and Siegmund’s right-hand man. For Siegmund, however, these were merely “youthful mistakes” that have long since been consigned to the past.
The politician has also spoken positively about YouTuber Matthäus Westfal, known online as Aktivist-Mann. “There are a lot of good people providing information,” he said. Siegmund appears untroubled by the fact that the livestreamer was on the front lines during the attempted storming of the German parliament in 2020 amid mass protests against Covid-19 restrictions, and is known for his ties to Holocaust deniers.
Then there is Sebastian Schmidtke, a former federal vice-chair of the NPD, now known as Die Heimat, who has also reinvented himself as a livestreamer and was accredited at an AfD federal party conference. Siegmund appears to have a cordial relationship with the convicted neo-Nazi. Moreover, when asked how he personally views National Socialism and the Holocaust, and whether he would describe the years from 1933 to 1945 as “the greatest crime against humanity,” Siegmund responded evasively: “I do not dare to judge it. Because I cannot take the measure of all humanity.”

Exactly. Who could dare to judge a holocaust, especially one that might not have happened?

How could any reader of the Australian Daily Zionist News take offence at that? 

The pond could spot only one minor blemish ... In 2017, Siegmund left the Catholic Church. He has said that he still carries its values “in his heart,” but rejects the German institution that represents them.

That's okay. You can take the tyke out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the tyke, and in much the same way, you can take the alleged neo-Nazis out of the AdF but you can't take the AdF out of your alleged neo-Nazis. Or some such ...

What we need is better, more dinkum populism and extremism down under. Hearken unto the bromancer ...

Australia needs the best One Nation party it can get, just as it needs the best Liberal, National, Labor and Greens parties.

Precisely. In much the same way that the Weimar republic needed the very best Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei:

One Nation’s weakness isn’t extremism but lack of experience in government, lack of policy bandwidth and the tendency of its elected representatives to defect.
This is where Joyce is critical. He gives One Nation daily political presence. David Farley has the ability to make a big contribution from Farrer but has sent out disturbing, egocentric signs that he doesn’t want to be a team player. If he defects from One Nation, sooner or later, he will have hurt Australian politics, not helped it.

Come on chaps. Pull together. If you want to truly stuff the country in a coherent, organised way, you need to be bigots working together, or perhaps dip in for a share of a magic pud..

Hearken unto the bro:

In Europe, most right-wing populist parties have moderated considerably while retaining core commitments on touchstone issues such as reducing immigration. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is the leading stateswoman of Europe. No one could describe her as extreme right. Nigel Farage in the UK has recruited figures who would make a Reform government credible. Farage still has many problems and establishment efforts to keep him out of office are huge. But he’s not remotely an extremist.
In France, Marine Le Pen is leading national polls. The AfD is Europe’s most problematic case. They are also leading national polls and form the official opposition nationally. But all the other German political parties except one are committed to a strategy of the so-called firewall. This means they will not form a coalition at state or federal level with AfD and will not accept its votes in parliaments, determining always to construct parliamentary majorities without AfD.

Talk about great advice, and of course the reptiles had to feature Nigel, no doubt busy making plans to score more billionaire funding ... Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage addresses delegates during day two of the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham. Picture: Anthony Devlin / Getty Images

There's a 'toon to go with that ...

Why is anyone surprised? Back in his early days, the bromancer was a disciple of Santa, and that led to some peculiar ideas.

The pond rarely quotes Phillip Adams, but there he was back in 2015 in the lizard Oz... 

Santamaria’s back in the news. As well as being hero and mentor to a younger Gerard (Polonius that is) he remains an inspiration to Tony Abbott, while journalist Greg Sheridan is also sharing memories...
...Gerard made much of Franco declaring Spain “neutral” during World War II. (What kind of Fascist would do that?) The truth is that, after a meeting in France, Hitler refused to accept Franco’s terms for full membership of the Axis — which included Spanish control of French North Africa. Another problem was a profoundly different view of Catholicism. Nonetheless Spain’s “Blue Division” would help Hitler in his war on the Soviets while Franco offered Hitler naval facilities for warships and U-boats. Franco also supplied Himmler with a list of 6000 Jews for the Final Solution, though he did not hand them over. (It should be acknowledged that some Spanish embassies in Europe provided some Jews with diplomatic protection.) And he considered blocking Allied access to the Mediterranean by seizing Gibraltar. What kind of neutral would do that?
Franco’s influence lived on in other totalitarian thugs — one who attended his funeral was his biggest fan, General Pinochet.
I’ll concede that Santa wasn’t alone in his support for Franco. So for a while was Churchill. And the western democracies kissed and made up during the Cold War, with Eisenhower visiting the Caudillo de España in 1953.
Franco a fascist? Never.

Of course he wasn't, at least in the bromancer's formative years, and thus black can be made white, and a bashing of furriners, in the manner of Herr Adolf's rise to power, can be made to seem perfectly normal ...

This policy has been an unmitigated disaster for Germany and a blessing for AfD in every way. As AfD support has grown, the great natural opponents in German politics, the Christian Democrat conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats, have had to form deeply unnatural coalition governments just to secure a parliamentary majority.
This has rendered German politics completely incoherent. Parties with directly contradictory platforms must, post-election, form compromise coalitions, time after time. This alienates voters who can’t get any change by opting for any mainstream party. And it reinforces the AfD message that all the other parties are the same, the “uniparty”, only in it for themselves and completely indifferent to voters’ wishes.

Carry on in a far right way and you can end up with a better kind of uniparty ...

How soon before the beefy boofhead steals all One Nation's policies in his quest for a uniparty?

What the bromancer wants is an experienced, able, competent party of extremists ...

There were times when the centre right could have taken AfD in as a junior coalition partner in some states or at least a party on whose votes it was willing to rely for what we call confidence and supply. This would have made AfD take responsibility for some mainstream decisions. It almost certainly would have domesticated AfD to some extent, meaning AfD got used to horse-trading within a semi-coherent centre right tradition.
The same thing happened on the other side with the German Greens. It’s hard to believe, but once the German Greens were almost as bad as Australia’s Greens are today. They were effectively domesticated by the responsibilities of government. They now support NATO, support Ukraine, as well as supporting the environment.
AfD has been allowed to maintain the purity of the impotent, as Gough Whitlam once described it. That means their support has steadily grown. Their signature issue is immigration. They hate the size and scale of the immigration Germany has experienced, especially from North Africa and the Middle East.

Is there anything more problematic to a lizard Oz journalist than a black or brown person? Not really ... Marine Le Pen

Colour the bromancer Marine adjacent, AfD curious ...

A fear of black people is perfectly reasonable, and it's one of the great policy failures of Australia that Aboriginal people weren't "bred out" or assimilated, or just made to go away somehow, or so the hive mind might think, and then there are those bloody tolerant loons who want to ruin the country's whiteness:

That’s not a Nazi position. The failure of mainstream German parties to deal with immigration has fed directly into AfD’s rise. AfD wants to deport people who are in Germany illegally and force other asylum-seekers who are in Germany legally to work for welfare benefits. These too are not Nazi positions and it’s mad to demonise them.

They're just your average hive mind readers of the lizard Oz. Now let's hear some more tolerance for bigotry ...

AfD wants to do a lot of culture wars stuff, some of it a bit nutty. It wants to remove gay pride flags from public schools. It’s a good thing that democracies are tolerant of everybody’s sexuality. But it is not a necessary condition of democracy that gay pride flags must fly from all public schools.

Get lost gay people, with your moaning and whining, but is there anything at all that troubles the bromancer? There was one minor billy goat butt, an awkward affinity for a sociopathic invader intent on resurrecting an empire ...

There are, certainly, elements of the AfD identity that give rise to legitimate concern. One of their worst features is their sympathy for Russia and Vladimir Putin. 

Steady, there's a billy goat butt for that ...

But the European establishment drove some right-wingers into Russian arms. 

And there's your standard defence. The left, or the centre, made me do it. I didn't want to be a fascist, but what's all this nonsense about having to get along with the gays next door?

Mainstream banks for a time wouldn’t deal with Le Pen’s movement in France, and Farage was briefly de-banked in Britain. Le Pen’s movement thus went to Russian banks. But banks should not have this absurd political censorship role in any democracy. Behaviour like that is a good argument for renationalising banks or regulating them to prevent such nonsense, just as so many Australian banks won’t finance fossil fuel projects. Who voted for the banks?

Indeed, it's not just a wrecking of the country, but the ruination of the entire planet by refusing to accept the science of climate change. Where's the harm in that ... Pauline Hanson speaks to the media in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

There's a 'toon for that ...

Once a Franco apologist, always a Franco apologist ...

The same dynamics that operate in Europe operate in Australia, though less intensely. The obscene Bondi massacre led to a huge rise in One Nation’s support. At first this seems strange. What’s the connection?
The Bondi massacre convinced many voters that the two major parties had both made a mess of the nation. Look what you’ve done to my country, was voters’ agonised cry. And the one figure in Australian politics who has stood most strongly against unregulated immigration from the Middle East, and from South Asian nations with strong Islamist traditions, is Hanson. Her position may have been right or wrong but it has been clear. Immigration populists are reshaping Western politics. That represents historic failure by mainstream parties. Shooting the messenger is no solution.

Um, perhaps the bromancer shouldn't raise the spectre of Bondi and get the AdF started on the subject of the Jews ...

The spectacular electoral victory of the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt represents a threat to both Germany and Europe, reminding us that antisemitism is on the rise again in Europe. “AfD often employs camouflaged antisemitic ideas and slogans or tolerates antisemitism in its midst, but at times it also disseminates overt antisemitic propaganda,” notes a Report from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) by Lars Rensmann.
“AfD’s election win in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt marks a grim milestone: The party is now within reach of forming Germany’s first far-right state government since the Nazi era,” AJC posted on X on 6 September. The AJC “has been sounding the alarm on the AfD’s rampant, intrinsic, and foundational antisemitism that is deeply embedded in its authoritarian-nationalist politics. The AfD’s rise remains a threat to German democracy and the future of Europe.”
Similar concerns are advanced by Yonathan Arfi, President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF).
“The AfD, a shadow over German democracy, a threat to Jews! The AfD is a party with neo-Nazi undertones, which claims, among other things, to put an end to “the teaching of guilt for the Shoah,” Arfi posted on X, highlighting that those in France who rejoice at the AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt cannot claim to fight  antisemitism in France. (here)

And why does the pond usually place the immortal Rowe down the bottom? Not today, not when he's featuring the bromancer's friends ...

And now the reptile hits, the top of the reptile charts, keep coming...bring on the groaner for a groaning ...

The header: Working from home is no way to revive our dismal economy; Is there a correlation between the decline in the quality of policy advice from the public service and the prevalence of WFH?

The caption for that splendid, uncredited collage of a Victorian fiend, and a stock shot of a young missy hunched over a computer ... ‘The harmful impact of the WFH legislation on private sector employment and investment is still dismissed by the Carroll Labor government home laws,’ writes Judith Sloan.

What's the bet that Dame Groan pounded out this column while working from home? It's a stretch to substitute her for the female figure in the collage, but work hard, and it can be done.

Sure, she could have hopped into a cab and headed into a News Corp office and pounded away.

Or she could have sensibly saved the cab fare (is she a tram person?), and wrote her yarn in the comfort of her home, filing it via the full to overflowing intertubes, pausing only to make herself a coffee at her own expense, so she could get fired up in a caffeine way ...

But then the reptiles always follow the chant "what's right for me is certainly not right for thee":

Working from home is very popular among workers. Forget the grind of the daily commute; fit in a Pilates class, grab a coffee from the local cafe, pick up the kids from school. How good is WFH?
But just because something is popular doesn’t mean governments should impose an obligation on employers to offer WFH. This is a message that sits uncomfortably with most Labor governments.
In the case of Victoria, the Allan Labor government thought it should take it a step further and impose a statutory right of WFH for workers – a minimum of two days a week for full-time workers and a pro-rata number for part-time workers.
Under the legislation – which is dubiously based on anti-discrimination laws – employers would be required to foot the bill for any set-up costs for those employees working from home as well as any ongoing costs. Liability for any occupational health and safety mishaps would vest with the employer. Employers who could demonstrate the unworkability of employees working from home could seek an exemption, but the default position would be the minimum WFH entitlement.
Any dispute would be sorted by an administrative tribunal, with employers required to establish their case that workers attend the workplace – a clear reversal of the onus of proof. One can only imagine the queue that will quickly form for adjudication of disputes about WFH.
Notwithstanding the economically beleaguered position of Victoria, the former premier could see only the political benefits of mandating WFH. The fact the Liberal Party was wedged by the proposal was simply icing on the cake.

On the upside, if Dame Groan did write this at home, she wouldn't have been confronted by the deplorable sight of furriners littering the streets, always distressing to her and the rest of the hive mind, and so she wasn't provoked into another diatribe about how furriners are ruining the country.

This was a more modest explanation of how the Labor party was ruining Victoria. Remember Jacinta (so sorry, no room for comrade Dan) ... Jacinta Allan resigns at a press conference. Picture: Jason Edwards

How all the reptiles yearn for a golden age, a time when everybody could congregate in offices, and indulge in the classic political games that made certain TV comedies great hits ...(looking at you Gervais and Merchant):

It is worth recalling where the WFH debate began. Before Covid, WFH was rare. At the time of the 2016 census only 2 per cent of workers worked from home on the record date.
Just before the onset of the pandemic about 10 per cent of workers worked at least one day a week at home. This percentage is now closer to 40 per cent. In the public service the proportion is higher again, close to two-thirds.
In the offices of some government departments and agencies, a cat can be safely swung and not crash into any workers. Junior workers may decide to go into the office for a bit of mentoring only to find the supervisory staff are all working from home.
There are of course some jobs that are more amenable to WFH. Clerical, repetitive tasks where external monitoring is possible and inexpensive often can be undertaken at home. But if the task can be done in Balwyn, it can probably be done in Bangalore.
By contrast, there are plenty of jobs that simply can’t be done from home, including those requiring contiguity between worker and client/patient as well as manual work in general. Surgeons can’t work from home; neither can bricklayers.
By favouring those workers who can work from home, there is a danger that resentment builds among those who can’t.
Working from home also doesn’t encourage teamwork and informal training; Zoom meetings are no substitute for face-to-face contact. Is there a correlation between the decline in the quality of policy advice from the public service and the prevalence of WFH?
The impact of WFH on productivity is a complicated story, although the avoidance of the daily commute has an upside. But if we consider what has happened to productivity since WFH has skyrocketed, it’s hard to make the case that it has been a boon at the macro level.

The avoidance of the daily commute has an upside?

So she did write this piece at home?

Quick, an AV distraction ... Victoria’s working from home legislation debate has been delayed as businesses pile on Premier Ben Carroll to scrap the laws entirely.

Some might be wondering why this old biddy still tenaciously holds onto a place in the pantheon of lizard Oz columnists, instead of some early career hiring to take a fresh look at life. 

Blame WFH ...

A recent large-scale study examined the combined impact of artificial intelligence and WFH on junior workers. The hypothesis is that these are the two factors that may damage the job prospects of young people. Using data from the US, Britain, Canada and Australia, the conclusion is that “WFH is a robust predictor of the decline in early-career hiring”.
So, what’s the situation in Victoria? If Jacinta Allan had her way, the legislation would’ve passed and come into effect this month. She was never keen on consulting with employers, regarding them as self-serving and irrelevant. Their many complaints landed on deaf ears, notwithstanding some convincing campaigning headed by the resuscitated HR Nicholls Society.
Allan’s replacement as Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, has been prepared to meet employers and has noted their suggestions for several amendments to the bill. While he has pushed the start date to July 1, the legislation has still been put to the parliament. It has passed the lower house and is awaiting consideration by the Legislative Council. There is a motion that the bill be the subject of an inquiry but it’s not clear this motion will be passed.
Time is running out before parliament rises and we are in election campaigning season. Labor’s political objective was to force the hand of the Liberal Party to vote against the bill, thus revealing to the electorate its refusal to meet the preferences of workers while siding with employers.
The clumsy handling of the WFH issue by the federal Coalition at the last election campaign has partly guided its thinking. The harmful impact of the WFH legislation on private sector employment and investment is still dismissed by the Carroll Labor government or seen as unimportant. It would be just another state government intervention that has damaged the economic prospects of the state while sending its fiscal position into dangerous territory. The ratings agencies are watching anxiously.

Great news, the HR Nicholls Society has been resuscitated! Watch out Albo ...Anthony Albanese during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And now a final gobbet from the groaner, with the pond still wondering if she actually stayed at home to scribble this offering ...

In case you think this is just a Victorian folly, the reality is that a statutory obligation to provide WFH would likely flow on to other states, in part because of national employers as well as unions keen to spread this entitlement.
The most economically efficient WFH outcome is when employers can freely negotiate with workers to reach mutually beneficially arrangements. This will generally take the form of hybrid work, where workers work some of the week at home but the rest is undertaken in the workplace.
Any outside imposition of WFH entitlements will undermine the right of employers to insist on workers coming into the office. Victorian Libs don’t need to object to WFH; they need to oppose statutory mandating.
When the Prime Minister rattles off a range of workplace perquisites – WFH; the right to disconnect; elimination of junior rates of pay; same job, same pay; and the list goes on – there is an implicit assumption that these conditions can simply be mandated at no cost to employers or the economy. If he understood markets and how the economy works, he would know this is not the case.
Our dismal record on productivity and falling living standards tells us otherwise.

And so another reptile has enhanced the country's productivity by spending an entire column bleating into an uncaring universe about the unfairness of it all. As for helping living standards, if you buy a copy of the tree killer edition, you can use it as mulch and grow your own vegies.

Relax, the pond didn't forget the lizard Oz headlines ...

How they love that snap of Barners eyes wide shut.

This day the reptiles were valiantly fighting a rearguard action, against the best advice of the bromancer ...

EXCLUSIVE
Spotlight on taxpayer grant as Hanson insists ice allegations a ‘personal matter’
Pauline Hanson’s hand-picked Victorian frontman faces mounting scrutiny over a $13,500 first home owner grant debt and explosive drug and conduct allegations from his former partner.
By Jamie Walker, Rosie Lewis and Elizabeth Pike

A teaser trailer ...

There's more at the archive, but sadly the archive refuses to save the best bits ... so here they are ...

And it would be remiss to ignore Jamie's contribution, though it might have compounded the bromancer's horror at the cruel way that One Nation is sometimes treated ...

COMMENTARY by JAMIE WALKER
Pickering’s past should have raised red flag for leader
Pauline Hanson claims Warren Pickering’s past was none of her business: the long-suffering voters of Victoria might disagree.

If Jamie keeps on rabbiting on like this, the bromancer will have to have words with him...

And so on, and now to celebrate Dame Groan and the bromancer a little more. 

Release the 'roos!

Another mob the bromancer needs to get behind (there are English subtitles available):

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what of today?

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

His Lordship turned to wrestling with Vlad the sociopathic invader:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a relief to Canadians and Mexicans. 

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

His Lordship ended with a flourish ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lizard Oz goes full tabloid dirt disher!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey nonny no, on with Killer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

... the reptiles studiously avoided the obvious link.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are better measures?

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

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

Heeerre's Polonius, and even worse, heerre's "Ned" ...

 

The pond should have mentioned the other thing that lifts the spirits, a weekly serve of the Beast, with Caitlin Cassidy standing in for the venerable Meade last Friday, and offering an array of follies...

The pond doesn't care a fig for the likes of loudmouth Kyle and influencers, but there's always a reptile-related yarn.

Take this one about the dog botherer ...

A fight with punches pulled
If you’ve been on News24’s Facebook page lately, you would have been greeted with a banner proclaiming “The fight for the right”, with smiling images of Angus Taylor and Pauline Hanson. “So Sky is openly campaigning for both right wing parties now?” one commenter asked. Not exactly.
The banner is promoting a documentary by Chris Kenny, investigating who will win the battle for rightwing voters. Kenny appeared to have unfettered access to One Nation, including a lengthy sit-down with Hanson and the new MP for Farrer, David Farley. This, of course, while Guardian Australia and the ABC have been banned from her press conferences.
“Right now people are dismayed by the major parties,” Kenny opened. “They’ve been let down by pandemic overreach, net zero and energy zealotry, record immigration and a cost-of-living crunch.”
The hour went along in a similar vein, with hard-ball questions to Hanson such as “you’ve been abused, you’ve been mocked, yet you keep going … why?” and, “are you still lonely?” The testiest moment came when Kenny quizzed Hanson on whether she would admit her 1990s comments about Australia being “swamped by Asians” were wrong. “If you were wrong about the migrants back then, you could be wrong about the migrants now,” he mused.

Hard hitting journo? A stick of fairy floss would have more substance, and be sugar sweet too.

What a twit he is, and that's much of the dog botherer floss the pond could take, and so the pond felt mightily pleased at being able to kick his weekend offering to the intermittent archive kerb ...

Productivity plummets in the ‘do not disturb’ nation

A sample will do, as another example of what the dog botherer calls productivity and a boon to the economy ... 

Running around asking softball questions, rabbiting on and on and on about this and that and the other is a form of productivity?

If getting disturbed by the dog botherer is the way to productivity, please do not disturb. Being in that sort of third world country has its charms...

Sadly when the pond looked around for alternatives, the dog botherer almost looked appealing.

The Angelic one had decided to go off on a Catholic mission...

Backdoor to baby industry: the risk of surrogacy law review
Push to legalise commercial surrogacy in Australia risks creating a human trade
Australia’s altruistic surrogacy system could be quietly traded away for a US-style commercial model. Critics warn proposed laws will effectively legalise buying and selling children.
By Angela Shanahan

The pond did its best to care, but collapsed into a bog swamp of indifference.

The poor possum was feeling incredibly defensive...

I can just hear the nay-sayers. Critics like me are blithely dubbed religious moralists, banished to the outer reaches of pause fundamentalism and ignored. 

What does "pause fundamentalism" mean? 

Colour the pond clueless. 

Is this an example of creative reptile productivity at work? Or perhaps the AI sub-editor was reaching for "pious fundamentalism"? Likely the pond will never know.

All the same, the alternatives to hand almost made the Angelic one look appealing.

It was wall to wall Gina's pampered pet.

Polonius can usually be relied on to be boring in his prattle, but this weekend he was mind-numbingly tedious ...

The header: Labor faces threat as ‘squeezed middle’ voters turn to One Nation; Roosevelt called them the ‘forgotten man’ and Menzies the ‘forgotten people’. Now Australia’s working and middle-class voters are finding a new political home, polling reveals.

The caption for a couple of clowns imported from MAGA America: One Nation’s Luke Herdegen celebrates with supporters after his party claimed victory in the Secret Harbour by-election. PIC: Paul Garvey

Which Roosevelt? Is it possible that Polonius is unaware there were a couple who were president? Why should the pond have to run off to the full to overflowing intertubes to learn he was referencing a pinko socialistic prevert?

As for the text, Polonius and the rest of the reptile mob don't seem to realise that the more they talk up Gina's pet, the better for her.

It gets even worse when Polonius thinks the cure is to wander down memory lane, like a rapidly aging old codger:

As an adult I have lived through three recessions: namely 1974-75, 1982-83 and 1990-91.
My contract as an academic at a university in Melbourne ended in 1975. But the impact of the economic downturn towards the end of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government was still extant and unemployment, interest rates and inflation were high. It was a difficult time for many Australians, particularly the private sector.
The 1982-83 recession had little personal impact on me. During this period I had an effectively tenured job in the commonwealth public service. Sure, regular pay increases decreased in amount at times. But life was secure.
It was different in 1991-92 when I had to survive in the marketplace without any long-term security with high inflation and interest rates and increasing unemployment.
The point being that recessions – and times like now when the cost of living is increasing, real wages are diminishing and interest rates and inflation are high – hit hardest at the private sector.
Right now the rich and well-off are doing fine, as is evident to anyone who follows the lifestyles of men and women who feature in the various rich lists. To them, increases in energy, fuel and food prices are of little moment. Rents are irrelevant and all but a few houses are affordable.
At the other end of the socio-economic ladder are Australians in receipt of direct government payments – pensioners, welfare recipients and the like. Their payments/incomes are low. But they are adjusted to take inflation into account.

After that opening, designed to prove that in his time Polonius had known suffering and was down wit those who still suffer, and never mind the way he's traded himself into a handy gig at the Sydney Institute, earning a living trolling for wealth patrons:

There is something of a myth about the poor living in social housing. In some sense they are fortunate. They have secure accommodation, provided they abide by the rules of their tenancy, and do not have to look after maintenance. Also, those on low incomes who own properties have a degree of security not experienced by renters. Those Australians who suffer most when rents are high are individuals on low incomes who depend on the private housing market.

The private housing market persecutes renters? Why that sounds almost socialistic, almost Franklin D.

Just to make sure we know it's about Pauline, there came another snap: One Nation leader Pauline Hanson celebrates the party’s Secret Harbour by-election seat win in WA. Picture: Facebook

That was the last snap to interrupt the Polonial prattle, as he carried on with the suffering, as if to the working class born.

Would Ming the merciless get another mention? Might as well ask if climate change is going to produce some unnerving situations in the years ahead...of course it is; of course Ming will turn up, with the FDR issue finally solved ...

At times of economic downturn those who also suffer are, to use an old-fashioned terminology, the middle class and the working class. Particularly, individuals in the private sector and medium to small businesses. In a previous generation, the latter group was called “the forgotten man” by US Democratic Party president Franklin D. Roosevelt. And “the forgotten people” by Australian Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies.
Economist Robert Carling, in a recent Centre for Independent Studies report titled Leviathan on the Rampage, estimated that nearly half of Australian voters are dependent on government payments for their income.
Life is quite different for those with low incomes who are not in receipt of government payments for wages, welfare and the like.

More socialist thinking! Polonius suffering along with low income earners.

All well and good, as Polonius came up with a novel theory.

It was anti-Semitism that drove people to One Nation ...

Surging support
As I, among others, have argued, the initial surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party took place between December last year and early February this year. This is evident in an analysis of Newspoll that reflected the terrorist attack on the Australian Jewish community at Bondi Beach on December 14.
This was regarded by many as an attack on Australian society in general. One Nation’s support has increased since then, as witnessed by its victories in the federal by-election in Farrer in southern NSW and in the West Australian state by-election in the southern Perth electorate of Secret Harbour. One Nation also performed well in the South Australian state election in March.

Of all the far-fetched reasons for Pauline's enhanced presence, that surely takes the cake.

Back in November 2025, Gina was ready to get things rolling ...

Last November, when Pauline Hanson cooked a steak for Barnaby Joyce in her parliamentary office, barely anyone raised an eyebrow that the wagyu on the menu was from 2GR – Gina Rinehart’s beef company.
Umami-rich marbled beef from the brand, named after Australia’s richest person and her daughter Ginia, retails at more than $100 a kilogram. It is more at home in the world’s high-end restaurants than in a sandwich press.
But its presence in Hanson’s office as part of a carefully curated media stunt showed that Rinehart was already playing a part in One Nation’s expansionist push, which has been gathering pace over the past six months.
Soon after the dinner, Joyce – who is one of Rinehart’s most loyal friends in the Australian parliament – announced his defection from the Nationals to One Nation, confirming his move on radio in Tamworth in early December on “Macca’s” 88.9FM breakfast program.
“I think I almost had to declare those steaks – I didn’t realise they were wagyu, they were very, very nice,” Joyce joked.
Looking up to make eye contact with the studio camera, Hanson piped up as if in a commercial: “2GR! 2GR!”
In the clip, an impeccably made-up Hanson is wearing a blue-and-white check shirt branded S Kidman and Co – another of Rinehart’s companies. And later that day she boarded the S Kidman and Co private aircraft to hitch a ride home to Brisbane alongside her fellow NSW One Nation senator Sean Bell.
The flight was not declared in line with Senate rules until many months later, after the Guardian had contacted Hanson’s office asking about her travel arrangements that day. (Graudian)

And so on, and Tamworth's ineradicable shame knew that the way to stay relevant was to borrow all the far right policies the lizards of Oz have been espousing for decades.

With Gina's money to hand, the hair-dyed ranga could embark on attention-seeking stunts ... again per the Graudian, 

The point?

...Dr Imogen Richards, a criminology researcher at Deakin University, said announcing or appearing on podcasts with contentious counterparts was akin to a “pseudo event” that’s as much about the publicity as it is about the content.
“The aim of these types of manoeuvres by more fringe, or formerly more fringe, political actors is to shift the Overton window and move the parameters of public political debate rightward,” she said.
Richards said Hanson’s rise in popularity meant her decisions between now and the federal election couldn’t be ignored, or dismissed as attention-grabbing.
“What [Hanson’s] doing is building international far-right alliances and signposting them,” she said.
Researchers for the anti-fascist group the White Rose Society suggested their meeting served the “attention economy” with a shared hostility “against non-white people”.

The selling card has always been about furriners causing the ruination of everything, climate science being a nonsense, mixed with hostility, anger and resentment (fear is behind everything).

This routine has been peddled by many who saw the way and the light offered by mad King Donald.

In his usual way, Polonius sounded completely clueless and turned to others with a degree in cluelessness:

South Australian Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas immediately saw the significance of the result for his party. In an evident defence of the Australian working class and middle class, he said: “I don’t like it when I see people associated with the progressive side of politics sneering at those who wave the flag or wrap themselves in the flag. I would rather us celebrate patriotism and recognise it at its best, a representation of what Australia is really about when we think about providing opportunity to others.” Malinauskas understands that One Nation is a threat to Labor as it is to the Coalition. So does NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns, who faces an election in March.

That's exactly the inauthentic blather that makes voters turn to One Nation. She's offering what the doofuses Malinauskas and Minns are offering, just with more ferocity, and she has the Liberals so terrified, the best the beefy boofhead can do is pinch her fags policy, hoping to get everybody back on to smoking nail coffins at a fair price.

Pollster John Utting recently released a survey of 1000 One Nation supporters in which one-time Labor Party operative Bruce Hawker was involved.
Interviewed by Nick Bryant on ABC Radio National Saturday Extra on August 29, Hawker commented that One Nation voters overwhelmingly used to vote Liberal although some of the longer-term supporters would have voted Labor in the past.
Hawker said “only about 17 per cent of the people who are now coming over to One Nation … now come from the Labor Party”. He said Senator Hanson’s supporters “don’t feature heavily amongst the poorest in Australia or the wealth­iest – they’re in what we call the squeezed middle”.
According to the Utting research, One Nation supporters “feel that immigration is the big issue that is holding Australia back”. Hawker said for One Nation voters immigration was an economic issue but for some it was also a cultural issue.
The problem for Labor is that an increasing number of voters called the “squeezed middle” could move away from Labor to One Nation. That seems to have been the case in the once safe Labor seat of Secret Harbour.
One Nation’s threat to the Coalition is well-known. However, as Kemi Badenoch has demonstrated in Britain, the Conservative Party, according to some polls, has won back support from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party and is now narrowly behind Labour.
In her book on the May 2025 election titled Earthquake: The Election That Shook Australia, Niki Savva revealed that Labor Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke believed that Labor would form a majority government after the 2025 election. But Savva reported that “Burke was convinced he was about to lose his once-safe seat of Watson” in western Sydney – presumably because of opposition from the extreme left and some radical Muslim groups.
This never made much sense and Burke was comfortably returned. The threat to Labor is like­lier to come from what Hawker refers to as the “squeezed middle” and working class who feel that Labor no longer stands for what they believe in.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

It's just as likely that One Nation voters come from News Corp tabloid footy readers, who notice on page one that everything is ruined, Islamics are everywhere, furriners are stealing their daughters, and what's wrong with coal and gas, NT and deep north toad style?

And just as likely they live in the bush, imagining that Barners is authentic when he's really only been an accountant and a pollie.

We've been here before ... and the pond trusts that correspondents have been up to speed reading Adam Morton in the Graudian ...Albanese’s resources minister celebrating the Beetaloo carbon bomb is a hell of a choice. Labor can’t say it wasn’t warned.

And as Polonius had a little side dish for the Australian Daily Zionist News, why not try Arwa Mahdawi's Ben-Gvir posts Palestinians on conveyor belts to detention camps. The world is silent.

Unfortunately, dealing with the Oz hive mind, running silent is the default mode ...

The pond realises that diligent herpetology students will have already followed yesterday's link in the pond, and have now staggered off to a rest home.

But the pond promised it would endure the "Ned" Everest climb, even if's more yammering on the same topic ...

The pond could have taken the Paul Garvey road, and strolled into Inside the social media ‘dark arts’ that fuelled One Nation’s shock win; Labor claims an organised One Nation network swamped its messaging in the Secret Harbour by-election; others say the party missed the point.

Polonius would have been shocked to discover an online world of festering fear and loathing ...

And so would quaint old "Ned", who thinks endless blather is some sort of analysis ...

The header: Nation eyes contest dominated by a clash between Albanese’s Labor and Hanson’s One Nation; Once dismissed as a fringe protest vote, Pauline Hanson’s party is now emerging as an alternative to the Coalition and Labor. Many of its voters say they won’t be changing their mind amid new research revealing they’re as locked-in as Trump’s MAGA base.

The artwork frankly is designed to suggest that Pauline is the real rival to Albo, with the beefy boofhead's mob a no show. Well played Frank: A contest dominated by Anthony Albanese’s Labor v Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is ‘an alarming, divisive and potentially disastrous event for Australia’. Artwork: Frank Ling

As the pond suggested yesterday, "Ned" will waste at least 11 minutes of a reader's life, and offered a link to prove it, Nation eyes contest dominated by a clash between Albanese’s Labor and Hanson’s One Nation.

But there was one real tragedy with the archived version, and that's the inability of the archive to capture all the fancy gifs and astonishing stats that the reptiles wheeled out in support of Gina's pet.

So there is something to be gained by plunging back in ...

A new survey of One Nation voters reveals the ideological depth and near unbreakable loyalty of a significant segment, suggesting that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is evolving beyond a protest movement into a potential far-right party that transforms centre-right politics.
A pivotal result from the survey is that many One Nation voters are “locked in”, perhaps similar to Donald Trump’s MAGA loyalists. A total of 52 per cent rate themselves 10 out of 10 “absolutely certain” to vote One Nation at the next election and won’t be dissuaded. Another 26 per cent rate themselves eight or nine out of 10, meaning they are “firm” for One Nation.
Those who can be persuaded to leave One Nation are in the 22-27 per cent zone of current One Nation voters. That gives Coalition leaders Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan some hope of detaching such voters, but to this stage they are not penetrating.

Given the opportunity to show off Moorice's spawn, a 'leet investment banker down with working class folk, the reptiles naturally went with the fake ranga ... NSW One Nation Leader Mike Newman says Australians feel there is “change coming” with the rise of One Nation.

"Ned" was in a state of panic about the "eruption":

The evolution of Hanson’s party into a potential permanent feature of centre-right politics is the central conclusion from the research. It was conducted by John Utting, the former pollster for the ALP, in collaboration with former Labor strategist Bruce Hawker, who has worked on more than 40 campaigns in this country and abroad. They devised the survey together and Hawker conducted an exclusive interview with Inquirer on its insights.
The survey sample was 1014 One Nation voters and held in August. It provides a detailed profile of One Nation voters, when they went to Hanson and their reasons, their political beliefs, how they see One Nation as a party, their attitudes towards the Coalition and Albanese government and the prospects of defections from Hanson’s party. The 83-page report is possibly the most detailed public assessment of One Nation’s recent eruption.

This is where the reptiles began to roll out compelling data ...

Not many folk agitated by anti-Semitism in that mob ...but there's a lot of mug punters up for the con job and the grifters.

Anyone who thinks One Nation will govern in style are dumber than the crowd you can find at the Longyard, out Golden Guitar way ...

The survey shows that 87 per cent of voters believe One Nation “has clear, workable plans to deliver what it promises”. But the breakdown is not so impressive, with only 37 per cent “strongly” agreeing and 50 per cent “somewhat” agreeing.
There is confidence in One Nation’s governing capacity. A total of 50 per cent believe One Nation “can win government outright”. Of the rest 27 per cent reject this proposition while 23 per cent are unsure. The conclusion: half of One Nation voters see the party as a government in waiting. Indeed, they might be more confident than Hanson herself.
Hanson is the ultimate heroine, with 98 per cent of One Nation voters saying she “says what a lot of Australians are really thinking” and 97 per cent saying she stands up “for ordinary, working people”. No other political leader remotely generates such fidelity from party supporters. These are deeply emotional ties.
Asked if One Nation held the balance of power in the House of Representatives whether they would support the party going into coalition with the Liberals and Nationals, 64 per cent supported this view but 10 per cent opposed. On a coalition with Labor, the figures were 74 per cent rejection and 10 per cent support.
Asked about preferences, 74 per cent of One Nation voters said they would preference the Coalition as against 9 per cent preferencing Labor. Yet 74 per cent remains far below the flow of Greens preferences to Labor, now running in the high 80s. There is no prospect of any Coalition-One Nation preference arrangement matching the Labor-Greens model so vital in delivering a Labor government.

Not seen enough of the ranga peril yet? Hold the sub-editor's beer ... and remember to label her as a veritable Jeanne d'Arc ... Senator Pauline Hanson, ‘the ultimate heroine’, at the official launch of Wounded Heroes Australia 24-Hour Challenge for FNQ veterans and Defence families. Picture: Shae Beplate

On with pumping up the results ...

Assessing the implications of the survey, Hawker tells Inquirer: “The most important thing I’ve found in the research is a transition away from One Nation as a vehicle for expressing unhappiness with the major parties to endorsing its policies in their own right. I think for the foreseeable future we will see One Nation as a real alternative, not just as a reaction to cost-of-living pressures.
"Voters see One Nation as expressing the attitudes that most approximate their own feelings about Australia. Her supporters see Hanson as authentic. For them, she is the real deal.
“I think we will see three parties on the right, two on the right and one on the hard right. My feeling is that in the near future One Nation is going to be the principal right-wing party in this country.
“I think the next election is going to be a values contest primarily between Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in our lifetimes and you would probably have to go back to the Second World War or earlier to see something this significant on the right side of politics.
“Of course, on the left we have seen major shakeouts from the Labor Party during the 20th century, but what’s different now is that the Liberals are feeling the full brunt of it.”
Published polls show One Nation remains strong, though its support may have reached a ceiling. This week Newspoll had One Nation leading the field on 30 per cent primary vote, followed by Labor on 29 per cent, the Coalition on 19 per cent and the Greens on 13 per cent.
The Redbridge-Accent Research poll in The Australian Financial Review had roughly similar results with Labor at 29 per cent, One Nation at 28 per cent and the Coalition at 22 per cent. Its two-party preferred split had Labor still in an election-winning position.

The reptiles decided that demographics was the next port of call ...

Rustics, men and old farts!

Who'd have guessed, but if you believe Polonius, they're all dedicated anti-Semites.

"Ned" sounded gloomy about the beefy boofhead and the Canavan caravan ...

Political events this week offered some credence to Hawker’s analysis. One Nation’s success in taking the West Australian outer suburban state seat of Secret Harbour from Labor revealed its ability to damage Labor as well as the Coalition. The upshot was Albanese’s political assault on Hanson’s party for “peddling dangerous, divisive and dishonest” politics.
His message is that Labor faces a historic mission: to defeat the populists now on the march. Yet Albanese quickly found Hanson’s ability to turn his words against him. Current omens point to a coming Albanese-Hanson battle.
Hawker says: “The government and Anthony Albanese must engage Hanson. The Liberals and the Nationals won’t get too involved in this fight. It will come down to a battle of ideas and values between Labor and One Nation. This is a clash between two conflicting views of the world and Australia.”
Politics is now dominated by two struggles – the battle for ascendancy on the right between Hanson and the Taylor-Canavan coalition – with the outcome having a decisive impact on the election contest between Labor and the forces of the right wing. Labor believes if Hanson is ascendant on the right most Australians will shun a change of government. This is buttressed by the reality – if One Nation leads the Liberals on primary votes, Liberal preferences will spray everywhere, with many Liberals reluctant to preference One Nation.

How soon can Josh come back? The Nine rags were hot to trot for the man who didn't have the ticker, Stars align for Frydenberg comeback. That could eclipse Taylor.

No wonder they looked a tad perplexed, glum and consternated: Matt Canavan and Angus Taylor Coalition leaders have some hope of detaching the 22-27 per cent zone of current One Nation voters who can be persuaded to leave, but to this stage they are not penetrating. Picture Gary Ramage

"Ned" then proceeded to confirm that the reptile and the Hansonite agendas were one and the same ...

One Nation voters are confident a Hanson government will deliver on their main concerns. Asked whether Hanson would “do a good job” on a range of issues the numbers were decisive: immigration 93 per cent, crime 87 per cent, housing 79 per cent, cost of living 77 per cent, defence 73 per cent and the economy 70 per cent. These voters feel sure about Hanson’s delivery capacity. Yet these are heroic assumptions, contrary to most views and analysis.
Significantly, One Nation voters mainly support the party because of its beliefs (45 per cent) more than they feel other parties have let them down (34 per cent) while those saying their support is because of Hanson are 20 per cent, suggesting Hanson is more a catalyst than the essential factor.
This is not a right-wing rebellion. It is, in fact, a fracturing of right-wing opinion, a hardening of sentiment and a decisive shift further right. It is the Liberal Party that has lost a sizeable section of these voters.
The survey reveals that 70 per cent of One Nation voters supported another party at the 2025 election or did not vote at all. The 2025 election functions as the trigger for turning voters away from the Coalition.
Of these new One Nation voters, 38 per cent defected from the Liberal and National parties and 17 per cent from Labor, while 9 per cent did not vote or cannot recall their previous vote.

Cue another graph showing how hard up these voters were, confirming that their stance had nothing to do with bigotry, hate and a devotion to populist authoritarianism (irony alert):

"Ned" could feel the vibe...

One Nation voters are deeply alienated and feel the political system has abandoned them. They feel most politicians look after themselves, not the country (95 per cent); feel that “people like me have no say in what the government does” (83 per cent); think Australia needs a “strong leader prepared to break the rules” (81 per cent); and say “it doesn’t matter which party is in power” (62 per cent).
A total of 91 per cent believe the nation is “on the wrong track” compared with 2 per cent saying it is heading “in the right direction”.
This points to profound disillusionment and resentment. It contrasts with polling of all voters from last month showing 62 per cent said wrong direction, with 24 per cent opting for right direc­tion.
Asked to nominate why Australia was on the wrong track, One Nation voters nominated immigration (39 per cent), cost of living (35 per cent), politicians and government (32 per cent), the economy and debt (26 per cent) and housing (17 per cent).
Their feelings of financial pain are fundamental. Two out of three One Nation voters say their household finances are worse than three to four years ago, with 41 per cent saying it is “a lot worse”, 27 per cent saying “a little worse”, 18 per cent recording “about the same” and only 14 per cent feeling “better off” at all.
(One voter reported in these words: “Every year the power bill goes up and never down, whatever they promise, I’m not asking for handouts. I worked, I paid tax my whole life. I bought this house.” Another said: “I just didn’t think this is where I would be at my age, sitting with a calculator working out what I can afford at the shops.”)

Sorry, the pond must have missed that bit about "Ned" recycled the Zionist riff that was being being peddled by Polonius. You know ...

As I, among others, have argued, the initial surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party took place between December last year and early February this year. This is evident in an analysis of Newspoll that reflected the terrorist attack on the Australian Jewish community at Bondi Beach on December 14.

Probably it's the way that the Bondi beach terror attack made power bills go up.

Tired of getting endless mug shots of the ranga? 

Yearning for a shot of Tamworth's undying shame, as he turns up in an AV distraction? 

Sorry, the reptiles are always ready to show off Pauline ... One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce says his party is pushing to expand early access to superannuation to help Australians with the cost-of-living pressures. “If you’re able to get money out and it’s an arduous process … they tax you at 17 to 22 per cent,” Mr Joyce told News24. “That’s actually higher than later on.”

Beginning to see a pattern?

Barners might be diligently working to wreck superannuation, but it's the bottle ranga that scores the visual:

The reality is that while Hanson remains strong, Australian politics will be more polarised as the centre of gravity on the centre-right moves distinctly further right and Albanese Labor doubles down on its core values and policies.
The only way to combat Hanson is to abandon the notion that as a protest party her backers will eventually get disenchanted. On the contrary, this is now a frontline political and ideological battle. Hanson doesn’t have detailed policies but this misses the point. Voters know what she represents.
Hanson believes in ideas once deeply rooted in Australian character and life. Her authenticity originates in the annals of our history. She backs economic protection, hostility to so-called mass migration, scepticism about multiculturalism, hostility to climate change action, coal and gas over renewables, rejection of identity politics, ditching “welcome to country”, scepticism towards free markets and hostility towards elite progressivism.
Hawker says: “We are seeing with One Nation a hearkening back to a different era. But 75 years ago many of these ideas were pretty much mainstream, including in the Labor Party. And it’s her apparent authenticity that gives her the edge over the Liberals. She has simple cut-through messages that are easy to accept and require critical thinking to reject.
“Our research shows the principal issue is immigration but the major parties can’t really come far enough to meet Hanson’s concerns on immigration. They can’t do enough to satisfy her voters.”

Ah, the good old days of the White Australia policy, but what's the talk about immigration? How could Polonius get it wrong?

The white Xian nationalist mob at work, though the pond was surprised at the number of atheists in the data. Perhaps gun owners don't feel any need for god, not when they have the power of a god in their hands ...

Back to the bigotry, of the kind you can find in the bush more than the big smoke, where a multicultural society is a given, and the chance of deporting enough to return the country to a monoculture (whatever that means) was lost long ago ... unless they go full ICE, and turn to war criminals to lead the charge:

Voters have two chief concerns about immigration. They are worried about the sheer numbers, saying “cut it, pause it”, but when pressed on why they wanted lower numbers the main reason was because it was “changing Australia’s culture and identity too much”.
The survey, however, reveals two categories of Hanson voters and this is the chance for the Coalition. They are the “rusted on” who have been with Hanson for more than five years, who are almost certain to stick, and a far bigger group of “new arrivals” who have defected to Hanson within the past year and are 41 per cent of her voters. This group is far less impressed and less attached.
Asked whether a credible Liberal Party might be able to win them back, 35 per cent of the “new arrivals” agreed while only 14 per cent of the “rusted on” agreed. Asked whether they were certain to vote One Nation at the next election, only 40 per cent of the “new arrivals” agreed while 82 per cent of the “rusted on” agreed.
Only 44 per cent of “new arrivals” see Hanson in “very favourable” terms while 85 per cent of the “rusted on” see her this way.
On the issue of “like” and “dislike”, One Nation voters are highly polarised. The person they most like is Hanson (95 per cent), followed by Ben Roberts-Smith (69 per cent), the VC winner now subject of war crimes allegations, with Barnaby Joyce next (62 per cent). For One Nation voters Roberts-Smith is a hero. Joyce is a distinct asset. While Hanson supports Trump her party is split, with Trump sinking to a 55-42 unfavourable/favourable rating. The old-style Hanson loyalists still admire him, not the new arrivals.

It goes without saying that they love Tamworth's shame and an alleged war criminal. 

Just see how funny the alternative looks... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faces mounting pressure to sharpen Labor’s national strategy. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

That snaps a reptile classic. What a funny looking man he is, how they're all laughing at him... what a cue to form an intense dislike of him, and sure enough, the reptiles know their hive mind.

All their diligent work mocking Albo has paid off in spades (the shovel kind, not the other) ...

All Hanson voters loathe Labor and Albanese. A total of 95 per cent disapprove of Albanese and less than 3 per cent approve him. Even the softest One Nation voters are hostile. A total of 94 per cent report he “says one thing and does another” and 88 per cent say he is “out of touch with ordinary people”. Labor’s hopes of winning back voters who have defected to One Nation look dismal.
As Liberal leader, Taylor, has a steep climb ahead of him. One Nation voters find against him 32-52 on a favourable/unfavourable rating. But 16 per cent have no view or have never heard of him. Indeed, when asked if they had heard of Taylor, 30 per cent said “some” and 40 per cent said “a little”.
Asked if Taylor represented traditional Liberal values, 55 per cent agreed (but only 6 per cent strongly agreed); asked if he would cut immigration, 49 per cent agreed (but only 10 per cent strongly agreed); asked if he had policies and ideas for the future, 38 per cent agreed (but only 4 per cent strongly agreed). The survey concluded that Taylor had “potential but almost nothing is strong”.
On these results Taylor needs to rethink his media strategy since he lacks the firepower to pull voters back to the Liberals.
Canavan suffers from lack of recognition from One Nation voters, with 43 per cent saying they have seen nothing of him or are unsure of who he is. Yet he rates better than Taylor, scoring 37 per cent both sides of the favourable/unfavourable ledger.

What a remarkably well informed bunch they are, and now stand by for a snap of Paddie, because he's the next to feature in an AV distraction ... Defence Industry and Pacific Islands Minister Pat Conroy says One Nation’s immigration policies “can’t be believed”.

Sheesh, the pond got that one wrong. No way the reptiles were going to show off Paddie, not when they had an image of Pauline to hand.

Of course the reptiles were going to feature Pauline, they can't get enough of the ranga ... and so at long last, an end to "Ned", living in hope, dreaming a beefy boofhead dream ... provided he remembers to persecute the other and the different...

On the Liberal Party, 68 per cent of One Nation voters say it is “deeply divided” and 59 per cent say it has “no clear policies or direction” – not an optimistic summary. However 27 per cent of One Nation voters – one in four – report that a “united, credible Liberal Party would be likely to win back their vote”. Asked what policies the Liberals would need to get voters returning, immigration headed the list.
Finally, the survey dissects the profile of Hanson’s voters. The gender split is sharp – 62 per cent men and 38 per cent women. The age profile is dramatic, with 56 per cent older than 50 and only 17 per cent in the younger 18 to 34 age group. A majority of 61 per cent report they are still working. They tend to be homeowners, with 77 per cent owning their home and only 17 per cent being renters; the breakdown shows 42 per cent own their home outright while 35 per cent have a mortgage.
One Nation has penetrated every state, its strongest being Queensland (27 per cent) and its lowest being NSW and Victoria, both on 20 per cent. A total of 55 per cent live outside a capital city; the farther from the capital city, the stronger the One Nation vote. The profile is strong Anglo-Australian profile with 88 per cent speaking only English at home. Their religion falls essentially under two categories – 59 per cent Christian and 33 per cent no religion.
One Nation voters are middle-income earners and being financially squeezed. An income breakdown by quintiles shows they are poorly represented in the lowest and highest earning quintiles but are concentrated across quintiles two, three and fourth, covering the income range $60,000 to $195,000. A typical One Nation household has an annual income of $101,000. Tradies are the heartland of One Nation support.
With the election not due until 2028, the politics will probably get more volatile. But a contest dominated by Albanese Labor v Hanson’s party would be an alarming, divisive and potentially disastrous event for Australia. We are being warned: the nation is on the brink.

Didn't "Ned" start with a snap showing just that, a contest between Albo and the ranga? So the lizard Oz is alarming, divisive, and promoting a  potentially disastrous event for Australia? What's new?

As the pond has gone so far down this path, might as well fling in the lizard Oz editorialist ...

The pond wanted that in because it shows just how much the lizard Oz and One Nation sing from the same song sheet.

Say it again to make it clear...

The ideological rift on climate, merit, gender and identity has been compounded by economic pressures that are set only to worsen. The warnings made by Reserve Bank deputy governor Andrew Hauser in November last year are coming true. In a Melbourne Cup-themed address Mr Hauser said the economy might find itself boxed in by its own capacity constraints, with little scope for demand growth to rise further without adding to inflationary pressures. That is clearly the conclusion of economic data this week that revealed modest growth but flatlining productivity and GDP growth per capital. Economists are tipping further rate rises this year because government policy has failed to deliver what Mr Hauser warned was the only escape route, which is to grow the capacity of the economy.
But rather than deal with the issues of low productivity, big government spending and $1 trillion in debt, Jim Chalmers has been more determined to play politics with perceived intergenerational inequity on house prices and accumulated capital wealth. Combined, these are the pressures that have pushed a large number of voters to One Nation.

Why all that's like reading the lizard Oz any day of the week, and the same goes for the next bit ...

Roll that around on the tongue.

The pond couldn't imagine a more succinct summary of the position of the reptiles.

It's as if the One Nation mob had been fed a steady diet of Dame Slap, the dog botherer, the canny Cranston, and Geoff, always chambering a birdshot round ...

Half of One Nation voters see the party as a government in waiting. Kelly writes that Senator Hanson backs economic protection; hostility to so-called mass migration; scepticism about multiculturalism; hostility to climate change action; coal and gas over renewables; rejection of identity politics; ditching “welcome to country”; scepticism towards free markets, and; hostility towards elite progressivism.

Tick, tick, tick and tick.

Still couldn't spot that Polonial anti-Semitism, but could spot all that the reptiles believe in, from climate science denialism, fear and loathing of renewables, endless crusading about furriners, and blather about woke 'leets.

About the only thing a few old-fashioned reptiles might have trouble with is free markets, but given the way that Faux Noise has gone all in on world wide tariff wars, there can't be that many of that old school thinking left ...

As an addendum, the reptiles also ran an editorial praising the beefy boofhead for his desire to kowtow to the IPA and bring back big tobacco, as dumb a policy position as that talk of the amount of GST in a birthday cake ...

If that's where the beefy boofhead is headed, into a bidding war with Pauline, he's on a hiding to nothing ...

As for "not encouraging smoking", you'd have to be a simpleton not to note the preceding point: "The move could yield even more money for government coffers". 

Why? Because Freedumb boy, kissing cousin to big tobacco and the IPA, is all in on the idea that more people smoking means more moola, and never mind all the deaths and diseases, and the strain on an already strained health system.

It's impossible to make up the stupidity of the far right. Not only do they want climate change to kill us, they want to speed up the job with fags ...

On the other hand, there's not many things to rename, though maybe Paulinandia could get a run for the deep north ...or the lizard Oz  could get tagged as the Pauline Press, full of photographic portrait treasures ...

And in the weekly debrief, here's a strategy designed to make Vlad the impaler and Chairman Xi nod approvingly ...together with News Corp's approval, via state regime media Faux Noise ...