The pond is always happy to answer questions from inquiring cartoonists ... but on Sunday, it has a higher, more important mission, and that's to bore the socks and stockings off people, and thereby ensure that they stay in bed for a long, restful morning ...
To do this, the pond has to step back to yesterday, where the pond willfully and shamefully ignored nattering "Ned", even though the reptiles had put him at the top of their digital page ...
The pond fancies itself as something of a keeper of reptile archives, and "Ned's" stentorian presence should have been noted. Instead the pond shockingly ran with the quisling Angelic one and her heretical views ...
But at least now amends can be made, and slumber ensured, especially as we begin with a graphic the cult master might be ashamed to see in the pages of the lizard Oz ...
Oh, wait, before proceeding, it would be remiss of the pond not to note that other cartoonist joke ... as he tweets away here ...
Sorry, the pond just had to slip in an onion muncher mention - you might even prefer to go to the Graudian here - because by golly, be warned, even the reptiles think the next ten minutes of your life are about to go down the gurgler ...
Well that was an easy start, but already the pond thinks it has answered the cartoonist's question, and now the going starts to get tough ... only relieved by a photo of a Medusa from the north ...
Ah how the reptiles love their litanies, and their Josh ... but onwards the pond must press, because it has promises to keep, and miles to go before it can at least nod back off for a nap ...
About this time in the endless saga, the reptiles decided that they would begin showing photos of all the deviants and preverts ... but really, couldn't they have dug up some ancient cartoon to show that back in 1934, things were still cooking in the west?
Trove here, and hey ho, and what a sexist giggle, as the onion muncher heads back to his spiritual home, while on we go with our modern secessionist ...
And so to the greatest villain of them all, and doesn't he look creepy and weird and shifty-eyed, and possibly with Brylcreem in his hair, and sweat dripping everywhere, because it's been really hot down south?
How could the angelic one have wasted kind words on this wretch, and his wretched strategy to ruin SloMo and Josh, and never mind a few Victorians dying? Who'd miss a Victorian, now that the game is safe in the hands of the toads?
Sadly all good things come to an end and even "Ned" must fall silent with a final gobbet ...
As the pond started with Kudelka, he perhaps should be called on to provide the real reason for "Ned's" despair. Yes, apparently "Ned" bought at the top of the market, and now for the life of him, he can't work out how to shift that back room full of mugs ...
And so to the pond's Sunday novelty item ...
Yes, there were a few simpletons who thought that the bromancer had something to do with foreign affairs, but they failed to realise that the bromancer is across everything, and is also a climate scientist, a vaccine expert, an epidemiologist, and even an expert bottle washer ... (the pond is sure he'd recommend potassium metabisulfite and citric acid for home bottlers).
Who knew that the world was tired of the virus now? That's the sort of insight the world, and the pond, can only get by reading the lizard Oz, and the bromancer in particular.
Some might have thought that they were tired of it by March, and what with it now being September, they've been tired of it for a mighty long time, but we need the bromancer's stunning insights to remind us of our situation.
By the way, the reptiles at this point introduced a set of graphics, which the pond includes only out of a sense of duty as reptile chronicler and record keeper. To ease the pain, those wanting a better view should click on the images ...
Meanwhile, the pond will ease those hares wanting a short cut back into their bromancer reading with a tiny gobbet of joy, like finding thrupence in the pud (or old Springsteen LPs millennials will pay a fortune for, but the pond will match Springsteen and up the stakes with vintage Zappa )...
Of course others, like the United States tell outright lies, and the federal government just forgets to include a few aged souls in the body count, but never mind ... because in an absurd world, we live with the bromancer's sense of absurdity in reporting ...
How desperate were the reptiles getting? Well they reverted to the old trick of breaking up the rant with sub-headings, just to try to keep the readers interested, or to allow them to skip the dull bits ...
Dear sweet long absent lord, did the bromancer miss all that guff from "Ned" about living with the virus and getting back to work by Xmas? Is the Angelic one's heretical thinking beginning to bob up in all sorts of odd places? Surely the bromancer can boost morale?
Fancy that. Once again, remembering we're in September, the bromancer is on hand to remind us of the four ways we can deal with the virus, and wear masks.
Yet strangely, if you catch public transport in NSW, you're lucky to find one in three wearing a mask, and even as a trainee bus driver cops the bug, our Gladys doesn't have the stomach for the fight ... (SMH here).
So much for masks ...
Phew, that's a relief. They're fucked too ... the world is fucked, but we're all right Jack and Jill ... and then what do you know, the pond discovered that Keynes is actually modern monetary theory ...
Would you take economics advice, let alone medical advice from the bromancer, or come to think of it, an explanation of climate science?
Well possibly, if your only alternative was Dame Slap, doing her usual rabble-rousing Confederate yell about freedom IPA style, which makes a nonsense of everything the bromancer and even "Ned" just scribbled ...
Ah, the old freedom rag, and the cry of fascism, and never mind the stupidity of some, who carry on without a clue and think that pregnancy is some kind of excuse, but we know where Dame Slap is coming from for the pond's Sunday bonus ...
Stick with it, that cartoon might have come a little from right field, but Dame Slap is a big MAGA cap wearer and she'll soon get to the punchline ...
Stuff the stupidity too ... and the selfishness ... is it wrong for the pond to remember that there's a pandemic going down and there are still people dying? Oh right, the pond forgot, they're old farts and won't be missed, and anyway if they die, just make sure to confuse the count, and when you do report, never mind, that just certifies them as losers and dropkicks and suckers ...
Meanwhile the reptiles got up to their old tricks, and sought a distraction with a "watch a video", but as the pond only uses caps, no chance of that, but it's included here for the archival reference ...
All the pond can do here is refer to the Angelic one in yesterday's pond, who remarkably suddenly sounded like an oasis of sanity while Dame Slap lurks having an hysterical breakdown in her schoolhouse above the faraway tree ...
How about a cartoon to ease the stress?
Would you like a Putin toxin to go with your Dame Slap? It could be a quicker way to a mental coma, but wait, the punchline is now upon us ...
Our hard-fought freedoms? What a fuckwit, what a dropkick, what a sucker, what a loser. Hasn't Dame Slap caught up with modern MAGA thinking? She needs to harden the fuck up, or at least develop a few solid bone spurs ...
That's better, and anyone who made it to the end of this lot of reptiles on a Sunday should give themselves a medal, even if they cheat and drop out of the race before finishing off the last serve of Dame Slap ... it's the MAGA way ...
Craig Kelly? Yeah, that'd be right, one fruitloop calling up another ... and with Dame Slap cheering on the fruit loops, herself being a major expert in the art of IPA agitation and fruitloopery ...
Strangely however, that reference to modern fascism made the pond think of people who actually understood notions of freedom and fascism and all that rag, and understood that maybe killing off people, whether in aged care homes or in a holocaust, wasn't such a good advertisement for humanity, whatever a selfish fruitloop crying freedom thought in Ballarat.
And yet if you mentioned deplorables or white supremacists or devotees of the Confederacy and slavery, or QAnon, or conspiracy theorists, or anti-vaxxers, who, like the Ballarat loon, are certain to cry freedom and throw the whole plot into another loop, and mount protests and carry on like pork chops, and such like other swineflesh absurdities, you'd end up being accused of cancel culture by the IPA Dame Slaps of the world ...
... which is why this cartoon had a curious attraction for the pond as a closer ...
Well, just to start off a lazy Sunday in the correct manner, I was contemplating the dek to Nullius Ned's paean of poltroonery: "Parochial premiers are pushing their states' interests at the expense of Australia's wellbeing" and just trying to grasp that somehow the "states interests" - which collectively is the interests of all of Australia - can somehow be inimical to "Australia's wellbeing". Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteBut then, some other "wellbeing" emerged into the light of day with the Extinction Rebellion blockading some Pommie newspapers. And "A free press is vital in holding the government to account,’ says prime minister" was one of the responses. (The Independent). You can read all about this terrible attempt to extinct British Democracy - at least that part of it lauded by Johnson and Murdoch - here:
Climate activists accused of ‘attacking free press’ by blockading print works
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/05/climate-activists-accused-of-attacking-free-press-by-blockading-print-works
Then came the Nullius one quoting Chris Richardson: "The politics of reform are the politics of compromise. If that is lost, it comes at a loss of reform and that undermines our ability to come out of this downturn. My worry is that some of the reform potential has already been lost. Our politics is becoming more tribal, more based on conflict, state against federal and that weakens the capacity for compromise."
ReplyDeleteNow does anybody have the faintest idea what any of that means ? Chad ? Bef ? Anybody ?
Jeez GB that's an easy one. "Compromise" means that when we (the tories) and our opponents (anyone with more than half a brain)agree, we do what they want to do. When we disagree, we do what we want to do. Can't get fairer than that.
DeleteSeems right, talk of 'reform' or 'flexibility', in my experience, usually accompanied a loss of conditions in the workplace or a degradation of services in the public sphere.
DeleteI know Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PWC will do alright whatever happens. The consultancy business is 'money for old rope' in the land of Oz.
Ned seems to have a blind spot for the three Liberal state premiers. He also doesn't seem to have noticed that Morrison has delegated a lot of responsibility to the states.
He has a difficult task trying to talk up a guy who is basically lazy and will avoid responsibility at all costs. Morrison needs to show-pony in order to pretend he has a role in this response, the trouble is the Premiers are rather used to telling him to fuck off at this stage.
Since DP has reference Kudelka
https://twitter.com/jonkudelka/status/1301748169517101056
"Scott threatens to take his bat and ball and go home. Everyone laughs at him then his pants fall down and everyone laughs even harder".
Here's some more confirmation of the role of idiocy in conservative politics
https://twitter.com/i/events/1302339185613762560
I can half agree with that, Joe, but the thing is that in my experience, what a reptile, indeed any wingnut, means by "compromise" is that You (whichever the "you" of the day is) must agree with everything we think, everything we say and everything we propose to do or the Murdoch newspapers will all condemn you as long-marching evil socialists and perverts (or 'preverts' if it's done in American).
DeleteBut I still have difficulties translating the full-on Richardsonese.
And when you say of Nullius Ned, Bef that "...he also doesn't seem to have noticed..." then I can only ask what is it that he has ever noticed. But yes, the one incontrovertible truth is that "Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC will do alright whatever happens". They always do, don't they.
Except for Arthur Anderson back in 2002. Which reminds me a little of Michael Milken of whom it was said: "that's the first time somebody that rich has ever gone to jail in America".
GB - your invitation to interpret Richardson did send me off thinking about what effective compromise might mean. That summoned up an amusing little book by (the late) Gordon Tullock, titled ‘The Economics of Non-Human Societies’.
DeleteTullock’s contributions to human economic studies largely involve the problem of rent-seeking - and there is plenty of that in the opinion writing of business identities in the different arms of Limited News right now. My Source actually looked in on the Sydney ‘Telegraph’ this day, and tells me about some free content from a Mr Hemmes, who, it seems, owns a few pubs around Sydney, but who has tried some of his mathematics on the readers of the ‘Telly’. As it was relayed to me, his proposition is that something like 1100 people are killed in traffic accidents in an average year, so why is government stomping on our freedoms because of 600 from COVID. The Source did note that ‘Telly’ readers are not a total loss - some reminding our Publican that governments have been accused of stomping on many freedoms in the name of making motor vehicles (and their drivers) less deadly; there are still ‘libertarians’ shrieking about their inalienable right not to use a seatbelt.
That is a convenient anecdote because Tullock is also known for the ‘Tullock spike’ - worth a look in considerations of car driver risk assessment.
But back to Tullock’s non-humans. After looking at how ants, bees and termites achieve such efficiency in their communities, Tullock pointed out that, inter alia, those communities did not include free riders, whereas humans - .
Although Tullock did acknowledge that there were genetic considerations in how communal non-humans behaved, snooty biologists suggested his entire work was of dubious value, especially to economists, because the amount of shared DNA in a colony meant that very little of what happened there offered useful comparison with humans.
Well - looking at some groups of humans with a high proportion of shared DNA - Western Australian mining families, for example? - yes, comparisons can become difficult on that measure.
Fortunately, some practitioners on both sides (and, in my experience, professional economists are less snooty towards biologists than biologists are towards proper economists) continued to investigate the economics of non-human groups. And this brings us to the real point.
One of the truly interesting studies is how bees divide a hive, and migrate. The entire process includes deciding that it might be time to divide, then - where to go, and how to start the actual migration.
In simplest terms - scouts go out, looking for a new site. Scouts return - proposing several sites. They transmit the basic information to the rest of the hive. Other scouts check the sites. The first scouts continue their - it can still be called a ‘dance’ for convenience - while they gather more scouts to their nomination. Now comes the brilliant bit - when one group, advocating a particular site, is seen to have reached a threshold number - the advocates for other sites steadily cease their ‘campaigns’, and fall in with the steadily dominant group. And that decides the question of when and where to go. There are no ‘libertarians’ holding out in corners of the hive, calling down doom on the populace; no scouts dancing their inalienable rights in a bee-enterprise society - the compromise becomes the mass decision.
Which, I think, is what Richardson has missed in his glib conjunction. Human societies, at times of stress, have it in them to reach a good decision, with mass support. It requires steady restating of the case, testing by other ‘scouts’ and - oh dear - a willingness to consider other solutions.
Very interesting viewpoint there, Chad. One of the things that biologists seem to be discovering more and more is just how like many non-human species we actually are. But I do have to disagree about the 'freeloaders' - depending on what you consider "freeloading" - but bees, for instance, have a bunch of 'do nothings' of the male gender who do not perform anything much except get the queen pregnant when necessary - eg, when an old queen dies or a hive splits. And I would have to consider the ant/bee/termites migration a case of surrender rather than compromise.
DeleteBut that's just me: I've always considered 'compromise' to involve solutions that consist of bringing together parts provided by the separate conflicting parties, not just a complete victory by one party. Can't quite see how a joint 'compromise' could actually work for ants/bees/termites splitting a hive, but it does happen often with human beings. And when instead there is surrender - eg the 'communisation' of Russia and China - there is always long-lasting opposition - eg as in Russia and China. Consider the 'revolutionising' of France and America (in which they supported each other) as contrary examples - though America did end up with a government very similar to Great Britain except for an elected Upper House and an elected Monarch (and we all do recall that a limit of two terms for a president was only a convention until FDR won (and died in) a third term and it was only legally limited to two terms when the 1947 law was ratified in 1951).
I do agree with your point though, the propensity for human societies, in time, to reach effective and workable decisions and achieve mass support - as apparently Dan Andrews has which clearly infuriates the reptiles. Then again, both ant/bee/termite hives and human societies can effect more than one solution concurrently - I think I recall that very large hives can send out several colonising groups pretty much at the same time (much concurrent getting pregnant of many emigrating princesses).
But regardless of your excellent exposition, I still haven't a clue as to what Richo thought he was on about. But then I never was that kind of consultant, when I was paid for something, it had to actually work.
GB - apropos what Richardson did not manage to say - the hive does not need to attain consensus - a group of scouts, which the researchers call a 'quorum', and which can be about 20 bees in 10 000, is sufficient to effect a move, and to their select site. Scouts are rank'n'file - the move is not lead by the queen, or the beequivalent of ScoMo.
DeleteAh, a 'quorum' - fascinating word to use in that context where 20 bees in 10,000 can achieve it. But clearly it is not a 'compromise', it's a 'winner takes all' for the first quorum attaining group.
DeleteBut anyway, let us consider the Dunning-Kruger state of the Bromancer starting with: "Modern Monetary Theory is the fruitcake idea that governments can create money and debt forever with no real cost." Is it ? And here I was thinking that not only governments but also any other kind of moneylender (eg banks) not only can create money and debt but have actually been doing so for centuries and that, unless he had a $mill or two sitting around idle, the Bromancer has availed himself of this practice when he took out a mortgage to buy a house. Or two. Or Three.
ReplyDeleteOr does the Bromancer think that money can only be created when miners dig up gold and put it into a vault ? I wouldn't put it past him to be that ignorantly stupid. Especially when he says this: "Viruses long predated human beings and have affected our evolutionary path in profound ways." Really Bromancer ? Then how about you tell us all the ways? Oh yes, "They may be set to remake fundamentally the way we organise ourselves, and the globe." and that certainly may change - at least for a few years - how we "organise outselves" but where exactly does the "evolutionary path" enter into it ?
I'm sure he'll tell us in a year or five, just as soon as he can come up with some kind of "rationalisation" for that.
"the fruitcake idea that governments can create money and debt forever with no real cost". And the Bromancer doesn't say, so why do they believe such a clearly crazy notion? They call themselves academics, they write books, WHAT IS THEIR ANSWER!!!?
DeleteAnd he doesn't say that because he would have to admit that maybe he has got MMT wrong, and the mere suggestion that the economics that his grandfather taught him is wrong, is of course, absurd.
Don't think he'll ever have read this, then Joe:
Deletehttp://www.profstevekeen.com/2020/09/05/the-mathematical-model-of-modern-monetary-theory-3/
Just one short comment on Slappy's post: "The second wave of COVID-19 was unleashed by an inept Andrews government ..."
ReplyDeleteThere's no doubt about it, Danny Boy is the reptile ogre of the month - maybe even of the year. But it was indeed a monumental stuffup, and the big question is: was it a stuffup from the accumulated stuffups of the bit players - eg police, public servants, hotel staff etc - or was it really that Dan - and including his colleagues - just doesn't know how to operate a modern government ? Too trusting, maybe ? Not rigorous enough maybe ? Assuming that all and sundry actually do have a clue or two as to what they are doing ?
I'll be waiting for the Coate inquiry report with some foreboding.
"the pond will match Springsteen and up the stakes with vintage Zappa )..."
ReplyDeleteYep, missed that one entirely, DP. Took my cues from the guy who did the music column for Nation Review back then (whose name has entirely deserted my old, alzheimered brain). My own taste back then was Dylan, Baez, Collins, Mitchell etc. And Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (and I still have the vinyl LP of that one too). So again I missed out on Zappa.
PS: everybody has just loved 'Jingle bell Rock' all their loves, haven't they:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtykgxear9w
Oh all right, how about 'Defying Gravity' too
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQ53howlr8