Start with flour, butter and a little comedy, then mix in Polonius and Dame Slap, and bake for a good few hours ... though it might still end up half-baked ...

 

The pond often likes a comedy item to feature before getting down to reptile studies, and this WaPo story obliged ... Ginsburg family blasts plan to give RBG Award to Musk, Murdoch, others (paywall).

Naturally as it featured the Emeritus Chairman, to paraphrase Joe Orton, the pond had a prick up its ears ...

Since 2020, a foundation has honored prominent women with the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award, named after the late Supreme Court justice who championed women’s rights and liberal causes. But this year’s lineup stands out: Four of the recipients are men. Two of them have done prison time for financial crimes. One founded Fox News. Another is Elon Musk.
Musk, Martha Stewart, Michael Milken, Rupert Murdoch and Sylvester Stallone are the “five iconic individuals” who will receive the Ginsburg Leadership Award next month at the Library of Congress in an exclusive ceremony and gala, according to a news release from the award’s organizer, the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation.
Musk will receive the award for entrepreneurship, Stallone for being a cultural icon, Stewart for industry leadership, Milken for philanthropy and Murdoch for being a media mogul, the news release said.

There can be little doubting of the fine qualities baked into these rascals and felons that entitled them to the honour ...

In announcing this year’s awards, the Opperman Foundation praised Musk for being a free-speech advocate. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who bought Twitter (now X) in 2022, certainly grapples with free-speech issues. But this week he was lambasted by Don Lemon for canceling a deal on X with the former CNN star a few hours after being interviewed by him.

“His commitment to a global town square where all questions can be asked and all ideas can be shared seems not to include questions of him from people like me,” Lemon wrote in a statement.

Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman to serve on the Supreme Court when she joined in 1993. The X owner has been accused of contributing to the rapid increase in antisemitism on his social media platform by amplifying anti-Jewish tropes. Some major brands have fled the platform after seeing their advertisements placed next to antisemitic content.

Murdoch, whom the Opperman Foundation’s statement called “the most iconic living legend in media,” was a trailblazer in conservative media.

Federal Election Commission records show that Julie Opperman has donated more than $200,000 to Republican politicians and organizations since 2014.

Milken has been a major philanthropist for cancer research and public health — after he served prison time in the 1990s on six felony counts, including securities and mail fraud. He was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020. Stewart, the beloved lifestyle personality, served five months in federal prison after being convicted in 2004 of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and lying to federal investigators.

Stallone will appear in the upcoming action thriller “Armored.”

Be fair, RBG was a huge action movie/Sly fan - she even loved listicles of his worst outings as a guide for a night's viewing - but as usual, the wimps, the pussies, the bleeding hearts, came out in force with a fainting fit, again in WaPo ...

The family of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and some of the Supreme Court justice’s former colleagues have denounced this year’s slate of honorees for an award that a philanthropic foundation bestows in the name of the liberal icon.

In a statement Friday, the family called the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation’s plans to give its “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award” to conservative billionaires Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch, among others, “an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother.”

Without specifically criticizing any of the honorees — who also include Martha Stewart, Sylvester Stallone and financier Michael Milken — the Ginsburg family said the foundation “has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.” For its first four years, the prize was styled as a “Woman of Leadership” award and presented to individual women of prominence.

Dammit, the Emeritus Chairman has done much for the right of nonagenarians to get engaged and married as many times as they like, at least until climate change ruins the planet, and think what Faux Noise has done for the world by bequeathing it the tangerine tyrant...

Normal programming will now resume, and being a meditative Sunday, that means Polonius ranting about the ABC, and if he can couple that with nuking the country to save the planet, so much the better ...

Poor old Ted. Polonius was so distressed that he put up the entire transcript on his 'leet inner city CBD site ... and it seems that the brutal cardigan wearer badgered him into an unwise admission, as she wielded a Bill Gates axe ...

Sarah Ferguson: He’s criticising – he is saying it is a not a good decision, it’s not a wise decision for Australia to invest in nuclear energy at this stage. Wait 10-15 years, see whether these highly experimental, uh, new plants work and then decide whether it should be in the mix. But right now, what does he say? Stay with what Australia has an abundance [of], solar and wind. That is Bill Gates’ advice. Will you listen to it?

Ted O’Brien: I will listen to the underlying principle, and I agree with the underlying principle. Because what I hear there is, you’ve got to leverage your comparative advantages. Do we have a comparative advantage of wind and sunshine? Yeah, we do. Therefore, are renewables important to our future grid? Absolutely. 

Naturally Polonius was appalled ...what with him being part of the hive mind suddenly anxious to nuke the country to save the planet ...

Weird really that the reptiles are so insistent on keeping the mug punters inside the bubble, deep in the hive mind, that they wouldn't allow a link to Polonius's transcript. Perhaps it was deemed too 'leet, a haven for CBD type wankers ...

Meanwhile,  the reptiles had rudely interrupted Polonius mid-rant to insert a media link, so hold that Malware thought while the pond continues the interruption.

Something deeply weird happened to cuddly Ted some time in the dim, now almost distant, past. 

A long time ago, 13th December 2019 to be precise, his parliamentary committee released a report, Nuclear Energy - Not without your approval.

It was mild-mannered, it was soft core, it was deeply beige and determined to be inoffensive, while mentioning the nuke way ...

Mike Seccombe told what happened subsequently in a story for The Saturday Paper (paywall) about what happened to the beige man ... forgive the pond for quoting at length ...

...The committee report, when it dropped in December, looked to have tiptoed a middle path. Its title, “Not without your approval”, acknowledged the need to build broad community support before nuclear power could be pursued.

It made only three carefully worded and highly conditional recommendations to government, summarised in O’Brien’s foreword:

“Firstly, that it consider the prospect of nuclear technology as part of its future energy mix; secondly, that it undertake a body of work to progress the understanding of nuclear technology in the Australian context; and thirdly, that it consider lifting the current moratorium on nuclear energy partially – that is, for new and emerging nuclear technologies only … subject to the results of a technology assessment and to a commitment to community consent for approving nuclear facilities.”

In other words, wait and see what happens with nuclear technology, particularly with so-called small modular reactors (SMRs), which were then in the very preliminary stages of development.

According to Steggall, this amounted to waiting for the “unicorn” to turn up. “The only viable option in nuclear was small modular reactors.”

Things have changed dramatically and repeatedly since then, however.

First, the Coalition lost the 2022 election and elected Peter Dutton, from the right of the Queensland LNP, as its new leader.

He did not share his predecessor’s caution when it came to nuclear power.

Second, O’Brien was elevated to the ministry as spokesman for climate change and energy. He travelled the world consulting on developments in nuclear technology, and began enthusiastically proselytising for SMRs.

One example often cited by O’Brien as the way ahead was an SMR to be built in Idaho – heavily subsidised by government – by NuScale Power Corp, a company that trumpets itself as “global leaders in SMR nuclear technology”.

There were, however, big problems with NuScale. O’Brien claimed a big advantage of SMRs was they could be built quickly, but the Idaho project was moving at a glacial pace. From site selection in 2016 to planned operation in 2029, the process was expected to take 13 years. This, bear in mind, was in a country with an established nuclear industry and regulatory framework.

Then at the end of last year, before construction had even begun, the whole project collapsed. In all it cost the American taxpayer US$600 million without operating for a single hour.

O’Brien was undaunted and shifted his focus to other projects. Recently he has been spruiking not just SMRs but traditional, large-scale nuclear plants.

On ABC TV this week, he cited the United Arab Emirates – “the most recent entrant in the civil nuclear program, globally” – as proof even large reactors could be built quickly.

It’s true: the UAE did build a large reactor in a little over eight years. Yet, as his interviewer, Sarah Ferguson, pointed out the UAE is an autocratic state.

According to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023, the mean time from construction start to grid connection for the seven reactors that started up in 2022 was nine years. Over the three years 2020–2022, only two of 18 units connected to the grid in eight countries started up on time.

As of July 2023, 58 reactors were considered under construction. Of these, 80 per cent were being built in Asia or Eastern Europe; 40 per cent in China. Which is to say, either in countries with relatively permissive regulatory codes or command economies.

In countries comparable to Australia, it takes far longer.

Josh Wilson points to the example of the Hinkley Point C project in Britain, which has been in the works since 2008.

The most recent update on progress, he says, shows it “already three times over budget, so it’s going be £46 billion”.

The project is already nine years late and at best guess might generate the first watt of power in 2031.

“The whole project is based on a guaranteed 35-year offtake agreement whereby the British government will buy the energy at a fixed price that’s indexed,” says Wilson. “The price that they struck is already twice the price of wind power from the North Sea. And they haven’t generated any power yet.”

The other complications of nuclear are myriad, as businessman and nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski – who conducted another inquiry into nuclear power back in 2006 – told O’Brien’s committee.

No country had yet commissioned and completed a spent fuel or high-level nuclear waste facility, he said.

The costs of reactor decommissioning may be high and may be a potential burden on future generations for hundreds of years.

Wilson quoted Switkowski in his dissenting committee report. He noted Switkowski’s view that there was “no coherent business case to finance an Australian nuclear industry” and “one of the things that have changed over the last decade or so is that nuclear power has got more expensive rather than less expensive”.

A host of energy experts and analyses have concluded nuclear energy is by far the most expensive option for meeting Australia’s future energy needs while reducing greenhouse emissions.

So why has the federal Coalition run with the issue?

Zali Steggall says it’s a ploy to delay the transition to renewable energy.

“I actually, genuinely think under Peter Dutton’s leadership they are still doing what the Coalition has been focused on doing for 10 years,” she says, “which is trying desperately to keep more coal and gas in the system for as long as possible.”

When we spoke last year, O’Brien said he was not about delaying the energy transition and was not anti-renewables. Australia needed an “all-of-the-above strategy” – nuclear as well as other measures – to address climate change.

He may be genuine, but there is reason to suspect the same is not true of many of his party colleagues.

One answer he gave on 7.30 was telling.

He was asked if the uncertainty about the time it would take to build a nuclear plant might necessitate running

coal-fired power stations for longer.

“So, our view is we should not be closing our coal-fired power stations prematurely,” he said.

Speaking to a business forum this week, Dutton said the opposition would soon announce about six locations across the country where reactors could be built. With shades of Barnaby Joyce, he foreshadowed measures to incentivise those communities to accept them.

“It’s worked elsewhere in the world,” he said.

Dutton did not specify where or what those incentives would be, but it is true many other countries, such as the United States and France, do give handouts to people living close to nuclear power stations.

Most commonly, it is potassium iodide, to protect them from thyroid cancer in the event of a nuclear accident.

The pond always likes to do a little counter-programming, and having done it, now back to the rudely interrupted Polonius for a final thrust behind the arras at that Malware rat ...

Ah the subs ... long after the pond's gone and finally ready to nuke the country to save the planet ... that's got to be worth a cartoon ...

And as for Ted, how about a Kudelka?

And so to the bonus offering and the pond had to think long and hard about the selection, but decided against going against grating Gemma grinding away in support of a Gaza genocide.

The pond can only do transphobia every so often before the pond's partner objects, so that prevented the pond from heading down the wrong lane with Bernard ... and besides this clash, or at least this odd, piquant juxtaposition, intrigued the pond ...

What on earth had made Dame Slap give up on the Lehrmann matter and leave the field to the Rice or other assorted grains?

Why had she wandered back in time to celebrate Bill Leak, turned full blown racist and homophobe in his twilight years?

So it's okay if you draw a racist cartoon in good faith, because apart from being "famously controversial" it was infamously, deeply racist ...

And it wasn't just a one off. As noted at New Matilda back in the day, in Artistic Arse: The Great Racist Works Of Cartoonist Bill Leak, he went on a streak ...

The pond isn't sure if it was the fall and the bump on the noggin or the company he'd been keeping, but there was a distinct coarsening of styles, heavy threatening blacks, both in the ink work and in the topics, and a crude willingness to take the cheapest shots ...

Luke Pearson thought it was the company he kept ...

...We need to look beyond the hype around individual acts of racist cartoons and articles and see the systemic impacts of racism within media. This is reflected not just in the content, but in the hiring practices of organisations, in their Style Guides, in the education of journalists in schools and at universities, and in the influences placed on media from government and from their audiences.

That said, Bill Leak’s cartoons are still very racist… but so are a lot of articles in the Australian, so are a lot of articles in a lot of other papers, and so is the lack of diversity in many newsrooms.

So, if the conversation about Mr Leak doesn’t lead to a reflection of those other issues then we will just get angry for a few days, media orgs will use it get more hits and sell more papers, and then we will start it up again next time someone publishes something racist, and presumably not get any close to actually addressing racism in our media, or in our country.

Fair enough, if you took Dame Slap seriously, soon enough you'd be donning a MAGA cap and celebrating genocide ...

At that point, the reptiles inserted a snap of the lesser Lessor ...

... and the pond regretted not being able to celebrate where donning the MAGA cap might get you ...

Grifters gotta grift and Dame Slap's gotta scribble ...

At this point, the reptiles produced a huge snap, but there's no need to offer that level of distraction ...

Instead it's on with the ranting ... ssshh, don't mention Islamophobia or the genocide ...

At this point, Dame Slap turned to Pauline Hanson.

That's right, Pauline, and at this point, the pond felt the need to remind stray readers that this wasn't random, it was a natural consequence ...

If you can don a MAGA cap and slink out into the night to celebrate, you can certainly don a Pauline ...

It's the Dame Slap way of arguing, guilt by association, and that way you can end up defending a genocide, so why not use the same trick? Mention Pauline, and the pond will always go the orange Jesus ...

Shame on all the reptiles for supporting the genocide, and shame on Dame Slap for donning that MAGA cap so long ago, but the reptiles, living in an alternative universe, are incapable of shame ...

And with that the pond has filibuster 'tooned its way to a final gobbet ...

In that last portion of her rant, Dame Slap almost managed to sound a little NY Times, a little both siderist ... at what cost the genocide? Is it wrong to mention the genocide?

Why, revealing her deepest, weirdest delusions, she even imagined herself out there in a messy, noisy, magnificently liberal process, asking hard questions, hearing a range of views and settling on the most sensible ones ... like "Lord" Monckton and the orange Jesus ...

It's as if she didn't have the foggiest idea of balance, or where it might lead ...

For that the pond will turn to the dancing bug to wrap things up with a pirouette  ...

Solution? Stick with the cap ...