Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Another rich and full day at the pond, with nary a hint of a reptilexit ... just a good Dame Slapping ...

(Above: and more Rowe here).

So there was the pond sitting down to watch a little stress-relieving television when, to the surprise of all, up bobbed Lazarus.

Naturally Leigh Sales lobbed down an under-arm soft ball to start proceedings:

What do you think has been the single biggest change in Australian society since your election?

And naturally Howard whacked it out of the park with "Undeniably, the threat of terrorism."

Now at that pond the pond expected the natural follow up. "Then do you regret your involving of Australia in the Iraq war? Thereby paving the way for Daesh?"

After all, in recent days, the pond's news feed has been inundated by the Daily Troll going at Tony Bleagh very hard, with stories such as Sickening lies. Serial deceit. And proof Blair has blood on his hands. Just google and you'll cop A man without morals, the sickening truth about how Blair's made MILLIONS from doing dirty deals with dictators.

Never mind that wandering apostrophe, line up for A 'useless, useless' £10 million peace envoy ...

But no, instead of something penetrating, we copped this from Sales:

...we are all these years later and Australia is less safe from terrorism than ever. What did we do wrong? 

What did we do wrong? Like ask you insipid questions or vote for you?

JOHN HOWARD: I'm not sure... I'm not sure that we're less safe. In fact, I think we are less vulnerable to terrorism because of so many of the things you've talked about: the investment in our security agencies.

Yes, the goose had provided Lazarus with an easy out ... and so the pond abused its partner for leaving the FTA TV on the ABC, fired up the PBS app and watched the Republican party and possibly the United States drift towards fascism, torture, the KKK, xenophobia, paranoia, and the rest of the festering Trump stew ...


Much more entertaining and relaxing.

Well it could be worse, the pond could have paid actual hard cash to watch the Bolter report from Rome for Sky TV on a man who has perfected the Catholic, compassionate, deeply Christian art of nothing knowing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing and doing nothing... and booking his ticket for third place in Rome ...(George Pell wasn't much interested in stories of abuse by priests. Which was lucky for his career).


And so on, google if you like, but oh dear, even the reptiles seem to be having some doubts ...


But there was some good news this day.


Hoo roo Joe and make sure you slam the door hard shut on your way out, you useless prawn.

And there were other delights and temptations at reptile HQ:



Oh yes, please, pretty please, go the whole Kevin ...

And for those with a taste for the sickly sweet smell of bitter almonds - yes it's a common indicator of a TV trope - you could go the full neo-Oreo ...


And yet no stories, outside the pond, at the way that neo-delusional, neo-hysterical biscuits have hijacked the reptiles' opinion pages.

Speaking of which, by now many pond readers will by this point be chomping at the bit, waiting to get into a reptile of substance? 

Well, who better than Dame Slap, and on a topic rarely visited by the pond in much the same way as the pond only visits the old country, the old Blighty, to be reminded of the Irish and Indian massacres of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ...

It transpires, as we started with Tony Bleagh, that Dame Slap has been swilling Newcastle Brown ale and eating warm baked beans for breakfast, and such is her unnerving capacity to relate to the common British folk, that she has emerged with a deep and enriching understanding of "voters", what "voters" think, the common herd wisdom of the "voters" ...

Please admire this astonishing capacity ...


Indeed, indeed. And it was even better in 1939 when nation states could do their thing! 

But please, we haven't yet seen how wonderfully Dame Slap is in tune with teh voters ...


Indeed, indeed. How shocking it was when the EU stopped Tony Bleagh from heading off to the Middle East in consort and conspiracy with George W and Dick Cheney. 

How dare the EU have prevented that little bit of colonial imperialism and adventurism. Why the failure to remove Saddam Hussein has seen the middle east spiral out of control into its current mess ... it certainly makes the pond wonder about the nature of politics, who participates in politics and for whom political structures are organised. Fancy imagining that it was for benefit of the Chairman and his minions ...

It's time to get Britain out of the EU so it can revert to colonial adventures, the Scots can leave to join the EU, and Australian voters can begin to wonder who organised the political structure that will see King Chuck on the throne, and no roundheads on the horizon ...


Indeed, indeed, it's called democracy and the right of Tony Bleagh to go to war on whatever devious grounds he invents.

As for the rest, it would seem that, unlike Gareth Gareth - oh aren't ethnic jokes so witty and so funny - Dame Dame Slap Slap isn't a devoted reader of the New Statesperson:


Yes, that was published in the New Statesperson on 10th February 2015, that's how long the notion has been rattling around, though you might find it easier to read here ...

And Nick Pearce was back at it again on 3rd February 2016 in After Brexit: the Eurosceptic vision of an Anglosphere future (may be slow to load).

In fact if you google, a skill some reptiles and Paul Sheehan are slow to acquire, you can find any number of hopeful references to a new world order featuring an Anglosphere ...

Never mind, the pond will now revert to watch the remarkable convolutions of the Pellopshere, up there with gravitational waves as a transubstantive mystery ...

The pond particularly enjoyed this effort by The Shovel here ...


And here's a few more warm-ups for today's proceedings ... and as the Canberra Times' gallery seems to be broken, you can get your Fairfax cartoons at The Age here ... (the Sydney mob are in the sourdough Krispy Kreme Kid Magic Water sin bin).










25 comments:

  1. My body is ivory tower supra-national too. How's yours?

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  2. "Oh yes, please, pretty please, go the whole Kevin ..."

    Oh yes, please: firstly lose to T'bull because of numerous character flaws, then defeat T'bull because of his numerous character flaws, and then stand for election, and with any luck, go the full Little Johnnie route and lose his seat too !

    Oh, one can but dream ...

    Talking of which, can I have Penny Wong as PM please ?

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  3. Bolt has turned!

    This year is already better than last year - which I thought wasn't possible.

    Woo hoo!!!

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    1. Oh no he hasn't - "turned" that is. He's just decided that despite having tugged the forelock and done the deferential genuflect, he isn't really one of "those people" - the ones that are "Pell's supporters" (Oh, I can't wait to see what peregrinations The Enviolated Devine has to go through to achieve the same result :-)

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    2. It is getting confusing late in the day GB - he appears to have turned again. I think it's safe to say that he'll end up regretting hotfooting to Rome as well! At this stage, we can all be absolutely sure that he doesn't know what he thinks.

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    3. I'm not sure that's altogether an uncommon state for him, VC, despite how much he blusters and blithers.

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  4. It is exquisitely painful to watch Pell squirming and prevaricating at the Royal Commission. (To be said in a Vincent Price voice). He didn't know anything, everyone else conspired to deceive him, he was ignorant of the gossip, all the others are to blame, it wasn't his job to do anything.

    I don't know where you can get more entertaining courtroom drama, except perhaps in Jim Carrey's 'Liar Liar!', if it wasn't so disgustingly sad.

    Pell is gone, dead, defunct, finished. For Whom the late Pell Tolls.

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    1. It was also exquisitely joyful to read Miranda Devine being utterly fucked over by Clare Linane for that hideous piece defending Pell from the "assorted victims" flying to Rome to face the great man. Bile flecked indeed - Miranda, I hope you are, but I doubt it's possible, embarrassed.

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  5. One wonders if Gorgeous George might be re-thinking his decision to impale himself on his own disgrace right on the doorstep of the Vatican?

    Far less world media in Ballarat on any given day.

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    1. Naahh, VC, if there's one thing that the Vatican is known for, it's Immaculate Deception (starting with the so-called Constantine Donation, and going on from there: bigger and better every year).

      The one thing you can rely on in the Vatican is a complete and total absence of that mythical creature, God Parts I, II and III. Here we have Pell, with apparently unquestioning support, acting as though God - the omniscient, omnipotent and immanent - doesn't know what he and Mulkearns and Risdale, amongst a caste of thousands, did and are still doing.

      But then maybe Pell believes that if he doesn't actually confess to us, God will join the farce and pretend He doesn't know either (sorry DP, but I reckon it has to be a He in this instance).

      The one constant, over nearly 2000 years, is the complete absence of God from the Catholic Church. He wasn't there when the Cathars were being massacred, he wasn't there when the Huguenots were being theologically cleansed, and he most definitely wasn't there when my old mate William Tyndale was abducted and murdered (inter alia).

      So I reckon Good ol' Pell-Mell is exactly where he should be, upholding millennial traditions.

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    2. http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nature/2016/03/could-chimpanzees-have-religion

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    3. "It's the unwillingness to imagine what others are going through. And that was what I meant by "banality" (of evil)" - Hannah Arendt on Eichmann and the black shirts.

      "It's a sad story and it wasn't much of interest to me" Cardinal George Pell on the Ballarat violators.

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    4. So perfectly put, VC. Evil succeeds through banality nd others doing nothing.

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    5. Well you gotta hand it to those underdeveloped PhDs, Anony: some classic anthropomorphism. At one end of the range, "gods" that are indistinguishable from sociopathic humans, and at the other end, chimps flinging rocks (but only because they don't have a large body of water to skim the rocks over) at "sacred chimp trees". Sigh.

      As to Hannah and banality, VC, I would once have perfunctorily disagreed - there are few anthropomorphisms less useful than a belief in "evil". Animals, and despite our overweening egos we are animals, kill. And very seldom do they kill mercifully or gently.

      So, no "banality" because no "evil". But nowadays it seems that psychopaths can actually feel 'empathy' if they really try. Or so the psychs say. Though some say that psychopaths don't feel pain as much as us 'normals' either, so they just don't usually see anything to empathize about.

      Anyhow, here is a description of 'psychopaths' courtesy of one Scott A Bonn in Psychology Today ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wicked-deeds/201401/how-tell-sociopath-psychopath )

      ____________________________________________-
      Psychopaths, ... are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.
      ______________________________________

      That sounds to me like he's saying that psychopaths can fake empathy at will. Anyhow, do any of us recognize Cardinal Pell in the above description ?

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  6. I wonder if you read to the end of Oriel's adolescent rambling about the left and neo-Marxism and how much politically correct social engineering these people do to make others safe. Much better to let them weaklings suffer until they learn how to be a rational individual.
    If you had you surely would have been impressed.
    Her conclusion bewailing the left's lack of vision; "How much greater students’ measure of human diversity would be if schools replaced politically correct programming with that apposite hilarity of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, or the soaring verse of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The best of ­humanity lies in its genius. Schools should rid the curriculum of oppressively mediocre activism and return to teaching greatness."
    Teaching greatness? Just like that.

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    1. Hmmm. Let's see: " They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them,...".

      Does that sound like anybody we might be discussing, Anony ?

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    2. I think Pell was raised to be a "great man"; his lack of empathy comes from a particular way of raising children.
      His speech, so measured and satisfactory to him but so lacking in any understanding of how others would respond, seems to me to be evidence that he believes in himself and his psychological diagnosis is he's delusional and a very bad case of 'motivated cognition'.
      The way I understand it, there are Psychopath genes but if these children are well socialised, they are able to understand others and develop empathy or an under standing of why it is a good thing.
      Children who do not have the psychopath gene can grow up lacking empathy because they never experience others as valuable.
      We can all change, but only if we want to. Got to be motivated to accept that one has been so very wrong. No?

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    3. So, psychopaths are made by nature and sociopaths are made by nurture, you reckon, Anony.

      Have a care there, or you'll be blundering into 'Refrigerator Mother' territory and end up calling Pell, or more likely Searson, autistic.

      Which mainly means you've gotta be very activated to even conceive that there is a "so very wrong" that you have been. Pell's theme is still "it's all their fault, they deceived me" and I can't see him ever climbing out of that very deeply comforting sleeping bag. Can you ?

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    4. Say what Anon, the Oreo wants us to examine the outpourings of a notorious homosexual and a pantheist egalitarian bisexual humanist? Will this decadence never cease, will this corruption of young minds continue endlessly? Better they should read the good book and discover that the world is but 6000 years young ...

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  7. Typing on a phone sucks.

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  8. Nope I knew I shouldn't comment on my phone.
    I am 'autistic' high functioning, apparently. Under stand lack of empathy from point of view as a Phd in psych and my own experience of being mothered by an earlier version of myself without the Phd. My children and grandchildren are also high functioning autistics or on the spectrum.
    It all genes and all nurture with nurture including the wider or narrower society.
    No more from me until I am at a real keyboard.

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  9. Sometimes GB you are quite inappropriate the way you jump to conclusions about what people mean. You might lack some empathy do you think? I'm dubious about anyone who still thinks that refergerator mothers are a thing.

    Anyway, you say "Pell's theme is still "it's all their fault, they deceived me" and I can't see him ever climbing out of that very deeply comforting sleeping bag. Can you ?

    I don't see that at all in Pell's words or his demeanour; I agree he will never climb out of his 'sleeping bag' or whatever but that is because he does not see that he is in a sleeping bag.

    He is one of the men who constructed the sleeping bag in which they and their male God rule the world.

    He is motivated to think in the way that demotes empathy to a lesser emotion, one for women and children but not for great men and will never be motivated to think like a lesser person.
    It's barking at the moon to ask him to feel empathy. Can't do it emotionally and won't do it intellectually.

    You do know that the diagnostic categories in the DSM are a bit dodgy don't you? Mostly US psychiatrists just make them up. They should only be used to diagnose people so they can get help.


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    1. Mayhap I do jump to conclusions, Anony, but I'm hardly Robisnon Crusoe in that respect. I do try to remember that "irony doesn't travel well, especially between people", but perhaps applying the thought of irony to a reference to 'refrigerator mothers' might help your jumping a little.

      As to Pell's "they deceived me", if you don't see that in Pell's words then you haven't been reading Pell's words because he has basically said just that - though "cover-up" was more his word of choice.

      Re DSM, yes I am well aware of DSM and the American Psychiatric Association's limitations. I never even bother to read my copy of DSM IVR these days and I won't be upgrading to DSM V.

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  10. Yes re the mockingbird and "greatness".
    Conventional "education" favored by "conservatives" has always about squashing "greatness" and especially creativity.
    It was, and still is about creating cannon-fodder and unconscious worker-ants for the industrial mega-machine, and for all of the inevitable imperial wars killing fields.

    Little boxes made out of ticky-tacky, little boxes ALL THE SAME.

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  11. And the Byzantine structures that Pell hides behind are beyonbg belief. There are Auxilliary Bishops, and Consultors, and Vicars-General and Nuncios, and Monseigneurs, and three types of school, Diocesian, Parish, Religious and Orders. Plus priests and assistant priests, and travelling monks. The poor Nuns don't get a look in. Pell plays them all, as he is well up on 'Canon law' Something like Sharia for the kikes.

    And who the hell are the 'Christian Brothers?'

    For God's sake, clear this shit out!

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