In which the pond gets around to the Groaning, but first shares good isolationist times with the bromancer and the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

Every so often the pond mourns at what it misses in the wider world because of its selection of herpetology as its major ...

Of all the degrees in the world, this is probably the most singularly useless.

What's most noticeable in the mounds of digital fish and chip wrapping produced by reptiles is the absence of links, producing an almost hermetic seal in most reptile columns, cutting off stray thoughts and random encounters with other realities.

The pond was reminded of this reading John Naughton a few days ago, with Misplaced fears of an ‘evil’ ChatGPT obscure the real harm being done.

Down the bottom of his pieces, Naughton always sticks a "What I've been reading" and that's how the pond ended up reading Tim Harford's piece What the poet, playboy and prophet of bubbles can still teach us.

The pond has always loved a good tulip bubble story, and likes to read scribblers who know stuff, with Harford really setting the driving wheels in motion with stories of the nineteenth century railway stocks bubble ...

There's a modern moral to the story, with the reptiles' super panic up there with anything yesterday might offer as a form of hysteria.

Naughton provided a couple of other links, and yet here's the pond on a Tuesday, forced back to the desk to do its herpetological studies, isolated from the world, rarely advanced, frequently insufferable... only to be briefly sidetracked by the cardigan wearers.

Last night Media Watch finally realised the super wars were well advanced, but failed to notice that The Insiders had spent an interminable amount of time recycling lizard Oz talking points, culminating in the bringing on of the beefy boofhead, Goulburn's spouter of gobbledegook, trying to fan the flames. 

Guess there's no point analysing how one of the cardigan wearers' sacred cows ended up there, though it's become an exceptionally tedious, predictable and boring chewer of lizard Oz cuds.

Then the heroically incisive Paul Barry endorsed a Killer Creighton talking point, only to conclude there was nothing to the story, but everyone should investigate the story and take it seriously because ... Twitter ...

If it hadn't been for the 2SM story and the twits falling for a parody account and then blaming Elon Musk for it, the show would have been a complete dud. As it was there were a couple of delicious juxtapositions ...first a lobotomised gnat spoke up, thinking the world was full of gnats like him ...

... only for the lobotomised gnat to realise it had been lobotomised and had less capacity than a gnat to do a little research before shooting off mouth, into the wireless microphone thingie ...

Look very carefully? 

Only if you're a lobotomised gnat. What fun, and the pond was swept back to the days when Mad Mel came out of his cage each night to the sounds of a squeaky cage door, in a way designed to shock parents with sounds from the platters that mattered, but in truth helping the Catholic church make a buck ... yes, the Catholic Broadcasting Company owned 2SM, because in those days the tykes loved to make a buck. Still do, though these days it's a bit more of a struggle.

Meanwhile, the deeds of the lobotomised gnats seem designed to reassure punters and pond correspondents that the spirit of the parrot in radio will never die, nor will the golden tonsils ever be shrouded in silence ... another lobotomised gnat will arrive to carry on and keep generating the stupidity and the dumbing down of the land ...

Begone dull care and memories ...

Now comes the hard yards, as all that talk of the reptiles giving up on their super hysteria bites the dust another day ...

Sure the bouffant one tries, with the latest reptile poll attached to remind how much work there remains to be done by the Catholic Boys' Daily, sub-branch of the Toorak and Double Bay Liberal party...

Forget super? Easy for the bouffant one to say, but once reptiles get set in their path, they just carry on and on regardless and so it was today...

And as well as a superabundance of super stories there was a super chance to spread more mischief and slag off the voice ...

So many stories the pond doesn't care to cover and here's another one ... just the last par is enough ...

Ah, the Minerals Council. Exactly what the lizard Oz climate science denialist team would order.

Was it only back in 2020 that the MCA was setting the pace for climate science denialists?

It was, it was, and indeedy do, with Minerals Council of Australia makes global top 10 climate policy opponents, that last accompanied by a fine snap of the liar from the Shire clutching his lump of coal and smirking as only the liar could do ... unless perhaps it's Brother Stuie and the know nothing Malware and his all star band ...

What a fine pair they make ...

Okay, okay, enough with the 'toons and the jokes, the pond will get down to it with an old game it loves to play with the bromancer.

First the bromancer talks about Vlad the Impaler, Xi, Russia, Ukraine and the whole damn thing ...

And then the pond reminds the bromancer that it's not just Xi giving comfort. The festering treasonous white anters, lickspittle lackeys, isolationists and sell out crowd are given aid and comfort by his very own Chairman, with none more strident than the man who prefers lying to telling the truth for a crust ...

No need to poison the pond with a full serve of Tuckyo Rose treachery - everybody knows his game, and everybody knows the Chairman prefers cash to truth, and if that takes treachery and treason, he's all for it. 

Everybody knows it, but apparently not the bromancer, full of strident righteousness ...

Of course sometimes Tuckyo can provide a laugh while peddling treachery and isolationism ...

That one came just before rumours spread that the Chairman might be contemplating a fifth marriage ... while Satanic rituals and unholy worship continued apace at the home of conspiracy theories, lies and isolationism ...

Luckily the bromancer is unaware of all this, and so could finish with a flourish...

Go talk to the hand or to Tuckyo or to your shared Chairman, but then it was time for the lizard Oz editorialist to join in the game with a breathtakingly cynical flourish ...

Only the lizard Oz editorialist, cynically forgetting the cynicism of the Chairman and his lackeys and acolytes, for years making a buck out of supporting the mango Mussolini's lies, could come up with that cynical erasing of the past ...

Only now they're trying to kick the habit? But there's a world of hope waiting ...

You've got to laugh, but on to the main event, and remember this exhortation?

Forget super? Not when there's wild-eyed conspiracies and paranoia to unfold in a jolly good groaning ...

Yes, at last, as cultists chomp impatiently on the bit, Dame Groan is here, and what a world of conspiracies she weaves with her groaning ...

There's that same mug shot of a downcast Jimbo the reptiles have been peddling for weeks ... while the pond has been peddling this ...

That's as much commentary as the pond cares to offer as the paranoia and the conspiracy theories keep coming ... such that even Media Watch finally noticed and even belatedly paid homage to The Shovel, Shovelling away, and then, yes, and then ...

So, what do the punters reckon?

According to the latest Newspoll, a majority of voters support Labor’s plan, with nearly two-thirds giving it the thumbs up.

No doubt that will shock some media commentators who argue the sky is about to fall in.

But as former Liberal leader John Hewson wrote in The Saturday Paper:

"It is most unfortunate that some journalists can’t move beyond the “gotcha”. They are obsessed with the idea of broken promises – at the expense of recognising the real revenue problems the country faces or acknowledging the unfairness that is built into our tax system." - The Saturday Paper, 4 March, 2023

Not long ago, the media were fixed on Labor’s debt and deficit disaster. But now — with debt and deficits much higher — that urgency seems to have vanished.  

So how can something once deemed so dangerous no longer be an issue? And how can a modest proposal on super, that needs voter approval, constitute a catastrophe?

Do the media have no shame? Or simply no idea?

No shame of course, followed closely by no idea, but always with the groaning ...

And another shot of a downcast Jimbo, and that'll teach the lad to go out and about and become a conversation starter ...

And so for the cultists and the specialists, a final groaning, just to keep the conversation and the wild-eyed conspiracies going ...

Yes, that idle talk of forgetting super was just an idle butterfly dreaming ...

The superannuation tax changes proposed by Labor won’t take effect until 2025. And they’ll only go ahead if voters re-elect this government.
But that didn’t stop TV and the tabloids branding it a broken promise and a breach of trust.
And somehow the changes became an attack on all Australians, even though they will initially affect only 80,000 taxpayers who have more than $3 million in their super funds. 
As the PM explained: 
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Ninety-nine-point-five per cent of people with superannuation are unaffected by this reform.
MARK RILEY: Among the 0.5 per cent who are, one mystery Australian with $544 million in super, 17 with over $100 million, 7000 over $10 [million] and 30,000 above $5 million. - Seven News (Sydney), 28 February, 2023
None of that context was enough to calm the media hue and cry — or stop the scare about what the government will target next. 
Which, the Herald Sun’s Terry McCrann suggested, could be a tax on family homes.  

Oh yes, in the fever dream of Dame Groan, it'll be a few ABC executives, senior public servants and senior stage government officials and Labor politicians suffering along with the 0.5% who might suffer a token docking ... not to mention the arrival of a Communist superstate no later than Xmas...

Now the reptiles have got their hobby horse, they'll never shut up about it, they'll flog it to death, and before it croaks, they'll use it to pole vault into bigger and bigger conspiracies and threats, until the world is made safe again for the likes of Brother Stuie and the liar from the Shire, and other dreamers, and visionaries, looking for reptile hills to die on ... (and thanks to BF for the link).