The pond knew the very minute it landed yesterday that it had to be the lead, and the reptiles confirmed the pond's assessment by keeping it up for all to see this day…
What a ripper rant it was, and even if it's an import, still, a ripper rant is what makes the pond's day …
What happened? Um, chairman Rupert, the WSJ, Fox and Friends, the GOP, Moscow Mitch, the Donald and his brood, and Gerard Baker?
Just guessing, just asking for a friend. Don't get the pond wrong, it loves the Confederacy, it loves the Confederate flag, it celebrates the joys and virtues of slavery every chance it gets … it realises the civil war turned out the wrong way, and what a tragedy that was, and how right the Donald is to keep the civil war going … but above all, the pond loves a preening prat narcissist snake oil salesman posing against a monument. Oh please, pretty please, do run that photo ...
Mindless Maoism? That's good, that's rich, but not half so good as mindless Donaldism …
The pond has always said that (a) under its current leadership the United States is comprehensively fucked and (b) what a tragedy it would be for satirists and humorists should the Donald miss out in November … but really (c), how good is a WSJ rant?
Deserted by predatory and mercenary corporate chiefs? Does that include the Chairman and Fox News?
By the way, did you see this brilliant piece of mischief-making? It wasn't done by a parasitic cultural elite, it was done by alienated Republicans, who apparently have more than the first clue about the Donald ...
It probably won't change any minds, but what a pity that the pond is prevented by tossing a dollar the way of its makers, because skilled exercises in political paranoia should be rewarded …
And now before proceeding, the pond should hail the return of the cult master …
Truly, students of the arcane arts of illustration will be contemplating that one for its hidden deeper meanings for the next hundred years, but sadly the pond must move on, because nattering "Ned" calls … with insights into hidden deeper meanings ...
How the pond loves it when "Ned" promises to elucidate hidden "deeper meanings", because the pond knows this will be an exercise in tedium and ennui and boredom that would make Beckett's "Waiting for Ned" seem like amateur theatrics ...
Surely the deeper meanings couldn't be the beginnings of an elbow bump? Of course not, please, get ready to fall into a deep slumber … because "Ned" has mastered the art of saying nothing at great length, while purporting to deliver profound insights, worthy of a Zen master ...
Dammit, the pond hates to interrupt the listicle, but how clever of "Ned" to have later politicians haunted by the 1930s, only so that "Ned" might, in his infinite wisdom, explain to them how it's a silly comparison, and there are some significant differences, apparent only to those who lived through the 1930s and now bore readers of the lizard Oz ...
A few hundred votes? The last the pond looked it was 814, and back in 2019, it wasn't much different, at 1,685. Could it be that the pompous, portentous "Ned" is trying to build a sand castle of significance out of not very much?
Could it be that it's just an excuse for a standard reptile rant about the climate change hoax, and its complete irrelevance to life down under, and by extension, the world? Could it be that the pond has read this sort of stuff a thousand times, and like the virus, the planet and the science don't much care ... the planet will go on doing what the science says it's doing, and if you like, you can hide your noggin in the by-election sands, and pretend it's wisdom and insight and a "deeper, hidden meaning" …
But do go on ...
Yes, Labor losing Eden-Monaro was a serious confidence shaker, but the pond had a sudden urge to relieve the turgid text with an infallible Pope, a reliable guide to deeper hidden meanings …
It would have been a lot simpler if "Ned" had simply scribbled, in a short par, "I don't much like Labor and I urge everyone not to vote for them, because that's the way it goes at the lizard Oz", rather than dressing it up with fancy talk of brand problems and such like, and blathering on endlessly about painfully transparent hidden meanings, in a way that might almost turn the pond Rosicrucian ...
What a hill of insurmountable guff, ending up somewhere out in Woop Woop and without the slightest insight into how things might play out down the track …
The pond felt short-changed, as it always does when reading nattering "Ned" and decided it needed to offer a bonus … and is there anything better than the lizard editorialist doing economics? (okay, Killer Creighton would be better, but remember that old song, if you're down and confused, and you don't remember who you're reading, well, there's a reptile rose in a fisted glove, and the lizard crawls with the dove, and if you can't be with the reptile Killer Creighton economist you love, honey, love the reptile editorial economist you're with …)
Oh dear, that's awkward, Pearson joining in, he was always a reptile pet. Luckily the reptile readership was on hand to steer the lizard editorialist to safer waters …
Indeed, indeed, bring back the gold standard, and the Confederate flag, and heck, why not the Confederacy itself, what have we got to lose? Rod Stewart? But do on on lizard Oz editorialist, being terribly poignant ...
We need to earn and pay our way? Hang on, hang on, the lizard Oz has always been an albatross around the chairman's empire, kept on because of the political influence it offers rather than the profits … it's never paid its way, and their ABC had this and other things to report at the end of May 2020 here ...
This month, News Corp posted a $1.1 billion loss for the March quarter, dragged down in Australia by the cable TV business Foxtel, which has seen the plug temporarily pulled on its once-wealthy sports broadcasting model due to COVID-19 restrictions on large events.
Media analyst Peter Cox, a longtime News Corp watcher, said the real estate advertising slump had compounded the losses, but that financial pressures at Foxtel accelerated the decision to close regional and community printing presses.
"News Corp in Australia is totally challenged," Mr Cox told the ABC.
"The original idea was that Foxtel would be the cash cow to finance the newspapers in Australia but, of course, Foxtel is in steep decline, it has huge borrowings and very reduced advertising and is in a diabolical state.
"So rather than being able to feed and finance the newspapers, that hasn't happened."…
M….r Cox said the viability of The Australian — the national broadsheet established by Mr Murdoch in the 1960s — would not escape the glare of News Corporation bean counters working to sandbag key investments in the US, including the prestigious Wall Street Journal and the conservative Fox News cable network.
"I think there's going to be reductions right across the organisation. Not just the regional newspapers and closing some of them down. And every time you cut back, you lose experienced journalists, you lose skills," he observed.
"So this is a very challenging time for both News Corp and their newspapers."
Ah, those economists will get you every time, so duty done for the day, perhaps the pond should just relax with the latest Rowe, and more Rowe here ...
"What happened? Um, chairman Rupert, the WSJ, Fox and Friends, the GOP, Moscow Mitch, the Donald and his brood, and Gerard Baker?"
ReplyDeleteThat is a very narrow sighted and minded timeframe that Baker has set, DP, when he truthfully claims that "The US hasn't passed from great to evil in 20 years."
No, it's been evil way longer than that, and even just the last half of the 20th century has to at least start with Joseph McCarthy and include Richard Nixon and his gang, and especially Ronnie Reagan. Not to entirely forget that Mitch McConnell has been a senator since 1985 (35 years by my count).
And especially lovey-dovey claims such as "the US ...advanced a free market capitalism that led more humans out of poverty than any economic system ever devised..." Yeah, sure: without the US we'd all be living in total poverty as bonded slaves, wouldn't we.
I think the WSJ has clearly become by far the most arrogant, addled source of wingnut wantonness on the planet - the Aussie News Corpse lot just aren't in the hunt.
Ooh, when I finished watching the Lincoln Project's whisper campaign, the next item offered for viewing was ... Mandolin Orange at the Fraser. Now that's a better part of the US altogether.
DeleteFor anybody else who wants to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdP8S0uKP5U
DeleteNullius Ned: "Genuine crisis begets genuine political consequence." Yep, you got that right, DP: "...because "Ned" has mastered the art of saying nothing at great length, while purporting to deliver profound insights ...".
ReplyDeleteAnd on and on and on old Neddy Nullius goes, and where he stops nobody knows ... because we've all gone comatose long before. But he did have this wonderful thing to say: "Eden-Monaro exposes a number of Coalition flaws." A number ? Well, zero is a number, so is that what he meant ? He goes on to say: "The economic challenge will only get much harder for the government from this point."
We're just unrecoverably doomed then, aren't we.
So then we get to The Editorialist who would like us to believe that the ignoramus reptiles - particularly Killer C and Holely Henry - have actually written something about "economics". Whereas, in fact, all they have done is try to pretend that yesterday never happened and a bunch of reptile wuckfits never said, or wrote, a single word about how the government "going into massive debt" to ameliorate in some small measure the lockdown pain was going to "impose a massive debt burden on the next two generations !" I mean, only Labor would ever do that, yes ?
So now they have to pretend they've actually made a sensible comment or two about MMT when none of them has even the faintest clue what "fiat money" means. Banks full of gold and very large IOUs anybody ?
Now here's an interesting read (not only because it mentions Aussie's Black Summer fires):
ReplyDeleteThe scariest thing about global warming (and Covid-19)
“Shifting baselines syndrome” means we could quickly get used to climate chaos.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/7/7/21311027/covid-19-climate-change-global-warming-shifting-baselines
Now tell me, has the human race always 'got used to' various big bad things, or has it ever reacted to change things: slavery was more or less ended, but is anybody doing anything at all about the deadly pollution of places such as Beijing or Mumbai ? Or has 2/3rds of the world already accepted "shifting baselines" ?
Is that about 44% of Americans still support and will vote for Trump a clear case of shifting baselines (that have, in fact, already shifted) ?
Thanks for that GB, the pond caught it, and it has an XKCD cartoon, and if ever a concluding line better summed up the reptiles, the pond couldn't imagine one …
DeleteOur extraordinary ability to adapt, to get on with it, to not dwell in the past, was enormously useful in our evolutionary history. But it is making it difficult for us to keep our attention focused on how much is being lost — and thus difficult for us to rally around efforts to stem those losses.
And so, little by little, a hotter, more chaotic, and more dangerous world is becoming normal to us, as we sleepwalk toward more tragedies.
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr
DeleteI think we're showing way too much pseudo-wisdom, DP.
That rant by Gerard Baker is pure gold. It has that quality apparent in DP's carefully chosen specimens of claiming they have certainty about something and simultaneously demonstrating they know nothing about that thing.
ReplyDeleteConsider this "the US had won World War II". Now if he said "war in the Pacific" or "helped win the war in Europe" it might make more sense, however, as it stands the Russians might beg to differ.
This video uses graphical representations to illustrate the scale of various contributions.
https://vimeo.com/channels/1113838/128373915
Most of the troops and the really critical battles occurred on the eastern front, but that doesn't fit the narrative so it is simply ignored.
The rest of the drivel follows in the same fashion, most of it imagined into existence by the conservative mind.
Baker is actually English by birth so having emigrated t the USA to serve Roopie, he has to pretend that only America ever achieved anything. It seems there's a few around like that. There's even been a few Aussies like that: gotta prove how "lovingly loyal" they are to their "adopted" homeland.
DeleteAnd in pursuing that noble cause, and especially in editing the WSJ, facts and truth are irrelevant.
Sheesh, BF, did you have to drag the Ruskis in? Were they involved in the fight with Hitler? Who would have guessed, who would have knew? And didn't the Americans help win the Battle of Britain with brave pilots and a supply of Mustangs?
DeleteWell played DP. Most reptile readers would have heard of the Battle of Britain and the P51, that would be enough to make this a fact.
DeleteOf course, they arrived after the Battle of Britain so they didn't play a role, and they were supplied under Lend Lease, so filthy lucre was involved.
The complexity of real life disrupts the narrative a bit, doesn't it?