It was only when discussing the reptiles with the nerd who was helping the pond in the paywall matter that the pond realised that it was responsible for leaching toxic sludge into the world.
The pond long ago accepted that a lack of empathy was a prerequisite for being a reptile, and the ability to do active harm was a much admired bonus feature. Not a bug, but an essential part of the operation...
As a result, the pond promised to keep the two worst offenders identified by the nerd in a safe late Sunday slot where minimal attention would be paid, and minimal damage hopefully to ensue ...
First up is Penbo, a jerk from the deep south doing his finest impression of fuck you Jack and Jill, I'm fine and dandy...
The nerd compared the feeling of glancing at Penbo to overhearing a couple of anti-vaxxers having a chat, and in the sense that Penbo was cheerfully fuck you Jack and Jill, I'm okay, and I don't really give a stuff about you, that was probably a reasonable comparison ...
At this point, the pond would like to interrupt to do a compare and contrast ...
The pond has already run it once, but that was before the reptiles returned to take over ...
It was the keen Keane in Crikey, and this is what he wrote (behind the paywall here):
A taskforce? A fucking taskforce?
That’s the response from Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt to the unfolding disaster that’s killing hundreds of seniors, has locked down tens of thousands and has left the sector with only enough staff for 75% of the shifts required.
The plea from the sector for the Australian Defence Force to be sent in to help offset the staff shortages that have left many isolated residents without basic services continues to be ignored. At least Defence Minister Peter Dutton signalled this morning that it could happen — undermining the prime minister’s rejection of the idea two weeks ago.
The “taskforce” wasn’t even announced yesterday by Morrison or Hunt but by Department of Health bureaucrat and chief medical officer Paul Kelly, who “committed” to “setting up a specific taskforce in the department to look at that and to do everything we can to get more detail about the issues”.
So a bunch of bureaucrats from the same department that has presided over two botched rollouts, the rapid antigen test debacle and the unfolding carnage in aged care will “look at it” and “get more detail”.
Such a pointless reaction to most policy challenges would be laughable. In this case, as the death toll mounts in our nursing homes, it’s sickening and enraging.
And increasingly it looks like a wilful negligence that speaks of a decision to let people regarded as expendable die — after all, Hunt and Morrison have insisted this week, most of them were going to die anyway.
Why are Morrison and Hunt unwilling to do anything significant about the aged care disaster? Surely even the political cost would be enough to force a government obsessed with appearances to take action?
In fact there’s a horrific political calculation — one that most politicians understand — at the heart of their refusal.
While everyone remembers Bronwyn Bishop and kerosene baths from the 1990s, that scandal was atypical in forcing a government to intervene in aged care.
Aged care generates headlines and induces plenty of hand-wringing and complaints — that’s why so many dozens of reports have been written over the decades — but doesn’t shift votes significantly. That’s because, at any one time, there are only a small number of households exposed to what is happening.
This is the horrible maths: at the moment there are about 240,000 Australian aged care residents. They’re not evenly distributed, of course, but for argument’s sake assume that the households they’re from are distributed across Australia — that’s across 150 electorates. That’s about 1600 households in each electorate.
More than half of those already don’t vote for the Coalition, and are unlikely to shift. The number of Liberal-voting households affected by aged care issues is probably about 700. So maybe 1400 people might be in a position to change their vote in anger at what they’re seeing. Then factor in nearly half of them are in seats already held by Labor.
It’s a crude portrait, and the parties would have their own polling showing in much finer detail which seats where aged care will be a real issue. But it illustrates how the transient nature of aged care means people are exposed to it for only a limited time and then move on.
But the 1990s scandal also illustrates that when aged care does break out from being an electorally limited issue and starts dominating the political cycle, it can wreak havoc on governments.
As the death toll mounts and the government’s disgraceful negligence becomes more apparent, that may well be the fate of Morrison and Hunt. The ADF should start preparing for an intervention.
Yes, people are still dying painful, and cruel, deaths, and yet the reptiles don't give a toss.
Meanwhile, back in the land of fuck you Jack and Jill, I'm okay ...
Not to worry, the dying in aged care can go on forever, and in the land of fuck you Jack and Jill, I'm okay, who will give a toss?
What a deeply self-regarding tosser this jerk from the deep south is ...
That kind of wanking surely has earned a Kudelka...
And there's more Kudelka to be found here, but now on to a tosser who cranks the tossing up to eleven ... and funnily enough, he too is a croweater, a small town which seems to boast of a superabundance of tossers, and even exports them occasionally to the eastern states.
Yes, it's the dog botherer, carefully cordoned off at the bottom of a late Sunday posting ... and if that isn't enough of a warning, you need to get out your meds ...
The nerd couldn't understand why anybody would read the dog botherer, or for that matter piss on him if they saw that he was on fire.
The nerd simply couldn't understand that at one time the pond had done it for the lolz, and now did it for the chance to slip in a reference to the odd sensible story, or perhaps just a cartoon of the kind that the New Yorker dropped in by way of email ...
The nerd said that was all very well, but still, unless you were interested in experiencing nausea or constipation, what was the point?
The pond struggled to find an answer ...
It was indeed like overhearing a conversation being conducted by anti-vaxxers...
The pond tried to explain that this sort of shit was going down all over the world ... and that was why things weren't getting better ... and was being facilitated by powerful forces who didn't give a flying fuck if they infected you, or you happened to develop a serious illness or long form Covid or whatever ...
The nerd couldn't see the point. Of course there were loons out there, but best not to lock eyes, just sidle on past, head down, checking out the pavement, preferably with an N-95 on ...
That's when the pond had to remind the nerd that this was a blog named after loons, and could she imagine a more exemplary loon than the dog botherer?
At last the nerd had to cede a point ... it was hard to think of a bigger loon, except perhaps major professional players of the Djoker, mango Mussolini, BoJo kind...
Dear sweet long absent lord, it's just a fucking self-indulgent whine about himself, a bit of fluff-gathering navel-gazing, getting agitated that he can't cheerfully send his kids out to infect anyone they happen to be passing.
Truly Adelaide exports wankers to the world ... and what's worse, wankers that don't know when to shut up ...
Oh fucketty fuck, not 'demonised the unvaccinated'.
The pond flinched at the nerd's reproachful look. How could the pond let this sort of toxic emission out into the world without a filter?
The pond feebly responded that others spent time noting the weird shit that was out there in the world ...
Trumpers on Real America's Voice are furious that Gov. Youngkin's optional mask plan for schools is being met with opposition and lawsuits by parents and school boards, so they are demanding to use the National Guard to enforce his wishes. The National Guard to enforce the mandate to not have a mandate. Catch-22 couldn't have done any better.
Fascism and thuggery reigns supreme for Traitor Trump and his acolytes.
But why give the loons air, oxygen? Why not wait until they catch Covid and then have to head off to hospital to get their oxygen fix?
The pond muttered something about loons wasting a lot of public money, and causing hospital services and medical teams much grief, but that only generated a nerdish glare.
The pond did its best to look contrite, especially as the reptiles next led with a snap of a rabble raging in the street ... but then being in favour of ratbags, anti-vaxxers, loons, crazies and secessionists is all the go these days at News Corp ...
The pond will admit that it ran out of excuses in relation to the dog botherer, but now it's done, with just one gobbet to go, though the nerd wasn't impressed by the pond's feeble attempt at an excuse, saying it could have been Killer Creighton, or Dame Slap ...
Shit's shit, no matter how you flush it, the nerd said severely, and the pond was pleased it had reached the last unpolished turd ...
A fuckwit's a fuckwit, the pond explained, and if you waded through the entirety of that sewage plant, you could better understand how the dog botherer helped Lord Downer in the fucking of Iraq and also managed to produce minor fuck-ups of the Utegate kind, and what a relief now that he was no longer in government, but instead could just vent his spleen behind a paywall ...
The nerd looked vaguely guilty... had the nerd helped in unleashing this toxic sludge into the world?
The pond proposed, as a way of mollifying the nerd, that it was time for the reptiles to do their duty, and stop this sort of stuff escaping ... after all, they'd managed it at Chernobyl, why not at the lizard Oz? It was on them to stitch up their paywall so tight that not a trace of this form of flurocarbon could make it into the real world, let alone the ozone layer...
And with that thought, it was time for a Wilcox to wrap up proceedings for this weekend, the first the pond has spent back with the reptiles, with the prayer that with any luck, it might be among the last...
Two very fine examples of "sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity" to end the week, and the reptile restoration, with.
ReplyDeleteBut to pick up on a small point, according to Doggy Bov, Peter Collignon told him of "much, much less deaths per person infected". Once upon a time, that would have been said as "many, many fewer deaths...". So why has few/fewer been removed from English in favour of "less" ?
Doggy Bov was up to all his usual thoughtless confusions though: "The only burden imposed on society by the unvaccinated is a disproportionate load on our hospitals because of their higher risk of serious illness. But we could say the same for the overweight, smokers, drinkers and motorcyclists."
Oh no we couldn't because the "overweight, smokers, drinkers and motorcyclists" don't actually crowd out the hospitals, do they. Just one more, among many, brainless reptile lies.