The pond apologises from the get go, because it's going to have to jump around a little today.
At first the pond thought it might celebrate the dog botherer catching a spanking from Media Watch, as can be seen here … it was delicious, and no doubt Dr. Kenny (U of Trump) will be brooding and gnashing teeth for days before he erupts.
Then there was Andrew O'Hehir in Salon announcing the decline and fall of the American Empire, as here …but the pond had already sensed that and conjured up images of fires and violins ...
But that image of bikini-clad sunlight on a golden beach haunted the pond, and it had to look further …
Yes, there it was again, so pure and cleansing and enticing, and yet what was that caveat "may help us" in the header - why so uncertain? - and then there was the author, one Mark Whittaker.
The pond immediately set out in search of Mr Whittaker's credentials … and stumbled on this …
Ah, a cow man, apparently of some leisure.
Obediently the pond clicked on "read more about Mark" and scored this …
Okay, his website might not be up to much, but he does have a wiki listing here … and so to the read announcing wondrous cures for all that might ails ya …dosed up with impressive graphs that would have Alan Kohler weeping with envy …
Note that the graph has absolutely nothing to do with the matter under review, which will no doubt please Alan Kohler.
But what of the study under review? Was it peer assessed? Does it have any direct, discernible relevance?
Neale et al can be found elsewhere, worrying about whether sunscreen might affect vitamin D uptake, versus skin cancer, as here … and here … and so on …
But what's the real point of the proceedings? The pond read on … and with the next headline, the pond realised immediately what was up.
It was a chance to run a few more Donald cartoons …
You see, right from the get go, Whittaker introduces a distortion … Donald Trump wasn't talking about sunlight. He was talking about inserting light up the wazoo …
This is what he actually said, according to the BBC …
"And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting," the president continued.
"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?
"So it'd be interesting to check that."
Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: "I'm not a doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-what."
And this was the feedback loop outlined by Politico here …
Instead, the process worked in reverse. First, Trump offered a muddled but hopeful theory — that one could somehow insert light or medicine into the lungs — and conservative and Trump-friendly media outlets started trying to explain and boost it. They flagged obscure research papers and said the president was simply attempting to raise the country’s spirits. They tried to discredit mainstream media coverage of the comments.
“Trump used the word ‘inject’ but what he meant was using a process — which he left ‘medical doctors’ to define — in which patients’ lungs might be cleared of the virus, given new knowledge about its response to light and other factors,” wrote Joel Pollak in an article posted on Breitbart hours after Trump made his remarks.
It’s the latest example of the symbiotic relationship between the president and his media boosters during the coronavirus. At times, conservative outlets have promoted ideas, such as the possibility that the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine might help cure the disease, that Trump has then adopted. Other times, Trump throws out his own theories, and conservative outlets swiftly parrot them and defend the president.
… which leads us to this headline in the lizard Oz ...
Peer reviewed studies? Evidence? Oh here, have another Donald cartoon or three…
And so back to the read … and the anecdotal evidence …
Note that this is to do with a matter in 2003, and involved a study of an entirely different virus, and so everything is speculation … but we've been there before …
And then comes the killer line … "but not in a study format." So we've moved from Trump seeing the light and sunlight and nitric oxide to "but not in a study format" ...
Well a little sunlight never hurt anyone, if taken in moderation to avoid skin cancer, and it is a good way to get Vitamin D, even Dr Parker (U of Trump) knows that, but as to the the rest of the idle speculation offered up by the idle gentlemen farmer?
All that just to get a header that says Trump saw the light? All the pond saw was ...
But the pond is pleased to report on what could be found … an infallible Pope, doing a Manet …
Well we all love our lunch on the grass, and getting a little sunlight, even if Manet seems a little shaded in his wiki listing here ...
And now this is where the pond must skip around a bit more, and get even more skittish.
You see Helen Coonan was out and about today beating the minerals drum, and as is the reptile wont, they obliged with a "news" story that regurgitated all her talking points …
Some might think of it as journalism, the pond prefers to think of it as a pick up line …
Now we needn't waste too long with the Coonan, because her love of minerals could be scribbled out by pond readers while in a deep sleep.
All that needs to be said is that the illustration for her piece was very disappointing …
And so on and so forth, and because the pond had to keep the tedium under control - the ennui introduced by that deadly mix of a Coonan and a Jellett - it was on with a hop and a skip so that the pond could arrive at the last couple of pars ...
Note the canny Coonan framing: "… will grow in line with the expanding needs of highly populated nations."
Phew, what a relief, Indonesia perhaps, or India or other Asian countries, but no mention of that dragon to the north ...
Meanwhile, simplistic Simon was also out and about …
Ah free trade. Well the pond could only stand so much Simon guff, and so again it cut to the last gobbet, not quite certain with whom we might be free trading ...
But what of that dragon to the north?
And here the pond must introduce a bummer, a downer, because the bromancer was on the warpath …
But what of the minerals boom? What of shipping coal to the fire-breathing dragon of the north, which needs plenty of coal to keep the fire going and turn Beijing into a nightmare of pollution?
What of the Coonan and her valiant lobbying? What of the reptile "news"?
What of simplistic Simon's yearning for free trade? (Did he speak to the Donald about that, and finally come to understand that the way forward is to slap a tariff on anything that moves … or anything that doesn't, there being a certain stillness in the air).
Sorry, the pond warned it was going to be skittish, because keeping company with sunlight and snake oil sales folk always leads to a case of the nerves.
Perhaps the bromancer will settle the pond down, with more talk of war with the dragon from the north …
What a relief. At last we're going to do something for climate science, by refusing to ship coal and iron ore to the fire-breathing dragon of the north … and it's not as if the planet couldn't do with some help …
Graudian them here while they last and before the lands above the faraway tree move on … and back to the bromancer, still on the warpath … and wonder of wonders, the bromancer leads with Malware, even though the reptiles have spent a week announcing he doesn't have a clue, and kept that up today …
Stand aside, Troy, let the warlike bromancer and Malware through ...
Ah, so it's all bully boy bluster and projection.
Put it this way. The bromancer and the reptiles are extremely unsentimental in trade, never doing you a favour because you are a friend - it's tricky being friends with Murdochian reptiles - but never walking away from a good deal because you're not a friend …
Yippee ki yay, Hans, the Coonan is redeemed, and we can still keep selling all our stuff to that dangerous northern dragon.
As a result, the pond rates the chance of getting an independent review in inverse proportion to the reptiles' ongoing desire to dump clean pure dinkum Oz coal up north …
And so to the pond's one regret, with all this skittishness, from sunlight to minerals to trade wars to the bromancer speaking out of his UV-cleansed arse …
There was no room for Dame Groan. Oh how sad, the Groan left in the outer darkness ...
But you already know all that. It's a simple message, pure and true. Don't forget to screw contractors and casuals, and make sure the gig economy keeps fucking over people, and remember to hate unions and resist any attempt to organise labour and provide decent living conditions, because once they stop being on the front line, who really cares about checkout operators, nurses and such like …oh, and remember to slam the door on their grasping fingers on your way out, and don't forget to break the arm of those milksop judges who worry that some might live in abject poverty on what's supposed to be a living wage …because if you can't screw the workers after the virus has been subdued, what was the point of living through the virus?
Perhaps the pond has mangled the message a little, but sadly the Groaner's moans had to go, to make room for an immortal Rowe, with more Rowe to hand here …and what do you know, it brings us back to the bromancer and the rest of the minerals mob ...
Cue contributor Coonan. (Alliteration is alluring, isn’t it?)
ReplyDeleteStart with a heroic verbal image, befitting a jolly Jellett. ‘The willingness of Australian mining to step up in tough times’. Oh, the sacrifice; what we do for the nation, with no thought to our own benefit.
Then the claim that the mining industry ‘has paid’ $234 billion in tax and royalties over 13 years. As fellow pond inhabitants will have deduced, my source is particularly interested in that kind of detail, so passed that snippet on to y’r humble.
No reflection on you DP - most of it was tedium, although the pap cobbled together in the Birmingham’s office, and to which he signed his name, makes the Coonan contribution almost interesting by comparison. And - you were willing to sift through the Dame’s foray into the IR legal system on our behalf. Now THAT is willingness to step up in tough times.
But back to the heroic miners. If you go to the MCA website, section on tax, you find they still cite the Deloitte report of 2018. That was based on a ‘survey’ of a sample of the major companies at the time, and was criticised because it made assumptions from taxable income for those companies, rather than tabulated tax actually paid.
You might think a former Minister for Revenue - as Ms Coonan was from 2001-04 - should be wary of offering a calculation from taxable income as equivalent to tax paid. Particularly for an industry, the members of which are routinely in legal proceedings because our tax collectors are not persuaded that the actual sales of bulk minerals occurs in countries that don’t even see the stuff pass through their ports.
But, in the national interest ‘fiscal settings should encourage investment and growth’ for that glorious post-Covid future.
Perhaps Ms Coonan’s next contribution to the flagship, as a Director of Crown since 2011, will praise the willingness of the gambling ‘industry’ to step up in tough times, and seek even more tax concessions as a reward for its patriotism.
Other Anonymous
What was it Bef said a couple of days ago ? Oh yes: "replacing complex facts with a simple narrative". Yeah, and they are so very good at it, aren't they: ranting, raving reptiles replete with rewards. (Yes, it is).
DeleteGB - I trust I have not set off adventures in allegorical alliteration across the pond.
DeleteOther Anonymous
Oh Popey! Popey, Popey, Popey!!!
ReplyDeleteThat's utter genius - I have not enjoyed myself so much since I nestled into the couch last night and watched the dog botherer get pantsed - and happily Barry left out some of his week of utter balderdash which may flow into next week.
Chris has always had zero credibility, but events of 2020 so far have seen him going deep into negative credibility zones as yet unplumbed.
Well that was a lovely wander down Halfpenny Lane, DP (reptiles aren't worth the full penny).
ReplyDeleteRe Rachel Neale: how would "pulls up her skirt" expose "a bit of belly" ? Never mind, let's consider this: "In Neale's review, which encompassed 78,000 participants ..." Where did she get 78,000 "participants" from ? And was every single one actually measured for vitamin D levels ? And every one was checked out via comprehensive hospital and doctor's records for a scientific assessment of the "extreme lung infections" that they suffered ?
On her academic web page [ https://www.qimrberghofer.edu.au/people/rachel-neale/ ] it says that: "Between 2014 and mid-2015 we enrolled 21315 participants and randomised them to 60,000 IU vitamin D per month or placebo, with a planned intervention period for each person for 5 years. Follow-up is ongoing."
So she says 21,315 and "Inquirer" says 78,000; who do we believe ?
As for the bit about sunlight and Nitric Oxide in the skin, read this for a balanced analysis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022202X15368974
But enough of the reptiles' Trump derangement syndrome (ie the insane desire of reptiles and wingnuts to want to "justify" every idiotic thing that Trump spouts) for now; the important thing is how to arrange for the stuff that's dug out of our ground to remain completely untaxed.
Helen of the MCA states categorically that: "The mining industry has always underpinned Australia's economic prosperity...". Mebbe, but I'll bet there's just a few people out there who will be very surprised to learn that Australia never, ever "rode on the sheep's back". Aussie bred merino sheep that is, and we didn't so much ride on their backs as on the fabulously expensive pure merino wool that we sheared off their backs.
Did you know, BTW, that the CSIRO invented a process so that wool cloth could hold a 'permanent' crease ? It's called Siroset. [ https://csiropedia.csiro.au/siroset/ ] Clever little so-n-sos, aren't we.
And skirting right past Simon, we get to: the Bromancer ! And the "independent inquiry" into how the Chinese grew and ate the bats and pangolins that gave the world COVID-19 and how we just won't sell them any more of our world's best coal and iron ore and beef and wine unless they tell us all about it. Like what they did to cause a bunch of non-Chinese mobs to total up around 3,000,000 cases of infection and over 200,000 'certified' deaths when China itself - not to mention Australia and NZ - didn't get anywhere near the infection and death rates signified by such numbers.
My wife reads the Global Times as a way of looking at the tea leaves, seeing what the PRC wants to telegraph without explicitly stating it as government policy.
DeleteShe advises that previous criticism of China hasn't resulted in much comment, but they seem to have been a bit piqued by the latest round of China bashing. She expects a good, hard slap coming our way when the health crisis is over.
Personally, I don't feel much of an urge to defend the Chinese, but I am confused as to what benefit will be gained by upsetting our major trading partner. The Chinese obviously see this as just doing the US' bidding as a dutiful lickspittal.
The Bromancer doesn't seem to have much in the way of moral or ethical concerns when talking about the Pussy Grabber, so why all the need to lead the charge against China? Considering the usual treatment of allies by the current administration it seems unlikely we can expect any reward from the US.
Well the Bromancer is a religious nut, and America is a country full of religious nuts and China is a country full of 'atheists'. Why wouldn't the Bro be anti-China ?
DeleteThanks for the link to the Salon article DP. The intertubes are full to overflowing with pieces detailing the decline and fall (someday) of the American Empire. It's all pretty self-evident to anyone who isn't an American but it's nice to see it laid out so nicely in any case.
ReplyDeletehttps://eand.co/donald-trump-american-idiot-1571f3606ea4
This piece by Patrick Wyman goes into the nuts and bolts of how a society fails using Rome as an example:
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/03/how-do-you-know-if-youre-living-through-the-death-of-an-empire/
It's not the big military failures or economic setbacks, it's "more like a cascading series of minor, individually unimportant failures than a dramatic ending that appears out of the blue. Carts full of olive oil failing to arrive at some nameless fort because of a dysfunctional military bureaucracy, a corrupt official deciding to cook the books and claim taxes were collected when they really weren’t, a greedy aristocrat bribing that official instead of paying his bill, an aqueduct falling to pieces and nobody willing to front the funds to repair it."
"Not with a bang but with a whimper" you reckon, Bef. Or as I once was given to saying: "When creeping entropy becomes galloping chaos".
ReplyDeleteBut then the United States have always been like this: graft, grift and just plain criminality have always prevailed (we all remember Al Capone, amongst many others, don't we ?), and they've had presidents nearly as bad as Trump before yet their nation did not collapse.
So why should it this time ?
I think the point is that Trump is not the cause, but rather the symptom. Trump is just a milepost on a long road.
DeleteSo, you're right, Trump will not cause a collapse by himself, but his presence indicates they are a long way down that road.
In that first linked article, Umair Haque's point is that Americans not only accept inequality and corruption, they actively endorse it. Australians do that too, but there is a long way to go before we can challenge the true idiocy of contemporary America.
Freedumb!!!!
The difference? Well, if Bush had lost in '04, he would have packed his bags and gone back to Texas. If Trump loses in 6 months, he will call on his supporters to protest in the streets, and to bring their AR15s. It will be like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXq7-vvGJ7c
DeleteI didn't post a quote from the Eudaimonia story because every para deserved a quote and I couldn't decide, but here's one at random "American life is made up of a series of abuses and exploitations and degradations that shock the rest of the world — all of it, not just some of it. You’re a kid, and you go to school, where armed, masked men burst in, and fire fake bullets at you — “active shooter drills.” Maybe you go into “lunch debt.” When it’s time to go off to college — good luck, it’s going to cost as much as a home. Therefore, you can forget about every really owning much, because you’re trying to pay off a series of mounting debts your whole life long. By middle age, like most Americans, you’re simply unable to make ends meet — who can, when going to the hospital can cost more than a mansion? Therefore, forget retirement — it’s something that vanished long ago. Maybe you’re working at Walmart in your old age, maybe you’re driving an Uber — but you’re still where you always were, being exploited and abused for pennies, to make the ultra rich richer."
DeleteBut it's always been like that, Bef, now isn't any different. Some of us have unrealistic views of America based on that short period of more general prosperity for about 30 years post WWII when a lot of the worst American flaws were disguised by a better economy.
DeleteAs to "active shooter drills" consider the career of Andrew Kehoe back in 1927: "The Bath School disaster, also known as the Bath School massacre, was a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan. The attacks killed 38 elementary schoolchildren and 6 adults, and injured at least 58 other people."
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster ]
To repeat, that was back in 1927. Have you ever heard of it ? I bet one or two of the living parents of some of the dead kids might have wished that they had "active shooter drills" or such back then.
Let's just get this straight: the US has always been a shvthole, nothing is different now.
You maybe could have a point there Joe: they could call out the NRA and tge KKK and a few others as well and have a lovely little armed insurrection.
DeleteGrueBleen wrote: But then the United States have always been like this: graft, grift and just plain criminality have always prevailed (we all remember Al Capone, amongst many others, don't we ?), and they've had presidents nearly as bad as Trump..."
DeleteHi GB,
Until the election of Game Show Donnie I would have tried to at least mount a defense
of America. But as a amateur historian I have seen too many signs of a waning empire.
However as to Capone and his minions, I would note I just finished watching the last of the "Underbelly" series on You Tube and I hardly would declare the values of King's Cross reflect those of people such as the commentators on this page.
My mom attended a Chicago teaching hospital in Chicago in 1940. Al Capone's brother
ran a bar next door where the nurses relaxed after their shift. They all said he was a gent and kept the bar room Romeos from accosting the girls.
So I guess I'm two degrees of separation from Big Al Capone himself. And my Mom's EPA maven brother once played gulf with Nixon, so I'm just one degree away from Tricky Dicky. Shit, maybe we "seppos" are all tainted by criminality.
But don't complain when Red China runs the world and drones stop you on the corner
and ask for your ID.
G'day JM.
DeleteI wouldn't claim Australia as any kind of paradise on Earth, it's had its share of criminals and arseholes. And still does. But for most of Australia's history it's been about the size of a middling American state, so the scope and scale has been very different. Even a Squizzy Taylor couldn't match the scope and scale of a Capone.
However, at least Australia has never had a Ku Klux Klan or an Andrew Kehoe - though we did have Farraday and Wooreen school kidnapping/hostage events. But you can look up a quite comprehensive list of Australia's crooks - if you want to do a camparison - here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_criminals#Families
There has always been a large number of basically decent, law abiding Americans too - and there still is - or the whole place would have descended into a mafioso style 'Sicily state' long ago. And mostly, yes, I'd still prefer to live in America - well, in parts of it anyway - than in China.
Nonetheless, I don't think the American 'empire' is collapsing just yet, though it does now have something it's really never had before - not even at the height of post WWII Russian 'power' - a serious, growing rival. Not that China is a big threat yet - it has only just commissioned its first homegrown aircraft carrier - but it is 'power hungry' in a way that Russia never was.
Trump has come, and Trump will go, and America will continue much as it has. The rise of China could even drive an American 'revival' rather than a fallover. We shall see.
Hi Mike,
DeleteOddly enough, I have American in-laws, have worked with a number of Americans and bumped into quite a lot on vacations etc. Nearly all have been decent enough and a few have been quite engaging.
What confuses me is the bland acceptance of attitudes and behaviour that would definitely cause distress in most of Oz (outside the herpetarium of course) or Europe. There's probably a bit of self delusion in this as Australia is not without most of the same problems, it's just at a totally different scale.
Apart from a few of the better educated types, probably "liberal" by American definition, most seem totally desensitised to what is going on.
Yep, that's the thing: that "bland acceptance". Not that it's quite as bland as it looks, I think, but ... Just for comparison, almost no Anglo or Euro nation would put up with the American way of health care: insurance mainly through employment, punitive costs all up and down the process, allowing corporations to 'own' life saving drugs and hold the country to ransom because of that ... And not to forget that Obama, not Trump, allowed very many Americans to be bankrupted and to lose their homes by 'mishandling' the GFC bailout, helping only the rich and ignoring the people.
DeleteAmerica has had presidents as bad or worse than Trump: Reagan and GW Bush of recent times for example. It's just that basically they've been less obvious or better hidden. For all his many faults, Trump hasn't started another Vietnam/Gulf/Afghanistan/Iraq war.
Befuddled,
ReplyDeleteA major reason for the racism is that the bitter promise "The South Will Rise Again" has been fulfilled with the South's takeover of the GOP(Grumpy Old Puritans).
Their generations spanning hatred for and need to debase all things "Washington" was a result of their resentment of the Yankees/Liberals who took away their slaves and thus their economic/political power.
Their culture of hate is the triumph of the Old South, the call to arms that put them in power ironically being Obama's election. The first 80 years the republic was in thrall to the Slave Aristocracy that basically ran the country.
Then they were out on their ass, and for the next 150 years the majority of the states that were in the CSA have been Welfare Queens.
Jersey, NY, Illinois etc pay billions more to DC than they get back, while the most backward states such as Moscow Mitch's Kentucky get by on Yankee gold while painting themselves as self reliant He-Men.
Hopefully it's their Last Hurrah, which they themselves suspect is the case which is why they push for voter suppression
I need a beer now, these people depress me. A VB would do.
Don't forget that VB is now a Japanese beer, JM, so you might like to go for an Asahi Black instead.
DeleteOf course part of the problem is that the American Rebellion Is about 160 years ago which is only about two modern lifetimes. Not nearly enough time to let bygones be bygones yet, as, for instance, in the British Civil War (1642-1651)or the War of the Roses (1455-1485). I don't think all that many people even remember such events nowadays, though some may have heard of them in school.