The pond is but a cork bobbing on the great reptile ocean, and today it's spend, spend, spend, with the pond lining up like everybody else to buy furniture with play money ... especially if you've printed the play money at taxpayer expense ...
Just look at the zeal with which the reptiles covered the great budget splash...
Here no talk of balanced budgets and the dangers of debt; no talk of balanced budgets and the dangers of debt here ... and further down the page it got no better ...
Simplistic Simon in a state of ecstasy. No one left out, no one left behind ...
In desperation, the pond looked beneath the fold ...
Is it any wonder that the pond turned to Dame Slap for a little risk-taking? By golly, it's time to travel up the Amazon with Colonel Fawcett and Dame Slap, because what's life without a little risk? Sure, you might end up brain dead, but that's always a risk when exposing any brain to Dame Slap ...
Fucketty fuk, or as Norman Mailer might say, fug, each day the pond is now confronted by a truly abysmal reptile illustration ... but no matter how truly awful, how stupendously hideous, it didn't stop the pond's dawning realisation that risk-taking for the pond might be a little different to risk-taking by Dame Slap.
After all, there's a killer virus out there, and you have to be extremely comfortable about sniffing in someone's sneeze as part of a daredevil, devil may care attitude to the world ...
Oh sheesh, the IPA chairman reports on the thoughts of a still wet behind the ears IPA graduate blathering away on Sky. Yes, that's the sort of risk-taking the pond dares each day ... followed by a classic example of Dame Slap confusing and conflating beach volleyball with a pandemic ...
Look, Dame Slap is entirely free to go and live in India, now that the risks are coming down in the United States, or perhaps she might like to risk her life in Brazil, which is still something of a hot spot, but frankly the pond isn't that impressed by keyboard warriors talking about risks.
Don't just talk it, from a plush job while living in plush digs, get out and do it, swallow that bleach, stick that light up the rectum, and live a little ...don't worry about getting the shot, it's just the flu in disguise, and live with it ...
Indeed, indeed, and the pond will probably sob to learn that Dame Slap's untimely death was duly recorded in annual health statistics, but in her passing, how the crowd paused to gasp and admire, and say what a risk-taker she was, putting it all on the line in her risky columns for the lizard Oz. So much risk-taking, in such little time ...
But at least it delayed the pond's solemn duty to at least pretend to purport an interest in spend, spend, spend ... what with the reptiles indulging in a huge splash this day, with witty puns aplenty ...
And given the grotesque illustration, nattering "Ned" it had to be ...
Gee, the pond hadn't realised it would be so easy ... here, have a celebratory cartoon ...
And so to a curious phenomenon. The reptile layout treated each "Ned" paragraph as gold and allowed oodles of space between each utterance ... as if designed to thwart the pond's patented screen cap technique ... so the pond just bundled them all together ...
And that's how you get through a "Ned" piece at a single go.
Think nothing of it, the pond is pleased to help the reptiles with their layout, and so off to Rowe, and strange ... a deleted tweet ...
Well, with the express train of 'spend, spend, spend' looming out of the darkness, the pond couldn't let matters rest there, and so as a bonus, it turned to the lizard Oz editorialist for a special bout of writhing on the 'spend, spend, spend' spit ...
A mere $161 billion ... and the pond loves the way that the reptiles now talk of 'bn' rather than billion, because ... well you know because ...
That should be "How many zeroes in a tn?" but never mind, on we go ... as the hapless lizard Oz editorialist did his best to sound balanced, while waving goodbye to all those years of talk of balanced budgets, surpluses and the evils of debt and deficit ...
Hmm, the power of the cliché is strong in this one, but desperate times call for desperate clichés, and the lizard editorialist was up to the job ...
Did the pond spot a tear trickling down the cheek of the lizard Oz editorialist as he recalled the case for saving and investing? Oh how sweet it is to harvest reptile tears and feast on them ... drink them to the full ... but there was only one keg to go ...
Even so, it had a spectacular payoff in the cliché stakes. Please allow the pond to explain, with spoiler alert ...
Many years ago, the pond was involved in one of those old-fashioned sponsored documentaries, now long gone, which concluded with the resounding line "Much has been done, but much remains to be done."
Ever since, when confronted with nonsense or stupidity, the pond has always responded "Much has been done, but much remains to be done" ... and now, this ...
The pond must fault the lizard Oz editorialist. "So far so good. But much remains to be done" is good, but it carries fatuousness to far too high a level. There was no need for a full stop to interrupt the flow, and there was no need to hint that so far is so good, when everyone knows that the undertoad is always lurking in the waves ...
Plainly, there's nothing wrong with the old pond standby in these difficult circumstances.
"Much has been done, but much remains to be done" has the right and proper ring to it. It is sturdy, it is solid, it is reliable, it has a yeoman quality, it can serve at any time, as needed, and the pond commends it to all reptiles when in search of something to say in difficult budgetary times ...
And so to a cartoon offered for an analysis elsewhere, but just as useful when applied to the reptile analysis above ...
Just yesterday I was reading about Simone Gold in Mother Jones - quite a read !
ReplyDelete(Try it yourself: Doctor, Lawyer, Insurrectionist: The Radicalization of Simone Gold
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/doctor-lawyer-insurrectionist-the-radicalization-of-simone-gold/ )
And today it's good ol' Dame Slap doing a similar thing.
So the thought came into my head: how do these people get to be that way ? And the answer tentatively presented itself: they don't "get to be that way", they start out that way and nothing is ever done to fix them. I mean that I can remember that I, by year eleven, was a keen fan of 'Straight and Crooked Thinking' by Robert H Thouless (all of 3 shillings in the Pan paperback edition) and I had long abandoned such human follies as "religion". And life continued from there.
But Gold, and Slappy, both have very good academic records (Gold is both a medical and a law grad so she rates a little higher). So clearly, they can do whatever reasoning is required for their academic achievements without that in any discernable way feeding over into life, the universe and everything.
Is that just a matter of extreme compartmentalization ? Almost certainly to some extent, but to the extent necessaty for the kind of blind faith in Trump (more Gold now than Slappy who seems to be largely over her worshipful bromance) and in Murdoch and the IPA. So it goes.
Anyway, some thoughts about Slappy who would like to lecture us about "managing risk". Now in my simple minded 'straight and crooked thinking' way I've always thought that "managing" risk meant that one had complete and reasonably accurate assessment of all the risk factors and had some capacity to significantly affect the risk probabilities and could take action to minimise disaster. "God grant me the courage to change what must be changed, the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference" - but Slappy sees to think it all just comes down to "put up and shut up".
So, if you want to swim in the ocean but not necessarily get chomped by a great white, then you might just check on the seasonal wanderings of great whites and find sea places that they don't frequent. And you might even investigate the idea of shark repellents just in case. And so forth. Actually "managing" the risk with positive, future oriented adaptive and preventative actions.
But Slappy would just like us to accept whatever risk is thrust upon us whether we have any capacity to "manage" it or not. So just go out into the world folks, and breathe deeply - especially when people around you are singing and dancing and shouting and coughing. And just hope nothing infects you. And that, to Slappy is "managing" the risk.
Slappy's header says "Without risk it's not a free country", whereas in my mind, anywhere you can get serious, possibly fatal, risk imposed upon you without your agreement or permission, then that is most definitely not a free country.
What do you think ?
Dorothy, the sub-head to Dame Groan’s contributing contribution this morning - ‘mostly politics with little economics’ - suggested that whatever bot that generates her columns had been programmed to deliver however many words, and left to it.
ReplyDeleteBut The Source sent me comment, and even noted that there was a bonus this day - from the old firm of the Henry and Jonathan Pincus, in which those two economists revealed themselves as experts in the intricacies of producing vaccines. Apparently the Henry did not manage to slip in a single reference to a Sudanese scholar, or even a Chinese sage, on variolation, so it doesn’t really count as a Henry, therefore not appropriate economics for this day.
Apparently, first up, the Dame expressed a wish for a treasurer ‘keen to repair the budget as soon as possible, given that the economy is bubbling along quite nicely.’ OK - to some extent, standard programming of Jud.bot. The Source had me focus on the second part of that statement.
Ah - yes - by several measures, the economy can be said to be bubbling along - even quite nicely. But, in comment on the budget - wouldn’t an ‘Economics Editor’ hint at WHY the economy is, already, bubbling along?
The simplest reason for that omission would be that nobody in government, or across the many public babblers on the economy, seems to have even the vaguest clue as to why the economy is doing what it is doing. It is dunking all forecasts, prognostications and readings of entrails into the dustbin of divination.
And it seems the Dame has not offered any clues from her long time at the forefront of economic thought.
Even allowing for that, her yearning for a budget repair man - ‘Jim’s Budgets’ , if you will - makes more sense than most of the other ‘experts’ on the rigging of the Flagship. I am told she even mentioned that business investment has been pretty much missing in action (setting aside the boom in utes) which is quite venturesome, given the concern by the other ‘experts’ about how ‘business’ will respond.
Oh, as ever, she does not tell us why budgets should be in balance/surplus. I suppose, to her readers, that is simply axiomatic
I expect Henry's diatribe about vaccine production was along the lines of, if Cuba can do it, surely we can! https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2021/03/31/cubas-five-covid-19-vaccines-the-full-story-on-soberana-01-02-plus-abdala-and-mambisa/
DeleteNow be nice to her Chad, at least she corrected herself and swapped to 'GDP per capita' as the prosperity measure.
DeleteYes, GB - I am finding that unsettling - another thought to be 'in the fold' drifting out a little. Not quite to the degree of KGK, but -
DeleteJoe - the column starts with ‘Grand gestures make poor policies, and the proposed removal of patent protection on COVID-19 vaccines is no exception.’ - so you can guess how it goes from there. The proposal is, of course, from President Biden, so - standard Limited News attack.
ReplyDeleteThe authors seem to have been briefed by BioNTech, and insert ‘BioNTech, which took a decade to develop its mRNA manufacturing process, says that validating production sites could take up to a year and, presumably, longer for sites built for other producers. And the problems are likely to be especially great in developing countries, which are much less hindered in their efforts to produce.’
Oh - and for a bit of economics - which is what My Source was looking for - ‘Unfortunately, the economics of producing vaccines have always been very marginal.’ Well, the Henry and Prof. Pincus claim to be economists - so no need of a reference there - accept it on their authority. Development of these vaccines is authorised by shareholders to show what good people they are.
And, of course, Donald Trump told them to get on with it - which was THE determining factor.
Attributing great altruism to drug companies isn't realistic, but development of useful medications is just a bit hit and miss as I understand it. Much research and many near misses that fail to produce any successful outcome.
DeleteBut one or two big successes can more than make up for that or there wouldn't be any drug companies. On the other hand, the drug companies tend to 'ignore' things such as tropical diseases because the people who mostly suffer from them aren't wealthy enough to pay large sums for them.
That didn't apply to COVID19 of course, but then these big companies always need a Trump to incite them to "get on with it at warp speed" don't they.
And Joe, while I am here - my further thanks for the Paddy Ireland paper in 'Modern Law Review'. It certainly repays careful reading. It is well written, so no problem with that, but, as you would have found - there is a lot in there.
ReplyDeleteHi DP. With all the reptile's adulation of Frydenberg I felt a little balance was due. Apologies to Johnny Mercer and Howard Arlen.
ReplyDeleteAccentuate the Negative
He’s going to accelerate the deficit
Spend up just for the heck of it
No more fiscal conservative
Now Josh is Mr Cash Machine
He’s going to splash cash up to the maximum
Coal and gas he won't be taxing them
If you’re a fossil industry
He’ll be your human ATM
He’s going to expropriate more capital
And not get in a flap at all
He knows in 2025
Labor will inherit all his mess
Eliminate the positive, you reckon ?
Delete