Friday, May 27, 2022

In which the pond has a Killer time with our Henry and a bubble-headed nuking booby ...

 

 

Was there an election? It seems so long ago, so distant, but it turns out that our Henry is still shedding tears into his holey bucket ...

Never mind, as a deeply conservative blog, the pond must follow traditional paths, even if it means beginning with yet another shot of a sobbing liar from the Shire ... because at least it will be followed by a splendid reference to ancient Rome ... Saturnalia, wot wot ...


 

 

 

Hmm, what a pity that Roman reference was followed by the usual twaddle, and the pond had to send off to Crikey for an interstitial ...

 

 

 

 

Great stuff, but sorry you'd need to get past the paywall for the hot links ... now back to our Henry still sobbing in his empty bucket ... but with a snap of the man who always has the reptiles meeting him more than halfway ...


 


 

 

Oh yes, there's hope, there's always hope, and the chance to blame past events on present governments, and we're not even done with the count, and yet the reptiles are already at it ...

 

 


 

 

Sheesh, barely a week in, and it's all their fault.

Meanwhile, our Henry is really just a soft core version of the shock troops already deploying ...and for that pardon another Crikey interstitial though the outing grows as long and as slow as Turtle Mitch taking action on guns ...

 

 


 

 

 

Jesus Christ indeed, but is it any different from our Henry, already planning his own insurgency?



 

 

Muh'lud, the pond humbly apologises for the way the reptiles manage to leak a Leak into the day's offering and seeks to offer compensation by way of a Rowe ...

 

 

 


 

 

And now may the gods forgive the pond for offering a final gobbet of our Henry referencing Robert Graves ...

 



 


Indeed, indeed, prayers to an imaginary friend, because the rapture is certainly just around the corner, and meanwhile, we have a new rapture ...





 

And so to a genuine, certified comedy item from a guaranteed half-witted booby ...




 

She's only trying to help, so naturally that plug for the benefits of fossil fuels had to go in, but here's where the bubble-headed booby gets really helpful. The solution? Nuke the country to save the planet ...




 

 

Ah, the bloody sun, the useless wind, always the reptile enemy ... and now to dispose of a little uranium in a thoughtful way, perhaps in a bubble-headed booby litter bin ...



 

Um, assuming of course that nuking the country is some sort of half life of a quarter million years clean energy future ...

And with that the pond would usually end, because there's nothing more entertaining than a bubble-headed booby trying to be helpful, but this day the Killer went there, and so perforce the pond had to go with him ...

 

 

 

 

Of course Killer is just the latest in a long line of helpful News Corp loons, and the pond is indebted to Vanity Fair for summarising some of the moments that have turned up on MSNBC this week ...

During Fox News’s coverage Tuesday night of America’s most recent mass shooting, in which an 18-year-old gunman slaughtered 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, it was apparently too soon to discuss gun reform—but the right time to propose that schools be equipped with booby traps, armed military contractors, and bulletproof blankets.
After Joe Biden demanded that Congress “stand up to the gun lobby” in a Tuesday night address, Fox News host Laura Ingraham condemned the president for attempting to use the dead bodies of Robb Elementary students to boost his favorability numbers, suggesting he spoke for “selfish” reasons. She also claimed that Biden had no intention of comforting the families of victims or uniting America. “He spoke tonight because…in today’s twisted world, it’s considered perfectly appropriate to exploit the massacre of innocent little kids in order to try to turn around your own sagging poll members,” she said. “Biden [is] at the lowest approval of his presidency, 36%, so this attempt at political resuscitation on Biden’s part, it’s despicable.”
Likewise, Fox News guest Buck Sexton told Tucker Carlson that those who criticize politicians for failing to pass any legislation that could prevent future shootings are only “hurting the situation” by opportunistically using the Uvalde shooting “to bludgeon the other side with platitudes about ‘we must do something.’”
On Hannity, Pat Brosnan, one of the host’s guests, called for the government to “utilize smart technology” to curb school shootings while dismissing renewed calls for stricter firearm regulations. “We need to install man traps…a series of interlocking doors at the school entrance that are triggered by a trip wire…and it traps the shooter like a rat,” he added, seemingly describing the kinds of armored doors used in banks and prisons. “When he’s trapped like a rat, we’re buying time, the most precious commodity these children can ever get is time to run, time to hide, time to get away from this madman and his bullets. It’s trip wires. It’s man traps. It’s not labor. It’s not gun control.”
Also during the program, Sean Hannity urged the U.S. government to hire military and police contractors to patrol schools. “[Place] retired military, retired law enforcement outside the perimeter of every school in the country, they can donate their time, we can offer them tax breaks, no income tax in the state, no income tax federally, 10 hours a week, and we can have every school in America covered,” the host said, suggesting that it would cut down on “police response times.”
But in this case, police were initially unable to stop the shooter, who was wearing body armor, from entering the school after he crashed nearby. “That’s when he attempted to enter the school where he was engaged by law enforcement,” Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Erick Estrada told CNN, adding that the gunman “was able to enter the premises and then from there that’s when he entered several classrooms and started shooting his firearm.”
Another solution pitched on the network came via Maureen O’Connell, a former FBI agent, who suggested that the onus is on parents to invest in bulletproof armor for their children and “threat assessment[s]” on school grounds. “Instead of parents buying their kids all these tools and toys and games, invest in the classroom to make it safer,” she told host Bret Baier. “They have blankets that you can put up on the wall that are colorful and beautiful, but they’re ballistic blankets.”
O’Connell also partially blamed the “anti-police narrative” for mass shootings, claiming––without evidence––that such sentiments force “people not to call police when they have these type of concerns.”
Colion Noir, a gun-culture social media influencer, said on Fox News that American schools should be “so hardened”––i.e., heavily defended and inaccessible to the public in the same way that “closed” military towns are––that it is impossible for shooters to penetrate them. “I can only imagine if Joe Biden had younger kids and they went to a certain school, do you know how hard it would be to attack that school?” Noir said. “These kids are the most precious things we have, so not putting them in the position where they are the most protected as well is kind of odd to me.”
Mark Levin, a talk radio personality who hosts a weekend Fox News program, suggested on Tuesday that bringing “Judeo-Christian principles” and prayer into schools could help stop future mass shootings. “This is not so easily addressed by politics…. These lunatics don’t really care what laws you passed,” he said. “I think a little bit more faith would help in the schools and in the public square. It’s not such a terrible thing, and yet, we have secularized everything.”

They're all Killer's kissing cousins - surely the man trap routine is the very best of Faux Noise thinking, right out of Straw Dogs - and yet the pond has a spare dollar to bet that Killer will ignore all those splendid Faux Noise contributions to the ether and blame social media ...

 


 

Meanwhile, there's an elephant in Killer's room, summarised by the infallible Pope ...

 

 


 

By golly that image reminds the pond of another dire threat to the planet ...

 

 


 

 

Now back to Killer so the pond can collect its bet ...

 


 

 

Oh not with the masks already, and yet the pond can now collect its dollar bet, because forget the Senate, forget Cancun Ted, forget Turtle Mitch, forget the GOP, forget the NRA, forget the gun madness that sees the likes of Abbott allow permits and handguns for all ... indeed forget Faux Noise and News Corp. Anything but them ...

Frankly the pond is happy it's done its US travels at a time when you'd only spot the odd loon carrying a weapon, and then usually in the company of a dead deer (fact: if you're a hunter, using a military weapon to spray off a hundred rounds isn't hunting in any traditional, conservative sense of the word; if you've got a military weapon, you're after human game) ...

 

 


 

 

Well the pond has made eye contact with Killer, and is glad it's reached the final Killer gobbet ... but if he mentions freedumb, likely the pond will scream ...

 



 

 

Ah, so the mask thing = guns =  freedumb ... the pond has a cartoon for that ...






 

And here's a few more cartoons as a wrap ...









5 comments:

  1. Interesting little list from Crikey about how much like the Libs the Labs are. Time, maybe, to bring up Hotelling's law: "there’s a natural tendency for competitors to be pulled toward a common middle ground"
    https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2692.htm

    Or in short, no matter how far apart we begin, we always end up together in the middle.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Dorothy,

    I wonder how the ex-Treasurer is coming to terms with his ignominious defeat by a Teal and the dashing of his hopes to be the next PM?

    Maybe a bit of light reading would help;

    https://www.mup.com.au/books/coping-in-good-times-and-bad-paperback-softback

    I’m sure Josh could get a copy. His mum will have loads.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And now he'll have plenty of time on his hands to read each and every one of those 25 books and 150 articles. And any more that she writes whilst he's getting through that lot.

      Delete
  3. Great column, as always. The lizards continue to bask in their reflected light, which is, happily, dimming. The stand out for me though was that there was once a party called The Progressive Conservatives - now that is having a bob each way!

    ReplyDelete
  4. KillerC is truly a wonder: in commenting on why the rate of gun massacres in the US occur "at more than double the rate in Chile (the second highest) and at 10 times the rate in Australia" he gives us this: "The undeniable access to weapons in the US is a major factor in explaining the difference. Yes, guns don't kill people, people with guns do."

    Bravo, what a perceptive analysis. But then he also tells us that, in terms of mass shootings (4 or more killed) in the US "the number rose from 417 in 2019 to 693 last year". Now if the US rate is 10 times the Australian rate, that would indicate that there were 7 "mass shootings" in Australia last year. I can't remember that many, can you ?

    According to Reuters: "Australia has had no mass shootings since 1996." and "Total deaths from firearms were 521 in the country in 1996. In 2019, with the population up from about 18 million to 25 million, Australia had 219 deaths, official data showed." [ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-marks-25-years-since-worst-mass-shooting-2021-04-28/ ] So where does this supposed ratio of 1/10th of America's 693 come in ?

    Anyway, as always, laughter is the best answer, so maybe a little 'Onion' satire will help:
    ‘No way to prevent this’: why the Onion’s gun violence headline is so devastating
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/may/27/the-onion-gun-violence-texas-shooting

    ReplyDelete

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