No Major! The pond's world trembled a little at the thought of the Major, disconsolate, perhaps shattered, inconsolable, wandering out of the tent, muttering that he might be a little while ... but as the wheel and the world turns, so things quickly turned around.
There were still reptile tears to sip, with the Caterist returning to a sobbing, neigh a caterwauling ... as in that dictionary example for the world, "he seems to think that singing soulfully is to whine and caterwaul tunelessly ..."
Oh there's even talk of Custer, a fatuous fop, now unilaterally promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to General ...
The pond wouldn't mind a little comedy as it sips on the Caterist tears, apparently oblivious to the famous tale of Colonel Custard's last stand... and offers this ...
No doubt she meant well with that line about Queensland cops, but the pond couldn't resist the obvious ...
Of course the days of Joh are gone, and how can a cockroach with memories of Roger Rogerson and the
Blue Murder gang still in mind take cheap shots at Queensland, not to mention Victorians, saddled with assorted chips and the Armed Robbery squad in its hey day ... but it was good to be reminded that this was the day that the mutton Dutton would finally ascend, and the fate of Barners would be decided - did anybody read the pure comedy in the Graudian about the Dungowan dam?
Barnaby Joyce's dam water set to cost 100 times more than market rates ...
Oh it's good to stay in touch with all the best in Tamworth ...
And now, distractions done, back to sipping on those teal-coloured Caterist tears...
Silly old departed Sharma. The moment you start talking about climate science as a religion, you lose the pond. Climate science isn't a matter of faith or believing, you don't believe, you accept the evidence as it stands ... or you join the Canavan caravan and become a cultist devoted to clean, dinkum, innocent, pure Oz coal ...
But then even the wet Liberals have famously been fatuous about climate science, not helped by the Caterist, in mourning for the seat of Ming the merciless ...
Oh yes, the heartland is shifting, and it's got the heart of a Queensland cop ... or is that Harry Potter?
And so to a bonus, which perforce is the Oreo, but with the domestic reptile world lost to that dreadful teal colour, the reformed, recovering feminist decided a little travel would help broaden the paranoia ...
Again the pond would rather be talking about that bizarre mix that gave Colbert a light-hearted moment ...
Grotesque in every sense of the word, but the pond can't set the reptile agenda, nor determine the shape of the Oreo's paranoia, though clearly she's over the colour teal, and is now seeing red ...
There you go ... so many levels of irony, not least blather about the language of colonialism, and talk of the "most powerful atheist organisation in the world."
If only the Oreo could stick to simple descriptions, like authoritarian dictatorship, of the kind General Franco arranged ... because a belief or a lack of belief in imaginary friends doesn't have to get in the road of being a repressive dictatorship.
All the same it's turning into a dull read, and the pond wished that the Oreo had speculated about the domestic scene this day ... then the
immortal Rowe would have been relevant to the text ...
Instead the pond has to be content with the reformed, recovering feminist doing a "Ned", imitating a headless chook or a Chicken Little, as the sky falls ... you know, those atheist Commie bastards ... leaving the pond wondering how 'atheist' got into the mix, because there are many ways to skin that cat ...
Is such propaganda likely to succeed? Past history suggests that it will not, and adherence to traditional articles of faith still remains strong in Tibet and Xinjiang. Moreover, recent studies have concluded that when belief in a counter-narrative is strong, it tends to persist despite any level of coercion or propaganda.
My recent book analyses CCP propaganda and the strategies of resistance employed by Tibetan Buddhists in response. During recent visits to the region, I have experienced a climate of fear far exceeding anything I have encountered before, and attacks on religion have become more intrusive and widespread. But Tibetans’ faith appears to remain strong, and religious practice has become an act of resistance against the state.
The CCP’s efforts to subvert religion and force believers to adopt versions of their faiths that narrowly equate them with Chinese patriotism have clearly failed to achieve their objective. However, the Party is an authoritarian organisation, and its leaders have seldom demonstrated an ability to change course when policies fail. So it is likely that the repression will continue, and those religious adherents who bear the brunt of the coercion will become increasingly resistant to their government’s message. Given this, perhaps it is not surprising that the Party views the persistence of such beliefs as an existential threat. (here)
As any sensible atheist knows, you can argue until you're teal in the face with those who want to believe in imaginary friends, and pie in the sky in the bye and bye, and the more an authoritarian dictatorship tries to impose its will, the more it creates a countervailing force ...
And that's what the reformed, recovering feminist has reduced the pond to ...
In all this strangely the Oreo hasn't mentioned that other alleged religion, because when it comes to climate science, the Chinese Communist party has been a dismal failure, and you'd have to be a particularly gullible islander to believe otherwise ...
The pond would rather be speculating about hidden messages in that Rowe cartoon ...
What a strange marking. A bit like that monolith in 2001, poised above the mutton Dutton's head ...
Never mind, back to climate science.
Perhaps it'll get a mention in the Oreo's final gobbet ...
... or perhaps not. Perhaps instead there'll be blather about the choice of right over might, as opposed to the visceral sense of a sinking feeling in the Pacific ...
Completely clueless as to how to win friends and influence people ...
Not to worry, the pond can't remember if it ran this immortal Rowe, designed to stoke the fears of the paranoid Oreo, but what the heck, if dementia has taken the pond, it's worth a run ...
"Custer, a fatuous fop, now unilaterally promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to General "
ReplyDeleteWell, he was sort of a general before he was a Lt. Colonel:
"He was a brevet Brigadier General of volunteers by the end of the Civil War; after the War he was a Captain in the Regular Army; after about a year he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel as part of the new U.S. 7th Calvary; influential friends he made during the War lobbied on his behalf to receive this promotion. He was a Lt. Colonel when he was killed at Little Big Horn."
He also seems have been one of those blokes who made the fatal mistake of believing his own publicity. A bit like Harold Holt, who was apparently nowhere near as strong a swimmer as he liked to claim.
DeleteNo, no, Anony, Holt didn't drown:
Delete"The Prime Minister Was a Spy is a 1983 book by British writer Anthony Grey. The book's premise is that Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia from 1966 to 1967, was a lifelong spy for the Chinese government, under both the Nationalist and Communist regimes.
Its most famous claim is that Holt faked his own death – rather than drowning, he boarded a Chinese submarine stationed off the Australian coast and lived the rest of his life in Beijing."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prime_Minister_Was_a_Spy
In town early, so stocked-up on popcorn, in anticipation of several more days of entertainment. The very absence of the Major is amusing - one can run various mental sit-com simulations in which the Major agonises over what to write, where none of his regular themes can serve. Difficult to reflect on the deterioration of what he has been presenting as the decline of journalism when the patent examples from the Flagship have all been navigating in the wrong direction. It is tempting to make a convoluted reference to their paying no attention to the Compass - but Compass Polling is more the tool of the Cater than the Major.
ReplyDeleteThis time the Cater offered us revelations like ‘the arrival of a third force that defies the two-dimensional continuum to which we normally turn to get our bearings’.
Now - a ‘two-dimensional continuum’ may be taken as a reference to the magnetic compass, at least in the context of turning to it to ‘get our bearings’, but the arrival of a third force takes the Cater past the strong and the weak forces into recent speculations about how beauty quarks might decay in ways that have not previously been predicted.
Or he could just be jumbling words in the hope of appearing to have insights denied we mere mortals who did not study sociology at a minor university in the UK.
The Cater does remain steadfastly Sydney-centric. He managed his little digression into Green country without drawing attention to the three seats in older, definitely leafier, parts of Brisbane, that tipped out both Liberals, and a Labor member, to de-smug the ‘opinions’ of writers for the Flagship, and the ‘Curious Snail’, about the fundamental political instincts of residents of Queensland.
All so entertaining, particularly as it purports to be more intellectual than the increasingly puerile content of Sky.
At least NickyC (rhymes with KillerC) had a comment about Kooyong and the "vigorous campaign by Josh Frydenberg" conducted there - which just proved that Joshy ain't no Menzies and never will be. But no mention of Goldsrein and Freedumb-boy Timmy or any if the other Liebral losses. Chisholm ? What's that ?
DeleteWell at least I got to put Fiona Patten's Reason Party 1st in the Vic Senate (and the Animal Justice Party second). Didn't get either of 'em anywhere, of course, but then who cares about Reason and animals ?
Without intending to specifically smear the Caterist, I suspect that even though Timmy Wilson was an IPA warrior at least some of the more reactionary Liberals were always a bit uncomfortable with the fact that he was openly gay. They may therefore be more philosophical about the loss of his seat - and Zimmerman's - for now and be hoping for the election of straight married-with-kids Liberal candidates at the next election.
DeleteAlas, woe, Barnaby is gone, returned to the backbench. Still, I suppose it's a fitting reward for having abandoned Tamworth for the bright lights of Armidale. I expect he's already plotting yet another comeback, though.
ReplyDeleteWhat hope now for the Dungowan Dam expansion? Even before the recent Grudian articles, it seemed pretty suspect, given that it's just up the road from the Chaffey Dam; I couldn't see how two such installations could be justified in such close proximity. The explanation that it's a classic National Party rort makes perfect sense.
The pond was shattered, but is troubled by that florid complexion and what it implies for the future. Perhaps a swim in Chaffey dam with the carp will make for better coal loving carping ...
DeleteWell, hucoodanode:
ReplyDeleteSolar farm trial shows improved fleece on merino sheep grazed under panels
"Sheep grazing under solar panels at farms in NSW's Central West have produced better wool and more of it in the four years since the projects began, according to growers."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-05-30/solar-farm-grazing-sheep-agriculture-renewable-energy-review/101097364
I wonder if we could get Lloydy or Doggy Bov to do a write up of that ?
:)³ The pond will likely borrow that some time in the future ...
DeleteI like "Caterwaulist"- sometimes an angry screech and sometimes a funerial moan.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those times where the truth sneaks through but reptiles don't recognise it, but then again, why would they? Nickboi quoting Dave Sharma "it's a lack of belief in the sincerity of our commitment" Bazinga! Nicky has just described the sort of half-arsed, backsliding offering that passed as a climate policy but he wonders why anyone would question their commitment (just hanging about with Angus Taylor should bring you to the attention of the authorities - and probably will).
Anyway, Herr Kipfler is about to lead them into the wilderness and who are we to point out the error?
Just think of that beefy boofhead Angus, a right old Murray Gray, as shadow treasurer BF and marvel at the ways of the world ...
DeleteThe energy minister, Angus Taylor, has denied he played a role in structuring the company which received an $80m government buyback of its water rights through the tax haven of the Cayman Islands.
Taylor, who was a director of Eastern Australia Agriculture between 2008 and 2009 and who described himself as a co-founder of the company, told ABC Radio National on Thursday morning he was involved only in advising on the agricultural side of the investment.
He said he severed all involvement in the company prior to being elected to parliament.
EAA was paid $80m for its overland flow water rights without tender in 2017 when Barnaby Joyce was agriculture minister.
Up to their necks in the trough ...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/02/angus-taylor-says-he-did-not-set-up-caymans-structure-on-80m-water-buyback