Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Day 72 of MUC and day 25 of MOC, and Dame Slap becomes a birther ...


Perforce, as we head into day 72 of Malware's unofficial campaign, and day 25 of Malware's official torture of Australia, the pond has to keep track of the reptiles of Oz campaign of fear ...

This day it's the doctors, and with no fear of blowback, thanks to a Barnes flapping in the breeze at the departing hooting owl ...


Well the doctors have their answer to their feeble attempt to tackle Malware and the reptiles ...


Sorry docs, you and your campaign here have been targeted by the Government Gazette, and the diligent reptiles have gazumped your arrow with a top notch fear campaign ...

There's too many doctors, there's too much of the health ...

And so on to the pleasures of the day, and what a singular pleasure Dame Slap has produced ...



Indeed, indeed, and no doubt there were scribblers back in the day scribbling It's time to take Herr Hitler seriously, or perhaps It's time to take Il Duce seriously ... though the latter was always a tougher ask, and the resemblances between the Donald and the Duce or perhaps Berlusconi are much more acute ...

But stay, the pond can already hear mutterings of Godwin's Law and rattling of swear jars for a coin donation ...

Forget it, the pond has supped deep of Xian bigotry and bile ...


You see how trippingly the holocaust and Nazis and the gay agenda dance off the bigot's keyboard?

Thanks to the bigoted, bilious Xians, the pond has got a year's free use of Nazi comparisons in its war chest!

But back to Dame Slap ... no doubt there will be a few who remember her wonderful series of articles It's time to take Lord Monckton and his climate science and his warning about the UN using climate change to advance world government seriously  ...

So her story this day, It's time to take Trump's birther campaign seriously, is just another example of her ability to get ahead of the curve ...


Indeed, indeed, it reminded the pond of a piece in the NYRB by Mark Danner, The Magic of Donald Trump (outside the paywall for the moment), in which Danner, inter alia, quoted a perceptive Richard Rorty from way back when:

Watching him blather and mug as he casually leaned over the podium in Boca Raton, seeing him cultivate the applause as if directing a symphony and then raise his two hands in thumbs-up gestures as he surfed the waves of applause and the deafening shouts of “USA! USA! USA!,” I recalled a remark that the philosopher Richard Rorty made back in 1997 about “the old industrialized democracies…heading into a Weimar-like period.” Citing evidence from “many writers on socioeconomic policy,” Rorty suggested that 
... members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. 
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots…. 
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion…. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
As Trump put it in Nevada, “I love the poorly educated!” Rorty’s words prophesy not only the strongman’s rise but his blithe refusal to let “political correctness” prevent him making sexist and bigoted remarks, and his fans’ euphoric enjoyment of their hero’s reveling in the pleasures of free speech. He says what he wants: he is rich enough, strong enough, to do what he pleases. Strength: though he has had no experience whatever in foreign affairs, polls consistently show he inspires the most confidence among Republicans when it comes to protecting the country.

It was inevitable that Dame Slap would join in the chant for a strong man, and never mind the actual nature of the strength ...


Oh indeed, indeed, that wicked Bill Shorten ...



Well just as the fascists had their quislings and their facilitators, it was inevitable that the Faux Noise roll-over to the Donald would reach down under, and just as inevitable, that Dame Slap would be in the vanguard ...

And there, right at the end, talking about a workers' party and real wages, is why Dame Slap suggesting the need to take Trump seriously sent the pond into a round of hollow, post-ironic Sierra Madre laughter.

You see, you can get a Trump quote on anything to trump a Trump quote on anything. 

Dame Slap's got a workers' party and a wage rise?

The pond's got Trump's actual employment and wages practices, and this ...


Of course within the week, Trump had walked it back with I never said wages are too high. 

But this is what we're supposed to take seriously? 

A man who makes Hitler seem like he had a coherent strategy and vision?

Seems so ...


So if we don't vote for Malware, we'll end up with Donald Trump ... or perhaps Pauline Hanson? And we shouldn't mind a little casual bigotry along the way ...

Planet Janet is always bizarre to visit, but this is surely an example of the extreme self-loathing that lurks within her ... because she's exactly the sort of phenomenon that the Donald's supporters despise.

Well the fascists had their nervous quislings and facilitators too, and no doubt they wrote exactly these kinds of columns long ago, back in the 1920s, when times were much tougher than they are today ... but damned if the pond is going to take the Donald or local politics so seriously that it must lose its sense of humour, especially if it means giving up the chance to chortle along with Dame Slap ...

Which brings the pond to its real gripe of the day.

Dammit, Fairfax get a grip. 

The pond is well aware that you're trying to pretend that your centralised brand has some kind of local relevance ... but the result is that you end up treating the one genuine jewel in the Canberra Times crown with a disturbing lack of piety ...

This is what happens when you attempt an inept re-direct on a gallery ...


Just get your shit together and treat Pope with proper papal reverence and the pond can go back to pretending The Canberra Times has got something to do with Canberra, as opposed to a brand recycling material from The Age ...

In the meantime, you can find more Rowe here celebrating Dame Slap celebrating the local Donalds busy at their work...




14 comments:

  1. "Planet Janet is always bizarre to visit...".

    You sure spoke a mindful there, DP. Yes, she really is a rampant 'belief floozy'.

    Makes me think of various sales persons I encountered in my long gone past (computer salesmen as it happens of the long extinct mainframe computer sales variety). It was plain that most of them could tell the most outrageous lies because they actually believed what they were saying ... well, for just as long as it took to say it, anyway.

    So is that the secret of Dame Slap ? Just a 'true salesman' talent for believing anything for just long enough ? Or, as I suspect, does she have a truly labyrinthine partitioned mind - just like 'The Donald' in so many ways - that simultaneously holds many contradictory beliefs because she always manages, somehow, to keep them from colliding with each other.

    Yes, we all manage some fair amount of that, but she's a real doozy.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. From Janet's description, it all really seems so simple.

      No need to burden your appraisal of Trump by his actual policies or his ability to work within the political establishment to get things done.

      Simply saying "make America great again" seems enough to actually make it happen. Who cares how?

      But there is a risk to Trump in this simplicity.

      If any establishment politician or punter for that matter, simply abandons any constraints from 'political correctness' and says they wants to refocus and support America's working class (no need to actually articulate how…) he's now up against another 'serious contender' - well from Janet's perspective at least.

      Delete
    2. She writes so enthusiastically perhaps because he's got one over on those inner city elites - that and she's read the memo from the dessicated corpse spider that employs her.

      Delete
  2. Slap's notion of political paralysis? I don't see it. I see a rigid LNP murdocracy fixation - from every angle.

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  3. Ah yes - Ronald Reagan the "great communicator".
    Never mind that he provided the catalyst for the systematic destruction of (first) the prosperous blue collar working class, then (next) the prosperous lower middle classes, and then the middle class altogether. He was of course also partly (mostly) responsible for turning the USA into a truly zombified nation.

    Two truth-telling references on the "great" man and his toxic actions and legacies.
    www.psychohistory.com/books/reagans-america

    The Man Who Sold the World - Ronald Reagan & the Betrayal of Mainstream America by William Kleinknecht - check out the review on the Third World Traveler website

    ReplyDelete
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    1. But Anony, old Ronnie did such a good job on tax reform for the Savings and Loan 'shadow' banks. You can't hold it against him that at least 1/3rd failed and had to be bailed out with $160+ billion of taxpayer dollars.

      Delete
  4. Dorothy, from The Prime Directive, a link to the blogger Ian Welsh (editor, writer and social media consultant) who has some interesting well said things to say on related matters...

    The Role of Politicians in an Oligarchy…
    …is to wrangle voters for oligarchs then enact policies to make the rich, richer... The vast, vast majority of politicians in the developed world are not just corrupt, they are your enemies. The actions they take impoverish and kill you in exchange for wealth and favors from the rich.

    Trump Starts His March Leftwards By Saying He’ll Tax Rich People
    ..The standard rule in an election is you run to the primary voters during the primary, then you run to the rest of the people you want voting for you and funding you. Clinton is now running to oligarchs, neoconservatives and Republicans who despise Trump; while Trump is running left to get economic populists.

    Why Hillary Clinton Is the Worst Kind of Leader
    ..Hillary Clinton doesn’t just make mistakes, she makes big mistakes, the kind that cost a lot of other people their lives and leave ruin and chaos in her wake. She doubles down on them and persists in them long after virtually everyone else has come to realize that they were mistakes. And then she repeats them.

    People Are Soooo Convinced Trump Can’t Win the Presidency
    ..I shouldn’t have to point out, but apparently do, that Trump will now move to the center. He’s pandered to the right-wingers whom he needed to to win the nomination. Now, he’ll pander to the people he needs to win the presidency.

    Seven Rules for Running a Real Left-Wing Government
    ..It is not possible to have a fair, egalitarian, prosperous society, and have very rich and powerful elites. It cannot be done. Brandeis^ was exactly right when he said you can have democracy or great wealth in the hands of a few, but you can’t have both.

    Hollande Continues to Prove that a Fake Left-Winger Is Worse than Most Right-Wingers
    ..There are other options than neoliberalism, but people like Hollande are too intellectually cramped and too much products of “there is no alternative” to even know what they are, let alone consider them.

    Surviving Climate Change
    ..Are you in a “global city” where the richer citizens may want an “insurance property” driving up real-estate prices even more? ..Move before you are required to flee. Really. Take the hit necessary and get out, unless you’re old and without dependents.

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    1. ^Louis Brandeis - American people's lawyer

      Louis Brandeis - wikiquote
      We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
      - As quoted by Raymond Lonergan in Mr. Justice Brandeis, Great American (1941), p. 42.


      The Genesis of the “Democracy or Concentrated Wealth” Quote
      "There is one more notable instance of this quote in Labor. Keating would occasionally write a column for the editorial page under the pseudonym Raymond Lonergan. In the October 14, 1941 issue – just a few days after the death of Brandeis – “Lonergan” penned a eulogy for Brandeis in a column titled “A Steadfast Friend of Labor”:

      "“We must make our choice,” he once said to a younger friend, who appreciated the opportunity to sit at the feet of" this modern Gamaliel. “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both."

      Here, finally, is the quote in the form as it is known today.

      Delete
    2. https://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/trump-voters-erotic-confessions/

      That trump-voters-erotic-confessions on youtube here:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o08VNosL2Q

      Delete
  5. The namby-pamby General of Oz has been out and about today discussing inclusive use of the English language rather than focusing on blowing people up.

    Cue the vitriol from the usual suspects as the peanut gallery grabs the popcorn.

    Which, remarkably, would be a welcome (sort of) distraction from the tiresome wave after wave of election coverage (Aus and US) and mindless punditry.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh Cory, Cory quote ConTory

    First you quote a Neo-Nazi, and now you link to an article by a pro-rape Neanderthal that even Dutton thinks is not a fit person to enter Australia.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cory, Cory, quite ConTory,
      How does your garden grow?
      With silvertail, and cocks for sale,
      And naked maids all in a row

      Delete
  7. Oh Guardian, you seem to be obsessed with the sexual life of humans. You feed us a daily diet of orgasms (or the lack of), naked geriatrics, masturbation techniques, and why pornography is good or bad (depending on the day.) And now you deliver the cruellest cut.

    Does a vasectomy hurt?

    Yes of course it bloody does. Try self-emasculation with a blunt razor to get a feel for it. But it's over in a few days.

    Vas the bloody deferens? The best bit is the pre-op anaesthetic, which is the best high I've ever had.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/01/does-a-vasectomy-hurt-google


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah Anon, it's the reversal that really hurts. Still living with the results.

      Delete

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