In which the pond explores Speccie opportunities, posing a grave threat to the lizard Oz ...

 

 

 

 

The pond has been so disappointed with the reptile offerings of late that it's thinking about turning to the Speccie mob for some decent, old-fashioned loonacy on a Friday.

 

The lizard Oz has grown old and weary, and not in the genuinely weirdly weary way of a Flinty, at his best when he saunters out on parade, preening and posing as a devoted MAGA cap wearer ... 

 

Speaking of laura norder, as Flinty does, did anyone catch this story for a decent bit of it?

 

Oh Flinty would be for that, no doubt about it ...

 

The pond isn't sure why Flinty is banging on about the debate or the election. Surely these are now a little passé ... just read the inspirational words of Mike Lee at the Graudian here ...

A top Republican senator has said that “democracy isn’t the objective” of America’s political system, sparking widespread outrage at a time when his party has been accused by Democrats of plotting voter suppression and questioning a peaceful transition of power in November’s election.
The Utah senator Mike Lee made the inflammatory declaration in an early morning tweet following Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate.
“Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that,” he wrote, misspelling prosperity.
It followed a series of tweets he made during the debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris in which Lee claimed “We’re not a democracy” and questioned its role in US government.
Lee, who is among a swath of Republicans who recently tested positive for coronavirus, wrote: ‘The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic. To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few.’
He added: “Government is the official use of coercive force–nothing more and nothing less. The Constitution protects us by limiting the use of government force.”
His democracy tweet immediately prompted alarm, including from a number of former government officials.é
Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director, tweeted: “‘Democracy isn’t the objective’. Our suspicions are confirmed.”
Walter Shaub, former director of the US office of government ethics, said: “People of my grandfather’s generation knew what to do about fascists. Now a member of Congress is urging us to join them. I wonder what made you hate America so much.”
The Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein wrote: “If we’re not to have rule of the people, who exactly should rule? Throughout American history, from the Framers up to the present, the answer has always been the same: the people.”

Why waste time voting, when the pigs have already organised a first class nosh-up with the farmers?

And so to Flinty's last gobbet ...

 

Can anyone beat Flinty? Bloody, resolute and not a wimp like Amanda the Devine ...

 

Oh come on, Karen, stay true, stay strong, remember first kill all the grannies ... (the Weekly Beast here for more).

The pond thinks the case grows stronger for the Speccie mob minute by minute. 

Sure, it's a flimsy paywall and three browsers by three views offers more than anyone could swallow of Flinty in a week, and then there's clearing the cache and so on, but think of the feeble reptile opposition and look at the line-up.

Bella used to be a reptile regular, but now she's so barking mad, she's only an intermittent presence, and yet at the Speccie mob, she's going strong ...

Les miserable musical as the y'artz, as an introduction to Bella's apocalyptic fear?! What is it with Bella, that she constantly sees the four horsepersons of the y'artzapocalypse riding towards her?

Why the catastrophist mindset? Humanity's managed to paint, do music, dance and so on back when we shared the earth with the dinosaurs (or so George Ham tells us), and nothing thus far has stopped people interested in the y'artz from doing a little daubing and scribbling. 

A few have tried it on ... most notably SloMo's recent attempt to stifle interest in the arts, or at least price it out of existence, and there's a good chance climate change might make doing the y'artz a little more tricky, but Bella seems to forget that there were a lot of dodgy people, in terms of sexuality and outlook on the world, doing y'artz long before she was born ...

What to say about Genet doing identity politics? Or Cocteau? Or a lot of others ...

 

Strange. Is Bella shaming Mr Tee for having capitalist instincts and a love of money? Is there anything wrong with trying to make a quid doing the y'artz? Who wouldn't want a scholarship?

Of course in the old days, it was live by the brush, die by the brush, but then at some point, a lot of them did an Ayn Rand and ended up on welfare ...

That said, disapproving of an interest in cash in the paw seems a little naff for a Speccie scribbler.  Why the pond has heard that the fly has already rushed out a best seller ...

But back to the truly terrified Bella ...

Indeed, indeed, it's the pond's understanding that black artists have had a tremendously smooth ride in the lucky country, much like the smooth ride experienced by black sportsmen ...and yet all they can do is moan about it, and go on about it, and create a terror in Bella's white-loving mind ...

Eek, another piece of tokenism taking up the space reserved for white artists. You tell 'em Bella ...

 

And all this signals the complete and utter destruction of the y'artz? Or perhaps Bella being absolutely clueless about what drives and motivates artists?

Actually what it signals to the pond is that the lizard Oz needs to up its loon quotient, and quixstix, or the pond might well jump ship on a Friday and start to throw in the odd Speccie offering just to spice things up ...

And now, as Bella probably missed out on the infallible Pope, here's an end of week repeat of a pond favourite ...