What fun it was to see John Oliver skewer grieving Trumpian reptiles and English royalty, and give Caleb Bond, the wannabe Bolter, a place in the international sun as a prize doofus of the first water ...
Oliver featured the English repression in Kenya, reminding the pond that, in the pond's youth, it had been exposed to a particularly racist, in retrospect, deeply noxious English drama.
Though memory fails, the pond suspects it was Simba, but it had the wrong effect on the pond's group because it inspired a desire to Mau Mau the teachers. Next thing you know a book about Mau Mauing cardigan wearers and flak catchers became fashionable, and soon enough reptiles began Mau Mauing the ABC for the Chairman and suddenly terrorism was the respectable thing to do ...(strangely Oliver didn't mention the Suez affair, but he had other fish to fry) .
Speaking of the ABC, Oliver featured an awesomely long silence by an English terrorist, incapable of lying on camera, but incapable of telling the truth about what he'd done in Kenya (he received an MBE for his stoicism).
And that epic example of silence allows the pond to congratulate the ABC's News Radio for the longest run of dead air it's ever heard. It was well over the twenty minute mark before the white noise induced a profound sleep, and not once did the cart advising of an imminent restoration of service kick in.
Never mind, during the wee hours, the ABC is just the BBC in drag, and the pond had already learned it might be wise to shift to Canada to escape the worst of reptile-supported climate change, and that since 2006 Greenland's changing climate has made for difficult lives... perhaps Tasmania instead? (That episode can be found here - please avoid mentioning it to the likes of the dog botherer and the Major because they live sheltered lives and can't handle observations of real world events).
In that spirit, the pond felt it right to start by offering an infallible Pope ... because life's too short to just follow reptile loons ...
The infallible Pope has always been good at irony, and so the pond could turn to the reptile business of the day fortified by its serve of spinach, and good news, at last the bromancer was on hand to celebrate what had happened in the US in the mid-terms ...
There was nothing new in it. The bromancer was simply acting as a little Sir Echo down under, showing to the mango Mussolini what it was like to have fair weather friends, a bunch of back stabbing Judas's, weasels, turncoats, two timers, apostates, betrayers, double-dealing double-crossers, quislings, recreants and serpents in his corner ...
Naturally while doing the back stabbing, the reptiles seized the chance to load up the bromancer with click bait videos ... though the pond decided to leave out the first one just to get on with it ...
As Jeremy Barr noted in WaPo,
After midterms, Ron DeSantis eclipses Trump on Fox News, (paywall), the knives were out, and the Faux Noise mob had completely forgotten, erased from memory, their love of the Big Lie and the orange Jeebus ...
The ability to turn on a dime, the capacity for the hyenas and jackals to select a victim for the feast - kill the beast, kill the beast, they chant - is always a remarkable sight ... and there was a general turning, with even the absurdly right Ramirez joining Dilbert in the recanting ...
Everybody rushed in to help kill the beast ...
The bromancer has always been a follower rather than a leader, no matter what he thinks about his future as Generalissimo of Australian defence (you have to be exceptionally dumb to turn cannibal each Sunday and drink human flesh and eat human blood), and so he was up for the recantation ... with nary a mention of Faux Noise's abiding responsibility for the beast that marched on Washington ...
Yes, the Big Lie has served the Murdochians well in some ways, with the notion that a refusal to go along with it might blight careers, or ruin the business model, while also offering the chance to own the libs and degut the Democrats ... does anybody remember Liz Cheney and the treatment she received as a Fox News apostate? So long ago, as the reptiles found a new saviour, in the manner of those who flee the tykes to join the proddies and vice versa ...
Yep, the beast is badly wounded, and the cartoonists are on his heel ...
The bromancer is just part of the braying pack which has suddenly found its voice...
No mention of Faux Noise's deranged universe, but here's a thought. There's still one election to go. Will Faux Noise suddenly discover a deranged, entirely unsuitable candidate?
Will Faux Noise join the bromancer in discovering that the football star has a shocking personal history and no political experience, exactly the sort of candidate Faux Noise has loved in the past (pussy grabbing, anyone?)
Will the bromancer urge his American kissing cousins to dump Herschel and urge a vote for his rival? Will they agree? Will they take it up to the faux Sheriff?
No prizes for guessing how that will go down. The business model requires the Murdochians to own the libs, even if that means owning a fake sheriff ...
Even now, after the ruination of the country, the bromancer can still talk of the mango Mussolini doing "some very good things in politics and in his presidency" ...
And truth to tell, up until the mid-terms produced a reality check, Faux Noise's conduct since the Donald lost has been as irresponsible and as destructive as they were during his wretched reign ...
After that cartoon-led recovery, it was all down hill for the pond, with not much else happening in the reptile world ...
No Oreo on a Tuesday, and just Jimbo out and about doing defence, while the bromancer was off with Xi, perhaps wondering how his yearned-for third world war was going.
One serve of the bromancer is more than enough and so the pond had no choice but to go with the Groaner, emitting her usual deep groan, though frankly IR bores the stockings off the pond ...
Even worse, there could be no cartoon respite until the immortal Rowe turned up at the very end, and devotees of the Groan will be shocked to discover that this time she didn't find a way to wangle in a mention of deplorable renewables or celebrate her deep, abiding love of Oz coal ...
That piece ominously ended this way, with a dire comparison to the fush and chups mob ...
It is noteworthy that the No. 1 ranked company in the RepTrak reputation benchmark is Air New Zealand, which is 51 per cent owned by the New Zealand government.
Its chief executive, Greg Foran, who worked as a senior executive at Woolworths in Australia and Walmart in the United States, inherited a collaborative mechanism that forces him to engage proactively with the airline’s unions.
Under the law, Foran must meet union representatives regularly to discuss problems. Air New Zealand’s unions do not dump on the company in public and the pilot’s association is publicly supportive of Foran and his strategy.
Savage, who is the head of aviation at E tū, the union covering the bulk of New Zealand aviation workers, says there is a marked difference between Air New Zealand’s approach to issues and the Qantas approach, which is “antagonistic and combative”.
Fixing the damage to the Qantas brand will require Joyce to tackle the prickly question of sour relations between the management and staff, given that there is a community perception – reinforced by the RepTrak and Roy Morgan research – that the airline is not collaborative or worker-friendly.
But that would involve a paradigm shift, with Joyce forced to rethink his strategy of always pushing back against union demands.
Dear sweet long absent lord, please allow the pond to have a groaning fit, and somehow there's no mention of filthy renewables and the need to keep on with sweet, innocent, Oz coal by Dame Groan... what's the world coming to?
Yep, go the Dame Groan way, and you can keep up a reputation for screwing everybody in sight ...
Another quote that will touch a raw nerve at Qantas HQ is this: “Don’t like their treatment of staff throughout the pandemic.”
Never mind, while the pond would love to see a company with the Groaner as CEO, the pond has reached the end, and it's time for an immortal Rowe, covering for the bromancer ...
This was a rejig of an earlier Rowe ...
And as always the inspiration should get a mention ...
"...it might be wise to shift to Canada to escape the worst of reptile-supported climate change" Naah, Antarctica is the go: already they can land large Russian jets on the 'blue ice' on their wheels and not skis, and young chaps can ride from one coast all the way across on a fat-tyred bicycle. And Australia already owns most of it.
ReplyDeleteThe Groaner was a strange read today, starting with the Hed: "Rushed IR reforms play squarely into the union's hands". The way that's stated it's as though Groany reckons that Burke et al didn't really intend to do "the unions" any actual good, but kinda did so either by mistake or by hasty, mistaken act drafting. Is that so ? Then how about this:
ReplyDeleteGuardian Essential poll: almost two-thirds of voters back Labor’s plan for multi-employer pay deals
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/15/guardian-essential-poll-almost-two-thirds-of-voters-back-labors-plan-for-multi-employer-pay-deals
I think we can take it that Groany, and those she pays homage to, are not amongst the "almost two-thirds of voters" then. Neither, presumably, is Alan Joyce who has just been generously rewarded for creating a whole heap of Qantas stuffups. But apparently there is "a picture showing Joyce talking to staff on the tarmac, surely a sign of connection with his workforce." Really ? All it takes for "connection" is just a few words on the tarmac with just a few employees ?
Nonetheless, Groany informs us that "There are good ways to amend laws, and bad ways as well." And of course Burke's Law "falls squarely into the latter category." I cannot understand why a reptile would complain so about Labor therefore granting the LNP an election campaign theme which will surely be a big winner - amongst the one-third of the population anyway - come next election.
I have read this day’s groan several times, because it includes this -
ReplyDelete‘analysis of the labour share indicates that recent movements have been dominated by the booming mining sector, where wages are already very high, and to a lesser extent, financial services, where wages are also high. Take out these two sectors and it turns out the labour share hasn’t moved much at all.’
yes, M’am - isn’t that the point? Have I missed something there? On any plain reading - those statements could have been included in speeches by either the Prime Minister or ‘Burke’. So it makes little sense in the context that, I think, our Dame is trying to establish.
Oh - I did not try to seek a cause and effect with ‘economic perils’ that that paragraph threatens. Perhaps this was a longer column, and she was told to trim it to allow more space for ‘Dan the Man’ assertions.
Perhaps our Dame does not expect readers to go beyond her first paragraph (before they realise it is ‘same old, same old’) - so she slips in the mantra ‘Real wage gains occur only when productivity is rising.’ I would think readers who are among the growing numbers who retain financial advisors for more than assistance in filling out tax returns, might wonder about how much productivity has increased in ‘financial services’ to have pushed wages to noteworthy heights.
Now I grant you Chad, that I had some trouble with Groany's bit about "labour" versus mining and financial services - and indeed one is quite puzzled about what constitutes productivity gains in "financial services" and why "mining sector" isn't regarded as "labour"? Yes, I know that the mining workers don't wend their way down tunnels with picks and axes nowadays, but surely that's the point: Mining sector gains come from investment in better machinery and automation, not from "labour" so why do the mining workers come out on top ? They don't produce any of the "productivity gains", do they.
ReplyDeleteAny'ow, the key, I finally decided, is this bit: "analysis of the labour share of GDP indicates workers are being underpaid. But recent movements ... dominated by the booming mining sector ... and, to a lesser extent, financial services." What I kinda gathered is that what might be considered a justification for wages increases - that "workers are being underpaid" just isn't so. In fact, what is happening is that the mining sector and financial services are being visibly overpaid.
Therefore there's absolutely no reason for "labour" to get an increase of GDP share, and hence no justification for any union efforts to achieve wage increases. But then, in Groany's world, there never is or ever has been or ever will be any justification for labour wage increases. Except for her, of course, but then she is not "labour".
Anyway, that's my take on it fwliw.
I'll take that take, thank you, GB. Our Dame really does a masterly job of ignoring every piece of serious investigation into the nature of 'work' and 'production' from the last about 40 years, and, even at that, tends to throw further back, to the less useful attitudes of the late 19th century.
DeleteThere wasn't much value in the Bromancer today: the best he could apparently manage was "...a Democratic Party that had in many places gone to the very limits of woke insanity" Oh my, "the very limits of woke insanity" and yet those ornery Democratics still won seats, including one in the holy of holies, the Judicial approval house aka the Senate. So, no hurry for Sonia to retire now.
ReplyDeleteSo, he tells us: "[The Republicans] had the best environment the party could imagine ... yet the Democrats achieved one of the best results ever for a governing party in a midterm election." Those Repugs hardly owned a single lib anywhere except Florida even though "the vast majority of Americans convinced the nation was on 'the wrong track'." It seems that not enough of them thought that a Republican Party, still under mindless fealty to Trump, could actually fix things. And "The closer they were to Trump, the bigger they lost."
So, just in case we didn't notice, Bromancer instructs us that "Trump was always a despicable person" - what, even back when Dame Slap first ecstatically donned her MAGA cap in the streets of NY ? And Rupert and minions did their successful utmost to set him up to be the president ? And Putin (and Xi ?) did his utmost to help them get him there.
Nevertheless, the Bro would like us to know and believe that "he did some very good things in politics and in his presidency." And of course he did: he "cut taxes and regulation, promoted energy self-sufficiency, [via horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing] backed Israel in the Middle East, and increased the defence budget..." Yes indeed, they were all good things which vastly increased human welfare throughout the world for ages to come. No other president in living memory did as many wonderful things in a single presidential term.
So many uncut gems of frustrated acceptance litter the Bro's essay of reckoning today. "Trump was always a despicable person" should be printed on a tea towel or a t-shirt and given out at the News Ltd Christmas do this year.
DeleteAnd pictures should be taken. And yes, I understand you might need to go a yard further to make a Paul Murray limited edition.
I also loved that the first step of seriousness with which election result should have been taken was the comfort that "His daughter Ivanka believed the result was true". Well there you have it barkeep - rest yourself here, take a load off - Vanky has approved it.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteIt would appear that Cater’s little misogyny piece yesterday, didn’t even have the benefit of being original.
https://www.thebulwark.com/blame-all-the-single-ladies/
Just another right wing talking point designed to deflect the blame for losing power on a group that isn’t stale and male.
Them demographics are turning out to be a bitch!
Yes, DW, they've all been at it in the US, and being a third rate jackdaw and wannabe bower bird, the Caterist went for the low hanging fruit. Good link, as a regular Bulwark reader it was tempting to celebrate Joel Berry's tweet at the start tomorrow ... might still do it...
DeleteAs I pen this on Tuesday day we are a few hours away from the long
ReplyDeleteawaited Big Orange's epistle to the faithful.
Come the appointed hour the chosen apostles of MAGA will roll away
the rock at Mar-a-Lago's front door and He will appear.
Hast thou gotten right with Him yet?
Will ye join His pilgrimage to the Promised Land of Bilk and Money?
Or when the Big Orange appears, will He see his shadow and return to
His lair for six more weeks?
If indeed He does retire back to His den, keep the faith and send Him
donations. Your kid's college fund, money for grandma's new teeth,
it's all good in His eyes.
The congregation will repeat after me -
"Thou shall send Him your bling,
Lest He's sent to Sing Sing."
"Bilk and Money" ? Heh :-)
DeleteJersey Mike - so good to have your perspective, and in the style of the King James version - or Herbert W Armstrong (who may still be broadcasting in Florida?)
DeleteChadwick,
ReplyDeleteHerbie bought the farm a while ago which must have been a surprise
as he thought he was going to greet Jesus on his return.
Personally I was a Garner Ted Armstrong man, and had a free subscription
to The Plain Truth for kicks.
When one was tooling across the Nevada outback for Vegas at 3 AM Garner
Ted would hop aboard via the local radio station.
Suddenly it was a fun ride, reacting to his spiel with a
"Garner you magnificent mad bastard".
If DP made a list of all her "snake oil salesmen", he'd have to make the cut.
But I bet he'd make a good wing man on a pub crawl thru King's Cross.
Throw in Chopper Read and DP sporting a Sydney Swans cap and bobs
your uncle.
Herbie's been 'on the farm' for a while now, and still no rapture. However I do still vaguely remember "The Plain Truth About the World Tomorrow" from rebroadcasts we got way out here. Can't actually remember anything that he said though, but it all appears to have been inspirational to some.
Delete