In which the Lynch mob, Killer Creighton and our Henry sort out matters in inimitable lizard Oz style ...

Might as well start with the important stuff, as negotiations proceed apace ... what with krill an essential part of any deal ...

Over at the lizard Oz, the reptiles were in a flap, bothered and bewildered ...

It was up to the pond's heroes to set things right, and on the extreme far right, Killer of the IPA was top of the world ma, as anticipated by an eager pond correspondent...

Never mind Snappy Tom, back to basics, and luckily the pond had already covered Dame Groan, because this was a bumper day for three of the pond's hero reptiles, on a mission to set things right ...

It's true that the pond could have gone elsewhere ... the folks at the NY Times were also in a tizz ...

There was news at WaPo that Vlad the sociopathic impaler had managed to dodge a bullet ... (archive link) ...

It was the business of our hero reptiles to pour oil on troubled water, or perhaps if you prefer another metaphor, cover the top of the tank in kerosene to keep the mozzies under control ...

First came the Lynch mob, because he'd been granted the status of a huge splash on what passes for the alleged news section of the lizard Oz ...

Real story of Liberation Day was not economics – it was culture, He commands all he surveys. His opponents are reduced to long, windy speeches. Elite universities are chastened. Foreign nations plead for redress. Trump’s performance was hard to match. Peak Trump? Perhaps. Pure Trump? One hundred per cent.

In celebration of peak Trump, the reptiles provided an opening snap, US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled ‘Make America Wealthy Again’.

Then it was on with the Lynch mob, avoiding economics, perhaps wise when you're completely clueless. How clueless?

In 2012, Barack Obama won re-election with a bumper sticker: BIN LADEN IS DEAD, GENERAL MOTORS IS ALIVE. In the Rose Garden, on Liberation Day, Donald Trump changed it: THE DEMOCRATS ARE DEAD, GM IS ALIVE.

Did the pond just read In 2012, Barack Obama won re-election with a bumper sticker? 

Why if it's that easy, the pond might just whip up a bumper sticker and run in the current election ...

It didn't get any better ...

It is now the left that’s attacking carmakers (ask a Tesla driver) and Donald Trump who has in his corner the workers that the Democrats forsook for wokers (ask Brian Pannebecker, the former Michigan autoworker who Trump backslapped on stage). American politics has slowly and then suddenly been turned on its head.
The President was in his element. He has rarely seemed happier. He read from his autocue and he riffed. Unionists, autoworkers, farmers, the builders and makers of things, applauded him. The defection of these men and women from the Democrats, who forgot how to speak for them, to Trump, who learned, completed the picture. An American politics realigned. A president imperious.

But we already know it's a circus run by the clowns, deep in imperious negotiations with penguins, and how did the next snap help? US President Donald Trump signs an executive order after delivering remarks on reciprocal tariffs.

The Lynch mob was in awe of the Cantaloupe Caligula's consistency ...

His 48-minute “Liberation Day” speech may go down in history as Peak Trump. He seemingly commands all he surveys. His opponents are reduced to long, windy speeches on the Senate floor. Elite universities are chastened. Foreign nations plead for redress. As a display of confidence and power, Trump’s performance was hard to match. Peak Trump? Perhaps. Pure Trump? One hundred per cent.
For a man with documented chaotic tendencies, Trump has maintained one pristine line throughout his adult life: foreigners are ripping us off. On Wednesday, Washington time, he announced America’s liberation from this racket. Its economic prospects are not certain – and probably quite gloomy. But its symbolic power is significant.
We saw a fulfilment of a world view that Trump has held for a long time. If you want to understand the genesis of Liberation Day read his interview for Playboy magazine in 1990, when he was 43.
Asked how he felt about Japan’s economic pre-eminence, Trump answered: “Japan gets almost 70 per cent of its oil from the Persian Gulf, relies on ships led back home by our destroyers, battleships, helicopters, frogmen.
“Then the Japanese sail home, where they give the oil to fuel their factories so that they can knock the hell out of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. Their openly screwing us is a disgrace. Why aren’t they paying us? The Japanese cajole us, they bow to us, they tell us how great we are, and then they pick our pockets. We’re losing hundreds of billions of dollars a year while they laugh at our stupidity.”

The pond must note here that the Lynch mob was interrupted by an AV distraction featuring petulant Peta on Sky Noise down under, Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses the Labor Party's inability to get an exemption from the Trump administration's tariffs. "The PM refuses to even try and mend the fences here, via a trip to meet Trump in person to the White House, to me that's diplomacy 101, but because Trump is so unpredictable, Labor handlers are always scared to have any meeting between Trump and Albanese that they couldn't control, in front of the cameras," Ms Credlin said.   "It's no wonder Anthony Albanese still has not been able to get that phone call with the president that he's asked for."

It's a dodgy business, trying to make political hay out of a messy business ...

Somebody has got to do it ... so on with the Lynch mob ...

Swap out Japan for the EU, China, Mexico, even Canada, and the interview is a draft of what he delivered on Wednesday. Indeed, the defenestration of industrial America in the decades since 1990 gives him a certain prescience: if we don’t put America first, national decline is certain.
Economists are busily scorning the logic of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. These dismal scientists seem united that tariffs cannot restore his nation’s manufacturing base. But his command of the politics and culture of his trade war was the story here. And it is on this basis that we need to assess him.
At home, his 2½ months in office have revealed a remarkable activism that will be hard to sustain. He has issued more than 100 executive orders – to Joe Biden’s 37 at this same stage in his presidency. He retained two seats in congress on Tuesday. He faces a noisy but weak Democratic Party. But he is also, whether the MAGA movement admits it or not, a lame duck who cannot run again. The Republican nominee who will run in 2028 is waiting in the wings.
Abroad, Trump is attempting to redefine international relations so they contain no great friends and no permanent foes. The friends are often worse than the foes, Trump insisted. Rebalancing this in Australia’s favour may be beyond Kevin Rudd’s diplomatic genius. Even Israel was not immune to a 17 per cent tariff.
Globalists and what Trump called “outsourcers” are fretting. Their “rules-based order” has been hit hard since January 20. America is no longer willing to subsidise it. Mateship is no longer enough to get American taxpayers to fund the shortfall in Australian defence spending. Ditto the trans-Atlantic alliance. Its mystic chords of memory, forged on World War II battlefields, have been jarred in the MAGA revolution. Trump and JD Vance really don’t like the European Union. They now have a tariff policy to prove it.

"Globalists"? Ah, at least we know the company the Lynch mob prefers to keep ...Globalist has been used as a pejorative in right-wing and far-right politics, and in various conspiracy theories, notably antisemitic ones. In a 2014 YouTube video, far-right radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones described the concept of globalism as a "global digital panopticon control system" which he considered to be "the total form of slavery

At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of the real perpetrators, Barack Obama and Joe Biden in Greensboro, North Carolina, September, 2008.

The Lynch mob kept rabbiting on about culture ...

But the “global deep state”, as Trump sees it, is not without agency. Trump so far enjoys the supplication of foreigners. This will inevitably turn into resistance of some co-ordinated form.
In defiance of Trump’s tariffs and threats, Canadians are buying guns and moving back to the left. And global markets have an effective way of calling foul on economic radicalism; ask Liz Truss. Japan experimented with a form of protectionism not dissimilar to Trump’s; its return was three decades of stagnation. Turns out, the Japanese picked their own pockets.
The real story of Liberation Day, despite appearances to the contrary, was not economics. It was culture. Four years ago, Joe Biden was lauded for starting a neo-New Deal. It fizzled. Identity politics, inflation, Afghanistan, a fentanyl epidemic, cognitive decline, lawfare and the beginnings of Trump 2.0 – this is how the Biden interregnum, in the Age of Trump, will be remembered.
The confidence of his Liberation Day address was a rebuff to the cultural dislocations of not just the Biden years but of a generation of failed foreign and economic policies, of both parties.

That blather about culture reminded the pond of the sort of culture the mango Mussolini was celebrating ...

At this point the Lynch mob tried a final rousing Trumpian climax ...

The end of history in 1989 was meant to begin years of American dominance. Instead, China rose, the Twin Towers fell, a war on terror wasted US blood and treasure, and eight million Americans lost their homes in a global financial crisis. Trump came from this malaise. Now perhaps THE MALAISE IS DEAD, TRUMP IS ALIVE.
Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

Once more the reputation of the University of Melbourne irretrievably damaged, while negotiations continued apace ...

And so to Killer, who was remarkably sanguine in what the reptiles alleged was a four minute read ... Albanese owes Trump a debt of gratitude on tariffs, Amid the cacophony of ignorant rage over the US tariffs, another obvious though no less significant point has been overlooked: Trump repeatedly said he would prefer to rely more on tariffs and less on income tax.

Nothing to see here, nothing to worry about, scribbled Killer, “Most economists argue this huge new round of tariffs will be passed on into higher domestic prices for Americans in any case, so why is that any of our business?” writes Adam Creighton, as he was blessed with one of those corny, wretched AI collages the reptiles have taken to doing ...

We should all be grateful, including Albo, says Killer...

Rather than mocking the US President, whose administration practically underwrites Australia’s defence in increasingly perilous times, Anthony Albanese should be sending him a thankyou note.
Donald Trump, as he repeatedly promised throughout his presidential campaign, has announced tariffs of upward of at least 10 per cent on all imports into the US.
Imports from Australia will attract the equal lowest tariff of any country, 10 per cent, less than half the tariff that will apply to imports from Japan, India and the EU. Chinese goods will be taxed at more than 50 per cent. Australian beef exports will apparently even escape US tariffs entirely.

Apparently? The beefy mob might have a beef with that ...Aussie beef hit with 10pc Trump tariff ...

Put it another way...

Back to a sunny, sanguine Killer...

Australia has done very well out of this relative shift in revenue-raising in the US from taxation on labour income to taxation of imports. Most economists argue this huge new round of tariffs will be passed on into higher domestic prices for Americans in any case, so why is that any of our business?
America is facing $US2 trillion ($3.19 trillion) deficits as far as the eye can see; it must either cut spending or lift taxes. Trump’s unilateral tariffs announced on Thursday will make significant inroads into that colossal gap, raising around $US700bn a year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

If we're going to quote from the WSJ, perhaps better to start with Trump's New Protectionist Age, Blowing up the world trading system has consequences that the President isn't advertising (archive link):

On a basic level, like any sales tax, it's regressive and will hurt the poor (and the MM's base) more than the well off ...

The reptiles preferred a more anodyne illustration ...US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs.

Killer did his very best to soft soap the whole affair ...

Amid the cacophony of ignorant rage over the US tariffs, another obvious though no less significant point has been overlooked: Trump repeatedly said he would prefer to rely more on tariffs and less on income tax.
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation and the US was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been … then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax,” the US President said, making an implicit argument about the relative merits of different taxes. Perhaps one that’s gone over our Prime Minister’s head!
It’s entirely the sovereign right of the US to decide how it raises revenue from economic activity that occurs within its jurisdiction. If the US, whose share of global GDP has halved to around 25 per cent of global GDP since World War II, wants to build an economic moat around itself, then so be it.
Australia prevents foreigners from buying established dwellings and accessing our subsidised public health and, quite reasonably, insists foreign workers pay Australian rates of income tax. Similarly, Australians pay US tax rates when conducting business in the US.
Trump often says tariff is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”. But it is a wonder it’s in the dictionary at all, given the confusion caused. Tariffs are simply another type of tax, in this case on US importers, which are the only entities obliged to pay any of these new taxes to the US government. No Australian will pay a cent to the US government from these tariffs.
It’s not correct to say the US is putting tariffs on Australia or other countries; no one outside the US will pay a cent to the US Treasury as result of these new measures. To be sure, Australian and other exporters into the US may choose to lower the prices they charge US importers to partly offset the impact of the tariff, thereby seeking to remain competitive against locally produced alternatives.

For some reason the reptiles decided to drag in a comedian to do a Killer and reassure the mob, Comedian Alex Stein discusses how the Trump administration’s Liberation Day tariffs will affect the United States. “I’m sure there is going to be some short-term pain, then you read that Hyundai is going to build a $US20 billion factor in the United States to build cars”, Mr Stein told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power. “I think it is going to hurt in the short term and be better for the long term.”

Really? The best they have on offer to do sage economic advice and pump up the clown-run circus is another professional clown? Isn't he at a competitive advantage these days?

Whatever, it inspired Killer to another level of fearlessness ...

But that’s nothing new. The real burden of a given tax is never the same as the legal incidence. It depends on the relative market power of buyers and sellers in a given market.
All taxes – whatever names they go under: customs, duties, levies – are bad in varying degrees, and there’s a strong argument that income tax (Australia’s favourite) is even more economically damaging than a general tariff, let alone the stamp duties Australia levies on property transactions at obscene levels.
Far be it for us to lecture the US on optimal taxation!
“Tariffs are a recipe for higher prices and slower growth right around the world,” said Treasurer Jim Chalmers, whose government has imposed industrial and energy policies that do just that.
Trump hopes tariffs will revive the emaciated US manufacturing sector, which began to shrink precipitously in the early 2000s as American firms moved operations offshore to lower cost jurisdictions. Trump is channelling an increasingly niche but longstanding view about the pre-eminence of manufacturing going back to Alexander Hamilton, who once wrote: “Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures.”
Such jobs will only return if businesses believe these new measures to be permanent, and if the tariff makes significant enough inroads into the cost advantage of manufacturing outside the US. But that’s far from clear, given US wages are among the highest in the world.
In any case, the long-term damage to the global economy may not be as severe as feared.

At this point, Killer dared to go where the fearful had already been, with a snap from the archive ...Herbert Hoover

It's worth remembering that Killer of the IPA is one of Gina's mob, and so it's his duty to ignore the WSJ, still yammering on ...

That was all nothing, mere verbiage, a mere speck of dust in the Buddha-like understanding of Killer...

Tariffs got a very bad name in the wake of Herbert Hoover’s infamous Smoot Hawley Act of 1930, which is widely believed to have triggered the Great Depression. No doubt, a significant increase in tariffs didn’t help the US economy at that time, but the New York stock market and industrial production had already tanked a year earlier owing to a more fundamental economic malaise.
Almost a hundred years later, the benchmark S & P500 index in New York fell by less than 3 per cent on futures markets after Trump’s announcement. The local ASX200 fall didn’t even breach 2 per cent, suggesting the long-term hit to growth from these measures isn’t so significant. The economics profession appears to be predicting serious economic disruption, but that same group has made a habit of being totally wrong about the economic outlook for years – think the global financial crisis and Covid burst of inflation.
The word tariff incites fear and loathing, but it is just another tax, one of many the US might need to increase if Washington refused to get spending under control.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Relax, it's just another tax ...Killer of the IPA, sorter of Covid and masks and vaccines, has spoken ...

And so to the hole in the bucket man, and wisely, he decided to keep his head down, and stay home in Government spending spree reflects narcissism of our age, It’s fine to blame leaders but fiscal discipline is simply impossible if voters don’t want it.

The reptiles called it a five minute read, and where Killer had gone back to Hoover and Smoot Hawley, our Henry trumped him by heading back to Gladstone. 

But first a snap ... Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The pond found the infallible Pope a more reassuring take on the duelling duo...

The pond proposes that today our Henry really nailed the First Law of Our Henry ...“There is no argument that cannot be bolstered by citing a long-deceased notable who had no direct knowledge or experience of the subject under debate.”

Things have changed a little since the days of Gladstone and empire, but not in our Henry's world view...

Since coming to office, the Albanese government has increased public spending by over $130bn dollars in a splurge rivalled only by the ill-fated government of Gough Whitlam. And the sheer scale of this pharaonic achievement is understated because it excludes both $45bn in “off budget” spending and the spending promises that will be made in the weeks ahead.
It is consequently unsurprising that even on the budget’s optimistic projections, we will be well into the 2030s before the Commonwealth balances its books.
Yet whatever Labor’s anxieties about the forthcoming election, being penalised for fiscal recklessness isn’t among them; it plainly believes that throwing money around is the key to electoral success. The opposition is scarcely better, fearful that promising a speedy return to surplus will raise awkward questions about spending cuts.
Assuming our politicians, for all their shortcomings, can read the public mood, one can only conclude that budgetary restraint is well and truly passé.
William Gladstone, whose successive periods as chancellor of the exchequer and then prime minister largely shaped modern notions of fiscal rectitude, must be rolling in his grave.
Having entered politics at a time of intense fiscal anxiety – by 1825, the Napoleonic Wars’ astronomic cost had propelled Britain’s public debt to 300 per cent of GDP – durably fixing the public finances was a defining goal of Gladstone’s extraordinarily lengthy career.
The outlook seemed dire. Already in the mid-18th century, when the public debt was barely one-eighth its 1825 level, David Hume predicted that it contained “the seeds of ruin”, as the taxes needed to finance interest payments would eviscerate the middle class, plunging Britain into a “grievous despotism”.

The reptiles encouraged our Henry in his Antediluvian anecdotes with snaps from the archives (cheep, cheep) ... William Ewart Gladstone, David Hume

The pond found it difficult to suppress a yawn ..

Adam Smith was not as gloomy. However, even he feared that the debt-fuelled “waste and extravagance of government” was displacing productive investment – and the lesson he drew from history was that extensive public borrowing “has gradually enfeebled every state that has adopted it”.
Meanwhile, radicals denounced deficit spending as the pillar of the “old corruption” that enriched the ruling oligarchy at workers’ expense.
Those pressures elicited the beginnings of a response. Particularly important was Edmund Burke’s “Economical Reform” legislation of 1782, which – by curtailing patronage and increasing the transparency of public accounts – started the process of reducing “that corrupt influence which takes away vigour from our arms, wisdom from our councils and every shadow of authority from the most vulnerable parts of our constitution”.
But Gladstone did not merely pursue Burke’s reforms; he elevated fiscal rectitude from being a matter of expediency into the touchstone of public morality.
In 1828, the Select Committee on Public Income and Expenditure had laid down the principle “that no government is justified in taking even the smallest sum of money from the people, unless a case can be clearly established that it will be productive of an essential advantage to them, and of one that cannot be obtained by a smaller sacrifice”.

There you have it in a nutshell ... the way to deal with current matters, Ergas style ...In 1828, the Select Committee on Public Income and Expenditure had laid down the principle ...

FFS, not even a hint of comic relief?

What was all this inane wandering back into the past in aid of?

Gladstone went even further. “All excess in the public expenditure beyond the legitimate wants of the country is not only a waste,” he declared, “but a great political, and above all, a great moral evil” – for it involved an abandonment of the chancellor’s “sacred obligation” as “the trusted steward of the public”, undermining confidence in the integrity of government.
The results of Gladstone’s incessant efforts at fiscal repair were momentous. Government expenditure fell from 15 per cent of GNP in 1830 to 9 per cent in 1880; in France, by contrast, it rose from 7 per cent to 18 per cent. By the period’s end, even GW Norman, a radical liberal, could conclude that the British got “a better return for their moderately just and equal taxes than any other European country”.

The reptiles gave the pond a clue by interrupting our Henry with an AV distraction, featuring petulant Peta on Sky Noise down under, bagging the government, Sky News host Peta Credlin says almost everything the Albanese government has done has made a “bad situation worse”. The government has announced tens of billions worth of policies which have been matched by the opposition in the lead up to the hotly contested election. “Every day now from Labor, there's yet another spending announcement in the hope they will bribe you with your own money,” Ms Credlin said. “Tomorrow night, the Treasurer will deliver a spendathon, vote-buying budget and the Opposition leader will respond on Thursday with a ferocious critique of three years of bad government.”

All the blather about Gladstone was our Henry's idea of how to give Albo's mob a good bagging ... because you know, Victorian England and empire, wot wot ...

But Gladstone was still deeply concerned. “The mischiefs that arise from financial prodigality,” he warned, “creep onwards with a noiseless and stealthy step; they remain unseen and unfelt, until they have reached a magnitude absolutely overwhelming.”
Yet “with every increase of expenditure there grows up what may be termed ‘a spirit of expenditure’, a desire which, insensibly and unconsciously, affects the spirit of the people, of parliament, and perhaps even of those whose duty it is to submit the estimates to parliament”.
How was the “spirit of expenditure” to be exorcised? It was, in part, a question of leadership: of ensuring that no one became (or remained) chancellor who “makes popularity either his first consideration, or any consideration at all, in administering the public purse”.
Forgoing all self-promotion, the chancellor had to, by his “magisterial influence”, infuse the sense of economy into the entire public service, going from the mightiest “permanent officers that bear unobtrusive but effective sway in Whitehall” down to the lowliest “distributors of stamps”.
And it was also the chancellor’s task to constantly explain how and why the country’s finances, and the difficult choices they inevitably involved, were “at the root of English liberty”. Hence Gladstone’s magnificent speeches that, said a contemporary, “made thousands eager to follow the public balance-sheet, and the whole nation his audience”.
It is, however, questionable whether Gladstone could have been so successful, electorally and politically, had his values, shaped by evangelical Protestantism, not faithfully mirrored the broader population’s. At a time when, even in London, that den of sin and inequity, a third of adults were regular churchgoers, those values embodied the archetypal Victorian virtues: not least thrift, which was actively promoted by the ubiquitous Penny Banks that disseminated a culture of “making a choice” for “responsible saving”.

The reptiles helped out by slipping in a snap of Karl. 

Finally an attempt at comedy, A demonstrator dressed as Karl Marx marches along with activists and supporters of Russia's left-wing parties and movements during a May Day rally in Moscow.

Sure it came from a 2018 May Day march, on file in Shutterstock, but it did suggest our Henry might eventually get around to the new millennium and the neew world order ...

Nope, not on your nellie ... the best that our Henry could do was bring his history lessons up to just after World War One ...

Little wonder then that Gladstone, who adamantly opposed tax concessions, made an exception for savings, which were taxed far more lightly than other forms of income.
And little wonder too that he regarded establishing the immensely popular Post Office Savings Bank, which Karl Marx denounced as “a golden chain on which the government holds a large part of the working class”, as one of his three most important legislative achievements.
The Victorian virtues on which Gladstonian fiscal rectitude so heavily rested are now a thing of the past, replaced by the “virtue signalling” that is nothing more than a form of narcissism. Our leaders may not be up to the task; but is it unfair to suggest that, in the end, each epoch gets the fiscal leadership its moral calibre deserves?
The great economist Joseph Schumpeter, who learned that lesson the hard way when he served as Austria’s finance minister immediately after the First World War, put it best.
“The spirit of a people,” he wrote, “its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare – all this and more is written in its fiscal history, stripped of all phrases. He who knows how to listen to its message here discerns the thunder of world history more clearly than anywhere else.”
It would be a pity if, on May 3, when Australians head to the polls, the only thunder was the catastrophic crash of a nation that has lost its way.

A bigger pity? 

The pond proposes that it would be a far greater pity if all we can read at the lizard Oz is the Lynch mob blathering about culture, Killer out to lunch with Gina, and the thunder of a catastrophic bore, seeking solace in ancient times and ancient thinking ..

The pond is more than well done this day, way beyond medium rare, and so it's time to wrap up proceedings with an offering by the immortal Rowe ...

A special late arvo Liberation Day celebration, refracted through reptile eyes ...

This being Liberation Day, the pond felt a wild surge of excitement and decided to track the reptile reaction.

At first it seemed like bad news ...

Never mind Uncle "Cheesehead" Leon doing a Cheshire Cat routine, the news from the Nine rags was also gloomy ...

Elsewhere in the world the reaction seemed ominous ... these were the early moments at WaPo and the NY Times...

Everybody wanted to feature the stage prop featured in the reality TV star's ongoing show ...

At first, the reptiles sent out a minor player, Cameron Stewart to handle the news, and he went into a witchdoctor-induced depression, lasting all of three minutes, or so the reptiles said ...

Trump’s voodoo tariffs from the Witchdoctor-in-chief will hurt all Australians, Ten per tariffs aside, Australia’s economy, businesses, jobs and opportunity will be hit far harder by the broad global pain which Trump has inflicted on our major trading partners and on the global trading system.

Cam felt shafted ...President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would impose a 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the United States and higher duties on some of the country's biggest trading partners, in a move that ratchets up a trade war that he kicked off on his return to the White House.

Cam lashed out...

The utterly unwarranted 10 per cent across-the-board tariffs which Donald Trump has slapped on Australian exports to the US is the least of the pain which we will feel from Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ trade war.
Australia’s economy, businesses, jobs and opportunity will ultimately be hit far harder by the broad global pain which Trump has inflicted on our major trading partners and on the global trading system. Add to that the genuine risk that the fallout could trigger a market rout and even usher in a global recession and it’s not an exaggeration to say that we have witnessed one of the darkest days in world trade in our lifetime.
Trump chose to levy far higher tariffs than many economists were expecting, including 34 per cent for China, 26 per cent for India, 24 per cent for Japan and as well as a ten per cent across the board tariff on all US imports for countries like Australia.
Trump chose not to exempt Australia despite the fact that we are not even remotely a bad trading partner with the US, given that Australia is one of the few countries with a trade surplus with America and a free-trade agreement.
It was further evidence, if any was needed, that Trump pays little or no heed to the notion of alliances, loyalty or friendship with his tariff policy – just ask Canada – or even with his approach to global security – just ask Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

The reptiles showed the mango Mussolini in action, Donald Trump holds a signed executive order on tariffs. Picture: AP.

Cam was determined to be upset, to an almost unholy reptile degree ...

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs fundamentally change America’s relationship with the world. It will hurt Australia’s relationship with our closest ally and will reinforce the voices of those calling for a recalibration of the foreign, security and economic relationship with Trump’s Washington.
Trump may only be president for the next four years, but the protectionist wall he has built for friends and foes will lead to similar walls being built around the globe – a bleak outcome for a middle power like Australia which relies on free markets for its trading prosperity.
Trust in international affairs takes years to build and when broken like this, cannot be rebuilt overnight when broken. So Trump’s tariff wall and his approach to global affairs will damage the so-called rules based order well beyond the term of his presidency.
Trump’s tariffs are a cruel trick wrought upon the most vulnerable Americans who do not understand that they will hurt them more than anyone because they will pay higher prices for goods imported into the US. It will lead to inflation from a president who was elected on a promise to reduce prices.
Trump has concealed this ugly truth from ordinary American workers by packaging it up with the pretty bow of nationalism, saying it will lead to American jobs and factories ‘roaring back.’
Nothing is final with Trump and he has made it clear he is open to negotiations over these tariff levels – a sign that he will leverage them for other outcomes.
Yet these new tariffs on many countries are so large, that it is hard to see Trump walking away from them entirely.

That chart provided an AV distraction, as you'd expect from a reality TV star,  Trump shares chart showing reciprocal tariff discounts taking effect

It was all voodoo to the shafted Cam ...

The ultimate check for Trump on these tariffs in the short term will be global markets. No modern president has attached more importance to Wall St than Trump, who frequently boasted about its strength during his first presidential term. The market has been battered so far during his presidency, largely over his tariff policy and also by the general chaos of his administration.
If Wall St continues to plunge in the months ahead, you can expect Trump to take moves to temper the extent of these Liberation Day tariffs.
But there is no sugar coating what Trump has done to the world trading system. He has targeted America’s friends and foes with massive punitive tariffs on the false premise that they will make America great again.
It is voodoo economics which will hurt all Australians and Trump has sadly appointed himself as the witchdoctor-in-chief.

Luckily cooler heads prevailed, and relief was at hand however as the reptiles delivered updated news just before noon ...

The Duttonator was consulted and at first he had sounded gloomy ...

Peter Dutton says it is a “bad day for our country” and the US imposition of tariffs on Australian goods is “not the treatment Australians deserve”.
“We have a very trusted, long-standing and abiding relationship with the United States,” the Opposition Leader said.
“It spans 100 years and we have fought alongside and with the Americans in every major battle over that period of time.
“We have a special relationship with the United States and it hasn’t been treated with respect by the administration or by the President and the question now is what do we do to resolve this matter and to do it quickly?
“It’s clear to me that in the language that’s come out of the administration that there is a discussion to take place and it needs to take place as a matter of urgency because, as prime minister, I want to make sure that we can help our beef producers, make sure that we can help our manufacturers, grow our industry and increase employment in this country and we can do that through a normalised relationship in a trading sense with the United States and obviously to expand other markets, which is exactly what a Coalition government does and has a priority and always has had.”

The bouffant one was quickly on hand to see dark forces at work ...

Trade grenade manna from heaven for PM’s poll hopes, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton
Anthony Albanese has swiftly sought to maximise the political impact of Donald Trump’s tariff announcement.
By Dennis Shanahan

...The details of the economic and trade impacts will take some time to work out – it’s not clear to what extent beef exports will be affected – and only last week Treasury said in the budget that the reciprocal tariffs would have a modest impact on Australian trade because only 5 per cent of our goods go to the US.

But Labor’s hoped-for political impact will be immediately apparent.

Albanese is seeking to use Trump as a vast distraction to the domestic economic and political scene, and has been painting Peter Dutton as a “friend” of Trump for some time.

Of course, Albanese’s calling out of Trump as a danger to the world’s trade is a lot easier than calling out Xi Jinping over China’s trade war with Australia, its military aggression and dropping our WTO claims against Beijing over dumping of steel in our market.

The basic issue here is to what extent Australian voters decide the US tariffs from Liberation Day are a greater threat to their cost-of-living than rising energy prices, higher interest rates, mortgage costs, fuel prices and threat of government spending and policies which threaten another round of inflation and even lower productivity than the past two years.

An external threat is manna from heaven for a leader who has lost popularity and credibility on key issues.

The timing — during an election campaign — is perfect for Albanese.

Damn you mango Mussolini, but the Duttonator quickly worked out who was really at fault and who should cop all the blame ...

PM 'missing in action' on tariffs: Libs, Noah Yim
Peter Dutton has accused Anthony Albanese of being “weak and missing in action” and has placed blame on the Prime Minister for the “position we’re in today”.

Yes, it's absolutely nothing to do with the Cantaloupe Caligula, it's all the fault of Albo ...

“The Prime Minister didn’t know anything about it (the tariffs),” the Opposition Leader said.
“It was first made known to him when it was publicly announced.
“So that talks about the influence that the Prime Minister has in relation to this matter.
“I can say this much – I want success in the relationship but it’s not going to happen if the Prime Minister finds out about things through the press. There needs to be proper negotiation and consultation.”
Mr Dutton said he had the “strength of leadership and the experience to be able to stand up and fight for us, for our country, whether it’s in relation to our national interests in the trading space, in the national security space or elsewhere”.
“The Prime Minister has been weak and missing in action and that’s why we find ourselves in the position we’re in today,” he said.
“The Prime Minister has a pathway to an outcome here that can see a better final position for the relationship and for our country. But that has not been pursued so far.”
He said Mr Albanese must do “everything he can” to talk to President Trump in light of the tariffs announcement.
“The Prime Minister hasn’t been able to get a call or a meeting with President Trump, but that needs to change and he needs to do everything he can to leverage the ambassador and others to get the relationship normalised,” the Opposition Leader said.
“It’s obvious that the Prime Minister didn’t know anything about this announcement until it was actually released to the press, which also speaks to the state of the relationship at the moment. So I want to make sure that we can, as quickly as possible, resolve this matter.”

Amazing how a gigantic suck can move so seamlessly to sucking on a gigantic scale ...

Apparently we're supposed to forget all that went before ... to borrow that Wilcox 'toon again that had featured earlier ...

The pond didn't understand why the reptiles bothered with the mutton Dutton.

Nor could the pond appreciate some of the cheap humour doing the rounds ...

You can't let those bloody penguins get away with it or the next thing you know, George Miller will want to do a sequel, and there'll be endless squawking and cavorting ...

The Cantaloupe Caligula confronted the cheeky, uppity penguins about their saucy insouciance (the poley bears on Jan Mayen island are almost just as bad and deserve their 10% tariff) ...

Luckily the reptiles knew how to put an end to the nonsense.

With Australia close to the penguin folly, they had Mein Gott on hand to handle the fall-out and the pond immediately knew all would be well ...

How Australia can use US tariffs to its advantage by focussing on defence, It’s vital that Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton do not turn this into a ‘who can hit Trump the hardest’ competition but rather look at how we can turn it to our advantage.

Mein Gott reflexively went into pandering mode, doing the giant suck ... but first there came an AV distraction, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the country would continue to push for President Trump to remove the tariffs he announced earlier in the day.

Mein Gott quickly hit his stride ...

Australia and the rest of the world have been anticipating being hit with higher tariffs since Donald Trump began his presidential election campaign. Naturally, we will and must express our strong opposition to what the US has done.
But we will be drowned out in a chorus of international opposition, particularly from Asian countries who now have much higher tariffs than Australia.
It’s vital that Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton do not turn this into a “who can hit Trump the hardest” competition but rather look at how we can turn it to our advantage.
To help guide the nation I sought advice from a person who is respected in the trade area by both political parties: former trade minister Andrew Robb. He put together many of the free trade agreements that we now enjoy.

Andrew Robb! What a relief ...

I concluded that after our initial strong expressions of opposition, we might view April 3, 2025 as Liberation Day for Australia just as the US President has declared it Liberation Day for the USA. As I explain below, the beef situation is different.
To see April 3 as Liberation Day for Australia we need to first understand that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made it very clear that the issue of tariffs, which was a central part of the President’s election policy manifesto, is quite separate from defence considerations.
That means Australia is liberated because the ANZUS defence alliance with the US becomes separate from what we do on the trade front.

Yes, we're truly liberated, and at this point the reptiles laboriously replicated that tariff board seen above, and then took credit for the graphic...

You could read the full list on The Hill ...

Or you could admire the short-hand X-rated version ...

So the reptile list was a huge waste of space, and rather than replicate it, the pond quickly reverted to Mein Gott and the Robbster ...

We should continue talking to the US about tariffs and beef but it’s time to take advantage of that liberation and develop a much more active role in regional trade.
And it’s here that I sought the advice of Andrew Robb and he has put forward a strategy for both our political leaders.
“We should shine a huge light on our fundamental opposition to returning to a closed world of elite narcissism where the large and the strong do what they will, and the small and weak suffer what they must,” he says.
“We could and should make an unequivocal statement of where we stand by initiating a bold free trade initiative to combine the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) Free Trade Agreements to create one truly Asia/Pacific Free Trade Zone.”
Australia, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam are in both agreements. Cambodia, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand, are only in the RCEP while Canada, Chile Mexico Peru and the United Kingdom are only in the TPP.
India is in neither agreement but we have a trade agreement with India which puts us in a rare position of advantage in the region.

Mein Gott had no beef,  Our beef industry will have boundless safety reasons as to why US beef should not be allowed into Australia. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Mein Gott kept on with his cunning planning ... he's the burger king of cleverness ...

I think Robb is right that by bringing the two agreements together we will boost both the region and Australia’s position within the region.
It would obviously be more effective if India also joined but that may be later. The US should be invited even though at this point under its current trade policy it would not accept.
There will be tensions with the US because China, as a member of the RCEP, would be a leading player. But thanks to Rubio we have been invited to keep defence alliances and trade agreements separate - ie we have been liberated.
And let’s keep beef separate. The beef industry will have boundless safety reasons as to why US beef should not be allowed into Australia.
But with a few extra safeguards the real reason becomes that we are protecting our beef industry. The President is right.
On the other hand, America needs our beef in its hamburger industry partly because we help insulate it against droughts and other local forces impacting US domestic beef production.
But more importantly we are integrated into the US hamburger industry.
The US focuses on highly profitable grain fed beef production for both local and export markets. It claims that it only imports beef “from countries that have gone through a rigorous USDA audit process and have proven that their food safety systems are equivalent to ours”.
By blending the higher fat content of US beef trimmings with Australian lean beef it lowers the cost of hamburgers and maintains the favour.
Theoretically, the US could replace Australian beef with local beef but it’s much more profitable to sell US beef on the export market than use it in local hamburgers.
Of course that may change if US beef is excluded from its export markets.
We are being invited by the US President to discuss beef and we should take up the invitation. It will give us the opportunity to explain that we are taking advantage of his tariffs in our region to involve ourselves more deeply in regional trade, while taking advantage of the Rubio declaration.

Why, it's a win-winning, there's so much winning in the fertile imagination of Mein Gott ... and never mind that in his fantasy island, he seems unaware that there's a giant toddler being given free rein to rule like a king ...

Then came an epic Groan, designed to put Mein Gott in the shade...

Trump thinks he holds the winning cards, but reality is complicated, While it’s true that countries cheat, fudge and manipulate – gosh, even the US does this – trade between countries offers win-win outcomes that improve global living standards.
US President Donald Trump announcing the reciprocal tariffs at the White House. Picture: AFP
This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

In short ...

Surprisingly Dame Groan hadn't listened to Mein Gott explaining the tremendous upside and was sad ...

Donald Trump might call it Liberation Day, but it’s a sad day for the international trading system. While it’s true that countries cheat, fudge and manipulate – gosh, even the US does this – trade between countries offers win-win outcomes that improve global living standards.
The best approach would be to tackle the weaknesses of international trade rather than the US impose unilateral tariffs, with rates varying according to reasonably cack-handed assessments of tariff and non-tariff barriers countries impose on the US.
But Donald Trump’s win-lose view of world trade has led to where we are now. On the face of it, Australia has got off lightly, with a proposed tariff of 10 per cent, the lowest on offer.
Our beef trade is singled out for special mention because we don’t import US beef for biosecurity reasons. Whether these reasons are fully justified is not entirely clear, but the way forward would be for the US to seek some clarification (and transparency) for the ban.
What is of greater concern is the relatively high tariffs being imposed on China, our largest trading partner by a country mile. It’s not certain at this stage whether the announced tariff rate is in addition to the tariffs that already apply to Chinese exports to the US.

There was an AV distraction, President Donald Trump has announced a 10% tariff on Australian exports during his ‘Liberation Day’ speech, citing Australia’s longstanding ban on American beef imports. The move is likely to escalate trade tensions between the two countries.

The Groaner thought about fighting back, but didn't have the ticker ...

There is a possibility that the countries hit by Trump’s new tariffs will fight back. There is a possibility, for example, that China and other nearby countries, including possibly Australia, could form a free trade bloc, which could be quite harmful to the US. China and the EU are already in conversation about the possibility of forming a trade alliance.
In other words, Trump might think that he is holding all the winning cards, but the reality is more complicated.
This extends to what happens to exchange rates. Imposing tariffs drives up a local currency, the reverse of what Trump is seeking.
When tariffs were imposed on China during the first Trump and Biden administrations, the net effect was to see an appreciation of the US dollar and a depreciation of the renminbi. To be sure, the US received the tariff revenue, but the impact on trade was muted because of the offsetting impact of the currency movements.
The idea that Trump’s actions can be contested in the World Trade Organisation, something that the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, is considering, is fanciful. Apart from the fact that the WTO is barely functional, these types of cases take a long time to conclude. It’s also not clear that the US would take any notice of the final decision.
The more likely outcome is that the world will simply have to wait until the negative effects on US industry and consumers become more apparent. It is at this point that the volatile president could easily change his mind. The impact on the sharemarket is also an important consideration. Were the Dow Jones index to fall significantly, for instance, then there is likely to some rethink of the strategy.
Anticipating the impact on car prices, there has already been an announcement by the Trump administration of full tax deductibility of interest on car loans, which would have the effect of offsetting, at least in part, the tariff hit to consumers. Recall that the soy bean producers who were badly affected by the earlier tariff imposed on China were showered with subsidies to offset the impact.

(At this point the reptiles repeated their list of tariffs, but missed out on vital ones like the 50% on Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the punishment of the ruffians on the Falkland Islands - 41% - the emasculation of the felons of Norfolk Island - 29% - and Nauru - 30% - and the degutting of perhaps the most terrifying and threatening country of all - Tokelau - 10%).

Dame Groan carried on with her groaning, not entirely convinced of the wisdom foisted on the world by her kissing cousins at Faux Noise:

This raises the issue of the net impact on revenue for the US which, on the face of it, is a driving force behind Liberation Day. To the extent that the administration is forced to compensate US businesses and consumers, the all-up gain in revenue will be much less than anticipated. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, the gain in revenue is small relative to income tax revenue, for instance.
Having said this, there is really no chance that Trump will change his mind on tariffs, at least in the short term. He simply refuses to believe that tariffs are the equivalent of taxes, the burden off which falls mainly on low-income people. And ultimately tariffs are ineffective at encouraging investment in import-competing industries, something that Australia finally came to realise.
zthis is not to deny that there may be geo-strategic reasons for thinking about trade policy – targeted tariffs or bans, even, can make sense to ensure guaranteed supplies of critical goods. But Trump’s Liberation Day is something else: it’s a scattergun approach that will come unstuck over time. In the meantime, other countries will react in varying ways, including imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on US imports while also setting up competing trading blocs.
Australia is best placed to keep its power dry, rule out imposing reciprocal tariffs and wait. Entering into dialogues with these other countries, as well as the US, also makes sense.

Golly, that's all she Groaned?

Did Mein Gott have the best zany solutions of all?

In all the fuss, the pond almost forgot to mention a two minute outing by the WSJ Editorial Board, faithfully reproduced by the reptiles, The MAGA backlash arrives, The Democrats’ victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election is a warning to Republicans that the Trump-Musk governing style could cost them control of Congress next year.

So much winning ... Elon Musk listens as US President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 11.

Winning hugely ...

Democrats solidified their 4-3 progressive majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday, and the ramifications are nationwide. The comfortable win by Democratic Judge Susan Crawford is the second sign in two weeks of a political backlash against the Trump Presidency.
Democrats turned out in large numbers to defeat Republican Judge Brad Schimel in a race in which the two sides may have spent as much as $100 million. Democrats sought to make the race a referendum on Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and Mr Musk responded by trying to mobilise the Trump voters who tend to stay home in spring elections. The Democratic bet paid off.
That’s a warning to the GOP that the Trump-Musk governing style is stirring a backlash that could cost them control of Congress next year. All the more so given the results in two special House races in Florida Tuesday to replace a pair of Republicans.
These are safe seats, and Republicans won the western Panhandle district held by Matt Gaetz with some room to spare. But Jimmy Patronis’s 57 per cent was about nine points less than the 66 per cent that Mr Gaetz won in 2024. It was a similar story in the Palm Coast seat of former Rep. Mike Waltz, who is now Mr Trump’s national security adviser.
Democrats had a better candidate, but the swing to Democrats was about nine points from Mr Waltz’s 66.5 per cent vote share in 2024 to state Sen. Randy Fine’s roughly 57 per cent on Tuesday. Democrats are fired up to make a statement about Mr Trump’s polarising second term. Last week they flipped a Pennsylvania state Senate seat long held by the GOP.

The winning never stopped, Wisconsin's Supreme Court will keep its narrow liberal majority after Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford eased to victory in one of the most closely watched state judicial races in yea …

Or was this just another WSJ FAFO moment?

Republicans can console themselves that they held the Florida seats and thus their narrow House majority. And we hope the results don’t scare House Republicans into backing away from their tax and regulatory reform agenda. That’s what Democrats would love, so next year they’d get the benefit both ways — motivated Democrats and sullen Republicans after a GOP governing failure.
But the elections are a warning to Mr Trump to focus on what got him re-elected — especially prices and growth in real incomes after inflation. His willy-nilly tariff agenda undermining stock prices and consumer and business confidence isn’t helping.
As for Wisconsin, Republicans in that state will now have to live with a wilful Supreme Court majority that could reverse nearly everything the GOP accomplished under former Gov. Scott Walker. School vouchers, collective-bargaining reform for public workers, tort reform and more are likely to be challenged in lawsuits by the left. Congressional district electoral maps will also be challenged and could cost the GOP two House seats.
The MAGA majority may have a shorter run than advertised.
The Wall St Journal

Oh yes, there'll be huge winning....

Finally on this freedumb day, a friend sent along a link to a piece from Germany's Zeid.de, by Von Florian Illies, Thanks America, That’ll Be All, Andy Warhol, Big Mac, iPhone: It was a grand American epoch. But it’s over. Europe must finally emancipate itself – just not as awkwardly as Jürgen Habermas might like.

It was a vale and an elegy, but there also seemed to be a lot of winning ...

Thank you for Andy Warhol. Thank you for the Big Mac and the iPhone. Thank you, too, for Francis Ford Coppola, for Stanley Kubrick and Quentin Tarantino. Thank you for Angela Davis, Joan Mitchell and Susan Sontag. Thank you for F. Scott Fitzgerald, for Aretha Franklin, Edward Hopper and also for Levi’s 501s. And now: Goodbye.

(Indeed, indeed, each day the pond says a silent prayer of thanks for the opportunity to watch Megalopolis and read a Sontag novel).

Yes, it was a grand American epoch, one that afforded us here in Europe with a hundred years of security, pleasure and stimulation. But every good thing must come to an end. Now, we can finally abandon our meek submission. We no longer have to skittishly acquiesce to each new crazed impulse from the prepotent, red-tied occupants of the White House. We must no longer listen, wide-eyed with horror, as the American vice president terminates our friendship. We don’t have to immediately contract the flu when someone in America coughs. In 1925, one-hundred years ago, the Americans gave us The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos, Hemingway’s first short stories, Josephine Baker’s first dance. America gave the world the first motel and the magazine The New Yorker. And it went on like that for ten decades.
The spirit of the age found a home in America, and the west wind reliably blew all the benefits and aberrations of capitalism across the Atlantic, every new music style, every new art genre, every new student movement, every new take on the world. But now that lunacy has installed itself in Washington for the next four years, the time has finally come for Europe to once again try its hand at hosting the spirit of the age. After all, that arrangement worked out rather well for the 2000 years before Hemingway and the Big Mac.
A brief reminder: When the Europeans conquered the American continent in the early 16th century, at a time when coyotes and grizzlies were still bidding each other good night where New York and Los Angeles would later appear – Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo were feverishly drawing, painting and building the Medici’s Florence, the spiritual center of the world. And this High Renaissance was itself just a "rebirth" of the venerated advanced civilizations of Greek and Roman antiquity a couple thousand years earlier.
We have, in other words, a slightly larger slice of the cultural history pie than the North Americans. And yes, it is, in fact, astounding just how fast they were able to catch up in the 19th century and cruise on past in the 20th century – technically, militarily and culturally. But now the time has come to stop obsessing about the humiliations from the New World and reflect on our own roots and strengths here in the Old World.
Never forget: Coffee existed even before Starbucks. And the computer was invented by Konrad Zuse, not Steve Jobs. The best books by Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Susan Sontag are set in Europe, Andy Warhol’s mother comes from the Carpathians, Bill Gates collects French impressionists, and the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is from Vienna.
Since World War II, the European – and particularly the German – perception of the U.S. has always been a bit schizophrenic. As deeply objectionable as the McCarthy era, the Vietnam War and the Iraq invasion were, everything cultural and pop-cultural produced by America’s liberal universities, publishing houses, film and record studios was eagerly and reverently snapped by Europeans over the course of several decades. The products from America were usually a bit more original, more fun, more sophisticated – and simply better.
Now, though, with the administration of Donald Trump, it’s not just American politics that is appalling, more appalling than ever before. Consumerism has also lost its shine, as it, too, seems infected by the Trumpian specter of illiberalism. It is spreading like an infectious disease. Those who use Instagram know that Mark Zuckerberg has kowtowed to Trump, those who order something from Amazon know that Jeff Bezos invited the president to his wedding – and every Tesla driver wants to punch the steering wheel every morning because their erstwhile mobile testament to coolness and climate awareness has suddenly become an enabler for Elon Musk’s chainsaw-wielding fever dream. It seems as if everything American has suddenly lost its innocence. Only the brave, recalcitrant journalists from the New York Times, the New Yorker and the Atlantic have not yet fallen under the broad veil of suspicion.

The New York Times? Brave, recalcitrant journalists?

Oh dear he was doing so well up to that moment, but at least the pond now understands what both siderism means in Germany.

Apparently a literal translation would be ... beides Siderismus

Alas and alack, according to at least one English dictionary this only adds to the confusion that the hacks at the NY Times foist on the world in their constant attempts to present both sides of the picture, giving Satan his due while dissing on the angels...

So it goes ...and what a glorious Liberation Day, full of fun for all ...