Saturday, March 07, 2015

It's fundamentalist Saturday, and so the pond enters the Aladdin's cave of the crazed reptilian commentariat columnists ...


(Above: and more Pope here).

Discussion starter: has David Pope captured the rich psychopathology and the manic glee routinely on view in the poodle? Or would Frankenstein's monster be more to the point? Was there a role for King Kong?

Is the mystery of the cat in the box actually a too intelligent conundrum for a blackmailing, extorting sociopath?

Never mind, if you want another example of a scientist pondering the ineffable mystery of the poodle, there's always Les Field's Research infrastructure cuts harm science, the economy and the nation.

There (is) absolutely no real reason to couple NCRIS funding to higher education reforms. While the government might well be angered and frustrated that a hostile senate is blocking its higher education bills, it makes no sense to take this out on good science.

Sorry Les, the pond doesn't do sound policy or sound government, the pond only does sociopathic poodles and low comedy routines with pratfalls and cats in boxes.

Which is why the pond was vastly amused to read this Laurie Oakes' piece:


Yes it's a journalist talking about the leak fixers, courtesy of leakers leaking about the leakers and the leaking.

And the illustration is a ripper, featuring a solemn, stern fearless leader:


Sadly, Laurie Oakes uses the occasion of Stop the leaks to clear the air to deliver some outrageous slanders:

A week earlier, new Treasury head John Fraser had delivered a speech — complete with an eye-opening graph — showing how John Howard and Peter Costello contributed to the Budget damage that Hockey says we must now address. 
The graph, Fraser told a business audience, showed that “the Government received positive revenue surprises at successive budget updates from around 2002-03 to 2007-08, primarily due to the terms of trade persistently exceeding Treasury’s forecasts”. 
It also showed that “these positive revenue surprises were largely handed back through personal income tax cuts or spent”.
Much of the spending, including on “so-called middle-class welfare”, was done “without sufficient regard to the future prospects for servicing those ongoing transfers”. 
Fraser added: “Generous income testing arrangements for Family Tax Benefits in the early 2000s and access to million dollar contributions to tax-preferred superannuation through 2006-07 were notable examples of middle or higher income welfare that contributed to the problem.”

Sorry Mr Oakes, the pond doesn't do sound policies, or offer a bipartisan approach, it only does hypocrisy and enormous stupidity, bedevilled by a generous serving of nattering negativity.

What's that you say?

The intergenerational report is, in affect, an admission of past incompetence and deception. 
It also sits uneasily with apparent assurances from a chastened prime minister that this year’s Budget will not contain the kind of tough measures that alienated voters last time around. 
If Hockey goes soft on the Budget repair task in May, his own intergenerational report will be there as a stark reprimand.

Why it's funny you should say that, because today is the day the pond loves best of all, the krazed kommentariat of the weekend reptile warriors doing their thing for the lizard Oz, and what a feast there is today, starting at the top of the digital page with the news that Abbott has already gone soft:


Ah the sweet softness, essential for tissues and toilet paper and the big issues of the day ...

By the way, that story Ready for a big future tracks, below the big softening, features a family reported on when the first intergenerational theft report came to pass, and offers up some sublime graphs - we must have graphs, there should always be graphs - such as this:


Sure, it's completely meaningless, but it looks very serious, perhaps because it uses Custom HTML again ...

I mean, projections assume the trend economic growth continuing for more than thirty years, and never mind the climate science ...

But let's cut to the chase. Look at the rich offerings this day:


What a kornukopia of krazed kommentariat kolumnists doing it for the lizard Oz...

And how reassuring it is. Perhaps the most touching outing came from Dennis "the bouffant one" Shanahan gently murmuring in our ears that all was now well:

 Yes, He's listening, and all is ship shape.

But what's this? That solemn, tedious Paul Kelly has the arduous job of explaining how Abbott has gone soft, but still all might be well if he turns tough:



Oh dear, consider the bizarre contradictions at work:

Consider the bizarre contradictions at work. The Abbott government dumped its Medicare co-payment, the most rotten of the barnacles, and in a concession to the backbench lifted its defence force pay increase, only to produce an Intergenerational Report at week’s end that was an argument for tough fiscal savings of the type it was ditching...
...Abbott’s strategy is based on an unresolved contradiction that he makes no effort to disguise. He told parliament the IGR shows “that our country’s best days are ahead of us”, yet declared in the same breath this was “provided government can live within its means”. 
Abbott and Joe Hockey are selling optimism about the future. That’s essential to lift their public standing. But the theme of the IGR is the need for savings equivalent to the unpopular May 2014 budget to ensure the future demands of an ageing population can be financed.

And so on. It should go without saying - but the pond loves to say it - that Kelly no more manages to resolve the contradictions than has Abbott and jolly Joe, but the pond enjoyed watching him writhing on the spit of soft v. tough ...

You see, the reptiles want Abbott to stay in, and act tough, but in order to stay in, he must at least pretend to be soft and go about the business of planning to be tough in a covert way, least he startle the leakers and they get to leaking more to Laurie Oakes than talk of the leakers being rounded up...

What else?

Well devotees of the krazed kommentariat would have noted that prattling Polonius scored a rare splash in the rotating reptile splash of doom:


Indeed, indeed. Only 3 or 6 but better than the usual Nowheresville.

These days the sublimely irrelevant Hendo, clearly heading towards doddering senility,  reminds the pond of a kitten as much as Polonius. All you need is a ball of wool, perhaps with signs reading "ABC" and "Mark Scott" and the kitten will pounce on the ball and savage it furiously.

It occurred to the pond that no mention had been made, in the extensive reporting of the Knox Grammar school matter, of the way Mr Peter Roach is the school chair, Mrs Sue Conde its secretary, Mrs Fiona Balfour its treasurer, or the way the likes of Richard Alcock and Dr Simon Longstaff serve as council members (the school council is here).

But when you get a paranoid obsessive, and possibly delusional kitten having a go at a ball of wool, you have to expect a little fuzziness ...

It's such a bizarre and defensive, and naturally pro-Pellist and confused piece, that the pond would like to offer it to the world in all its faux outrage:


Yes, there's your crime right there, being a high-profile Australian.

But do go on, because, having defended the shameful behaviour of the Pellists, we need to get on with persecuting the allegedly shameful business of Scott and the ABC, as if somehow they're directly equivalent:


It's about this time in the laborious read - well Polonius always was a tedious old fart in Hamlet - that a couple of tendencies can be noted.

Firstly the way Hendo lives deep in the past, this time back in July 1975, and secondly the way he uses correspondence to harass people, as if they haven't got anything better to do than cater to his obsessional interests. And so it turns out again:


Dear sweet long absent lord, is that weird or what?

The pond looks forward to the Catholic church finally offering an explanation for its attitude to homosexuality, and an apology for its refusal to acknowledge the behaviour of Cardinal Newman and his sublimated homosexuality in the nineteenth century, when it was thought that men could love men, at least in a spiritual 'share my lodgings' way ...

That said, the pond  can think of nothing polite to say about Hendo's column, or its logic, but what a sublime joy to realise this is what the reptiles at the lizard Oz feature as intelligent reading at the top of their digital page.

But wait, you left without your steak knives, and in reality there's more, much more, because the canine consorter is also out and about this day:


The canine consorter, it should go without saying, is a fierce armchair general, ready to bang the drums of war, and to smote mightily doubters and nay sayers:

When the Howard government joined the Iraq War in 2003, the ships remained while the army and air force were also deployed. That controversial war colours all debate about the current strife. 
A strong theme of public and political debate is that we should not be too eager to get into another Iraq conflict. The grim reality is that our interests there are likely to be long term. Besides, the latest mutation of the conflict has reached out to our shores. 
The source of the current bloodshed is not so much that the US and its allies have been too hawkish, but that we were too eager to withdraw from Iraq. 
Much Iraq sentiment, perhaps understandably, is caught up in simplistic “war-based-on-a-lie” rhetoric laced with a post-­Vietnam hankering for isolationism. Green-left elements and large swaths of mainstream opinion characterises the Bush-Blair-Howard action from 2003 as the genesis of today’s Islamic State horrors. This has a powerful effect on the current debate, encouraging politicians to limit deployments and fudge their goals. The reality is that a rush to retreat from Iraq created the incubator for Islamic State.

The reality is that the rush into Iraq on the basis of lies about WMDs and hysterical paranoia about the dangers Iraq posed to the world is what created the incubator for Daesh and other forms of terrorism, but you can't tell that to stupid war mongers as they contemplate the fall out from their first effort ...

In the process you have to re-write history in favour of Bush and Blair:

No doubt this experience, along with the changed dynamic after 9/11, informed George Bush Jr in the 2003 war triggered by Iraq’s non-compliance with UN resolutions on weapons of mass destruction, threats to regional stability, continued support for anti-Israeli terrorism and human rights abuses of its own citizens.

It was actually triggered by lies, and not just ordinary lies, but knowing lies and sexed-up documents...

Now the same routine is going down ...

Now we have a weak Shia-dominated government in Baghdad relying on Iranian support, Kurdish self-reliance and an international coalition to combat Sunni militants in the north of the country. This is a fracturing along the Sunni-Shia divide that so many worried about a decade ago, and it is worse than expected. By claiming territory and establishing their version of a caliphate, Islamic State has become an inspiration for jihadists worldwide. 
The strategic consequences in the Middle East are amplified as it inspires murderous acts from Ottawa and Paris to Sydney and Melbourne and it offers itself as a nihilist base for those looking to plot further horror. 

Sydney? As further evidence emerges today that the barking mad Monis was barking mad a long time ago, with a bizarre fixation on Channel 7 and its 'current affairs' show? (The pond uses the term 'current affairs' loosely, when 'current foot in door' would be more to the point).(Martin Place gunman Man Monis believed Sunrise 'insulted' Mulsims and 'instructed terrorists').

The pond has always believed that fundamentalists need fundamentalists to keep the flames of fanaticism burning.

And so it turns out with the dog consorter:

Back in 2003, Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard argued that Hussein’s Iraq could once again become a threat to its neighbours and the West. But now its northern regions have morphed into a more sophisticated version of the Afghanistan badlands that harboured al-Qa’ida, Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 plotters. 
There is an informed view, best articulated in Australia by Tom Switzer, that this is not our battle; that the Sunni and Shia should be left to resolve their own schism. Yet the evolving lessons of Islamist extremism and failed states must surely be that there is no place to hide. 

The evolving lesson? The dog consorter's tribe of armchair generals has managed to create many more places for extremism to lurk in failed states. That's the evolving lesson ...

The US and its Western allies have considered it worthwhile to make long-term military and diplomatic investments to guarantee security in eastern Europe, the Pacific and the Korean Peninsula. This situation is not analogous and caution is warranted, but we deserve an honest discussion about long-term investments in Iraq to stabilise the Sunni-Shia fault line. 

So now the US and its western allies are going to sort out the Sunni-Shia fault line - running since the death of the prophet - by suddenly fighting alongside Iran while still keeping the fundamentalist Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia as allies ...

Leaving it to fester in a movable feast of Baathist nationalism, Syrian dysfunction, Iranian influence, Saudi sponsorship and Wahabist extremism is unlikely to be a safe — or humane — option. 
And just as Australians have served in Sinai, Cyprus and Timor, our limited commitment in Iraq might need to last a very long time.

So there you go. A very long time. War without end, and fundamentalists given endless excuses to stand up agains the western crusaders ...

In short, when you're tired of dog fucking, why not keep on fucking the middle east, or as it's known here at the pond, the middle west, for a very long time  ...

Oh Saturday, Saturday, what a heartbreak day you are, and every Saturday the pond reels away, chastened by reptilian madness.

But at least there's a Cathy Wilcox cartoon to hand, and more Wilcox here.



23 comments:

  1. Isn't that a lovely photo of dear Scott Morrisson?
    Positively benign, sort of like a loveable cuddly old friend, I'd certainly buy a used car from a fella looking like that.


    fred

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    1. It reminded me of that old line about a politician from Monty Python: 'I gave him my baby to kiss, and he bit it!'

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  2. When any politician talks about having a 'conversation with the Australian people' as Joe Hockey did this week, it makes we want to stuff my ear drums with cotton wool so I do not have to endure a flood of soothing, truth concealing words.

    Stuff like: We are listening. We are in this together. We must consider our children and our grand children.

    Alas 'The Conversation' is one-sided. In other words Hockey and the rest want you to listen up and be seduced by treacly words while the govt works in the shadows to deliver what their supporters want. They hope you will be so sweetened by treacle that you will not notice. Dot you described what is happening very well above.

    I wonder if the 'rebooting ' is working though. I have noticed a couple of News Corp columnists musing on whether the next NewsPoll will continue to deliver good news for the govt. The dreaded 'dead cat bounce' has been mentioned.

    In the meantime I take nothing said by politicians at face value. And I do not like treacle.

    Miss pp

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    1. Miss PP,

      It was when Joe talked about this fictitious "conversation with the Australian people" in one short AM feature two days ago that I threw the toaster at the wireless.

      Why do these numbnuts feel the need to repeat repeat repeat repeat the key words of whatever the day's brain fart is?

      Whom do I blame here? I MUST blame someone.

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    2. Bugger. Appalling sub-editing by, er, me.

      It was when Joe referred to this fictitious "conversation with the Australian people" for the sixth time in one short AM feature two days ago that I threw the toaster at the wireless.

      Why do these numbnuts feel the need to repeat repeat repeat repeat the key words of whatever the day's brain fart is?




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  3. Professor Methuselah Q. GerontiusMar 7, 2015, 11:01:00 AM

    Lord above. As Professor Mitchell at Newcastle points out, a deficit in a fiat currency system is a post facto description of spending by a currency monopoly issuer, and not an actual debt.

    Sovereign governments that issue a currency under a monopoly to a customer base that needs that currency to satisfy tax liabilities (you and me) can spend any damn amount they like, provided they have real resources to buy, and provided they don't compete with private sector for resources (one real cause of inflation).

    They don't need your tax dollar for funding because they have full right of currency issuance. The Federal Government could abolish all personal and corporate profit taxes tomorrow in full and continue funding programs indefinitely. They are a currency issuance monopoly. The biggest downside would be they would be turning off a prime government mechanism for controlling private sector spending power.

    Likewise, they can run an ongoing deficit with no issues if they manage other aspects of the economy correctly and don't tie themselves to unnecessary political acts of accountancy (eg arbitrary rules such as all funding must equal all tax).

    The real boomer issue is not where will we get the money. The same place as we ALWAYS do every single day - by government adding numbers to private sector banking accounts as they see fit.

    The real issue is where will we get the labour and facilities. Boomers will draw extra load on trained staff and hospital facilities, and you can't magically spend things into existence.

    We can ALWAYS afford it, given fiat currency macroeconomics, but will it be there to be bought?

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    1. Nicely put, but we pay the one percent first - and not in fiat.

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  4. Rather than the Frankenstein monster, the Poodle rather reminds me of Dr Pretorius (as played by the great Ernest Thesiger) , from "The Bride of Frankenstein":
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J104E5RgiN0
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7AKLKQqfj4

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  5. Wow! First they were modest, now they've gone all soft. Those crazy lizards at the Oz - what next?

    An admission they've been wrong all this time perhaps?

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  6. Henderson's latest criticism of the ABC is both fatuous and, ironically, an example of the double standard. I don't remember him drawing much attention to the fact that the infamous Meredith Hellicar was a high ranking member of his Sydney Institute, and that she resigned from it after her appalling behaviour with James Hardie was made public. This is ancient history, but much more recent that the 1975 radio program that he wants current ABC management to apologise for.

    In any case, wouldn't an attempt to understand the motivations of perpetrators of child abuse be useful? Wouldn't such an understanding have helped to prevent perpetrators being employed to work with children?

    Why does the ABC continue to give this obsessed fossil a platform on Insiders, and presumably pay him?

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  7. Fred Nile has issued a press release on the eve of Mardi Gras.

    "I am a crusader for human freedoms and family values governed by traditional Judeo-Christian values. It is wrong when freedoms are exploited and test our laws. This is evident annually in the Homosexual and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade.

    "Almost naked adults luridly imposing their sexuality to spectating, innocent children should be illegal as, according to our laws, it is indecent exposure."

    ""The activists in the homosexual community will always be faced with a fundamental deficiency. This deficiency is governed by Almighty God's law and natural law. Almighty God's intention for the continuance of life was to reproduce via the miracle of reproduction within the context of a male and female relationship.

    "Rev Fred Nile therefore calls on the NSW Police Force to uphold the existing laws as they would enforce every day and there should be no exemption on Mardi Gras night."

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    1. I strongly suspect that Fred has issued the same release ever year for the past several decades. It might b worth checking to see if he's remembered to change the date - though in Fred's world that might be superfluous, as it's always the 19th Century.

      I remember Fred first coming to public prominence (so to speak) around the mid '70s, as one of the co-leaders of the "Festival of Light", which he seemed to gradually take over. From memory, he was first elected to the NSW Upper House in the 1981 election, and almost 34 years later he's still there sucking on the public teat (*eeeww*); his late wife Elaine was also there for many years. In all of those years, has he done anything to successfully influence general public opinion? Has he been instrumental in implementing a single measure that's been beneficial to the general public of NSW? I'm pretty sure I already know the answers to those questions. I know that there's been some pretty stiff (*gaaa*! - there I go again!) competition, but could Fred be the most useless and parasitic NSW politician of his generation?

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    2. Too right Anon. How does Fred keep getting elected? And what is the point of the NSW upper house?

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  8. Hi Dorothy,

    How delightful to know that Henderson enters into a "correspondence" with those he chooses to harangue and defame.

    I am quite certain his missives must be handwritten in vermillion ink on the finest sheets of manila paper, each bearing the watermark of his beloved Sydney Institute.

    Indeed once his epistle had been placed in a matching envelope and sealed with drop of wax, I for one would not be surprised if his letter was then conveyed to the ABC by a runner with a cleft stick.

    None of the vagaries of modern electronic communication for Gerald.

    DW

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    1. Bloody vagaries I meant Gerard!

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    2. I represent that remark, cheers, lol.

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    3. Good one. About as authentic as Fake Andrew Bolt.

      http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-08-04/35696

      Satire is the way to go.with such dicks.


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  9. How "free market economics" caused the death of millions in Ireland, and how the British Parliament refused to consider actually feeding starving people. (It's Marxism doncha know).

    http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/nbw/pot_famine95.html


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  10. The K9 consorter is laying it on thick as usual, and well countered Dorothy. Kenny aparrently can't spell 'wahhabist'. Some can't mention the word, nor apparently can they say Philby, nor Ibn Saud, nor Uncle Sam when it comes to the greatest defeat of Gertrude Bell and her role in losing Saudi Arabia. How do you think Hollywood will present it all in the forthcoming movie with Nicole Kidman playing Gertrude. There's no Saudi finance in Hollywood is there?

    A quick dip and grab from the interesting Gertrude Bell Archive as linked from the Doogue's RN Saturday Extra Soapy show:
    Turkiyyeh
    Muhammad al Ma'rawi
    Courtyard of house - probably the Summer Palace of Muhammad al Rashid in which Gertrude Bell was held during her visit
    Gertrude writing of the lovely desert near the once, then currently new again, Saud wahhabist stronghold Inside might be more than a match for Gertrude, John Philby, advising ibn Saud. Did they meet there? By the next year acceptance of a British offer green lighting all the Ottoman booty to the north that Saud and his wahhabi warriors could plunder, arms and funding for that, and for the conquest of the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, and recognition of a line of wahhabi Saudi kings to rule in perpetuity. Not the king, not the line Gertrude was pushing at all...
    Gertrude writing a little later..lots of wahhabi Saud (Sa'ud) slaughtering all over the place!

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  11. Wow! Those opionaters at the aus are so far beyond crazy that I just cant....... on my brain hurts. Thanks for reading them so I don't have too.
    Deb

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  12. DP, you would agree that any man looks better in a suit & tie. So, the latest Abbott youtube is especially enticing. The New Tony is reaching out.

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    1. It depends UC. The pond has a soft spot for a bright canary yellow Najee suit, double breasted with huge shoulder pads - ah the 1980s when will they return - so when it comes to Tony Abbott, the pond prefers the quiet desperation of a middle aged inordinately vain man, going bald, worried about his masculinity, and therefore cladding himself in lycra or revealing togs. There's something especially enticing and revealing about that gear ... and luckily no suit or tie can remove the images engraved in that part of the pond's mind reserved for horror movies ...

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