No, the pond isn't going there …
The pond has a particular contempt for the Victorian court system's use of suppression orders - a Victorian, in the sense of the Queen - attempt to turn back the internet just as Canute turned back the tide, with the only victims local journalists and the right to know - yet these two clowns and all the others blathering away in the Murdochian empire make cogent arguments in favour of suppression.
Who is Brennan to determine in the court of reptile opinion what is improbable, if not impossible? His own arguments have already been shown to be improbable, if not impossible. How on earth can the craven Craven attempt to pin the blame on the ABC and former Fairfax journalists, as if the Catholic church and Pell himself had nothing to do with the fix he's in? The treatment of victims over the years has been an appalling disgrace and yet these loons still whine and moan about the justice system going about its business?
There's an appeals process to go, and yet these clowns do their very best to contaminate the process and pass comment on a victim who wants privacy and therefore has no recourse …
It was a relief then to turn to old favourite nattering "Ned", sighing yet again about climate science …
Say what?
Even "Ned" realises that there's an attempt to pass off a very old "knees up, mother SloMo" tune, and the result is another stop on the way of a long exercise in political weirdness, prompted and provoked by reptile climate science denialism?
Actually it's about ideology …and it's pretty hard to hide the ideological bent ...
But this is "Ned" and suddenly he too is a true believer in climate science and climate action, except not really, not deep down, it's still a faith, it's still ideological yadda yadda ...
Actually SloMo will never persuade the climate science denialists still running rampant in Murdochian la la land that he's had a change of heart …
The trick is to do dog whistles... all he has to do is persuade them that a little tokenism will take care of things until after the election …please, just allow a little wriggle room until after the election, and then the incoherence and lack of action on all fronts can continue on apace …
How can this be done? Well there's the old saw of blaming China, while failing to mention the way dinkum clean Oz coal heads off to the Chinese burners and no-one in Murdoch la la land ever says boo to that particular goose … and trust nattering "Ned", he knows how that game is played ...
Aah, poor "Ned's" slip showed in that interminable gobbet.
See how"Ned's" religiously obsessed talked of morality, faith and ideological commitment continues, while making a brave attempt to redeem the onion muncher …suggesting that he rendered magnificent political service, never mind the folly of his green army service to the science or the planet …
Is there a final irony? Of course there is … whenever the blathering bore mentions coal, the pond is reminded of the lizard Oz's endless crusade in favour of clean, dinkum, true blue Oz coal, conducted on the moronic level of a Clive Palmer political ad ...
For fucks sake, when will they ever stop talking of climate science as "radical", or as a "popular climate change wave"?
Okay, the pond understands that "Ned" is old and the science is beyond him, but then why does he keep on blathering about the science with simple-minded, simplistic, reductionist words that prove his complete irrelevance?
Climate change isn't a a fucking popularity contest, it's not women in bikinis parading with lumps of coal, or sex symbols like SloMo, or even, long absent lord help us, that Tamworthian temptress Barners …
And now speaking of the hard lunar right orbiting in the planet Janet, how pleasing it was to see Dame Slap out and about, mixing profound contempt for Liberal wets with a liberal dose of her own brand of misogyny …
It puts the pond in a peculiar position.
Usually the pond wouldn't spare a moment's sympathy for the asbestos woman, but here she is being assaulted by Dame Slap, in a particularly vicious mugging.
She's barely out the door, but Dame Slap dons her steel-capped Blundstones and hoes into her in a way that evokes the droogs in Clockwork Orange … and what's more the reptiles love it so much they've given the Dame cult Lobbecke status for the day ...
Indeed, indeed, politics is not a popularity contest. Just ask for a reptile opinion on comrade Bill …but that sounds like a stand-up routine from Dame Slap, when you consider the alternative, the grifting snake oil salesman who thinks he's immensely popular … as most clowns do …
Talk about an entertainer, and the pond apologises to the immortal Pope for carving out this splendid portrait of the performer at work in his very own popularity contest, before reverting to Dame Slap …
It turned out she wasn't just going the Bishop, she had her eye on any woman with the guts to do what Dame Slap didn't have the guts to do … wend their way through a party of patriarchs and try to score pre-selection and then get elected, knowing that all the time the bullies would be queuing up to see if you were tough enough to take it …
Actually the yammering about gender goes hand in hand with all the other problems … because behind it all is the dead hand of the dullard hard right, the dopes that nobody can rope, the onion munchers, the outlaw Kellys, the mutton Duttons … ably abetted by the lizards of Oz, helping them confound intelligent responses to matters such as climate science, energy, welfare, gulags … why once you get started, the list of ineptitudes is endless …
In fact, the lunar world of Dame Slap is at the heart of it, because she simply can't stand anything that hints of moderation or the centre ...
No, it seems we must continue to live in the bog of Dame Slap's deeply entrenched - and dare the pond quote nattering "Ned"? - deeply weird policy prescriptions … but thank the long absent lord, there's only one more gobbet to go, with Dame Slap getting wildly excited by the triumph of the patriarchy ...
And there you have it. If anyone wants an explanation of why the onion muncher ministry looked like this in December 2014 …
Can we have a token woman over there …
…and why the SloMo ministry had to stack a few women in the front row in an attempt to seem like a mixed bunch …
...Dame Slap has provided your answer … and it's a fair bet that, following her nostrums and prescriptions, the Liberal party will go on looking like this for years to come, and while dreaming of Margaret Thatcher, wonder where a female leader might come from, sometime perhaps around the year 2525 …
And now is it so wrong for the pond to enjoy a cartoon by the genuinely infallible Pope or the always reliable Rowe? With more Pope here, and more Rowe here …
Mr Brennan is a human rights lawyer who seems to care more for the rights of the Cardinal than the boy who was made to gag on the Cardinal's penis. I doubt Jesus meant this when he said for the children to be allowed to come to him. Still you can't blame the human rights centred church, as the Cardinal said, it is like a trucking company and can't be blamed for drivers who are rapists. Jesus wept.
ReplyDeleteAll things considered, A.Tim, trucking companies can't be blamed for drivers who are rapists any more than religious orders can be blamed for priests who are rapists. All of that is God's work: he made the human brain and psyche the way it is, not any of us.
DeleteBut I reckon it might just be possible that we could blame trucking companies and religious orders who take no action against rapists and who offer no protection or support to those who are raped.
But then, maybe Brennan enjoyed his experience so much that he just can't see what the fuss could possibly be.
Perhaps we should rename the "catholic" church as the fucking company!
DeleteEspecially as anyone who chooses to be a priest is obviously fucked up in the head about both his body and his sexuality.
I think you can argue that churches create a fertile environment for aberrant behaviour by teaching that normal sexual practises are a mortal sin. It's a formula for deviance that is no doubt compounded by the patriarchal nature of most churches (the targets of opportunity are mainly young males).
DeleteIncidentally, I note that for Catholics even having sex with yourself is a mortal sin. Sheesh it's a hard rule to live under!
I dunno that it was so much the self-gratification, Bef (Xtians have always been good at that) so much as being annoyed at Onan for "casting his seed upon the ground" to avoid fathering a bunch of children that God wanted for some reason or other.
DeleteEvery sperm is sacred, you know.
Good one, DP.
ReplyDeleteOnly 1.3%. So, no more foreign wars for us, we wouldn't make any difference.
Let in as many refugees as you like, as long as it's less than 1.3%.
Don't worry about your suffering self-funded retirees, they are less than 1.3%.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDelete“But few regarded Bishop as a serious political warrior on issues that go to the heart of the Liberal Party’s existence as a political party.”
“Bishop didn’t have the political heft to carry that fight.”
“The Howard government had heavyweight ministers such as Peter Costello, Peter Reith and Downer who were at the front line battling big policy debates.”
“A better candidate would have stuck around for a fight.”
Dame Slap is a fine example of the lunar right’s attitude to politics. It’s either a fight, a battle or a war. Like the onion muncher’s feeble musings “Battlelines” everything is couched in martial terminology. This of course makes it easier to demonise the opposition and turn every issue into a Manichaean struggle between good and evil.
Whilst others may view politics as a way to provide good governance of the country, often via discussion, debate and even compromise, for the Dame Slaps of this world it’s all about the biff.
As one US politician once said when asked “What is best in life?”
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”
For Albrechtsen, words to live by.
DiddyWrote
I nearly choked at D Slap's troika of heavyweights. I cannot think of a single worthwhile achievement between the three of them. Self-serving mediocrity would seem more appropriate.
DeleteI'll throw in Thatcher as well. Her legacy has been to provide an adjective to describe uncaring policies driven by greed.
Maybe words for the Slap to claim to live by DW, but not actually for her. I simply can't recall her ever taking on anything remotely combative, and especially not combative with males as she would seem to be requiring of the Asbestos Lady.
DeleteAs for Howard's "men", Bef, well surely Costello achieved a high in feckless gutlessness, Reith did wonders for Father-Son finance and Downer reached the heights of political "things that batter".
Now I don't know of any other MPs with sparkling achievements like those.
Oh, and Reith did his best to destroy the MWU, but I'm not sure just how much of the credit he can actually claim.
OTOH, GB, Reith did an outstanding job if destroying the federal public service as a body (at least nominally) dedicated to giving frank and fearless advice to the government of the day. He was able to convert it into a dysfunctional, politicised, disunited melange of entities with low morale and little courage whose chief function is to validate ministerial decisions to help out their mates.
DeleteWhether that counts as an achievement or not depends on your perspective. But on behalf of 47% or so of the population, credit where it's due.
I dunno, FD, the age of Nugget Coombs and Roland Wilson were long gone by the time of Peter Reith. By then we were well and truly under the greasy palm of the Productivity Commission and other 'deep state' groups.
DeleteYour mileage may differ, but my own experience of the Australian Public Service, having been in and out of it for various engagements since 1963 (Dept Navy at Albert Park Barracks) until 1977 (then in Dept Health ADP section in Canberra) and having 'consulted' for some later times (mainly DEIR, also AOTC/Telstra before Howard sold it off) was that the Federal Pubserve was a very variable entity: sometimes good and honest, often bad and partisan.
Truly a modern 'curate's egg'.