The pond likes to begin its reptile week with a dose of climate science denialism and lying, and who better than the Major, and the pond also has a sweet tooth for ironic juxtaposition and how better to indulge than to put a handwringing Mike """ Baird - who was he again, didn't he cash out with a fortune in the paw? - and the complacent Caterist ...
So let us begin with the lies and the enduring love of sweet, innocent, dinkum, pure Oz coal, and sundry Major lies, misrepresentations and stupidities ...
The pond won't repeat the Chairman's old hoary and patently untrue line about there being no climate change deniers in News Corp.
Why bother, when we have the Major celebrating the wonders of coal?
Actually the Major just delivered another dose of bullshit fake news courtesy of the Murdoch media, because the unreliability of wind and solar power had sweet fuck all to do with what happened in Texas ... as anyone outside the Murdoch bubble and GOP lies about the alleged effect of the alleged, but not legislated green new deal, would know...
But there's no point in arguing over that old story ... it's been debunked in plenty of places ... and anyone interested might start with the Austin American- Statesman here ... which assessed the lies put about by Texas Governor Abbott (why are loons always called Abbott? Does he munch onions too?)
Abbott said that the failure of the state’s renewable energy sources “thrust Texas into this situation where it was lacking power at a statewide basis.”
Texas is a state with diverse energy sources. Grid officials have said multiple times that, on top of grid infrastructure being poorly designed to handle the week’s freezing conditions, the drop in power supply is attributable to all energy sources. Although many wind turbines faltered under the conditions, wind energy as a whole outperformed normal expectations thanks to blustery weather.
Abbott walked back the comments he made on Hannity during a press conference the next day, denying that he singled out wind power as the culprit.
We rate this claim False.
And so on - there was a lot more before the conclusion ... but on we go ... because the love of coal runs deep and strong with the Major and the Murdochians ...
Sometimes the pond wonders if it would be better off running little snippets it picks up here and there ... as when it was wandering down memory lane, thinking of its times in Japan and visiting the NHK site, and came across this here ...
No biggie. It's just one of hundreds of observations made around the world, all apparently part of a gigantic conspiracy, while the Major argues the toss in his inimitable Murdochian way ...
A debunked worst case? Who says? The coal-loving Major? Is the worst case that he'll run out of time to find that long-lost Order of Lenin medal?
And so from the Major, in good denialist form, to the Caterist in typical lack of empathy form ...
Well he would say that, wouldn't he, living as he does in the alternative world of a partisan body that purports to be a think tank, but is really just a branch of the Liberal party ...
Oh the irony of this Marie Antoinette.
Let them drink International Roast from Coles is almost as good a line as letting them eat cake ...
The pond would love to be a fly on the wall, and see what the humble Caterist drinks by way of coffee. It's a fair bet that it won't be International Roast from Coles. The Caterist looks like one of those coffee snobs, far up themselves, heady from all that government cash in the paw ...
As for the Caterist volunteering to go fruit picking to plug a gap in the workforce, sorry dole dwellers, this is more the Caterist idea of how to make a living ...
Oh it's sweet work if you can get it, and best of all, the cash in the paw allows you to lecture everyone else about the deplorable notion of relying on the government for a handout ...
Meanwhile, if the pond might continue to harp on the subject, there's a crucial line in that cash in the paw thing which should be inspected in detail ...
You see dole survivors? You see that last line as you gulp down your coffee, living in your cockroach-infested room? Allow the pond to repeat it:
Selection process: Closed Non-Competitive ...
What you need is a behind closed doors non-competitive relationship with good government mates, and you'll get a decent serve of cash in the paw, and your days of living on the dole will be a distant nightmare, and gone too will be the days of being told that munching on tar on side of road, or sipping a cup of International Roast will suffice, you bloody peasants you...
Instead you can join the self-satisfied, complacent, humbug bullshitting of the Caterist ... but please, be careful about predicting the movement of flood waters in quarries, or it might all be snatched away from you ...
Self-worth, hope and fulfilment? Oh the cant and the International Roast humbug, but there's sadly no chance of this loon ever abandoning the sweet succulent milk to be obtained by sipping on the teat of government ...
And so to a final ironic juxtaposition, which the pond found irresistible ... you see Guy Rundle asked a question in Crikey and the reptiles almost immediately answered ...
Of course they'll fall for him again... in much the same way that the Major falls for coal every time and the Caterist falls into dole bludger bashing, and serving up International Roast in lieu of cake...
Rundle's piece is here (paywall affected), but the pond would like to include the portion that evokes the reptile spirit ...
...The root cause of Peterson’s addiction is no joke — trauma brought on by his wife’s cancer diagnosis. But, erm, yeah, the preaching stoicism and self-reliance round the world while popping bennies to deal with a life event (among other matters) is a hell of a thing. How can he show his face again, with this level of implicit deceit and absurdity?
Presumably he will turn it into the very thing he has criticised, the confessional personal journey. The new book is being published by Penguin so the establishment seems along for the ride.
Will the political right come back for the second round, or is their effusive support of Peterson going to be another embarrassing chapter of rightolatry? Janet Albrechtsen praised Peterson for his words of wisdom, and his ability to infuriate the left, Andrew Bolt called him a superstar of the right, and, as we noted last year, Caroline Overington published 15 pieces on him in a two-year period.
Peterson was in a long line of the right’s fallen heroes, from Lord Monckton, the climate denier turned Obama birther truther, to Milo Yiannopoulos, the cool conservative turned man-boy love “advocate”, to the “daddy” Donald Trump himself.
The right falls for one after the other because their politics is a cult of the imaginary. They are afflicted by something that Peterson himself identifies — the slippage of meaning in modern life and the false path of going to war in the name of a single simple truth to restore it.
But their latching onto Peterson took that habit to a meta-level. They followed a guru who re-appeared like a classic ’70s EST-biorhythms crackpot — advocating sober realism, acceptance, and meaning over happiness — while at the same time projecting his manifold neuroses onto the world and running after instant cures.
Peterson’s best move would have been to retreat to the cloister and have a bit of a think for a while. Or forever.
Instead, by coming around again he ensures that his tale is not one of caution but of absurdity. One suspects he has done his dash with troubled and diffident youth, but will the right line up again for more snake-oil?
Their favoured brand is a very strong addiction…
The pond will be keeping an eye out for a return of Peterson mania in the reptile bunker ... and in the meantime, there's always a Rowe to end with, with more Rowe always here ...
If the Cater is concerned for those who do not live in the real world (consuming hand crafted soy lattes - has he been stung by observations from GB here?) presumably he had no such concern over a strange contribution from Shanaham over the weekend.
ReplyDeleteMy Source told me about it, because it was presented almost as a dialogue between Shanaham and Dutton, using the usual tricks of innumeracy ‘more than 20 000 reports of potential child abuse’ apparently for Australia, over an unspecified period, with no indication of how many actual cases were investigated. The reason for bandying this, er - number - about? More Facebook bashing/Frydenberg triumphalism.
The reasoning that the unquestioning (but suitably outraged) reader was intended to apply was that Facebook was likely to offer further levels of encryption through its site, and, as we all know - encryption is used mainly by pedophiles, drug dealers and - oh, that’s right - by politicians, who, in most jurisdictions now are required to use high security communications - and who will be excoriated by ‘Fox and Friends’ if they do not.
But back to the main site of outrage - the Dutton reasoning is that this is all new, and down to Facebook. Consequently, the number of reports would drop ‘from 20 000 to a dozen’ and it’s all because of Mark Zuckerberg ‘putting profit above people’, so implicitly condoning the abuse of some 19 000 Australian children.
And reality? Assuming Shanaham and Dutton browse about the internet, what have they made of those ubiquitous offers of ‘VPN’ that have been popping-up for years? Did they, perhaps, confuse it with, say ‘VPL’, which they had been told was a naughty thing, so looked the other way?
Given the obvious naivety about electronic communication across ‘Limited News’, perhaps it is a heroic assumption that Shanaham does browse the internet, and Dutton, no doubt, has several strata of ‘aides’ to do that for him. They can’t all have been involved in designing uniforms.
My Source has observed that she will believe that federal agencies have some technical capacity over telecommunications when she no longer receives synthesized calls about her NBN being cut off in the next hour, or confirming her ‘Amazon’ purchase for an improbable number of dollars - unless she presses this number immediately.
Chad: "hand crafted soy lattes". Indeed, just one, but on most days, including this morning: a 'large' soy latte plus raspberry and white choc muffin, takeaway for a mere $11 at Chadstone.
DeleteBut "20 000 reports of potential child abuse" ? Let me see: the rough percentage of 'children' (age 0 - 14) in Australia is just under 19%. The population of Victoria in 2020 was just under 6.7 million, and therefore there are 6,689,377 * 0.19 = roughly 1.27 million. 20 000 - presumably Australia wide - versus a population of 1.27 million in Victoria alone. Or 25,687,041 * 0.19 = 4.88 million 'children' in Australia in 2020.
So 20 000/4,880,000 = 0.41% So, is that high or low compared with the world ? What is the Dutton mutton trying to tell us ?
But 'VPL', Chad ? Is that short for Visible Penis Line, or Vibrant Parish Life ?
https://www.acronymfinder.com/VPL.html
But oh, the long futile wish for federal agencies to "have some technical capacity over telecommunications". And how about privatised ex-federal agencies such as Telstra ?
GB - I had not realised there would be so many options for ‘VPL’, and I was quite taken with ‘Valor Presente Liquido ‘ from the site you offered.
DeleteThe phrase I had in mind was ‘visible panty line’, which I learned from my grand daughter, when she was trying not to scandalise me in her remarks on how others of her age cohort were dressed (?) in a particular shopping mall.
Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed libertarians at Catallaxy started commenting on the same column from the weekend Flagship; railing against the Dutton’s unending demands for ever more legal powers to pry into the lives of citizens. Well, it started off that way, but veered off into a vax Vs anti-vax stoush, in which contributors tended to address each other as ‘Imbecile’ or ‘moron’ - so not really arcane nor abstruse.
At that point I thought it was time for a coffee. I suspect that the Cater’s ‘International Roast’ is a version of what I buy from ‘Officeworks’ to put out around my veggie beds to keep slugs off the produce, but I would be unlikely to drink it. If that is what the Caters drink at home, it could account for some of Ms Weisser’s expressions - facial and oral.
I distinctly remember the old 'International Roast' from several decades ago - it came in a sealed tin. It was a kinda drinkable 'instant' (ie just add hot water or hot milk) coffee which was acceptable back before the barista age and home brewing.
DeleteWouldn't touch it with a barge pole now.
A teaspoon of Vegemite in hot water is all that's needed for a healthy start to the day. The pond wonders if the Menzies Research Centre has made this compulsory, and if not, why not? Are they un-Australian? Or perhaps there's an ill-informed Pommy git in charge who thinks Marmite is a thing ...
DeleteApostasy, I know, but Marmite is actually quite ingestible. Or maybe it's just that my dad was born in Marmite ingesting Pommieland. But he escaped as soon as he could and emigrated to Aussie in 1905 at age 3.
DeleteThis seems a bit at odds with the Major's triumphant tale of good old Ozzie coal:
ReplyDeletehttps://splash247.com/48-ships-with-australian-coal-still-stranded-off-chinas-coastline/
"As of this week, there are 11 capesizes and 37 panamaxes stuck in China, with Australian coal according to the latest data from Braemar ACM and some of these ships have been waiting to discharge since April last year."
Doesn't seem like the Chinese are quite ready to kiss and make up yet.
As for the Texas power outage, here's some analysis with lots of numbers and graphs for those that like that sort of thing:
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/severe-power-cuts-in-texas-highlight-energy-security-risks-related-to-extreme-weather-events
Just to pick on one thing, the major draws an equivalence between the Californian and Texan power outages.
"In comparison, the California rolling power cuts lasted about two hours and resulted in about 1.5 GWh of lost load. Using these figures as rough estimates, the level of outage in Texas on 15-16 February was over 500 times higher than in California during last summer’s load shed event."
I keep wondering why some, at least, of those ships don't just turn around and go somewhere else. Maybe they all need to be refueled or summat - not themselves being of the old coal burning steamer kind.
DeleteOtherwise, Bef, there's absolutely no point explaining simple technical matters to reptiles, they are just constitutionally incapable of taking that on board. Just remember, if there's a power outage it must have been totally due to 'renewables'.