Confronted with such a fine array of weekend reptile reading, how is it possible for the pond to make an editorial decision, knowing that only two shall make the cut, that the number shall be two?
Actually it's not that difficult … always go the dumbest, though sometimes fierce arguments erupt over who is actually the dumbest.
These only tend to rise to the surface, like scum in a bog, when the pond is confronted by the bizarre spectacle of someone who has never actually read the dog botherer …
These only tend to rise to the surface, like scum in a bog, when the pond is confronted by the bizarre spectacle of someone who has never actually read the dog botherer …
A quick read always sorts them out …though they're sometimes startled by the mass of neuroses that come with it.
One of them involves Twitter, because the dog botherer made such a twit of himself on the platform and had to give it up, but there's also often a deep resentment of the young, as if the doggie fucker sometimes had intimations of mortality …or if simmering below the surface, there was that ongoing Freudian battle with his son still in play ...
But above all this, above all else, there's immense stupidity and absurd attempts at arguments of the nihilistic, anarchist kind …
Yes, when in doubt, or given the dubious task of defending Trump, attack the attackers of Trump, so that something might be redeemed from the mess.
This requires a subtle form of intellectual masturbation, but with the doggie fucker, we have to leave off the intellectual, and so sadly are left with just the spillage of onanistic seeds, the result of routine masturbating in public ...
Did you like that deliberate quaintness?
"Camera-phones". You young 'uns, if only you could knew about the dark days of landlines and the PMG … now them damned "camera-phone" thingies and all this digital stuff is ruining everything, and did I mention Twitter, the platform on which I made myself a bigger idiot than even the Donald?
Oh it's a rich comedy, and much loved by all …
Here, have a cartoon … you'll need one before this is over …
And so to some praise of the Donald, because really that's the main point of the exercise …done in the reptile style, which is first to do a pretend excoriate, and then trot out sundry excuses … and remember, always blame the victim or anyone else you can find to play the victim ...
Settle on the sweet, pacifying Donald?
Who could imagine why? Given that the Donald thinks there are good people on both sides, why all he sees is goodness all around him, and all he does is deliver goodness to the world.
Did the pond mention that cartoons help prevent a condition known as barfing while consuming dog botherer?
Who could imagine why? Given that the Donald thinks there are good people on both sides, why all he sees is goodness all around him, and all he does is deliver goodness to the world.
Did the pond mention that cartoons help prevent a condition known as barfing while consuming dog botherer?
Now before the dog botherer gets on to inspirational leadership, the pond should just note that it appreciated the incantatory rise and fall of Sharpton's speech, with its insistent evocation of knee on neck …
There's a transcript here, but this will just do for the birther Donald …
...A man comes out of a single parent home, educates himself and rises up and becomes the President of the United States and you ask him for his birth certificate because you can’t take your knee off our neck. The reason why we are marching all over the world is we were like George, we couldn’t breathe, not because there was something wrong with our lungs, but that you wouldn’t take your knee off our neck.
Now it's back to the dog botherer, in his own humble way joining the birther-in-chief, to put a scribbled knee on neck ...
Aah, and so we're back with vulgar youff, because who better than the Donald and the dog botherer to light the way into the future …
The Trump way is to lie about everything. And so the dog botherer must wilfully lie about the mindset of young reporters, as if they know nothing of the past, or previous generations ...
"For Trump to fix any of this, he would need to be greater than Abraham Lincoln"?
But the Donald has already explained to dunderheads like the bromancer that he is better than Lincoln, and he's also been treated worse than Lincoln, because after all, getting shot dead at the theatre doesn't compare in any way to the Donald's suffering …
And then comes the nyah nyah, he's going to win in November, and it's all your fault, you damned liberal 'leets and nothing to do with Fox News, the devious workings of the Chairman, the GOP, rich Mitch, and all the rest of the real looters and destroyers …
But perhaps the pond has jumped the gun, perhaps the bromancer is even dumber, or at least entitled to share first place, because the pond shouldn't simply follow movie titles and rank Dumb and Dumber without giving the all dumb ones the chance to parade their dumbness…
Perhaps a sign from the heavens or at least the presence of the cult master to help in the dumb ratings? Sorry, the cult master went elsewhere this weekend…
How did the cult master end up with the wishy washy oscillating fan?
Mystery upon mystery, but the pond can't go there, not when there's a competition running to find the dumbest of the dumb ...
Oh fucketty fuck, surely the bromancer doesn't fancy himself as doing a Jimmy Baldwin? He's not going to do a spin on history?
Well there's only one way to find out, but don't say you weren't warned there'd be suffering a plenty ...
What did the dog botherer say about young 'uns being wilfully ignorant of history? Not one of them could surely have been as woeful as the bromancer, determined to sweep Jim Crow, strange fruit, Rosa Parks, the civil rights movement, and assorted outbreaks of violent racism all through the twentieth century under a very large bromancer carpet…
Here, have a cartoon, think of it as a mint julep …
Smile and nod, smile and nod, grit your teeth, as you grind through "the progress has been spectacular" ...
Subjective experiences are worth something? Well pardon the pond if it takes the subjective experience of a black American over the privileged white experience of a ning nong nonce of the bromancer kind …
There's more on that channel … and while it would be wrong to use the word 'enjoyable', some might prefer to spend their time with Amber than stay with the pond and the bromancer, and that's fine … because that choice would seem sane up against the bromancer indulging in a statistical blizzard of bullshit ...
Trump is assuredly not a systematic racist? But is Trump systematic in anything?
Is it better to be an unsystematic racist, able to talk about good people on both sides, as storm troopers march in the streets assuring the world that Jews won't replace them?
Or perhaps doing a New York Times and bending a knee to all that's wrong with American life?
And so to the reptile defence and the downplaying of the Donald's flaws, and the blaming of the victims, which is really the point of all this guff...
Okay, the pond had to reach a breaking point. You don't just have to rely on Amber, there have been many reports over the years, including this one …
There's more recent data, but nothing has changed … except the capacity for the Donald and the reptiles to deliver the big lie, that the Donald was delivering for African-Americans before the pandemic struck …perhaps in the same way that those cops delivered for a 75 year old white man …
Go tell it to the mountains, they might listen ...
You know, after that last outburst, the pond has to admit that it was wrong. The bromancer is just as big a fuckwit as the dog botherer …
It takes amazing gall, and astonishing stupidity, to scribble that a country being led by the Donald is systematically anti-racist …
If the pond happened to be black, and read that, a little rioting and looting might follow, but what do you know, that would all be the fault of liberal 'leets, rather than loons of the bromancer kind …
Sometimes the pond thinks it might just be better off staring at a blank wall, or perhaps a blank cartoon …
But no, it might be better to try a little empathy, of the kind that the bromancer, the dog botherer and the Donald lack. But that sort of empathy involves listening, not speaking down, condescending, lying, distorting, warping data, and blathering about personal experiences of a white kind … and listening is something privileged white reptiles never try to do …just check out the number of regular black columnists you find in the lizard Oz and the WSJ reprints now reaching white blizzard proportions ...
The Cult Master does serve a significant purpose.
ReplyDeleteI had a communication from my source quite early this morning. Usually, she trawls through Limited News for items that might, however tangentially, involve what most economists recognise as economics, and we try to identify from what part of the actual literature those opinions might have been gleaned, or adapted.
Of more recent time, because of the to-and-fro here in the pond, she has looked to see who scored the Lobbecke of the day. Today, at least one has been awarded to the Ned.
When the source saw this, there were already a few comments on the, er - content, of the Ned’s assemblage of words. But the one that caught her eye said -
“The cartoon has ‘Catholics’ prominent across the lady’s forehead, why? And for that reason I didn’t read the article”
Great is the power of the Cult Master.
Other Anonymous
I'm not sure I'd want to read a Nullius Ned article headed by a representation of a lady with 'Catholics' stencilled prominently onto her forehead either, OA. But then, I'm not all that sure that I'd want to read a Ned post even without such an introduction, either.
DeleteNot to get too sombre, GB, but (my source explains) the 'lady' appears to be a version of the one more correctly known as "Liberty enlightening the world'.
DeleteInteresting that Dorothy included a Rowe adaptation of that same figure yesterday.
I would like to think that the Cult Master is at least vaguely familiar with the words from Emma Lazarus, and was conscious of the sad irony of the last few lines, that say -
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Yearning to breathe free - anyone?
Other Anonymous
Yes and just wonderful how each successive wave of those "masses yearning to be free" became the next lot of slum-dwelling wage slaves - if you can't get the real thing any longer, then find a substitute. And their arrival was what generally helped to push their predecessors up the economic ladder a bit.
DeleteWhat a precious pair of perfectly pretzellised prawns you've presented us with this fine Saturn's day, DP. And as usual, so much verbiage for so little sense or meaning. Oh well, such is life among the reptiles, isn't it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, getting on to the Doggy Bov: "Self-fascinated, impetuous, aggressive, obsessed with social media and ignorantly disdainful of history ..." And there ya go, a wonderful description of the members of the ophidiarium. But hold on: "...millenials have much more in common with Donald Trump than sets them apart."
Whoa, Liam Kenny isn't a millenial, is he ? Google is silent in the matter. Anyway, Doggy Bov is displaying one of the reptiles' perennial fallacies: the assumption of homogeneity. All millenials are all alike, aren't they ? So if you know one, you know 'em all, yes ? Just like if you know one GOP Republican such as Trump, then you know 'em all.
But I do have to acknowledge that DBov is finally getting it: "Ill-judged retorts, impromptu trolling, ill-considered pronouncements and unseemly personal reflections ..." Yep, Doggy Bov really does know Trump. But then it truly does take one to know one, doesn't it.
So now for a brief interlude with the Bromancer: "By week's end the protests seemed to be moderating, at least in their violence." There we go again: the protesters are homogeneous, so it's the same folks who were looting and destroying that have all "moderated" now.
And so, you see, that's what allows the Bromancer, at least in that opaque stew he calls a mind, to declare that just because there are many US citizens who are neither systematically nor systemically racist, then America is not systematically nor systemically racist. A "truth" that is believed only by the basket of deplorables that are, in fact, racist.
But let us at least put this delusional nonsense to rest: "Trump was actually delivering for African Americans. Their unemployment rate, at just over 5%, was the lowest in history. Black poverty had declined substantially ...Black incarceration also declined under Trump ..."
Once again, the Bromancer demonstrates that he can't, or more accurately won't, distinguish between actually initiating and doing something, versus just more or less passively being there when something happened. Trump's record is almost exclusively been the latter; the few things he has actually done have been either total failures (North Korea pact, anybody ?) or things he has subsequently - and often very quickly - walked back and/or walked away from.
Someone should tell the Bromancer that, just because there's now a 'national convulsion' over racist killings where before there was none, it doesn't mean the US is no longer racist, or anything like it. The current situation and responses to police brutality merely represent the beginning, the very start, of chipping away at the injustices. We have a long way to go: I therefore expect Bro, being a man of little vision, to fail utterly to understand that.
ReplyDeleteRemember Upton Sinclair's observation, Merc: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
DeleteThen remember that the Bromancer's salary is likely quite considerable.
Ah, yes GB. The Great Murdoch Unlearning.
DeleteMy dearly beloved partner, in common with the greater mass of the country, has zero time to spend indulging reptiles. And she worries about my doing so, but that's another story.
ReplyDeleteToday, she glanced towards the Dog Botherer's heading today when collecting coffee cups, and muttered, "Surely that's a load of nonsense!?". Marvellous innit? She spends no time reading the guts of it, but gleans the exact message that we all do after poking through the entrails. "My darling, your perspicacity is in perfect order."
"Why do you read it then if you know it will be bollocks?"
Uncomfortable silence.
Ah well I do so admire those who only have time and motivation to do sensible, beneficial and reasonable things in their lives. But I would point out that the entire purpose of human progress is to be able to spend more and more time doing things that are loony, frivolous and fantastic. Like making art (see Christo's 'Wrapped Coast' for example) and creating music (like Wagner's Ring Cycle for example).
DeleteOk, so I can't do any of those things, but what I can do is critique the reptiles in case there's some lost seeker also reading it who might like to make some sense of it all. But of course you knew all that, didn't you :-)
Friends who are more intuitive than I am often roll their eyes and say things like "you can see this guy is full of shit". They bypass the whole business of spotting the falsehood or trying to provide a rebuttal.
DeleteI guess that, as with vc, it just depends on how you like to spend your time. I can't wrap coasts or compose ring cycles so I "critique" Murdochian reptiles because, basically, they're the only ones that DP serves up - and serves up so appealingly with excellent cartoonage.
DeleteBut it really all comes down to how you like to spend your time: vc's partner and your intuitive friends have other fish to fry, you (particularly) and I have other tastes but indeed we could both be accused of time wasting nit picking. To which I'd respond that: in the long run we are all dead, so basically everything is time wasting in the end though some things (eg ring cycles) have longer lifetimes before fading into oblivion.
Dorothy, Quentin Dempster appears to be trespassing on your turf. This may be a copyright issue!
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/QuentinDempster/status/1269021300606922753
Comments string in furious agreement.
On seeing the Bromancer's statistical analysis the needle fell off my bullshit meter. Before looking at the methodology, just the raw figure of 30 unarmed out of a total of 1000 people killed by police each year sounded very suspect.
Bro's stats look likely to have come from WaPo via Larry Elder. I've used all my free access to that site so I cannot pick through the data, but some criticisms can be found here:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/05/larry-elder/larry-elder-mislabels-statistics-fatal-shootings-p/
If you have been involved in data collection and analysis you will know that the question you are asking is rarely the exact one addressed by the data. In this case "Elder incorrectly claimed that his statistics represented the numbers of all black and white Americans who were killed by police, not the number of "shootings in which a police officer, in the line of duty, shoots and kills a civilian"”.
"The Washington Post doesn’t account for deaths like Floyd’s, for example. Floyd died in police custody May 25 after an officer in Minneapolis kneeled on his neck."
So do we mean shot, not strangled, tasered, run over by a car or struck by a falling star?
Also, the reporting is patchy and commonly delayed "According to the Washington Post data through June 3, police in the line of duty fatally shot 10 unarmed black people and 20 unarmed white people in 2019. (The data is updated as new facts emerge, and by June 5 the numbers jumped to 15 unarmed blacks and 25 unarmed whites.)". "As of June 3, Mapping Police Violence had counted 28 unarmed blacks and 51 unarmed whites who died at the hands of police in 2019."
Of course, in cases of police killings the only witnesses are often the police (dead men tell no tales).
In summary “black people in the U.S. are disproportionately killed by police relative to their share of the population”
Further reading
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793/tab-figures-data
I think the point is that there are two important facets here: 'racial' discrimination (and I note from the PNAS data that this doesn't only apply to 'blacks', on a proportionate basis it probably applies even more to 'native Americans') and also police behaviour.
DeleteThe emphasis on one particularly obvious matter (anti-black) is de-emphasising the base problem of police behaviour in general. Obviously, if the police killed fewer prople, they would kill fewer blacks, though the 'racial' disparity would probably still remain.
I see, though, that 57 Buffalo police have resigned in "solidarity" with the two cops charged for pushing over the 75yo guy. Now that's something to support: let's see if we can get more violence supporting cops to resign.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/fifty-seven-police-officers-resign-after-suspension-of-officers-who-shoved-man-75-during-floyd-protest-20200606-p55033.html
The PNAS data sure makes Sheridan.....and the whole tribe at NewsCorpse, as they are fellow travellers, look rather, dare I say, racist.
ReplyDeleteAnd your Twitter link from Dempster was lovely, just for this, as it also applies to the whole family of shills. Thank you. https://twitter.com/ThumbarseHuber/status/1269026185339494401
Cheery Anon.
HI GB,
ReplyDeleteThe reporting on the 57 cops resigning is unclear. I would assume they resigned from the SWAT like
response unit they were seconded to. Not their regular jobs as officers, as it's unlikely they would give up
such well compensated gigs just to support two meatheads they know in their hearts were wrong.
Yes, that makes a bit more sense of what I thought I was reading, JM. There was something about the cost of their insurance against claims from the public too as being more important than any aspect of workplace solidarity.
DeleteBTW, I have a small correction to make: Alien wasn't the last movie I saw in a theatre, as I remembered later it was actually 'Local Hero'. But it was in a small 'boutique' theatre (might have had seats for about 60 at the very most) so it didn't come readily to mind. So-so movie, fabulous music.
JM and friends - this entire episode kinda raises the question of - Just what is the function of such groups? Clearly, from what we see in the clip, it is not to ensure the safety of ordinary citizens. Are they there only to protect (the much more sacred) - property?
DeleteOther Anonymous
GB,
DeleteGreat minds think alike. I bought the Local Hero soundtrack.
Other Anonymous,
They can call them what they choose, but they are the Riot Squad. And those
cops that resigned from it in protest just screwed their CO, leaving him without a
(supposedly purpose trained) tactical response unit. Paybacks will ensue from their
bosses. Big time. Good.
Other Anonymous, I enjoy your postings and like GB's I could pick out your posts even
if both of you signed in as "Anonymous". Same for Befuddled and others.
Over time you guys have earned respect for your views.
But when various people sign in as Anonymous, I have no idea if they are the same
poster who had a great - or lousy - post previously.
Why not use a monicker, no one will know your true identity in any case.
Just a thought.
I agree with you in both respects JM - I bought the Local Hero CD too. And I have a moniker as well.
DeleteAnd for anyone who may still think that it's a meaningless moniker, here:
"Grue and bleen are examples of logical predicates coined by Nelson Goodman in Fact, Fiction, and Forecast to illustrate the "new riddle of induction" – a successor to Hume's original problem. These predicates are unusual because their application is time-dependent; many have tried to solve the new riddle on those terms, but Hilary Putnam and others have argued such time-dependency depends on the language adopted, and in some languages it is equally true for natural-sounding predicates such as "green." For Goodman they illustrate the problem of projectible predicates and ultimately, which empirical generalizations are law-like and which are not. Goodman's construction and use of grue and bleen illustrates how philosophers use simple examples in conceptual analysis."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction