In which Dame Groan is the only reptile left standing, groaning away as Our Henry waits in the wings ...

 

The pond likes to think of each Thursday at the lizard Oz as a miniature Xmas eve.

A few mice scuttle about, but it's a day that must be spent in anxious anticipation. 

Only one sleep and Our Henry will come down the chimney to fill Xmas stockings with an abundance of philosophical, theological and historical goodies.

Until that moment, there's nothing to be done but wait with baited breath (preferably of the snail killer kind), and give minimal, modest attention to the scuttling mice.

Luckily that doesn't mean giving some squeakers in the house any space.

The pond personally supervised the placement of petulant Peta's contribution to the latest reptile jihad in the intermittent archive.

"Commentary by Peta Credlin
I’m booing on the inside because it’s my country too
By making welcomes and acknowledgments of country mandatory, the goodwill towards fellow Australians who weren’t always extended a fair go is evaporating fast.

She's booing on the inside? 

Why not just do what other reptiles do, boo on the outside, boo night and day, and make the desire to join white Xian nationalists and neo-Nazis in their booing explicit?

What's even more insulting is the way the reptiles started with a snap of an indigenous veteran, with the clear implication that he needs a good booing too:

The levels and depths of racism, fear and loathing in the reptiles knows no bounds, but the pond doesn't have to go along with it ...

It's a measure of how mindless and moronic these jihads have become that none of the reptiles seemed interested in the perils of Pauline and Gina ...

Similarly the pond doesn't have to spend time with Jack (who also refused to fly with Pauline), especially as his approach involved asking an extremely silly question ...

Elon v Altman: This is how it sounds when rich nerds cry
The Musk and Altman feud: a legal stoush to determine the future of humanity or a power grab by some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world?
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

With full disrespect, if you must head off to the intermittent archive, why not make the journey for Matteo Wong in The Atlantic:

The Richest Grudge Match in History (*intermittent archive link)
Sam Altman and Elon Musk Sure Dislike Each Other
The trial between the CEOs makes the AI boom seem sordid and small.

Or follow along with the testimony in such rags as the both siderest NY Times ...

Live updates: Elon Musk, Testifying at OpenAI Trial, Accuses Executives of Stealing a ‘Charity’ (*intermittent archive link)
Elon Musk, who split from OpenAI years after cofounding it as a nonprofit in 2015, said it was putting commercial interests over the public’s. A company lawyer said Mr. Musk had sued because he did not get his way.

There's a lot more fun to be found outside the lizard Oz when watching two criminals take to court to diss each other... (at least until Our Henry comes down the chimney with his bag of magical goodies).

The pond also decided that Saul wasn't up to snuff ...

Here’s why the Snowy 2.0 dream went south
Snowy 2.0 stands as a warning sign against more government control over our energy market. That journey is already going poorly and is likely to get worse.
By Saul Kavonic

Still taking potshots at Malware?

Never mind, the pond woke to news of a positive kind: Australia’s battery boom has doubled in a year – and is rewiring the energy grid (*intermittent archive link)

Even better, New study suggests majority of regional Australians back renewable energy transition.

Saul was on hand simply to play the grinch ...

...This is a cautionary tale for other government initiatives seeking greater control over energy investment. The federal Capacity Investment Scheme, Hydrogen HeadStart program, ever expanding Australian Energy Market Operator powers and the State Electricity Commission of Victoria are already showing similar issues to those that led Snowy 2.0 astray. Future government plans for additional fuel security in response to the global fuel crisis risk the same pitfalls unless designed carefully.
There is a role for direct government support of energy investment, but mostly in carefully circumscribed situations involving clear national security or national interest considerations – and even then it must be applied transparently and sparingly.
Snowy 2.0 remains a stark reminder that greater government control over energy can make things worse for both consumers and taxpayers, not better.
Saul Kavonic is head of energy research at MST Marquee.

As previously noted, Saul has form and knows on which side his private sector consultancies are buttered by government ..

Saul has previously worked in the energy sector in commercial, research and government policy roles. He has worked in commercial and strategy roles at Woodside Energy, Australias largest oil and gas company, and was the principal analyst in Australasia for Wood Mackenzie, the worlds leading energy consultancy.

And for some reason the pond rarely pays attention to the squeaking of Geoff, as he chambered yet another predictable round ...

PM progresses Shorten manifesto, as inflation roars
Anthony Albanese prepares to embrace Bill Shorten’s failed 2019 housing tax reforms as Australia faces soaring inflation and a looming recession.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

Somewhere along the way it went wrong for Geoff, and towards the end of his piece, he had to pay attention to the men surrounding the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, and it wasn't all inflation roaring like a lion, it was a few pollies squeaking like mice ...

...Chalmers, who has lost the confidence from last year when the RBA was cutting rates and inflation was falling, hasn’t faced much opposition since the 2022 election.
Angus Taylor struggled to take a fully formed and competitive economic policy manifesto to last year’s election. Ted O’Brien, the architect of Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear energy policy, failed to land a blow and resorted to calling Chalmers the “Candy Man” and whistling tunes from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Now there is Tim Wilson, the self-described “modern Liberal” who helped Scott Morrison attack Shorten’s tax policies and last year reclaimed the Melbourne seat of Goldstein from Climate 200-backed teal independent Zoe Daniel.
Wilson, who doesn’t lack self-confidence, hasn’t enjoyed a great start against Chalmers.
After a bizarre rendition of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire in the House of Representatives, Chalmers described Wilson as the “opposition’s karaoke clown”.
After making a bad mistake in citing the Coalition’s new $800m fuel supply policy as costing “around $80bn”, Wilson on Wednesday responded to criticism from Chalmers by releasing a musical playlist for the Treasurer. The list, more university politics than federal politics, hijacked lyrics from John Farnham, Carly Simon, Michael Jackson and others to mock Chalmers for failing to “take the pressure down”, being “so vain” and a “smooth criminal”, and making “money too tight (to mention)”.
Australians struggling to pay their bills and keep businesses open deserve an opposition Treasury spokesman who is focused on policy not playlists.

Oh dear, freedumb boy strikes again ... 

...but what's this talk of Jimbo not facing much opposition?

How dare Geoff suggest that?

Dame Groan has provided consistent, stiff, rigorous opposition and she was at it again ...

The header: Treasurer faces inflation crisis ahead of budget as rate rise threatens households; A stark disconnect emerges between Treasury’s rosy budget claims and the harsh reality of approaching trillion-dollar debt alongside persistent inflationary pressures hitting households.

The caption for the snap, which surely is the best the reptiles have ever displayed of this surly, sulky, insupportably snarky rogue: Treasurer Jim Chalmers addresses the media during a news conference relating to the release of key inflation data. Picture: Liam Kidston/NewsWire

Dame Groan could only manage three minutes of "we'll all be rooned, the end is nigh" this day, and she managed with great skill to downplay the clear and present danger, a danger that looks like being around for months - the decision by King Donald and the mad mullahs to mutually blockade the strait of Hormuz and thereby hold the world to ransom while they face off and pose down.

Paying attention to that would entirely defeat Dame Groan's primary T-800 purpose.

Destroy Jimbo.

And so she spends her time bleating about the feds by following the most simpleton path to hand:

When grinning Jim, our Treasurer, tells us that the budget is in better nick and he has managed to reduce government debt, informed people know these statements to be falsehoods.
Any cursory look at the budget papers will confirm the facts that the fiscal position is deteriorating, particularly when off-budget spending is considered, and government debt is fast approaching one trillion dollars for the first time.
Mums and dads are too busy and hard-pressed to investigate these tall tales. But what is clear to them, part of their “lived experience” to use an overused term, is that prices are rising and that the monthly outlay on the mortgage has been going up this year.
The quarterly CPI figures for March this year point to annual headline inflation of 4.6 per cent, driven mainly by higher fuel prices. But higher fuel prices quickly flow into other prices.
Higher prices are only too obvious at the supermarket and meeting regular bills.
To be sure, the trimmed mean of the CPI, which excludes irregular and volatile items, was 3.3 per cent, but still well above the target of the Reserve Bank of 2.5 per cent. The trimmed mean has been 3 or above since July of last year.

And what of that crisis in the strait, and news of Hormuz that you can use? Dame Groan has got it covered:

This timing is important, because it’s clear that our inflationary woes truly pre-dated the conflict in the Middle East. The proof of this pudding was the fact that the cash rate has been adjusted upwards twice this year. The cash rate is currently 4.1 per cent.

Roll that one around on the tongue, and see how easily you can dismiss news Dame Groan can't uze ...

...it’s clear that our inflationary woes truly pre-dated the conflict in the Middle East

And not content with that Dame Groan hammered the point home ...

Had excessive inflation only emerged recently, after the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, then the bank could afford to look through any headline inflation figures. Indeed, this would be regarded as best practice. It will likely be the strategy adopted by most central banks around the world.

It was all the odder then that the reptiles rolled out the Ughmann to complain about the way that the cost of fuel was fuelling inflation pressures...and something had to be done about the news no one can us

Sky News Political Contributor Chris Uhlmann says the government must find ways to “bring down” the cost of fuel in Australia to ease inflation pressures. Mr Uhlmann said 91 per cent of “all the energy consumed” in Australia every year is coal, oil, and gas. “41 per cent of that we now know is liquid fuels.”

Never mind that stunning illustration, feel Dame Groan's ongoing wrath ...

The situation here is different and the bank will be particularly concerned that high headline rates of inflation will lead to higher inflationary expectations. Once there are widespread expectations that inflation will exceed the target figure – and potentially by a wide margin – the bank begins to be really worried.
Of course, cranking up the cash rate, which feeds into higher mortgage and borrowing costs, will inevitably feed into slower economic growth. At this stage, consumer spending appears to be holding up reasonably well, but this may well be the lull before the storm.
The Monetary Policy Board will meet next week to consider what to do about the cash rate. The market expects another increase of 25 basis points, although the fact that the trimmed mean was essentially unchanged, even if the figure is too high, may weigh on the members’ thinking. Recall that last time, there was split decision.
Stagflation – rising unem­ployment accompanied by above-target inflation – is something everyone wants to avoid.
The following week is, of course the federal budget, Jim’s fifth. If he really understood the predicament, he would slash the growth of government spending to ease the inflationary pressures. His constant unconvincing denial that government spending has contributed to the inflation problem points to a likely failure to act in a sensible fashion, with possibly more cost-of-living measures.
Much will be made of the highly tentative plan to radically reduce spending on the NDIS, and these figures – assumptions, really – will be fed into the four years of the budget’s forward estimates.
They will make the fiscal position look better from its poor base – the NDIS has been the fastest growing item in the budget apart from interest payments – but whether the lower rates of spending growth ever come to pass is an unanswered question. Mind you, good job for trying, Mark Butler.
The political strategy of the budget will be to draw attention away from the bottom-line figures, particularly the headline cash balance, and to focus on some adjustments to various tax arrangements on capital.
They will be seriously oversold and entail high compliance costs, but many mums and dads (and younger folk) might get the impression that the government is doing something about housing, in particular.
For Albanese and Chalmers, this outcome itself would be regarded as a success even if there are lot of complaints. Let’s face it, most of these affected don’t vote Labor. It could also set up a tricky wedge for the Coalition.
While policy is definitely not a strong suit of the Albanese government, they are really good at politics.

Here's a thought - if King Donald doesn't manage to sort out the strait, Dame Groan will be able to chortle about the way we've all been 'rooned, without ever mentioning the reason why.

As if to celebrate the King, the reptiles went full meme in the news section ...

Oh sheesh ... do they have to pander to him? 

So this is what full dementia, sundowner style looks like?

Well, in that spirit ...

Look away reptiles, shield your eyes from what Faux Noise has foisted on the world.

L'État, c'est moi. 

Le roi est mort, vive le roi!

Roll on Friday and the arrival of magical Santa Henry down the chimney ...

In which the bromancer sorts out everything in his usual way, sundry reptiles are sent to the intermittent archive, and talk of Anglo-Celtic values wraps up the show ...

 

The pond wondered whether the bromancer would ever get back to his theme of a war with China by Xmas, but thanks to the inspiration of that other Jimbo, one time member of the IPA and still a treasured author, he's made a nostalgic trip back to future ...

The header: New defence chief and Trump envoy pick expose deep flaws in national security; A hardline Trump ally becomes US ambassador while Australia’s defence chief lacks military experience – raising questions about readiness as China eyes Taiwan by 2027.

The caption for the orange emperor and his minion: Dave Brat with Donald Trump in 2015 in Washington. Picture: Getty Images

As might be expected, the bromancer was fully on board with a Trumpian tea party ratbag as a way of furthering a deep and warm relationship with the disunited States ...

An ambassadorial appointment, a Mandarin coronation and a strong speech from opposition – three important developments for our national security.
Former Republican congressman David Brat is a good pick to be US ambassador in Canberra. He’s a good choice because Donald Trump chose him.
Brat was a hardline conservative congressman. He rode the Tea Party, the forerunner of the MAGA movement, to a primary victory over the highly regarded Republican incumbent, Eric Cantor, who was then the majority leader in the House of Representatives.
Cantor was pretty conservative himself, Brat much more so.
In the Trump era, Brat has expressed some opinions many Australians would disagree with, such as that Ukraine should concede major territory to Russia, that there was a vast intelligence agency conspiracy against Republicans, and massive voter fraud against Trump.
But guess what? That doesn’t matter a fig. There are only two qualities that count in a US ambassador in Canberra – commitment to the US-Australia relationship, and clout with the president.
Of the two, the second is the more important. Some of the most effective ambassadors the US has sent to Australia have been non-diplomats who were close to the presidents who appointed them. Tom Schieffer was a former business partner and close friend of George W. Bush. Years before, Mel Sembler was a close friend of George H.W. Bush. Schieffer and Sembler were among the best ambassadors.
Australian governments, other Australians too, could get their concerns considered seriously in the White House through the work of these dedicated, influential men.
The bad sign is it took Trump so long to appoint anybody at all. There is, of course, much administrative chaos and delay in the Trump administration. But the fact it took 15 months since Trump’s election to get around to making the Canberra appointment is a sign no one of consequence in the Trump firmament particularly wanted the job, and it certainly didn’t figure as any kind of priority for Trump himself.

Actually the bad sign is that with a stooge and a sycophant on location and paying attention, King Donald might attempt to do more than the odd whine and bleat, and then who knows what carnage might be wrought.

Then came the bromancer on a disastrous appointment, because (a) she's a woman, and (b) she's not the bromancer, Meghan Quinn has been appointed Secretary of the Department of Defence.

See how quickly the bromancer can elide from celebrating King Donald's emissary to sneering lips and quivering disdain...

The second big appointment for Australia was Meghan Quinn, the Secretary of the Industry Department, as the new Secretary of the Defence Department.
Quinn is a distinguished public servant and deserves congratulations and goodwill on her appointment. She also deserves to be judged entirely on results.
However, Quinn’s is the type of appointment which has not been effective in Defence in the past. It’s many decades since a career Defence insider has been appointed Secretary of the Defence Department. Given how poorly Defence has performed for a long time, that might seem fair enough. In fact, it’s been part of the problem.

At this point, the reptiles flung in an AV distraction which sort of did a little undercutting of the bromancer's euphoria about the new ambassador, with him apparently being no better than Junior's old squeeze ... Former acting US ambassador to Australia James Carouso spoke on the newly appointed Australian Ambassador to the United States, former Republican congressman David Brat. “I don't think anyone can expect the type of appointments we have in the administration,” Mr Carouso told Sky News Australia. “We have a former girlfriend of one of Trump's sons as the ambassador to Greece, we have an orthopedic surgeon as the ambassador to Singapore. “This particular ambassador, I think, has more background in government, having been the congressman for two terms, with a background in economics.”

The bromancer proceeded to carry a torch for the disgraced Pezzullo, as so many reptiles do these days ... what with the lizard Oz one of the main locations for his rehabilitation tour ...

If someone goes to Defence without a deep background in defence it takes months and months just to get across all the information, much less to work out how all the defence tribes interact, where the bodies are buried, how the distinctive Defence culture militates against speed, effectiveness and accountability.
There’s a strong case, if you really want to break the mould, for appointing someone from the top of private industry who is accustomed to bringing big, complex projects to completion and actually getting things done.
The Morrison government totally squibbed its one opportunity to make meaningful change at Defence when it declined to appoint Mike Pezzullo as the head of the department. There was a feeling that such an appointment would have led to a lot of distress in senior defence circles. Good. That’s just what was needed.
When you appoint a senior mandarin without much direct defence experience you can easily end up with the worst of both worlds, you get a mastery of bureaucratic process, broad concepts, eloquent position papers, government bureaucracy gobbledygook. Every strategic challenge is lovingly described, every problem deeply admired from all angles, and nothing actually happens, or at least not on a timescale relevant to the country’s needs.

If Pezzullo's the answer, forget the ethical questions ... and now for a little fear and anxiety, Military personnel attend the ceremony as Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomes Uruguayan President Yamanda Orsi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in February. Picture: Getty Images

That's the cue for the bromancer to jump the shark and nuke the Chairman Xi fridge ...

China’s Xi Jinping has told his military to be ready to take Taiwan by force, should its government decide to do so, by 2027. The British Spectator noted this week that in 1930 Britain spent 2.5 per cent of its GDP on defence (well above our level now of 2 per cent), but by 1938 it was 7 per cent.
Australia has not remotely responded to the security challenges we face with the requisite urgency. Nothing in Quinn’s background suggests this will change. She worked on the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper which was a fatuous document with little predictive or policy value at all.
A dose of something closer to realism came in the first National Press Club speech delivered by Senator James Paterson, the opposition’s defence spokesman. He rightly demanded much greater openness from the Albanese government on basic defence information, rightly lambasted its failure to deliver expenditure or capability, stressed the centrality of the US alliance while acknowledging the difficulties posed by the Trump administration, and rightly called out the strategic danger of China.

Jimbo's the answer to getting ready for a bit of biff and a stoush by 2027? His profound insight?

Why it was a pitch for buying up big on the B-21 Raider stealth bomber.

This might have gone down well with the Sky News mob (still no rebranding?),  but sounded completely clueless and desperate, what with the first of these planes to be delivered to the US air force in 2027. 

What are the odds that the Yanks will immediately make them available to us as submarine substitutes, a kind of AUKUS pacifier?

Even the bromancer couldn't hack it, and he's still desperate to take on Chairman Xi.

When you've lost the bromancer, you're in trouble ...

His one mistake was to go down the road of proposing the acquisition of a fleet of B21 strategic bombers. When we’ve made such a pitiful investment in small, swarming drones, and when our defence budget can’t remotely keep even the feeble kit we have in proper working order, the last thing Australia needs is another giant, wildly expensive, technologically complex platform to cost endless billions of dollars and take forever to come online.
Dysfunctional defence culture, persistent and seemingly ineradicable, rears its head in the most unexpected places.

Grim times when even the bromancer can't be made to swallow Jimbo's massive stupidity ...

The lizard Oz editorialist chimed in on the matter of the ambassador for the disunited states, hoping against hope ...

AUKUS is in desperate need of a confidence booster?

Brat for sedulously promoting? Brat for demanding workload?

Likely he'll have a hard time explaining how to play the game ...

And so to what the pond won't be covering this day.

The pond won't be encouraging Dame Slap in her familiar bout of black bashing. The intermittent archive is a safe home for that sort of thing ...

COMMENTARY by Janet Albrechtsen
Welcome to country: is it time to take a vote?
A divisive response to welcome to country ceremonies raises deeper questions about meaning, timing and whether Australians ever truly agreed.

There's going to be a lot more of this bigotry emanating from the reptiles as they discover new ways to divide the country, but damned if the pond will help them in their mission.

The pond did at least have a couple of 'toons handy that evoked the Dame Slap spirit ...

The pond was also disinclined to feature a standard bit of Albo bashing, as Geoff chambered a far too familiar round:

Who’s fairest of all? Albanese holds the mirror up to history
Anthony Albanese has revealed his government will return to Labor’s political basics in next month’s budget, echoing the same big-spending, anti-business themes from his maiden speech delivered 30 years ago.
By Geoff Chambers

Political editor

The pond did however think that a teaser trailer was worth it, if only because it featured a novel new form of pictorial attack.

What better way to diminish comrade Albo and make him feel tired, weary and aged than by starting off with a snap showing him in his vulgar youff days?

It was too cruel, it was deliberately unkind in the reptile way ...

That's about as low a blow as the reptiles have ever managed in their war on comrade Albo, but anyone wanting more of the faux outrage must resort to the intermittent archive, while praying its still working.

Another item that was sent to the archive was this angle on the dire straits the world is in thanks to King Donald embarking on a jihad ...

West pays a price for Iran’s global cartel economy
Rather than relying on conventional statecraft, the Islamic Republic regime combines geopolitical positioning with financial resilience to extract economic consequences from disruption
By Sara Rafiee

At the end of her piece, Sara came up with a splendid proposal ...

...Western enforcement systems are designed for linear transactions. Tehran’s networks are layered, transnational and structured to pass formal compliance checks. What is required is a shift to intelligence-led enforcement: forensic accounting, network analysis, digital asset tracing and blockchain exper­tise, cross-border data integration and co-ordinated action across financial regulators, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. That means strengthening anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing frame­works to trace ownership, identify networks and disrupt financial flows at scale.
The West has exposure and agency. As a network of rules-based financial systems integrated into global markets, it is directly affected and capable of driving enforce­ment.
The Islamic Republic is sustained not by ideology alone but by access to capital, markets and financial infrastructure. Remove that access and the system weakens. Leave it intact and the cost is externalised through fuel prices, inflation and balance sheets.
The choice is clear: remain reac­tive and be at the mercy of the regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and give in to their demands for ransom and extortion or act proactively to dismantle the financial architecture that sustains them once and for all.
The question is not whether the West pays but whether it chooses to stop.

So not just a complete blockade but also even more extreme sanctions, so that 90 odd million people can be made to suffer, while the regime skates along over their suffering.

If they chose not to stage a revolution, well let them starve, stuff 'em, serve 'em right.

It seemed an odd strategy given how Sara chose to describe herself ...

Sara Rafiee is a human rights advocate. The views expressed are her own.

Must be human rights advocacy of the King Donald kind ...

And so to a final offering ...

The header: Stop chasing nostalgia, start defending principles; Australia’s conservative movement often reaches for ‘good old days’ instead of asking: what made those days so good in the first place?

The caption: Demonstrators gather in Canberra to protest the impacts of immigration and cost-of-living pressures. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Immediately the pond's ears were on high onion muncher alert.

Was this tosser going to diss "Anglo-Celtic values", thereby undermining the entire edifice of the lizard Oz and the hive mind?

Last weekend’s March for Australia rally in Canberra drew scores of people from across the country, united by a deep frustration at what mass immigration is doing to their daily lives.
Housing is out of reach, rents are soaring, grocery prices are crippling and infrastructure is buckling under the weight of demand. These are legitimate concerns and Australians are right to be angry that government policy has left them worse off in their own country.
But alongside those concerns a familiar strain of rhetoric resurfaced. Once again, the language of “Anglo-Celtic values” and questions about who really belongs in Australia found its way into the debate.
Worse still, many on the right turned a blind eye or echoed their rhetoric, as if the way to channel public anger is to pine for a cultural purity frozen in the past. That isn’t just lazy, it’s destructive. Cultures evolve.
The things we prize about being Australian – our irreverence, our egalitarianism, our suspicion of authority – may have sprung from Anglo-Celtic origins, but over time they became distinctly Australian, shaped across the past century by the millions of migrants who made this country their home.
My own family has been here since 1946 – 80 years and five generations strong. At what point do families such as mine count as Australian? To keep insisting that the character of this country is Anglo-Celtic alone is to write millions of patriotic Australians out of the national story.
Even the so-called Anglo-Celtic values were never purely Anglo-Celtic. They were the product of centuries of evolution – first forged in ancient Greece, refined through Rome, filtered through Christianity, revived in the Enlightenment and finally embedded in British institutions.

He was, he was, and the pond was outraged on behalf of the lizard Oz. 

How did this miscreant get into the mix? Where was Our Henry to box his ears and teach him a lesson?

The principles we talk about today – rule of law, liberty, civic equality – trace back to Athens as much as to Westminster. To pretend they belong exclusively to one culture is to misunderstand their nature: they were always meant to be inherited, adapted and lived by anyone who chooses to uphold them.
Worse, it’s politically self-defeating. You cannot build a broad conservative movement while telling half the nation they don’t belong. America, for all its flaws, actually gets this right.
The US came from Anglo-Celtic stock, too, but you won’t hear conservative Americans demanding the return of “English values” when things go awry.

Steady, steady, in fact in the early days, there was more than a fair sprinkling of Dutch, German and perfidious French settlers, and even worse by 1790 almost 20% of the population was of African descent, though it took some time to count them as human.

But the pond digresses, do go on ...

They talk about American values. Anyone who embraces the principles of liberty, independence and self-government, honours the country and respects its laws is accepted as American. That inclusiveness is what made America strong.
If conservatives in Australia cannot make the same leap – if they cannot stop confusing ancestry with principle – they will condemn themselves to irrelevance. The future will not belong to those peddling nostalgia. It will belong to those who can articulate a creed called Australian values, open to anyone willing to live by them.
After all, the instinct is already there: when something goes wrong in this country, we don’t say it’s “un-Anglo-Celtic”; we say it’s un-Australian.
Unlike our American cousins, Australia never had the clarifying moment of revolution. We were not born in blood. We inherited institutions rather than forging them in struggle and so we were never forced to chisel our values into stone. In the absence of a creed, we leaned on character – and for a long time, that was enough.
Stoicism, a larrikin irreverence, a practical egalitarianism and a work ethic that prized reward for effort. “She’ll be right” was more than a shrug; it was a philosophy of proportion, resilience and perspective.
But if you never articulate your strengths, you never learn to defend them.

Dammit, if the onion muncher gets to read this sort of heresy there'll be hell to pay ...

Over time, the habits that made this country work have been crowded out by bureaucratic creep, cultural risk-aversion and an ever-expanding politics of grievance. Instead of protecting the ideas that sustained our way of life, too many on the right reached for the easier script: bring back the old days. The result is a movement that sounds like a museum tour.
Nostalgia cannot save a nation. Principles, however, can. If Australia is to succeed in the 21st century, we need to stop chasing the shadows of yesterday and start identifying, clearly and unapologetically, the values that made us strong in the first place.
So which principles? Freedom of speech: not as a slogan but as a social norm that tolerates offence because truth requires friction. Reward for effort: the moral right to keep more of what you’ve built and the expectation that contribution precedes entitlement.
A “fair go” earned rather than allocated. Institutional humility: rules that bind government before they bind citizens. And an unembarrassed larrikin spirit that resists control and laughs at pomposity, including its own.
None of that requires a revolution. It requires articulation, prioritisation and courage. Articulation because we must say plainly what we stand for. Prioritisation because governments stuffed with committees can smother a culture without firing a shot. Courage because defending principles will be noisy, unfashionable and – at times – personally costly. And yes, that means fewer glossy slogans and more stubborn substance.

The pond could almost get on board, but what about Dame Slap's desire to put pesky, difficult, uppity blacks back in their box?

The less we see of them, the more of a fair go there'll be for all the whites slaving away at the lizard Oz?

Whatever, best wrap it up ...

But the purpose of that effort isn’t to look backwards. The point isn’t to sell nostalgia for a different decade or to cosplay as America. It is to recover the foundations of an Australian life that worked, then say them out loud, codify them in policy and live them again.
The debate we need is not about what we used to be. It’s about who we intend to be – and what we’re willing to defend to get there.
Damien Costas is the author of What Happened to the Lucky Country?

And speaking of equal opportunities for all, and rights and all that jazz, let's celebrate the ways of two noble monarchies, with wretched republicanism at last put back in its box ...

Finally those interested in the state of Vlad the sociopath's Russia might be amused to see the way that the country's chief Lord Haw-Haw, the nuking sociopathic Solovyov attempted to retrieve his most recent dismal situation by inviting lips-loaded Victoria Bonya on to his show, all the way from Monaco, the latest in a seemingly endless dance between the pair.

Only on Russian state media:

Vlad the sociopath must be beginning to feel the heat ...

In which the bromancer and ancient Troy tackle the state of the orange emperor's empire ...

 

The pond has long thought that complete shamelessness, chutzpah, and an inclination to a certain kind of insolent cheekiness are prerequisites for the practice of politics, and the thought came again with this yarn near the top of the lizard Oz this morning ...

STOCKPILE PLEDGE
Fuel fracas: ‘fill ’er up to 60 days’, Coalition vows (intermittent archive link)
Coalition vows to double reserves to 60 days
Angus Taylor has pledged an $800m plan to double Australia’s fuel reserves while Foreign Minister Penny Wong embarks on Asian diplomatic mission to secure shipments.
By Ben Packham and Geoff Chambers

This is, of course, the man who not so long ago decided that Australia's fuel reserves were best stored in the United States... from March, 2020: U.S. And Australia Strengthen Fuel Security With New SPR Arrangement

Part of the process is the expectation that - unlike elephants - punters will always forget, or perhaps not have cared in the first place ...

To be fair to Dame Groan, unlike the remarkably stupid and wildly oscillating beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, she's always been consistent. 

She's always been a climate science denialist, she's always been a devotee of fossil fuels, of oil and gas, so her piece this day is just business as usual.

The header: Making the case for more refineries at time of crisis; We have been given a warning about our reliance on overseas sources for our liquid fuels and the totally inadequate level of our reserves. It would be negligent to ignore this warning.

The caption for the snap which got Dame Groan wildly excited: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen during a visit to the Ampol Lytton refinery in Brisbane. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

You can make the case for the electrostate and renewables and such like as much as you like, but this Dame is not for turning. Never has been, never will be ...

It was quite the turn-up for the books but the photograph of Anthony Albanese and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen standing in front of one of the last two oil refineries was indic­a­tive of a change of heart, if not panic, on the government’s part.
It was only a few months ago at the UN Climate Change 30th Conference of the Parties in Brazil that Australia was championing a proposal to phase out fossil fuels. Just this week there is a follow-up conference in Colombia to flesh out the details. Plenty of countries will be attending, but there are some notable absentees including the US, India and China – all the big emitters, in other words.

How she loves to dance on the grave of the planet, how she thrives in the hothouse of carbon dioxide emissions ... Bowen and the PM have been trying to secure an increase in the supply of liquid fuels. Picture: News Wire/Thomas Lisson

This is of course just what her cult followers expect and demand ...

Back at home, Bowen has had to face the reality of a potential shortage of liquid fuels: diesel, petrol, aviation gas. Forget all that stuff about fossil fuels being the enemy.
The Prime Minister and Bowen have been working hard to achieve an increase in the supply of liquid fuels, even if the incremental additions secured thus far are relatively trivial: a few days’ extra supply.
We also are not being told the cost of the fuel carried by these additional tankers heading our way.
While the fuel situation may appear to have improved temporarily with a fall in bowser prices, the government is aware of the dangers that may emerge in the coming months. When the conflict in the Middle East began, there was a record number of oil tankers on the water. These have now mainly reached their destinations.
With the restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hormuz – it previously had handled around 20 per cent of the flow of global fuel supplies – these flows have become severely hampered. It is estimated that only about 10 per cent of the tankers that normally sail through the strait are now doing so.

Token riff raff who take a view apart from the Dame should make ready to be demonised - fires waiting to happen ... Albanese, Bowen and Deputy PM Richard Marles at the Viva Energy refinery after a fire there. Picture: NewsWire / Josie Hayden

Expecting Dame Groan to double down in her denialism? Make that a triple ...

The refineries in Asia are likely to run short of crude oil to be refined in the coming weeks. This will have flow-on effects for Australia since most of our liquid fuels were sourced from Asia. Hence, the government’s desperate attempt to diversify the sources of our supply.
Not surprisingly, Bowen hasn’t been prepared to give up entirely on his dreams of decarbonisation, bragging about the current progress of the rollout of renewable energy.
But he realises that electrification is not a short-term solution, and only a partial one at that. He also reluctantly has come to acknowledge the critical role gas must play in the electricity system.
Many voters must be scratching their heads, wondering how we got to where we are. How did eight refineries become two? How could it be that we produced enough oil for our needs a quarter of century ago and now produce less than 20 per cent? On what basis was the minimum fuel reserves recommended by the International Energy Agency of 90 days rejected?
There are a variety of reasons for the closure of the refineries, foremost among them that they couldn’t return a consistent profit. Our refineries are old; some were constructed partly based on the need to shore up national security; they are at the end of the line. They are also sub-scale, judged by the modern refineries constructed more recently in other parts of the world.
The new fuel standards imposed on them – sulphur content, for instance – would require substantial capital investment by the refineries that simply could not be justified. Add that the amount of local crude oil has been dropping and bizarre industrial relations arrangements, and closure of all the refineries was all but guaranteed.
Had it not been for the actions of the Coalition government, the refineries in Geelong and Brisbane also would have closed.

Here the reptiles slipped in Sky Noise down under (what, still no rebrand?), with the pond's only note to wonder why caps were deployed to describe a "Cane Farmer". 

A new trend, inspired by Kind Donald's truthing ways?

Cane Farmer Owen Menkens says farmers are “worried about the future” with the fuel crisis impacting Australia. Mr Menkens told Sky News Australia that there are “inflationary pressures” also adding to stress for farmers. “And then there’s the fear of not being able to get fuel and fertiliser, which is really probably the scariest bit of it all.”

You can't expect Sky Noise or the reptiles of Oz to get agitated about what's actually caused, and is continuing to cause the crisis.

It provides too much in the way of cudgels with which to thump comrade Albo.

A prevert might succumb to the temptation to wish ill on Dame Groan's descendants as the planet heats up and expires, but that's to consign everybody else to the same fate.

Instead it's best just to politely nod and plough through the denialism to the bitter end of her new drill, baby, drill program, incidentally putting her at one with King Donald's desire to ruin the planet..

The Labor government has committed to continuing this support and has relaxed the fuel standards in the meantime. (Bowen had proudly brought forward the new sulphur standard but has been forced to reverse this decision.)
Bowen has now declared there is no need for another refinery, although he has not ruled out extensions to the remaining ones.
This is surely a premature stance to take, given the number of moving parts that will be needed to accommodate a policy that grows our domestic liquid fuel reliance. This must include facilitation of the exploration and exploitation of oil, onshore and offshore.
Much is being made of the potential of the Taroom Trough, which is part of the Bowen-Surat hydrocarbon basin in southwest Queensland.
While it’s unclear just how much oil there is, it’s surely the time when risks must be taken to restart our oil program.
There are other prospective areas including in the North West Shelf, the Beetaloo Basin and the Great Australian Bight. Recall that 50 years ago some experts were telling anyone who would listen that there was no exploitable oil or gas left in the North Sea. They were wrong.
On the face of it, the government seems flexible in using existing programs to facilitate the resurgence of a local oil industry. However, some legislative impediments such as the veto on funding pipelines in some programs will need to be removed.
One viable option is the construction of a new refinery at Gladstone, which would be close to several large-scale industrial operations.
There is a suitable port and there are other reasons this would make sense. Should the Taroom Trough work out, for instance, this refinery could be used to convert the crude.
It also should be possible to use imported heavy crude to produce diesel, which is critical to many Queensland economic activities, including agriculture, mining and metal processing.
To be sure, the cost of a new refinery is substantial – about $10bn to $12bn – and many components would need to be shipped in modular form from Asia. It would require the services of a major global engineering group when there is already heavy demand.
We are not the only country waking up to the weakness in their liquid fuel position and considering options such as new refineries. We need to get in the queue soon lest this option vanish into the distant future.
The real danger is the government will revert to type should the Middle East conflict be resolved in the near term and the strait reopened for traffic.
As unlikely as this scenario is, there are still powerful anti-fossil fuel influences on the government likely to re-emerge from the wings of the political stage.
We have been given a warning about our reliance on overseas sources for our liquid fuels and the totally inadequate level of our reserves. It would be negligent to ignore this warning.

Speaking of King Donald ...

 

Those 'toons are by way of introducing the bromancer, out and about this day, and picking up on the assassination attempt.

Yesterday the pond did its level best to ignore the Lynch mob, but the pond can never ignore the bromancer in all his glory ...

The header: In an age of narcissism and violence we need true physical courage more than ever; While we celebrate Anzac heroes, a Washington shooting incident exposes our contradictory attitudes toward the warriors who keep us safe from everyday violence.

The caption for the snap of the carry on: US Secret Service agents surround President Donald Trump after a shooting incident outside the ballroom during the White House Correspondents Dinner. Picture: AP

On the upside, the bromancer can't scribble one of those "I was there and was completely unnerved" yarns that have been littering the ether in recent times.

With due regard for the correspondents who might have actually reported from war zones, the rest of the bunch might actually write more useful pieces if they did a little cross dressing, and went as schoolgirls into current war zones in Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza, or Iran - or any American school, where the chances of actually getting taken out by gun violence are pretty high.

On the downside, the bromancer felt the need to begin with an Orwell quote, yet another example of the mangling of Orwell ...

“Those who abjure violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.”
– George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism, 1945

If only the bromancer had bothered to check, what with those notes being freely available online ...

Context always provides a slightly different resonance, and the pond wishes it could spend more time with Orwell and far less with the bromancer, but that's not the pond's mission ...

In the scene at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton hotel, when a gunman fired shots in the foyer on the floor above the event, one figure stuck out to me.
One Secret Service agent leapt to the front of the stage, directly in front of where Donald Trump was sitting. He was a big fellow and in those seconds he had just one job – to take a bullet fired at Trump. He had a protective vest. But his actions required incredible personal courage. Presidential bodyguards have been shot before, shielding presidents.
(I played an extremely unheroic version of this role myself once. In 1997 I spent a few days trailing Philippines president Fidel Ramos around his country. At a giant national day rally in a big stadium I was part of the president’s party but respectfully sat a metre or so away from him. Move up next to the president, his staff instructed. Later they explained this was so no gunman would be able to get a clear shot at the president. Yikes.)

Oh sheesh, TMI, as the reptiles celebrated with action men, Agents stand ready to fire at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as Donald Trump, along with other government officials, were evacuated from the Washington Hilton. Picture: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

It won't be too long before the bromancer will get tired of the valourising and then he'll turn to the philosophising, and at that point bromancer cultists will reap their rewards ...

The Secret Service agent’s action underscores a feature we seldom speak of, and that is the central role and necessity of physical courage in the face of violence for our society to function at all, and for peaceful citizens to continue to enjoy peace.
This Anzac Day, we remembered and celebrated that physical courage of tens of thousands of young Australians sent to war. I was surprised and delighted at my Catholic parish last Sunday that the Ode of Remembrance was recited, with its haunting tribute to young lives sacrificed: “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.” The congregation sang the national anthem as pictures were projected of Diggers going over a ridge and of a navy warship. This occurred after mass so didn’t interfere with any liturgical rite. It was a marvellous recognition of the debt we owe to the courage of soldiers. Importantly, it signified, too, Christian acceptance of the moral virtue of the profession of arms, its necessity and its heroism.
Like the Americans, we exhibit confused paradox in our attitude to violence and courage. Some neighbourhoods are saturated in crime violence. There is something like an epidemic of domestic violence. We don’t have so many guns as the US, but there’s an undercurrent of political intolerance and borderline violence, especially directed by demonstrators against the police.

The pond has absolutely no idea why the bromancer should have been surprised by the recitation of that ode in a Catholic church. 

Back in the day, the pond recalls that galumphing marches up and down St. Nicholas's  church aisle by school cadets was standard routine for Anzac day, with sprigs of rosemary at the ready...and as for an "undercurrent of political intolerance", apparently the bromancer has yet to catch up with the seething hatred and fear and loathing emanating from News Corps 'assorted jihads, though the reptiles decided to run a few snaps to illustrate the point... Victorian police blasted the anti-war protesters in 2024 who rioted in ­Melbourne by hurling acid and horse man­ure at police; Pro-Palestinian and free speech protesters march in Brisbane this month. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

 

Back in the day, it used to be accepted that political protests were permissible and actually an expression of the democratic process, unless you happened to be taking a view of apartheid in Joh's streets ... or perhaps a view of US wars, when the police might be invited to run the b*st*rds over (*google bot safe).

Speaking of the undercurrent of intolerance, how long before the bromancer's own hoppy toads hop into view?

More so even than soldiers, our police are required every day to live out personal, physical courage. Every time a police officer visits a scene of domestic dispute, for example, they run the risk of confronting a violent person, high on ice or something else, armed with a gun or a knife. But if the police don’t go through the front door, the victim has no hope at all.
Courage is essential in many walks of life. Doctors and nurses display courage by exposing themselves to infectious diseases. Firefighters too. Sometimes society needs soldiers or police or even just good citizens in terrible circumstances to lawfully confront violence with violence.
The narcissism of contemporary politics is a social disorder, a mental affliction, which we suffer greatly just now.
It’s the absurd self-indulgence of any of us thinking our particular political views and causes are of such transcendent importance that they justify violence outside the law. This has for many decades been a conscious tactic of the left in Western societies.

And here you have it ...

Thus there are endless calls for “direct action” from campaigners allegedly trying to help the environment, particular racial groups, various gender and sexual preference identities and much else. 

You can almost smell the resolute denialism, mingled with a whiff of transphobia and black bashing saturating the air.

So making a political protest? Not in the bromancer's street ...

The direct action call is both corrupt and corrupting. 

What's corrupt and corrupting is the notion that ordinary people can't mount political campaigns to make their point known to the wider community.

Inevitably the bromancer went on to confuse such notions with wild-eyed anarchy and lawlessness...

It’s an assertion that I don’t need to abide by the rules that should bind other people. It’s most often directed at police. This has theoretical support among many elements even of mainstream left opinion.
A recent New York Times podcast was titled The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I? The podcast, obviously without justifying murder, accused assassinated healthcare fund chief executive Brian Thompson of practising murderous violence, structural violence as the left often call it, against those failed by the US health system.
The podcasters, though all affluent themselves, approved of theft from supermarkets and the like because the rich are too rich.

Oh dear, been there before, and with bonus Jewish stereotypes ...

At this point the reptiles flung in a snap of the suspect for the moment, a singularly inept and delusional wannabe assassin... Cole Allen, the suspected gunman at the WHCD dinner,

And then the bromancer revealed he really can't let King Donald go ...

For the use of force to be morally justified, the circumstances must be immediately causing great risk and the force must be authorised by law and morality. It’s the tremendous arrogance of individuals, or demonstrators demanding direct action, that believes they don’t have to abide by the rules because their cause is so transcendently important.
Thus the alleged shooter at the White House press corps dinner, Cole Allen, wrote in an almost sickly banal manifesto: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” This involves a wild mischaracterisation of alleged crimes by the Trump administration and a supreme arrogance in deciding an individual’s own political judgment is adequate to justify mass murder, as was apparently intended.

Um, actually on the balance of probabilities, a civil court decided that King Donald had committed a form of rape, and depending on your view of what hasn't been explored in the Epstein files, might have been found in an awkward - certainly uncomfortable - position with an underage girl, and could arguably - as an organiser of a coup designed to unseat the US government and ensure his continuing reign - be adjudged to have been a traitor, but the pond will leave others to argue the point.

Instead the pond will end with the bromancer deciding to be insufferably Xian ...

Trump’s exaggerated rhetoric, and the MAGA movement’s generally, creates the same exaggerated hostility and tendency to violence on the right. Right-wing violence is also growing. Both sides of politics are guilty. These trends culminate in suicide terrorists. Suicide is not the same as heroic indifference to danger. Intentional suicide for political ends (without judging those who tragically succumb to despair) comes from a hatred of life. Heroic actions indifferent to danger emerge from the deepest love of life.
Christianity is theologically unique in positing personal physical courage – Christ enduring crucifixion – as manifest in God himself. Anzac Day aside, we too often spurn traditional heroes and courageous warriors.
Yet, in our ignorance and confusion, we need them more than ever.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

About that crucifixion. 

How much courage is needed when you're actually supposed to be god, and so you're enduring a little short term pain before heading off to an eternity of godly bliss?

Never mind ...

And so to ancient Troy, providing a slightly different angle on King Donald's Amerika...

The header: America at 250 rewriting its own history in the age of Donald Trump; From renaming the Kennedy Center to removing slavery exhibits at George Washington’s house, Donald Trump has turned America’s birthday year into a presidential vanity project.

The caption for the orange clown: President Donald Trump gestures after speaking at a reception celebrating Women's History Month in the East Room of the White House. Picture: AP

Ancient Troy sounded decidedly gloomy ...

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, agreed by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in July 1776. The semiquincentennial, however, comes amid deep divisions in the US, its animating goals and ambitions being revisited and reconsidered, and its global leadership in retreat.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump underscores the polarisation. There is no justification for it; there is no place for violence in democracy. Sadly, though, America was born in violent struggle and its politics has always been marred by it. Four presidents have been assassinated and many more, in office or out, have survived attempts on their lives.
I recently returned from two weeks in the US, travelling through the original colonies that banded together to fight a bloody revolution for independence from Britain and rise to become a 20th-century giant with immense economic, military and cultural power, authority and influence.

In particular, he didn't seem to have much time for the king, currently consorting with another king ... ‘Character matters and Trump … is an embarrassment to most Americans.’ Picture: Getty

Fair dibs ...

Ancient Troy clearly spent too much time talking to punters in the field ...

It remains extraordinary that a small group of people such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison could emerge at such a time and place to inspire a people to rise up and win their freedom from a powerful empire.
How that remarkable story is remembered and retold is under challenge in the US, along with the ideals and aspirations of the founders and the revolutionary generation about how they should be governed and led, during the second Trump presidency.
Everywhere I went, from Boston to New York, Philadelphia to Richmond and Washington DC, Americans went out of their way to apologise for the divisions in their country and the actions of their President.
These comments came from people on subways or in bars, at museums and galleries, memorials and battlefields.
Character matters and Trump, though long a bully and braggart, repulsive and outrageous, is an embarrassment to most Americans. He is profoundly unpopular.

Profoundly unpopular? That's a rare acknowledgement from a reptile, though if the world continues in dire straits, it might get even more profound than profound ... Tankers and cargo ships anchored off the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, which sits on the Strait of Hormuz. Picture: ISNA / AFP

Ancient Troy didn't hold back ...

The Iran war has been a disaster and could plunge the world into recession. Trump’s MAGA movement is splintering and one-time allies are openly criticising him and apologising for having supported him.
What struck me most was the visceral reaction of everyday Americans to Trump’s treatment of longstanding allies and friendly nations, namely Canada and Denmark’s Greenland, with threats of invasion, but also his treatment of Ukraine and NATO countries, and other nations that have endured punitive tariffs, nasty social media posts and Oval Office reprimands.
It is one thing for Trump to treat people with contempt in his own country, to corruptly enrich himself, shatter norms and conventions of presidential behaviour, flout laws and ignore congress and courts, pardon or commute sentences of Capitol riot­ers and those who assaulted police, and attempt to overturn an election.
It is another thing entirely to humiliate and intimidate nations that Americans like and respect.
Australia has been a steadfast friend and ally, alongside disastrous wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and hosts a growing US military presence. Why treat us so appallingly?
Trump’s self-aggrandise­­ment also troubles Americans. Presidential faces and names are carved in marble and stone mountains, appear on notes and coins, and designate roads, bridges and schools. These usually come long after a president has exited the White House. But Trump, with his unchecked ego and vanity, is seeking to remake the US in his image. This personal glorification of a president in office is without precedent. It is what you usually see in a dictatorship, authoritarian regime or military junta.

It's all too little and too late, and too irrelevant, what with the lizard Oz not a big mover and shaker in the United States, and Faux Noise still determined to note the slightest deviance from the MAGA bandwagon ...‘Ugh!’ Fox News Host Groans After Being Told Jimmy Kimmel’s Ratings Are Up Amidst Widow-Gate

Most concerning in this semiquincentennial year is Trump’s attempt to whitewash and rewrite history.

Ancient Troy kept brooding in a way that suggested he might want to join the Graudian ...

A huge banner of Trump’s face drapes over the departments of Justice, Agriculture and Labour. The US Institute of Peace was renamed for him. And he renamed the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts so his name prefaces the former president. His signature will appear on dollar bills and his face on new coins. His face also will be on tickets to national park sites.
There are plans for Trump-class battleships and several government programs already bear his name such as the $US5m ($6.98m) Trump Gold Card visa.
Trump tore up the White House rose garden, demolished the East Wing to build an oversized ballroom and decorated the walls with garish gold filigree as if it were Trump Tower. The adjacent 1888 Eisenhower Executive Office Building is to be painted white.
Most concerning in this semiquincentennial year is Trump’s attempt to whitewash and rewrite history. Philadelphia has become an early battleground for Trump’s MAGA-style assault on the past.
Near Independence Hall is the site of the President’s House. Washington lived at the site as president with his slaves (1790-97). Trump’s executive order Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History requires anything at a federal site that “inappropriately disparage(s) Americans past or living” to be removed. In January, the factual text-and-image boards that chronicled slavery at the President’s House were removed.

Next came a snap of a suffering victim... Kim Sajet, former director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, was fired by Donald Trump who claimed she was ‘highly partisan’. Picture: Getty

And that was about that ...

Dozens of monuments, parks and museums also have had content removed.
As a result, the President’s House site, next to the Liberty Bell, has been activated as a place of protest. Americans are turning up in their thousands to add their voice and words of dissent.

Steady on, the cluck-clucking and tut-tutting bromancer explained exactly what that sort of behaviour means. 

You can't just go adding voices and words of dissent willy-nilly in public. Please bromancer, remind ancient Troy ...

Thus there are endless calls for “direct action” from campaigners allegedly trying to help the environment, particular racial groups, various gender and sexual preference identities and much else. 

The direct action call is both corrupt and corrupting. 

QED. America is both corrupt and corrupting.

The pond simply had to put ancient Troy in his place as he wallowed in pity ...

The site remains largely stripped but a legal challenge by the City of Philadelphia has prevented Trump’s version of history adorning the walls.
Slavery is at the heart of the American story. It is the original sin. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave owners. Yet they adopted Jefferson’s wording that “all men are created equal”. It took a civil war to end slavery and another century before civil rights were enshrined in law.
Ahead of the 250th anniversary, it is a pity the US is so fractured and violence – shootings, terrorist attacks and attempted assassinations – is part of everyday life. At a bar in Philadelphia, a man sought to reassure me: “We are much better than our political leaders and we don’t all hate each other.”
That faith in America will be sorely tested this year.

They don't all hate each other? 

Can't say that for uncle Leon and scamming Sam ... (and that New Yorker profile mentioned by Wired can be found as ...

Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?
New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI (*intermittent archive link)

The pond went there because John Oliver had another go at AI on the weekend, written up at the Graudian as 

John Oliver on AI chatbots: ‘Behind that machine is a corporation trying to extract a monthly fee from you’

The Last Week Tonight host dug into the many issues with AI chatbots released on the public without proper safety guardrails, from sycophancy to sexualizing children

And it provided a nice segue to a closing toon ... 

Tough times for King Chuck, Sir Keir, and Maggie Thatcher's legacy, but perhaps the bromancer will sort it out ...(please, no Falkland Island street protests) ...

Or perhaps this is more to Dame Groan's taste ...