A killer time was had by all, including the fundamentalist religious bigots ...

 

No time to beat about the bush ... it's dive right in, with a killer serve of the Killer ...

You see? It's the "dangers of toe in icy or boiling hot water" syndrome.

 If you'd seen the header or that pathetic snap of nodding donkey pumps in the glow of a fading planet wrecked by climate change, you might have hesitated ... you might have not plunged in, you might have walked by, saying in a polite way, "not today pond, kindly though you are, not today, because life is short and there's living to do ..."

As compensation for taking the plunge, allow the pond to compensate with some killer cartoons celebrating Killer economics ...

Of course that should have been killer tax cuts for the richest companies, but it'll do, it'll do ...

Now there's a classic Killer line, the one about corporations not being greedier or nastier than they were in 2019, and it's true. Why, Killer himself hasn't sounded greedier or nastier, he's maintained a steady level of greediness and nastiness, though his years in the Covid killer fields were perhaps his real moment in the sun.

Now it's getting so you can't even spot a Freudian mention of the dangers of masks ... though there was a routine mention of climate zealotry ... (mark that turn of phrase, it will come in handy)

Here, have an immortal Rowe ...

And now continue on with good cheer and in great, if somewhat expensive, spirits ...

And there you have a free marketeer in action. It turns out that the markets have got nothing to do with it, and it's all just a political choice ...

Well the pond routinely makes the wrong choice, and this day there was an unholy coupling ...

Was it wrong for the pond to be tempted by petulant Satan Herself? The pond has steadfastly avoided petulant Peta, but felt compelled ... could she be as moronic and as reprehensible as the rest of the reptiles in relation to renewables?

She could, she could! And the reptiles threw in a bonus snap of Satanic windmills for no other reason than to arouse a sense of fear and loathing in the kool-aid sipping members of the Murdochian cult.

The pond had learned its lesson - never dive into shallow water without first checking the depth - and cut to the closing pars so that the final folly might emerge...

Isn't quite the urgent necessity? There goes the planet. Moral zealotry and intellectual timidity? Tick. Hard facts of delusionalism denialism trumping the the mere opinion of climate science?

Didn't the pond urge stray readers to mark "zealotry", saying it would come in handy? Was the pond not right? Does it take a zealot to spot a zealot sounding like a barking mad denialist zealot?

Who will call this madness out? Where are the younglings and why aren't they glueing themselves to the doors of Sky After Dark?

What's the Graudian got to say about all this?

Europe’s climate warming at twice rate of global average, says report

Temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average in the last 30 years, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The effects of this warming are already being seen, with droughts, wildfires and ice melts taking place across the continent. The European State of the Climate report, produced with the EU’s Copernicus service, warns that as the warming trend continues, exceptional heat, wildfires, floods and other climate breakdown outcomes will affect society, economies and ecosystems.
From 1991 to 2021, temperatures in Europe have warmed at an average rate of about 0.5C a decade. This has had physical results: Alpine glaciers lost 30 metres in ice thickness between 1997 and 2021, while the Greenland ice sheet has also been melting, contributing to sea level rise. In summer 2021, Greenland had its first ever recorded rainfall at its highest point, Summit station.
Human life has been lost as a result of the extreme weather events. The report says that in 2021, high impact weather and climate events – 84% of which were floods and storms – led to hundreds of fatalities, directly affected more than 500,000 people, and caused economic damages exceeding $50bn.
“Europe presents a live picture of a warming world and reminds us that even well-prepared societies are not safe from impacts of extreme weather events,” said the WMO secretary general, Prof Petteri Taalas. “This year, like 2021, large parts of Europe have been affected by extensive heatwaves and drought, fuelling wildfires. In 2021, exceptional floods caused death and devastation.”

Oh that's just funny old Europe. With petulant Peta's help, we can do much better at fucking the country and the planet ...

What else? Well there were a few other noble contributions, but the pond could tell they were wrong simply from the splash...

Sorry Jenkins, the bromancer has already spoken. 

The aim is to start world war three by Xmas, if not by the New Year, so we can get the year off to a big bang. 

And how noble of simplistic "here no conflict of interest, no conflict of interest here" Simon to pick up "Ned's" baton, and carry on in the reptile race to give hope to the mutton Dutton's golden chance ...

It's a daily chore, but someone's got to do the turd polishing, and the "no conflict of interest here" man is perfect for the job.

Tom was also on hand to talk down any notion of progress ...

Ah those lofty progressives...

You can never have your cake and eat it, that pleasure is reserved for the reptiles and the rich ...

And so on a day of complete perversity, it was right for the pond to turn to the lizard Oz editorialist, celebrating the turning of Israel to a barking mad fundamentalist theocratic far right state ...

The pond did say that "zealot" would come in handy ...

Of course there were a few that were unhappy ...Kahanism Won. Israel Is Now Closing in on a Right-wing, Religious, Authoritarian Revolution (paywall)

Naturally the bromancer was as happy as a pig in shit. There's never been a far right group of religious fundamentalists and ratbags that troubles the bromancer, unless perhaps they're a bunch of mad mullahs of the women- and gay-hating Iranian or Taliban kind ... (though really is there any big difference to a celibate priesthood and the angry Sydney Anglican quest for complimentary women?)

Yes, a man of epic achievements, and never you mind about a taste for good drinking and smoking, where's the harm in that?

Yes, one loon getting along with another, mango-coloured loon ... and the like ... because that's how you downplay corruption charges when you're a mentally corrupt reptile ...

Meanwhile, back with the hapless Haaretz editorialist ...

...In recent years, Israel has become terrifyingly more extreme. Everything we were warned about is happening right before our eyes. Kahanism has been legitimized and spread, and on Tuesday at the polls outdid the party whose leaders are two former Israel Defense Forces chiefs of staff (the National Unity Party); the Kahanist slate is almost three times as large as the movement that founded Israel (the Labor Party).

While political forces on the left, the center and the right joined forces to fight against MK Benjamin Netanyahu, a more dangerous threat came into being.

“‘This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it,’” tweeted the chairman of the Religious Zionism party, MK Bezalel Smotrich. “Today, Religious Zionism makes history with the greatest achievement for a national religious party since the establishment of the state,” he added. His joy should rattle the calm of every Israeli.

Although as noted, it is still too early to tell how the political blocs will form, as of this writing, Netanyahu might return to government. His apparent coalition will allow him to carry out his plot against Israeli democracy, including a fatal blow against the justice system.

Moreover, that coalition might demand this of him. In such a revolution, a number of destructive steps might be taken.

Here are some examples: Fire the attorney general; split the role of attorney general; legislate an override clause that will allow the Knesset to legislate whatever it wants to – even laws that are unconstitutional; allow the Knesset to select Supreme Court justices; restrict freedom of expression; and persecute journalists, Arabs, leftists and members of the LGBTQ community.

We have to hope that the appearance of the blocs will change when all the votes are counted, and that Netanyahu will not be able to form a nightmare coalition, which hinges on the votes of the Kahanists.

Israel is now on the verge of a right-wing, religious, authoritarian revolution, whose goal is to decimate the democratic infrastructure on which the country was built. This may be a black day in Israel’s history.

There was a link in that text to Kahanism, (paywall), a code word for Jewish supremacism, but this gobbet will serve ...

One can already imagine the panels convening under the banner of “how did we get here,” as Kahanists celebrate their achievements, proceeding to instill their culture in the streets (a possible answer: because you walked straight into it).

Meanwhile, the apparatus of denial, mainly on the right, is working diligently. The right blames the “bloc of change,” the Black Flags movement and anyone else who isn’t them, for the ignominious linkage to the Kahanists. Another attempt at assuaging – mainly themselves – is expressed in the comparison of the alarmed reaction to Ben-Gvir to the past demonization, as they see it, of any new right-wing partner of Labor, from Menachem Begin to Ayelet Shaked. Besides, they say, those who legitimize Palestinian nationalists or Knesset members who “identify with the enemy” are doomed to wake up with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in the cabinet, in some kind of amusing revenge. There are other ways, with various degrees of success, of denying the alarming avant-garde experiment which Israel is apparently walking into. This denial attests to shame, blame and anxiety, all of these justified.

Even if this is a trend that’s exploiting expedient timing and a global climate in which populists of all stripes are thriving, even if we’re told that this is a reaction to political paralysis, or to the historic inclusion of an Arab party in the coalition, the fact that a Kahanist slate is growing in strength is horrifying. Large portions of the Jewish public are unashamedly embracing Kahanism, the open and latent one, affirming the dismantling of the foundations of the rule of law, the entrenching of Jewish supremacy at the expense of trampling democratic values, the imposition of apartheid within Israel and the criminalization of Arab political representatives. The latter point has contributed much to the formation of the current pattern, but the political abandon of Arab representatives is no reason to minimize the seriousness of the situation. Kahanism is a Jewish creation, now being placed on the stage of history by Jewish actors.

There's a wiki too, featuring the views of fundamentalist bigot and zealot Rabbi Meir Kahane, but it goes without saying that barking mad fundamentalists of the bromancer tyke kind would be comfortable with other forms of religious fundamentalism ...

The pond couldn't end on such a downer, so it sought solace with Elon, who is already providing tremendous entertainment, what with Stephen King and Catturd in the fray ...

What an excuse to celebrate with a few closing smelly, musk-laden, cartoons ...

And if you're visiting the Daily Beast, make sure you follow the link to Politico for those doubting Thomas ... and those doubting that pillow talk with Ginni ...

What a tremendous honour, to be assessed as the man most likely to judge a coup as the best way forward ...

Put it another way ...