From Sharri to Joe Camel, with brass in pocket but bugger all trust ...

(Above: screen cap, no links, original here)


The pond is always strong on community service, and that's why it's a pleasure to offer the official Oxford dictionary definition of narcissist:

Excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance. 
1.1 Psychology: Extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one’s own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type. 
1.2 Psychoanalysis: Self-centredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder. (here)

Of course there's a simpler, shorter definition: Sharri Markson.

How else to explain the twittering frenzy that broke on Markson's account because Richard Adey ran a story on RN last night, ABCnewsIntern comes clean (sort of), which involved a discussion, inter alia, of the twitter account Sharri 2000.

Is there a word to describe an object of satire enjoying being satirised because of all the attention being paid?

The pond used to think that all this talk of self-absorbed young people indulging in selfies and looking at themselves in mirrors and shouting "the news, it's all about me" was the meandering of embittered old fogies.

Used to ... and then came Sharri ...

But enough of the featherweights.

Off on another planet, far away ...

Yes, it's all there in Carbon emissions from electricity grid rise after carbon price repeal.

Of course if you're a denialist, and break your eggs at the wrong end (don't let's do a Markson on that), it's all fine and dandy.

You're off on another planet, far away, and what does it matter?

So what have the reptiles got to offer on climate science today as a response?

Oh no, not another Lomborg tract? Haven't we had enough of narcissists already?

Oh wait, that's not about the climate, that's Lomborg solving the problems of world poverty and universal education.

Well one way to fix the poverty is to save that gold brick the reptiles have posted on access, and head off to The Trouble with Universal Education.

If you can be bothered, you'll find the insights worth the amount you paid for it, and don't you mind the staleness ... if you reheat goods doing the rounds on August 19th, just scrape off the mould, pop in the magic science oven, and devour in the first week of September ... and just like fairy floss, soon enough you'll be hungering for another sugar hit ...

Why do the reptiles insist on charging for a man who struggles to give away his thoughts for free? Well they charge for Sharri Markson too ...

Meanwhile, has there ever been a more cynical and naked ploy than this one?

Yes it's all here in Coalition rubbishes Clive Palmer industry fund after voting for inquiry into it.

So now we know the price the Coalition paid for the pleasure of fucking superannuation for the young and the poor ... handing Clive a trinket which everyone thinks is a waste of time and energy and will never fly.

Meanwhile, the taxpayers pay for the pleasure of a parliamentary inquiry Jolly Joe trashed before it even began. And so did others:

The coalition senator who co-sponsored a parliamentary inquiry into the so-called “Palmer Piggy Bank” has described it as an idea that would never succeed “with any government anywhere at any time.”

That's Queensland LNP Senator Barry O'Sullivan talking about his baby.

How Sullivan gets out of bed and looks at the mirror without it cracking is one of the minor mysteries of the year ... perhaps he takes advice from Sharri Markson ...

(and more Rowe here)

What happens when you sell your political soul to a pretender?

Well it helps explain how Lenore Taylor could ask this question in Tony Abbott one year on: how the trust was won and lost:

Taylor does a fair run down of the lies, the deceits, the fudges, the hypocrisies and the cheating that have marked the Abbott government's first year, and then expands a little on that splash:

We don’t know how Australians would have reacted had Abbott levelled about the policies that were coming, and tried to explain his reasons when he looked down the barrel of the cameras that day. 
But we do have even more evidence that voters react viciously when they feel they have been deceived. The question now is whether it is possible for a leader, and a party, to recover after breaching the trust of the electorate, whether voters, faced with an underwhelming opposition, can be persuaded to take untrustworthiness as a given.

But there's a fudge there, in the way that Taylor has written it.

Feel they have been deceived?

There's no feeling about it, voters were lied to, promises - many, many promises - have been broken - and Abbott, never much liked, is now much diminished in stature. You don't just feel reality, you live it, and Abbott did a thorough con job at election time, which has consistently come back to haunt him.

If he was up against a canny political player, as opposed to Bill Shorten, he'd be on the canvas.

The consummate, breathtaking cynicism can be summarised in funding an inquiry its Liberal co-sponsor admits is a complete waste of time.

That's a form of negativity and cynical deal-making even an American Republican would admire.

You could have knocked the pond down with a feather when even Miranda the Devine turned up on the ABC's The Drum - who knew ideological ratbags were prepared to turn up on Pravda? - and dared to note that Abbott had delivered mixed messages - like saying the medical co-payment was designed to help fix the budget emergency and act as a price signal to limit pressure on medical services, then turned around and announced it would use the cash for medical services, and yammered on endlessly about the budget emergency and crisis, only to persist with Abbott's pet policy, an over-generous PPL.

Eek, there she is, a News Corp angel, and there in the bottom right hand corner is the sign of Satan!

The pond was just as astonished when the IPA had a go at George Brandis, as recorded in 'Another internet filter': IPA slams George Brandis copyright proposal.

It's rare enough that the pond and the IPA are on the same planet, let alone the same page,

"The policy resembles the previous Labor government's internet filter, and, like the internet filter, represents a threat to freedom of speech and digital liberty," the IPA argued. 
"The government lampooned these ideas when Labor proposed them," the IPA's Simon Breheny told Fairfax Media. 
"Alarmingly, this is a Liberal government that prior to the election made promises on freedom of speech. We expect a Liberal government to adhere to liberal values and this policy does anything but," he said. 
Furthermore, the IPA argues that such injunctions would be easily bypassed by users buying a Virtual Private Network, or as they are commonly known, VPN. 
"VPNs are not tools of a savvy, narrow elite," the submission said.

Indeed. The pond swears by its VPN and uses it daily, and how bizarre that the pond is now linking to the IPA and its media release and its discussion paper here.

Fancy the IPA being outside the tent with the pond, howling at the moon in impotent rage ... and the long absent lord and Lawrence Oates knows, it might be some time before we get back inside ...

What's more, all this treachery, betrayal and chaos helps explain why Australia now has its very own birther conspiracy, revolving around Abbott's British citizenship, which seems to have gained energy here, and had a nibble from the Nine network.

That's what happens when you make untrustworthiness a given in politics ... anyone can play that game.

Not to worry, never mind, it's Friday, and doubtless dinner parties are planned for the weekend, which brings the pond to a much more urgent matter, yes even more urgent than Sharri Markson's narcissism:

Kale!

It was Henry Alford in The New Yorker with The Kale Diaries (hurry, outside the paywall at the moment) who charted the crisis in kale supplies, which led to the world's ruination by July 2034, and so to this poignant conclusion:

Yesterday, I bought my six-year-old godson a black T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a Brassica oleracea frond and now everyone will think he has the hippest parents in the world. (I’m just another bourgeois bohemian who is unwittingly draining the profits of the Ramones’ estate.) 
But I’ll never get used to the sight of someone vaping kale. No, vaping always looks to me like you’re doing something very intimate to a fountain pen. I prefer the old ways. I find myself most nights staring into my empty salad bowl, reminiscing about the days when we’d delicately slice the rib out of eight or nine rubbery leaves; then we’d massage the greens with olive oil, until they became wilted and supple; and then we’d douse them in a rich, garlicky dressing to cloak their horrid essential bitterness. Simpler, happier times

Horrid essential bitterness?

Tony Abbott and kale?

Why didn't the pond realise it before?

Enjoy your weekend, heck enjoy your dinner party ... and remember to massage the kale ...

(Below: and if you got to Shouts and Murmurs via the humour page, you would have found this cartoon for Jolly Joe)

(Below: and it would be remiss of the pond not to note Pope's new persona ploy, and more Pope here)

Tony Abbott as Joe Camel? Is that fair?

Why yes, Joe was a team player and cheerleader.

Team Camel:

And Joe didn't mind a little war mongering.

More here, and isn't remarkable that these were doing the rounds as late as the 1980s. Oh IPA where did it all go wrong ...