What else to start the day?
Well the federal government has ensured that the pond won't be flying anytime soon and that the Hume highway will continue to score pond business ...
And the ABC ran a story about the US, and submarines off in never never land, which should produce an apocalyptic fit in the bromancer in due course ...
Meanwhile, the pond is going to spend this day explaining why it will ignore almost all of the reptiles' offerings...
You see? There's the Dominator at the head of the comments section. The reptiles must think he's in deep doo dah as election day approaches.
Why else turn to the most incompetent of state premiers to offer blather about the most urgent issue right now being a severe shortage of employees when any resident in the Dominator's state can tell you that it's trying to catch a train, or a bus, or endure Dominator's thoughts for longer than a nanosecond ...
And then there's Oliver Hartwich. It turns out that Ollie is the executive director of the New Zealand Initiative, an assembly of right wing loons of the Caterist kind, and that Ollie routinely spends his time being gobsmacked by the company he keeps ...
The pond regularly falls off its chair and is gobsmacked by the Caterists and the IPA and sundry other institutes of the prattling Polonius kind and doesn't need to spend any time sharing its fush and chups with a Kiwi blowhard blow-in ...
The pond also checked out the reptiles' tree killer edition ...
Nada, zip, but the talk of Gorbachev's legacy did remind the pond that the immortal Rowe had noted a gnat lurking on the forehead ...
Then when the pond turned to the digital edition's top of the page, ma, the pond knew its fate ...
Not Malware getting agitated about Lord Downer ... that story is summed up in its headline, and it says as much about Malware as it does his lordship.
No, the pond got lumped with a genuine weirdo yet again, Killer Creighton ... and that was more than enough for the day ...
Curiously the sight of Killer and his well-remembered killing fields reminded the pond of what a mixed bag Crikey is ... what with space being given to a genuinely ignorant, singularly incompetent Covid denier and board member in the shape of Adam Schwab ... as wretched a member of the commentariat as the Killer himself ...
The pond isn't going to recite or recycle his many distortions ... but will note the sort of reactions he provokes in the readership of a rag under threat from the Murdochians, and needing every subscriber it can get ...
This from the top and tail of one Ruv Draba ...
…your ‘commentary’ represents ignorant chatter. This has been demonstrated repeatedly, Adam. To be clear: reporting on your own ignorance is not news to anyone but you.
Adam, you need to either educate yourself to the necessary level and reported from balanced insight, or else recuse yourself from Covid health commentary. Anything else is unprofessional, misleading, disrespectful of Crikey’s masthead, its values, and its paying readers.
Wow, and there's a lot more, but that and the idle Covid chatter is more than enough groundwork so that scribbler Killer, scribbling away for unindicted co-conspirators, can take the stage ...
Disclosure of interest - after reading about Lachlan's distress over seeing the family name unindicted in 'Crikey', and his brave move to salvage the family honour - I contacted 'Crikey' to ask what I might do to join the battle under their banner. Their response at that time was to become a subscriber - so I have done just that. I don't think that requires post-nominals to my chosen title here, but will check on that.
ReplyDeleteWell done - and what does a Crikey sub cost in these terribly inflationary days ?
Delete$199 for the year. Nooo - they didn't make it the 'great value' $199.99!
DeleteI seem to be finding my kind of 'gems' at the rate of 4-5 a week, which I rate as fair value, but - the main purpose was to add that little bit of power to their arm for the Murdoch event.
The selection of cartoons about South Carolina Senator Lindsay
ReplyDeleteGraham were spot on.
But what irks is they never address the reason Graham literally
went overnight from despising Trump to being his
"forelock tugging lick spittle".
Perhaps out of misplaced kindness, they dance all around what
Trump has on Graham as it would ruin him with his close
minded - as DP adroitly terms them -Christian Taliban voters.
It is not exactly a secret that the senator is gay and raided
J. Edgar Hoover's closet for his weekend party clothes.
But all respect for how a individual leads his private life
is "trumped" when he sells his soul and his country to a
one time game show host lest said host exposes his
secret.
What a gutless punk, jello has more backbone.
If there was an annual Uriah Heep Award, they would
give it to Graham in perpetuity.
Hmm, 52, unmarried and not openly dating. But is that enough to convict ?
DeleteHi JM,
DeleteI think the former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards summed up US political “morality” when he said;
“The only way I can lose is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.”
I think Lindsey Graham’s electorate in South Carolina are on much the same wavelength as his mother, with whom he still lives. They know but they don’t want it articulated and that the possibility of a scandal rag outing Graham is what scares him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/10/ladygraham-went-viral-not-just-because-lindsey-grahams-politics/
The power of the tabloids, with their thirst for gossip and sexual improprieties, are underestimated as being an extremely powerful political weapon, at least in the Anglophone regions (however the French and possibly the Italians generally view MALE politicians affairs as a sign of virility and a sign of an alpha male).
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-not-so-secret-sex-lives-of-french-politicians-paris-mayoral-campaign-benjamin-griveaux-emmanuel-macron/
On the whole the general population are rarely interested in political corruption or incompetence but are instantly fascinated when a pollie is found in a “compromising position”. All well and good but when those owning these “newspapers” get to decide who gets outed and who doesn’t that gives them political leverage.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/national-enquirer-shredded-trump-docs-before-2016-election
Probably more interesting than what the Murdoch press publish is what they don’t and how the politicians understand that threat.
Hi Diddy,
DeleteExcellent points.
Especially what the Murdochians opt to publish or leave down the rabbit
hole. No mention is ever made on Fox of the following which made
the NYC papers back when.
Roger Stone's then NYC centric career was thought ruined when it
came out he regularly advertised in Swinger mags for Black men to
engage his wife while he watched.
Nobody would hire him, till Donnie deemed his specialty
of political and personal dirty tricks ops of use to his empire,
Stone becoming the closest thing Trump has ever had to a
friend.
This won't ever be a topic on Fox and Friends.
GB,
I am in no sense "convicting" Graham of being gay, I am completely
of the Live and Let Live school.
I have cousins in Rockville, MD and in DC who move in the Washington
social swirl.
DC for all intents and purposes is still a provincial "small" town and has
always had a vibrant gay (historically) underground, everyone knows
everyone else. Graham has been "out" there since he hit town.
I loathe Graham for crawling to a creature like Trump when
he could free himself today by declaring who he is.
Instead he sells out all for temporary advantage, he has
to know Trump will sell him out just as he has anyone
who ever allowed themselves to be put in his orbit.
By the way, our 15th president was almost certainly gay.
The "conviction" was just metaphorical, JM; I really know very little about US politicians, especially of the GOP kind, so I was curious as to how 'open' Graham is. The more open, the less he can be 'blackmailed' about it. Though yes, his turnaround on Trump was radical.
Delete"The pond will get back to something useful when the reptiles come up with something worth contemplating ..." That could be a very long wait indeed; what would it take for the reptiles, individually and collectively, to actually come up with "something worth contemplating" ?
ReplyDeleteReading KillerC and all those Faux Noise items was an experience indeed. If only I were a student of sub-normal psychology the effort of reading may have been vaguely worthwhile, but ... The thing about all those people is trying to understand how they got that way - it's almost enough to make one wonder if it isn't just a case of acquiring a pre-birth 'soul' that brings people to that state without any effort at all on their part - after all, learning as many lies and falsities as they do takes as much time and effort as learning facts and truths.
Afrer all, consider what we know of human history, and it's the KillerCs and Doggy Bovs and Bromancers who are clearly in the majority in homo sapiens sapiens, all the way along. So Gorbachev is supplanted by Putin and Gorbachev, applauded outside Russia, is detested inside Russia. And Americans in their millions still worship Trump (or the Tangerine Baal as somebody put it).
But then I look around and see that despite centuries of highly successful science the belief systems of most people still see 'science' as indistinguishable from religion - and for most of them the two are acquired in the same way. So anyway, I ask hopelessly again: how do these people ever manage to graduate from school ? It's not that they're 'ignorant' as such, it's just that virtually everything they think they know is wrong.
A not too distant relation was one of those kids who achieved a near perfect tertiary ranking (maybe they knocked off .02% for poor handwriting), his work career followed the same pattern, with lots of offers from headhunters and a partnership also on offer early in his career with a high profile company. And then came Covid and, despite every effort by the company, he had to leave because he refused to comply with their vaccination policy.
DeleteIt doesn’t make sense until you meet his partner. It’s obviously more important to him to fit in with the fruit loop he lives with than follow the facts and therein lies the problem. The need to fit in with an individual or group often overrides the need to understand the facts.
It did cause me to recall Bertrand Russell's piece about how if he had the money to recruit and train an elite army to "persuade" people, he could get them to believe that you boil water by freezing it. As he said:
Delete"Of course, even when these beliefs had been generated, people would not put the kettle in the ice-box when they wanted it to boil. That cold makes water boil would be a Sunday truth, sacred and mystical, to be professed in awed tones, but not to be acted on in daily life. What would happen would be that any verbal denial of the mystic doctrine would be made illegal, and obstinate heretics would be "frozen" at the stake. "
Passages from
An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)
http://panarchy.org/russell/rubbish.1943.html#
Yeah, I guess "Sunday truths" are quite common really, and people who hold them still pass their school exams, I guess. I do sometimes wonder how many "Sunday truths" I believe though as I aver: being imperfect I can easily be wrong, but at least I try to be rational - ie I will correct myself from time to time.
Would have been a bit sad for your relation if Covid had managed to infect, even kill, his 'fruit loop' though, as it did with many:
\https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/
Over at the Grudian, there’s an article by Robert Reich calling for Fascistic behaviour by prominent Republicans to be more clearly and frequently identified as such. Of course what are his views worth up against the wisdom and experience of a top Reptile such as the Killer? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/31/ron-desantis-republican-party-fascism
ReplyDeleteAnother similarity between the Mango Mussolini and the original - it turns out that Benito also didn’t join in on his followers’ march on democracy, but skulked around in the background - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/31/the-march-on-rome-review-mark-cousins-dissects-mussolini-and-the-grisly-founding-myth-of-fascism
ReplyDeleteWatching that very film note, he was indeed hidden away in Milan just in case the march was a damp squib. But hopped a train once word escaped North that there was a substantial uptake.
DeleteAn interesting theme in the film is that whatever he projected in terms of size or attendance never turned out to be more than half the predicted number. Now, what does that remind us of?
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteWhat a weasel word the Killer has made of SURE;
“To be SURE, Trump’s Make America Great Again movement has mopped up America’s sliver of ultranationalists.”
“SURE, some Republicans might want to clamp down on abortion rights, loosen gun laws, stop teenagers reading pornography in the school library or introduce voter ID.
Advance notice - the Menzies Research Centre has another 'survey', from ever-reliable Compass Polling. A minor minion, name of Mathias, was telling our Doggy Bov on Sky this night that the results are 'definitive'. No doubt the claimed results will be used by some or other reptile in the next few days. I'm guessing the Cater has dibs on them for flying from the flagship.
ReplyDeleteWon't burden you with any of the supposed figures - coming, as they do, from people who are available for 'polling' because they offered to do 'market research' in return for things like free samples of toothpaste.
Will it be anything like this Pew survey, d'ya reckon ?
Delete"Rightwing voters in Australia less concerned about climate than those in most other comparable nations, Pew survey finds"
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/08/31/climate-change-remains-top-global-threat-across-19-country-survey/
GB - thank you for that link. Well, reminder of it - often I intend to go to the Pew site to see what they might have, but there is only so much time in a day, and not all of it to be spent staring at a screen (of any kind). At least Pew disclose their sample size - 24,525 adults in 19 nations. If that is apportioned by population of each nation, then the sample for Australia will be much smaller than used by, e.g. 'Newspoll'. Newspoll sampling is well short of what those of my academic friends still in the business would consider acceptable, even for questions as basic as these, so the Pew 'findings' will be subject to appreciably more sampling error. It should still be well ahead of the 'join up for samples of toothpaste' population that Compass draws on.
Delete