The pond has its Joycean moments, and this jocular piece, Cryptogams and the NSA - which has been doing the Facebook rounds - has its existential moments, as the author uses Finnegan's Wake to encrypt messages designed to tease and taunt the USA's spies. Well it tickled the pond's funny bone ...
The pond also has its Wordsworthian moments, and intimations of mortality, and splendour in the grass.
Was it only a few months - well under a year ago - that Clive Palmer was still able to say he was the major donor to the NLP in Queensland?
Then somehow it all went wrong, and by December 2012 Clive was thinking of resigning from the NLP because of his dissatisfaction with Campbell Newman, alleging along the way that the Deputy Premier and the Treasurer were the "biggest crooks to have occupied office". (as you can see here).
Back in the day, Clive was held up as a classic example of a victim of the class war (led by the Bruce Springsteen-loving Wayne Swan), an innocent hapless billionaire persecuted by the chattering classes.
Back in September 2012 you could find the Bolter channeling Paul Kelly - at length, because the Bolter is a magpie who builds his nest out of the words of others - under the header Labor, out of money, mounts a class war for more:
It fits into Wayne Swan’s projection of true Laborism by attacks on Clive Palmer, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest for allegedly misusing their power and opposing his mining tax....
Oh those damn class war warriors.
Yes, Clive was a real warrior as you could read in March 2012 as the Bolter celebrated in Palmer messes with the carbon taxers' minds:
Millions of Australians would cheer:
Mining billionaire Clive Palmer has escalated his campaign against the Gillard government, vowing to mount a High Court challenge to the carbon tax.
As the major political parties wrestled over proposed cuts to company tax, Mr Palmer last night turned his sights to the carbon tax, telling the ABC’s 7.30 he had legal advice that it was unconstitutional. Asked on what grounds it was unconstitutional, Mr Palmer said: ‘’The grounds are set out in legal advice and they’ll be coming out in the High Court."
Oh yes, let's all give a hearty hurrah for valiant Clive.
Huzzah, huzzah ...
Back then the Bolter was chortling at the romp Clive had on the ABC, "most entertaining", but limiting himself - in a Calvinist way - to a single example, featuring Palmer snickering and sniggering about the way the Treasurer would turn from rooster to feather duster.
Oh Clive, you're an original, a one of a chortling, romping, entertaining kind.
But that was yesterday:
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though the PUPs are here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday.
You see, it's astonishing but true.
The Bolter is now conducting a relentless campaign of class warfare. In which poor Clive is denigrated for being a billionaire (or maybe not much of a billionaire and maybe not a billionaire for long).
Shocking, appalling!
In fact in paranoid circles it's whispered that at night looking in the mirror the Bolter sometimes seems suspiciously, eerily, weirdly like Wayne Swan. As if he's some kind of Dorian Gray, or perhaps an old school vampire ...
You see in the last month the Bolter the astonishing campaign against poor old Clive has become more and more virulent, more and more relentless, almost obsessive compulsive.
On the 1st June, the Bolter's header ran Clive Palmer, political menace, which opened with Clive Palmer is not just a buffoon, but a lazy buffoon.
Clive's lazy crime? Allegedly cutting and pasting a policy document.
This from a blogger who routinely cuts and pastes lots of things from everywhere.
In fact even this piece, this denunciation of Clive, was largely put together by doing cutting and pasting, including a cut and paste from Andrew Landeryou.
Lordy, lordy. Andrew Landeryou ...
On June 16 the Bolter cut and pasted a huge slab from Hedley Thomas. The Bolter's major contribution? The header Behind the picture of Clive Palmer, billionaire and a line and a half of intro.
Now there you go Clive, there's a role model for your cutting and pasting.
A couple of days ago, the Bolter stepped up to the plate again with Do not vote for Clive Palmer. We deserve better.
Naturally the bulk of the piece was a cut and paste. Naturally the words did down poor Clive.
And yesterday the Bolter was posting An important reason not to vote for Clive Palmer.
Naturally most of the post was a cut and paste, containing the seminal information that Clive Palmer's lawyers had issued proceedings against The Australian and two of its journalists, seeking about $800k in damages.
The Bolter felt so stirred, so furious that he even tapped out a tip:
My tip? This buffoon will not win a single seat in Parliament. And will turn out not to be as rich as many now think.
Indeed. And today the Bolter is outraged at the ABC, as he explains with a lengthy cut and paste of a transcript featuring Hedley Thomas, in About the ABC's defence of its pet billionaire.
Yes, in just over a year, Clive has gone from being a "most entertaining" romper on the ABC to the worst thing of all, a billionaire buffoon ABC pet.
The world is full of irony. But can there be a more remarkable exhibition of irony than that produced by the frothing, foaming, furiously scribbling Bolter? An unconscious ironist, perhaps, but a fine one all the same.
Yes, in just over a year, the Bolter has gone from sticking up for Clive and the other two big miners (Twiggy and Ginda) in pieces like Gillard's the loser in Australian class war (paywall affected) to routinely calling Clive a buffoon billionaire.
Enough's enough.
The pond demands an end to this class warfare.
The pond demands that the Bolter stop channeling Wayne Swan, and sounding like Julia Gillard. Or even worse, sounding like a sore loser caught up in an Australian class war.
The hilarity is killing the pond. It's like being held down in the playground and being tickled to death. Stop it, stop it, you're killing me ...
Oh heck, can we have just one more cut and paste? It's so Bolter to do a c an p, and lordy lordy it comes from the Bolter himself, scribbling furiously in Prime Minister Julia Gillard is in denial over the mining boom (paywall affected):
Swan accused Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and "Andrew Forrest, who wails about high company taxes" of using their "considerable wealth to oppose good public policy and economic reforms designed to benefit the majority".
To punish them for their dissent, Swan and others in the Government unleashed class warfare - an extraordinarily punitive naming and shaming of "the greedy rich".
Yes, how pathetic, how feeble, how weak-kneed, how lacking in wit.
Swan should of course have called them billionaire buffoons and pets of the Bolter... or perhaps pets of the ABC.
Oh the bloody irony.
And so to a song. Okay, okay, it's not Finnegan's Wake, it's just a cut and paste singalong ...
Oh yesterday, Clive Palmer and his lawyers seemed so far away
Now it looks as though the PUPs are here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday
Suddenly I'm not half the class warfare warrior I used to be
There's a billionaire buffoon ABC pet hanging over me
Oh yesterday and PUP and the lawyers came suddenly
Why Clive had to go and leave Campbell Newman I don't know, he wouldn't say
He just cut and pasted something wrong, now I long for yesterday
Yesterday, class warfare was such an easy game to play
Now we need a place to hide away
From Clive's lawyers, who don't believe in yesterday
How he turned from victim to buffoon I don't know, I cannot say
Either he or I said something wrong, and now I long for yesterday
Yesterday class warfare was such an easy game to play
Now we need a place to hide away
That billionaire buffoon and ABC pet who seems here to stay...
With lawyers who love to play ...
Oh how can we just cut and paste yesterday ...
And now can we just briefly pause and acknowledge that the parrot turned in a pathetic flop and a failure. He really needs to go to the back of the bird cage, he really is a complete loser these days. The pond was at one point thinking of celebrating the folly, but as usual, the excellent David Pope has said all that needs to be said.
More Pope here, as the pond's love affair with this most excellent cartoonist continues.
As always you seem to make the day a bit better in unusual ways. Your link to Cryptograms and the NSA was priceless. The funniest thing I,ve read in quite a while.Where do you find this stuff? Still laughing while visualizing.Angry spooks!Angry wife!Too funny.Thank you DP.
ReplyDeleteHi Dororthy
ReplyDeleteJust watched 7.30 to see that supposed anchor of the show trying to humiliate Craig Emerson who took the piss out of her by telling her to concentrate on policy and not on leadership.
Do these people realise that we do have Labor voters as part of the audience and for her just to focus on polls is an insult to the audience. So would you please give that lady some advice in how to interview politicians that have some meaning to the population on what our choices will be based on Leigh Sale could not possibly have been given the appointment on ability as in most cases she is not across the topic either.
Thanks Anon, glad you enjoyed it. People send the pond links by a variety of ways, and anyone can add a link at the pond to a favourite bit of loonishness - a reader recently made the pond's day by drawing attention to Project Loon. There is no such thing as an off-topic comment if it features a loon ...
ReplyDeleteAnd bravely watched Anon, but truth to tell, these days we'd rather endure repeats of the Big Bang Theory than suffer Leigh Sales, or more particularly Chris Uhlmann, at 7.30. It's so unimaginably quaint to watch the world of commercial television, with actual television commercials. Little did we know what we were missing when we downloaded the show ...
There will be a hard rain at the ABC next year, and they'll only have themselves to blame ...