Wednesday, November 16, 2016

In which the pond does a mega reptile editorial, Dame Slap burst of emotional irrationality posting, before retiring to the bunker hurt ...


Trust the Pope to set the right tone for a loser, dropkick nation - more papal infallibility here - and so it's off to deal with those nasty media elites, because let's face it, the nation is hopeless at cricket, and there are only two explanations - reptile media elites or Donald Trump ...

The pond's grandmother is rolling in her grave, while the pond is with the Queen and is vastly amused.

Sadly, the pond is off to the bunker again today, and so has only one posting in it, which is a tragedy, given the superb job the reptiles are doing in adjusting to the new world order ...

There's a charming mix of the old and the new, including a man who is a legend in his own lunchtime, at least in Deakin ...


The pond instantly went into "sneering elites" mode and wondered where it might find good examples ...

Unfortunately the pond allowed its vision to slide down a little on the very same Oz digital front page ...


Oh dear, so the sneering elites go searching for the perfect coffee, update their summer wardrobe, indulge in immersion retail therapy and head off to the Barossa valley on a bespoke package ...

Never mind the contradictions, feel for the reptiles as they try to steal the AFR demographic ...

You know, it's tremendously difficult reconciling shameless consumerism and rampant indulgence, while lecturing others about the way the plight of hard-done-by, long ignored and long suffering workers is of deep concern to caring reptiles (as if they really did give a flying fuck).

Thankfully, elsewhere, unaware of the shamelessness, the Oz editorialist let fly with more of the mumbo jumbo usual ...


Yes, it's up to the media to listen to the braying of clowns, and then to propose that the braying makes perfect sense ...

Remember how the reptiles used to love to mock relativism and subjectivism and all the post-modernist, post-ironic nonsense?

Here's how you can get yourself into listening to folk wisdom of the Being There kind ...


There, that's a classic Oz line:

"Worrying as his positions are, always look on the bright side of life. When you're chewing on Trumpian gristle, remember it's not as tough as it's often characterised, don't grumble, swallow it whole, digest it later, and give a whistle, and you too will be able to re-do your summer wardrobe, find the perfect coffee, take a trip to the Barossa, and indulge in immersion retail therapy, as is your working class right ..."


Now here it should be clearly understood that Greg Sheridan calling it for Hillary and getting egg on his face is just another of the bromancer's great calls; Barrie Cassidy calling it for Clinton is just sheer outrageous festering ideological barracking ...

As for the reptiles themselves, their tremendous reporting of climate science facts has always astonished the pond with its tremendous objectivity ... and now there's a climate denialist in the White House beavering away at climate denialism, no doubt they'll listen to the climate denialist public and keep in sharing a wide variety of strictly climate denialist opinions ...


It is very likely that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, with global temperatures even higher than the record-breaking temperatures in 2015. Preliminary data shows that 2016’s global temperatures are approximately 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to an assessment by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 
Global temperatures for January to September 2016 have been about 0.88° Celsius (1.58°F) above the average (14°C) for the 1961-1990 reference period, which is used by WMO as a baseline. Temperatures spiked in the early months of the year because of the powerful El NiƱo event of 2015-16. Preliminary data for October indicate that they are at a sufficiently high level for 2016 to remain on track for the title of hottest year on record. This would mean that 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have been this century (1998 was the other one).

But of course the reptiles listen to the climate denialists and share a variety of opinions that somehow always seem to end up supporting the Donald's opinion ...


Well speaking of Trumpian opinions, it wouldn't be a mega bumper post at the pond without the pond reaching out to Dame Slap and enjoying the juxtaposition of these two digital headlines ...


Now who knows if the top story is true, though the reptiles set their tree killer front page by it ...


If it is true, watch the spending spiral out of control, and the US debt go up in even more gigantic and huuuggge leaps and bounds, with all that might do for markets, and then wonder how a 'gigantic', 'huuuggge' military force might thwart China if all it does is stroll about like a bunch of pussies, rather than bunging on a mighty do ... say world war three for starters, and then we can see how we can push it into something really gigantic and huuuggge ...

First a few skirmishes between the two huuugge gigantic super-sized militaries in the south China sea, while meanwhile Vlad the impaler makes hay in Syria and what the Poms like to call the middle east ...

But that's the way it is with mindless reptiles. Give them a catch-cry like "super-size" and they'll take the burger, the fries and the huge drink of incredibly sweet kool-aid ...

Never mind, the pond must remain loyal to Dame Slap ...


Now of course what Dame Slap means to tell her class is "harden the fuck up", but of course she's too genteel and politically correct to actually say "harden the fuck up" in the proper Tamworth way, because when you boil it down, that sort of talk is the sort of mindless stupidity that might suit a sergeant major, but is singularly useless in the real world of the Dame Slap classroom...


Yes, the class is instead certain to cop the usual Dame Slap nonsense delivered in the usual strident school-marmish way...


You see, in Dame Slap's world, facts no longer matter, and Stephen Bannon and Breitbart are tremendously positive early signs, and this shouldn't be seen as a miasma of emotion, but an accurate reporting of scientific facts.

Others might read about the Trumpian Pravda here and wonder just a little, but in Dame Slap's bubble school, it's important never to question ... any flash of self-awareness would be noteworthy, and it's important on Planet Janet never to show noteworthy signs of self-awareness ... 

This will, in due course, have major implications for Fox and the Murdochians ...

What about the relationship between the Trump White House and a publication whose former executive chair is now in power? Cassino says that “it becomes like what Fox News was for Bush”, arguing that Bannon will see it as a media source he can trust, has access to and where he can get his message out. He points out that Trump is already appearing to freeze out other media sources. If true, this would leave Bannon as the main point of contact between an administration with a “bunker mentality” and its favored outlet. Breitbart will become “an influential source for the mainstream media to find out what’s going on inside the White House”.

So what happens when the extreme right is out-trumped by the even more extreme alt right?

Buckle down,  and scribble more furious nonsense about the need to harden the fuck up and just take it, like it or lump it, and so on and so forth...


Oh fuckity fuck fuck fuck ... the usual carry on, and all the worse because it purports to be about soul-searching, as if the rise of Trump shouldn't cause some soul-searching in Dame Slap and the rest of the reptiles ...

As if we hadn't noticed what's been happening these last few decades, and who has been doing it ... and so a single image will do as a response to Dame Slap in full mindlessly stupid rhetorical flight ...


It's the oldest con in the book, and all the more poignant that Dame Slap should routinely fall for the oldest con ...


Never mind, it's time to wrap things up ...


Yes, there are some classic lines there, which will no doubt be recalled as the Supreme Court is made over, Roe v. Wade is struck down, and lines like the biggest danger to women is not Trump, but gender studies experts, because gender studies experts have urged, along with Xian fundamentalists, for the bringing back of backyard abortions and the humiliation of women and the stripping of their rights (not to mention the right to go on pussy-grabbing as an expression of healthy maleness) ...

Well others might share Dame Slap's attitude to healthy human emotions and attempts at a little cheer ...


... but if reason leads to irrational Dame Slap stupidity, then the pond is all for emotion ... especially as there's an unseemly rush by all to don new hair colouring and new hair stylings, as captured by Rowe, and as always, more Rowe here as the pond heads off  to its underground bunker for the day ...




34 comments:

  1. So, according to Dame Slap, Tina Brown said: "These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat."

    Ok, then it's permissable not because you're a "star" but just because men are "boorish" and women are "resilient". Yep, that's the kind of thinking a Dame would identify with. I wonder how many "boorish" men she's encountered in her working life ?

    Then The Dame goes on to say: "If women want to be treated seriously, they need to choose reason over emotion. You can't have it both ways. You can't, with any credibility, attack Trump for saying that Fox's Megyn kelly had "blood coming out of her wherever" then give yourself over to pure, unadulterated emotion."

    Can anybody please enlighten me as to what that's supposed to mean ? What "pure, unadulterated emtion" is she spouting about ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It could be the emotion that comes with being Trumped, GB.

      Delete
    2. "what that's supposed to mean ?"

      Hmm, tricky.

      Such emotion may not be contingent, perhaps. It is wholly primal. It exists free in the universe a fundamental force of nature.

      Try 'disgruntled' - dis is contingent on and coloured by there being a gruntled that requires something to grunt about that may have led back to it. It is a circular existence most likely to dissipate in time.

      Compare that with 'rage', or 'anger' - this fine feeling is primal and self serving. It may be focus on anything directly or indirectly in its path and it may endure and encompass more than a life time.

      Delete
    3. Umm, Merc, do you think she can even play 500, much less bridge ?

      Err, Anony, do you think The Dame would understand what you are saying ? I don't - it isn't one of those French postmodern deconstructionist thingies, is it ? I never did learn to speak fluent Derrida or Foucault.

      Delete
    4. No none of that, GB. That's totally beyond me, all that Frenchified incomprehensible "impostures intellectuelles".

      As it happens, there being allowed only one language elective I studied German for some time, but on reflection I now realise the course was totally devoid of any Cultural Marxist content, and though it was a long march through the institution without hint of it being any Frankfurt School it also lacked any Marcuse in either German or translation. Bother! But such was the case for poorly planned, and impoverished NSW state education throughout the intersection of the bagman "run the bastards over" Bob Askin and post-war baby boom periods. It was a kind of Apocalypse Now prequel, lots of torture, existential yet unreal. For examples, I recall screaming kids dangled by their feet from second story windows by a teacher. Better that than by the scruff of the neck, throat, or once by the neck tie and forgotten by the animated teacher, he being so engrossed in delivering the Shakespeare lesson. The kid regained consciousness and lived... I recall a youthful Californian relief teacher, Mr Beams, who expounded and demonstrated the optimal and several alternative ways to roll joints during history classes of which he knew nothing other than that of surfing and Harley Davidson, but I suppose that was more Grateful Dead than Gramsci...

      By way of working toward any understanding of Slap's follow on from "If women want to be treated seriously, they need to choose reason over emotion." one could do worse than come at it from another angle via such as this short primer on alt right speak:

      What Is "Virtue Signalling"?
      Published on May 31, 2016 Here's a handy guide for what the hell people are on about when they whine about how hard it is being criticised for sounding sexist...

      Delete
    5. Ah yes, delicious, Anony: 'virtue signalling' is its own reward - technology has brought what used to be confined to the kindergarten playground ("And so's yer old man") out into the wide, appreciative world.

      I'm rather glad I didn't share any of your early schooling experiences though - thankfully I only attended boring suburban learning spaces, with teachers who were very 'politically correct' for the time - no sex, drugs or rock'n'roll (though the two male art teachers were quite 'camp' as it used to be called. "Row of tents" anybody ?).

      But apropos of German, I did read in passing the other day that more Americans claim German origins than any other - including English. That would kinda explain the USA's great reluctance to enter WWI and WWII, I think.

      Delete
    6. GB, I didn't learn this in school, but was surprised in the naughties when I learned on a Yahoo group, frequented mostly by yanks, that the USA had had to conduct a referendum in the late C19 on whether the lingua franca of the country ought be English or German. English won narrowly they said. But it's a myth. There was a congressional vote in 1794 on translating some laws into German that lost by one vote, that of the first ever Speaker Frederick Muhlenberg, of German descent too, who abstained. Today I learn that the myth is wrong, that the Muhlenberg legend recycled is the basis of it.

      Americans claiming German ancestry are the largest self-described ethnic group in the USA at 49 million, but less than 4% speak anything other than English at home. The United States has no official language, but 27 states and some territories differ on that and do designate it as English.

      Delete
    7. Yeah, good ol' Aus doesn't have an official language either. The problem of having one, as I think I remember it, was along the lines of that old myth about how "primitive" people supposedly count: one, two, many ... So if one "official language", why not two ? And if two, why not many ? (Slippery slopes are everywhere in these degenerate days of sinkholes, aren't they).

      Delete
  2. Wouldn't that be the same pure unadulterated emotion exhibited by Herr Drumpf when he made that over the top statement about Megan Kelly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mebbe, kez. Personally, I thought it might be the pure unadulterated emotion that comes upon a "resilient" woman as she is accosted, and maybe raped or even murdered out on the street or in her own home by some "boorish" man.

      You know, the dawning realisation that maybe it is "an existential threat" after all. But no, The Dame wouldn't have a bar of that would she - it never happens to people like her.

      Delete
    2. "Motherhood is a political act. Period."

      Hmm. Yes, I guess every act of "motherhood" creates another possible voter somewhere down the line. And that's clearly "political", isn't it.

      Delete
  3. Meanwhile the Chumps principal adviser Stephen Bannon is on record in stating that the all American loons Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin represent what a real woman should be like.
    I would suggest that dame slap has a lot in common with these loons. And that all of her rants are based on a very primitive level of emotion, all dressed up with a seemingly rational veneer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mighty sick of these Right Wing elitists wringing their hands over the "forgotten classes" while promoting policies to wipe them from the face of the earth.

    The reason they like Trump and others is that the distract from the true causes by blowing the smoke of racism and terrorism in their faces

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As John Birmingham so succinctly put it:
      'The interests of the one per cent, of capital, of whatever you want to call the super rich ... can generally be said to lean towards ensuring that the fear and loathing felt by so many attaches itself to cultural changes, not economic ones.'

      http://www.smh.com.au/comment/blunt-instrument/john-birmingham-how-a-trump-or-a-brexit-could-happen-in-australia-20161114-gspat2.html

      Delete
    2. Oh yeah, "the "forgotten classes" ??

      Michael Moore - "So this morning I showed up to do a scheduled 7-minute segment on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." The conversation got so intense, so powerful that it's host, Joe Scarborough, kept waving off one commercial break after another. I was allowed a television luxury -- the chance to express my thoughts in complete paragraphs instead of in sound bytes.."

      MSNBC "Morning Joe." - Michael Moore joins wide-ranging election talk for 44 minutes uninterrupted
      Moore quotes:
      "I'm the Trump demographic.."

      "To borrow the Dylan line, 'the country I come from is called the Midwest.'"

      "90,000 Michiganders voted for every office and every ballot proposal on both sides of the ballot ... and, refused to vote for President. They couldn't vote for Trump. They knew that was wrong. But they were not going to participate in this... in what they saw as - as - a system that left them forgotten and at (indistinct). And that was the end of that."

      Delete
    3. More Moore:
      5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win - The Huffington Post

      Friends:
      I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president. And now I have even more awful, depressing news for you: Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, ‘cause you’ll be saying them for the next four years: “PRESIDENT TRUMP.”

      5 RESONS WHY TRUMP WILL WIN - Michael Moore .com
      - You need to exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts – “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump cant win a majority of any of them!” – or logic – “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!” – is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma.
      - From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room.
      - Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage.
      - Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It’s one of the few places left in society where there are no security cameras, no listening devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops, there’s not even a friggin’ time limit.

      Morning After To-Do List: fb

      Michael Moore’s to do list for a revolution: an intervention for liberals - boingboing

      "Moore does not make his predictions based on algorithms, polls, and self-satisfied soothsaying. He pays attention to the root causes, he sees how systemic problems play out in individual lives -- it's what he has always done in his films. Michael Moore is as woke as they get. He kept his eye on the ball while the rest of us looked away, assuming it would land in our glove. Well, it got dropped and we lost the game."

      Michael Moore - Political views - Wikipedia

      Delete
  5. With you re The Queen, DP, and I hazard a guess that you are dipping into Netflix for the marvellous 'The Crown'.
    (from another sneering elitist in Deakin)

    ReplyDelete
  6. DP - "... then wonder how a 'gigantic', 'huuuggge' military force might thwart China if all it does is stroll about like a bunch of pussies, rather than bunging on a mighty do ... say world war three for starters, and then we can see how we can push it into something really gigantic and huuuggge ..."

    Well Dorothy, it wouldn't have been all that disimilar if a Prez Killiary had of got up. Yep, it'll simply be more of the same to add to the record...

    Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Record of Unparalleled Failure
    Don’t Walk Away from War, It’s Not the American Way - By Tom Engelhardt

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. American History Explains Donald Trump - By Tom Engelhardt, The Nation, November 14, 2016

      After so many years of creating chaos abroad, it’s finally come back to haunt us.

      The one thing you could say about empires is that, at or near their height, they have always represented a principle of order as well as domination. So here’s the confounding thing about the American version of empire in the years when this country was often referred to as “the sole superpower,” when it was putting more money into its military than the next 10 nations combined: It’s been an empire of chaos.

      Back in September 2002, Amr Moussa, then head of the Arab League, offered a warning I’ve never forgotten. The Bush administration’s intention to invade Iraq and topple its ruler, Saddam Hussein, was already obvious. Were they to take such a step, Moussa insisted, it would “open the gates of hell.” His prediction turned out to be anything but hyperbole—and those gates have never again closed.

      Delete
    2. The Wars Come Home

      From the moment of the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, in fact, everything the US military touched in these years has turned to dust.

      ...If I had to choose a date to begin that history, I think I would start in 1979 in Afghanistan, a country that, if you were an American but not a hippie backpacker, you might then have had trouble locating on a map. And if someone had told you at the time that, over the next nearly four decades, your country would be involved in at least a quarter-century of wars there, you would undoubtedly have considered him mad.

      ... Imperial Overreach and the Rise of the National Security State

      In the end, those seeds, first planted in Afghan and Pakistani soil in 1979, led to the attacks of September 11, 2001. That day was the very definition of chaos brought to the imperial heartland, and spurred the emergence of a new, post-constitutional governing structure, through the expansion of the national-security state to monumental proportions and a staggering version of imperial overreach. On the basis of the supposed need to keep Americans safe from terrorism (and essentially nothing else), the national-security state would balloon into a dominant—and dominantly funded—set of institutions at the heart of American political life (without which, rest assured, FBI Director James Comey’s public interventions in an American election would have been inconceivable). In these years, that state-within-a-state became the unofficial fourth branch of government, at a moment when two of the others—Congress and the courts, or at least the Supreme Court—were faltering.

      ... At the same time, the basic needs of many Americans went increasingly unattended, of those at least who weren’t part of a Gilded Age 1 percent sucking up American wealth in an extraordinary fashion. The one-percenters then repurposed some of those trickle-up funds for the buying and selling of politicians, again in an atmosphere of remarkable secrecy. (It was often impossible to know who had given money to whom for what.) In turn, that stream of Supreme Court–approved funds changed the nature of, and perhaps the very idea of, what an election was.

      Delete
    3. ... Meanwhile, one of the country’s two great political parties launched a scorched-earth campaign against governing representatives of the other and against the very idea of governing in a reasonably democratic fashion or getting much of anything done at all. At the same time, that party shattered into disorderly, competing factions that grew ever more extreme and produced what is likely to become a unique celebrity presidency of chaos.

      The United States with all its wealth and power is, of course, hardly an Afghanistan or a Libya or a Yemen or a Somalia. It still remains a genuinely great power, and one with remarkable resources to wield and fall back on. Nonetheless, the recent election offered striking evidence that the empire of chaos had indeed made the trip homeward. It’s now with us big time, all the time. Get used to it.

      Count on it to be an essential part of the Trump presidency. Domestically, for instance, if you thought the definition of American political dysfunction was a Congress that would essentially pass nothing, just wait until a fully Republican-controlled Congress actually begins to pass bills in 2017.

      Delete
    4. The pond welcomes every attempt to draw an equivalence between the Donald and Clinton.

      Good luck with that, and as the Donald fucks up, it will no doubt be incredibly consoling to say, well it would have been just as bad with Clinton in the chair ... it always reminds the pond there's little doubt that German in the 1930s would have suffered deplorably under the SDP, the KPD or the wretched Zentrum party, and so the infallible voters made the wisest of choices ...

      Delete
    5. Your welcome, but did you actually read the articles? You think Killiary isn't a fuck up? Anyway, lot more presidents are involved in the unparalleled failure of American war mongering. Further, there can be no equivalence when it's clear that of the two, Killiary or Trump, Trump was more the peace candidate. And Trump was elected to office by the by voters, by the rules, fair and square.

      As to early 1930s Gemany get your facts straight there. German voters only got to cast an opinion on it all after the fact, after the Nazi takeover in Hitler's August 1934 plebiscite. No other parties then or before had a chance in the creeping coup d'etat that went on under the legally dubious "presidential government" system of the reliably fucked up Hindenburg.

      The 85 year old aristocratic career soldier, President Paul von Hindenburg, and his advisor group, those consistent underminers of the parliamentary sytem, the anti-democratic pro- presidential government Kamarilla (eg., the pro total war Chancellor and long time tacit military-political head of the military Reichswehr state within a state, Kurt von Schleicher) appointed Hitler as Chancellor by a slippery work around of the Weimar Constitution they governed by. That 25/48/53 Articles formula for presidential government was in violation of Article 54 stating that the Chancellor and cabinet were responsible to the Reichstag.... Hindenburg then approved chancellor Hitler's Reichstag Fire Decree, Enabling Act, and all but one other bill Hitler sent him. On Hindenburg's approaching death Hitler had cabinet pass the Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the Reich which merged the offices of president and chancellor into one office of leader and chancellor - FĆ¼hrer und Reichskanzler. Two weeks later, after the fact, the FĆ¼hrer, Hitler, merely allowed a plebiscite on the merging of offices. What chance the people? What other parties? That plebiscite received 90 per cent voter approval. Sure it did.

      Delete
    6. Decided years ago never to listen to anybody who says 'had of'

      Delete
    7. And people who say 'your' when they mean 'you're'

      Delete
    8. Nah, Anony, it's "off of" that's really objectionable.

      "Had of", like "would of" is actually just a hearing muck up with some youngsters. People say "would've" or "had've" but it registers in their brains as "would of" and "had of" respectively. And like all things learned young and uncritically - like a very large percentage of our common vocabulary and its pronounciation - it just never quite gets recognised and corrected (eg regional accents).

      So be a litle forgiving - just not forgiving of "off of". Or "your" instead've you're.

      Delete
    9. Whew, the police of style, they loom, they swing by. They sniff. They snivel. But this typo critic is of no mind, and cannot count. And no error of substance is found by the knitpickers three in wise monkey guise. The stash is safe, and sound.

      Delete
    10. That's "nitpickers", innumerate one. Pay attention, man.

      Delete
    11. Still not catching 'em all? Oh well... ;)

      Delete
    12. Glorious fuckwittery by a certifiable loon ... and in the usual way, illiteracy is the least of it, and yet the all of it ...

      Delete
    13. Oh didumms such a stance, a frightful take two. Got any more of that substance left?

      Delete
  7. https://www1.udel.edu/htr/Psc105/Texts/power.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And your point is that there are stupid, stupid paranoid conspiracy theorists in the world? Who proliferate and fester on the full to overflowing intertubes, using strange colours and hysterical fonts?

      Is this a new or novel point? Why not link to tales of lizard people for People of Earth, or Jewish bankers led by the Rothschilds?

      Delete

Comments older than two days are moderated and there will be a delay in publishing them.