The pond's yearning for the real in reality has grown insatiable of late.
Last night the pond heard that Brother Stuie, that great mate of the liar from the Shire, was going to front theRobodebt inquiry, to talk about that cruel bureaucratic modern day form of the Inquisition, and yet all the reptiles had fed the pond was talk of super and the voice, a monotonous breakfast diet of stodge and waffle ...
Take your eye off the reptile fluff-gathering navels and there was real news in the world:
It's true that a cartoonist can produce a Taylor-made response ...
... but how the pond yearns to be part of the real world sometimes, because clearly the local reptiles are suffering from what might be called Howard Kurtz syndrome (WaPo, sorry, paywall):
Kurtz revealed the prohibition during Sunday’s episode of “MediaBuzz” after he received criticism for not covering revelations about the network that came out of a recent filing by Dominion.
“Some of you have been asking why I’m not covering the Dominion voting machines lawsuit against Fox involving the unproven claims of election fraud in 2020, and it’s absolutely a fair question,” he said midway through Sunday morning’s program. “I believe I should be covering it. It’s a major media story, given my role here at Fox. But the company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can’t talk about it or write about it, at least for now.”
There's a helluva lot the local reptiles can't cover, or must cover in a certain obsessive way, trained to murmur like a murmuration of starlings, and this day the lizard Oz was full of it ...
The same doleful image of a downcast Jimbo was front and centre on the tree killer edition as all the reptiles could do was have a super time ...
The pond sometimes feels that its studies are undertaken in a Conradian Heart of Darkness dream state:
“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone...”
Every so often alternative realities intrude, as when the pond came across a Philip Bump outing in WaPo, The ‘trust’ Fox News seeks from its viewers isn’t about truth (sorry paywall) which ominously ended this way:
Imagine how jarring that must have been to viewers who had spent five years hearing about how Trump was correct or, at least, that Trump’s critics were wrong. There were no Americans more loyal to Trump than Fox News viewers, and now the network is trying to say that Trump lost? That the election was stolen? How could you trust anything Fox said if it wasn’t going to say the one thing that everyone on the right had agreed to say?
So Fox started saying it more. And Dominion sued.
You won't hear any of that from the reptiles down under.
It's all a dream, or a nightmare, a gazing into an absent void. That's why when Dame Groan delivered yet another super groaning yesterday, the pond knew it should do something, its correspondents cried out for yet more super groaning, but the pond read the piece, and decided to pass. There's only so much groaning any hapless wayward soul should suffer ...
That's why the pond routinely passes on petulant Peta, who helped the onion muncher fuck the country and the planet, and now each Thursday fucks with reptile reader minds ... (not to mention the fucking she does on Sky after Dark and in the Terror, though the pond only notices when it goes to the car wash for its free copy of the Terror).
But all this passing leaves very little to offer keen students wanting to pursue advanced herpetological studies ... just look at the line-up this day:
Go with the oscillating fan, that lickspittle lackey, that weak-willed toadie and fellow traveller with the minions of Faux Noise? Not likely.
And there was Monsieur Dupont, apparently unaware that the reptiles had hosted a Xi lackey the previous day (where was the bromancer to rage and rant?), and still more on super, and that's how the pond ended up with the lizard Oz editorialist blathering on yet again about the voice ... if only because the blather contained a delicious lack of awareness and provided a stupendous offering of irony and hypocrisy ...
And what then of Faux Noise and Tuckyo Rose and all the other congenital liars doing it for the money, and incidentally spreading Covid misinformation?
There's a whole paper on the topic here:
In this article, we show that right-leaning broadcast and cable media (for example, Fox News, Breitbart) regularly discussed misinformation about COVID-19 during the early stages of the pandemic. Further, nationally representative survey data suggest that people who consumed right-leaning media during that time were more likely to endorse COVID-19 misinformation.
We find that misinformed people were more likely to believe that the CDC exaggerated COVID’s health risks, suggesting that media coverage of the virus in the early stages of the pandemic may have had important public health consequences.
Well yes, perhaps a Killer Creighton column about masks or just about anything else to do with Covid? Just to remind the lizard Oz editorialist of what paraded under reptile reader noses for the pandemic years ...
But no, the reptiles routinely lie to themselves and to their readership, and it's worse than a masturbatory habit, there's no happy ending, the disease is congenital ...
With that done, the pond turned to one of the few contributions not about super or the voice, just for the lolz ...
What a deeply unaware twit, apparently unable to understand the rich irony he's served up while scribbling away in the lizard Oz, home of the local crazies, kissing cousins with that home of congenital liars, Faux Noise...
On the upside, it's not about super or the voice.
On the down side, it's just the usual set of fundamentalist delusions on parade, as expected in the lizard Oz. There might not be a home for Brother Stuie, or Taylor-made solutions, or the truth about Fox, but there'll always be a home for the mango Mussolinis of this world ... (why not read the NY Times' piece, Fox Leaders Wanted to Break From Trump but Struggled to Make It Happen, outside the paywall, just for the lolz).
Here have an immortal Rowe to celebrate the crazy ...
Forget the puppet master playing with his executive balls, as always the crazy is in the detail ...
Oh yes, the detail ...
I was wondering if Tuckyo is trying to set off a mutiny. Recently he went on at some length that Joe Biden had been born in 1942, when something like half of American homes did not have indoor plumbing (well, they probably had some plumbing, Tuckyo trying to show a genteel public face about where people went to shit) and assorted other supposed 'statistics', presumably to show that Biden had no sense of the 21st century. Yet, everything Tuckyo offers about the age and life of Joe Biden applies to a certain volunteer American, born in 1931, a year for which one has a wide selection of modern conveniences that had not actually materialized - so just how competent is Roopie to run anything? Whatever applies to Biden applies to Roopie plus 11. And, no, he did not experience rebirth when he took American citizenship, which he has held for 38 years.
ReplyDeleteTuckyo would not be the first 'star' in mass media to believe themselves to be bigger than the corporation that employs them, and there were those speculations that he saw himself as a challenger for the Presidency.
Now, where did I leave that box of popcorn?
Tremendous fun Chadders, though perhaps we should forget rebirthing, Tuckyo probably thinks the Chairman is immortal and so reaching 92 is just a blip on the road to eternity ...
DeleteOh what a wonder from today's Mr Ed: "We [Roopie's minions] take our responsibility seriously and will continue to provide a full range of diverse opinions and viewpoints ..." And "Australians must be well served in being able to seek out information they can trust." Well they're not going to get it from the reptile press, are they.
ReplyDeleteJust a bit of a turnup actually; instead of the reptiles projecting their faults and failings onto others, Mr Ed is somehow trying to project others' virtues onto his lot. Yeah, that'll work every bit as well as the usual practice of going the other way.
Yes, yes, GB, now as Brother Stuie was saying about Robodebt, it wuzn't me, and you won't read about it in Chairman Rupert's great tree killers ...
DeleteOk, so Dr David Hastie: "We enjoy one of the highest GDPs with an expansive social wage. Between the time I started work and now, average incomes have doubled." That must be really good then so let's see: Hastie got his BA (Hons) in 1992, so I guess he started work about then - let's say 1993.
ReplyDeleteSo, Australian GDP per capita was US$39,313 in 1993 and was US$65,006 in 2022. So, GDP per capita did not double in the time that Hastie has been working, but somehow, mystically, "average incomes" did. However, if we assume an average inflation rate of 2.5%, it takes roughly 28 years for prices to double.
So, is everybody twice as wealthy now as they were in 1993 ?
And how about schools: are public schools funded at at least twice thw rate of 1993 ? And is that the question anyway, or is it possible that private schools are funded at a higher rate per student head than government schools ? Well, yes and no: public schools are funded by all levels of government in total at an average of $16,748 per student year or $19,328 if capital costs are included. In comparison, "non-government schools" get $11,813.
But then, what are the 'non-government school' fees per student ? As is obvious, "government funding of non-government schools is still growing at a faster rate while receiving higher fee income from parents".
So yep, maybe de Tocqueville got it right: "equity is always in creative tension with personal liberty in democracies." How's your equity and personal liberty balance these days ?
Visiting Melbourne today, I took a chance on ruining my breakfast by glancing through one of the cafe’s copies of the Hun (despite it being mid-morning, the rag was in pristine condition, indicating I may have been its first reader). The front page was the usual footy & scandal mix, but page 2 featured Warren Mundine endorsing a Sky News documentary as demonstrating the uselessness of the Voice, as economic development was more important; as usual, the Reptiles consider the two to be mutually exclusive. A few pages on, the editorial pages were wall to wall attacks on the proposed Super reforms, with such pundits as Terry McCrann (yes, he’s still on the payroll) proclaiming that it was obscene, that the government were crooks with an incompetent trainee Treasurer, and that the changes would bankrupt poor, struggling billionaires everywhere. I’ve no idea how many votes this sort of hysteria might influence, but I’m pretty sure that not too many Hun readers fall into the affected demographic. Anyway, there may have been much more of this in the rag, but I could take no more; I wanted to enjoy my meal. I put the shit-sheet aside, and when I left I noticed that nobody else had picked it up.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - back a few years, a small group of us used to play a guessing game with McCrann's writings - how many lines down, before he blamed Paul Keating for whatever the catastrophe of the day was? This continued long after Keating had left Parliament, but it carried over from Keating's time as treasurer, when McCrann was unwise enough to attempt to 'verbal' Keating at a press event. By several reliable accounts, Keating took several minutes, with an instant resume of Terence's writings up to that time - in particular, predictions of doom and disaster Terence had made in response to economic announcements (nothing has changed there), what actually happened, by how much Terence's 'forecast' was wrong, and so on. One person who was present observed that Terence should have been pleased that Keating had paid so much attention to what he, Terence, had written, but the Keating account concluded with a character reading of a kind seldom delivered to any 'journalist' in this land.
DeleteClearly, McCrann retained an emotional bruise for a long time after that, to the extent that it skewed his supposed reporting and analysis until quite recently. In fact, one of my group sent me a message about a year or so back to tell me that he had read a McCrann column, and, whaddya know?- whatever the impending catastrophe of this recent time was, it was all the fault of Paul Keating.
"Media attacks on proposed super changes ‘hyper-stupidity’, Wayne Swan says
DeleteSpeaking on Nine’s Today show
"The difference here is hyper-stupidity in the media and some of the stories that have beaten it up to the point it’s not even recognisable as the original proposal."
The Guardian this morning.
ACC: "We believe that the Bible is the inerrant, inspired and infallible Word of God". And yet: "so many different translations in so many different tongues. Which one is inerrant, which inspired and infallible?"
ReplyDeleteI don't think it will be either John Wycliffe or William Tyndale, do you ? Maybe the Vulgate - before it was replaced by the Nova Vulgata in 1979, but does that mean that the Vulgate wasn't actually "inerrant, inspired and infallible" ? Of course the early Catholics liked to insist that only one 'godly' Bible existed, and any attempt to create an alternate, and particularly vernacular, bible was heresy demanding the punishment of Earthly death.
But anyway, one that has always entertained me is Paul and the injunction on women to remain silent in Church. Well of course they really can't or they wouldn't be able to even respond "I do" in their wedding ceremony. So, there is this:
Apostle Paul never said 'women should remain silent': scholars claim controversial passage was added later
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/apostle-paul-never-said-women-should-remain-silent-scholars-claims-controversial-passage-was-added-later/114255.htm
Quite an entertaining read for those who consider "the" Bible to be "the inerrant, inspired and infallible Word of God".
:)³
DeleteMeanwhile, across the waters, in Argentina - bit of a problem with the power grid. Like, about half of the grid is decidedly 'down'. Oh well, probably something to do with them pesky 'renewables'. Except that about 70% of their power generation - for a country that rates as fairly highly industrialised - comes from natural gas and nuclear. Yes, it has long had a component from hydro. generation, but otherwise wind or solar barely register. Oh, and the hydro. output is now about half of what it was 20 years ago because, well, something is happening with the weather. Perhaps Dame Groan can spare another coffee with one of her superannuated electrical engineer acquaintances to cobble together some country comparisons of power generation.
ReplyDeleteBut only happening with the weather, Chad, not the climate - and it's all fully precedented, of course.
Delete:)³
DeleteAn oldie but a goodie: Contradictions in the Bible
ReplyDeleteAn essential reference Joe, and still offering heaps of fun ...
DeleteEspecially No. 466
Delete