Between Lauren Boebert's obsession with urination, and deplorable Mark Latham proving too much for Pauline and the Bolter - albeit invited by Channel 7 to be an expert commentator on the the state elections - there should be plenty of distractions for the reptiles, but sadly all they have is the voice ...
Oh and they have Jimbo, and here the pond is going to pick a bone with Jimbo.
Why go behind the lizard Oz paywall to discuss your budget? The pond read the piece, and found it was the usual pile of pre-budget tosh ... and here's the evidence the pond got to the end ...
But Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo, don't you realise that you're supporting the Murdochian machine?
At the very least your piece should have been published simultaneously on a publicly available website, your own perhaps, or some official Labor site, but the google machine suggested it wasn't ...
Next time someone on the government side complains about News Corp, just remember who keeps feeding the beast with EXCLUSIVES which can only be accessed by tugging the forelock and dropping a shekel or three in chairman Rupert's purse ...
Meanwhile, the voice was also front and centre at the top of the digital page ...
As usual, there was conflation and misdirection. "Voice of authority over states and territories" doesn't quite chime with "the power to advise", but that's the reptile way.
And the same misdirection was prominent in the tree killer edition...
What wasn't prominent? The trudge to replace the long-lost Tudge ... you could find it at the Graudian ...
You could find it at the Nine rags ...
It's a long shot, but the mutton Dutton and the reptiles are terrified, so the reptiles gave the story a quiet disappearing off to the cornfields ... the best they could come up with was simplistic 'here no conflict of interest' Simon saying doesn't matter, don't care, can't be counted, wide of the mark ...
Meanwhile, the pond was left to deal with the hole in the bucket man scribbling about ... you guessed it, the voice, though not so much the voice, as more his usual meandering, deeply pathetic wander through history ...
What a card, what a clever man, that reluctance to spell out cockservative, but that snap of Winnie at the start did remind the pond of what conservative once meant ... with this a sample from Ishaan Tharoor's piece in WaPo,
The dark side of Winston Churchill's legacy no one should forget ... (paywall)...
There's plenty more out there ... once the walls of cancel culture came down, it became routine to take notice of the darker side, as in
the Graudian with Priyamvada Gopal...
Sheesh, triggered by our Henry at the get go, and without even mentioning that other figure in the opening snap, Ming the merciless ...
And so on, but in all the pro-Hitler class laden fuss, the pond has almost completely forgotten our hole in the bucket man ...
What the fuck, but here a curious thing happened.
The reptiles clearly recognised that our Henry was being as boring as batshit, in his usual way, so someone thought a few illustrations might help, so they introduced this giant sized snap of Coke ...
Naturally the pond had to whittle it down to size ...
Then there was another short burst of meandering ahistorical mendacity ....
... and then some literalist at the lizard Oz felt the need to introduce giant snaps of Hume and Burke. So much visual padding, so little time ...
The pond did allow the next snap to stand in context, because it was of a modest size and there was some humour to be extracted ...
Eek, that'll get our Henry and the pond banned in Florida. Naked boobies ...
Just to make matters worse at the end of that last gobbet the reptiles flung in a giant sized snap of Ming the merciless which now seems mandatory in all reptile columns ...
Oh please, spare the pond. Time for a few cartoons?
By this point, even the most casual observer will note that the pond hasn't paid attention to our Henry or anything he's said, and truth to tell, the pond doesn't give a flying fuck for his tedious history lesson ...
There are only a few items worthy of study ...
But the pond supposes it should run the last gobbet, which features, of all the nonentities that our Henry might have chosen, the eminently boring Sir Paul Hasluck ... and that's some journey, from Winnie sounding like Hitler and Ming the Merciless praising Hitler, through Cicero, Aristotle, Coke, Hume and Burke, to land on Hasluck ...
And if Aboriginal people wonder why they've been fucked, are being fucked, and will be fucked long into the future, they just have to accept that ration of sugar, flour, tea and tobacco from our Henry ...
As for Hasluck, why did the reptiles chose that snap? Dressed in a top hat like some silly member of the upper Pom class carrying on like a Monty Python figure, wearing meaningless badges of a cargo cult kind ...
Surely they could have shown him shoulder to shoulder with some great statesman of a conservative stripe?
And so, with peg applied to nose, the pond turned to the craven Craven, just to see how vile an alleged Xian could be ... and because some correspondents expressed some interest in the erupting, ongoing, never ending feud, evoking memories of big and little endians ...
There is a real coward to hand, but you can't expect the craven Craven to notice.
The mutton Dutton took a powder, just as he once turned his back ...
Yep, fails to show, and if only the same could be said for the craven Craven...
As for the feud, Pearson can look after himself, because being assaulted by the craven Craven is a bit like having a plastic shark in the bath tub or taking a verbal lashing from a wet tyke lettuce leaf ...
At this point, the reptiles decided to prove what an abject ass and ponce they were showcasing by producing a snap, and this time the pond will allow it to be enlarged, so the full hideous detail might be clear ...
The pond, it should be emphasised, didn't do any tweaking to produce that florid, self-satisfied, smug face, or the portentously pompous pose ... but it did decide as a lark to remind any reader who has made it this far of yesterday's take down ...
Who cares why the craven Craven got his knickers in a knot, and is still twisted and distorted and flapping about like one of those wacky, waving, inflatable, arm-flailing tube men, but you know what they say about a Catholic spurned. Inquisition time ... and a drawing of oneself up to great heights ...
By golly this feud is fiery ... please allow the pond to keep stirring the pot ...
And so to a last bout of shenanigans by the craven Craven, snout out of pompous joint, with a braying and a frothing and a foaming of righteous indignation ...
After all that, how could the pond resist the lizard Oz editoralist trying to pour oil on waters, perhaps so it might be set alight ...
Dear sweet long absent lord, what a mess the reptiles have created, full of unhinged rhetoric, betrayals, and somehow out of this unholy mess, "still a chance for political unity on voice question"?
Sorry ... lest we forget ...
Thank the long absent lord all this reptile carry on is behind a strict paywall, and if it wasn't for the ABC amplifying the message, and inviting reptiles and News Corp fellow travellers on to panels to discuss reptile navel gazing and fluff gathering, nobody would be any the wiser ...
The length of the lizard Oz editorial indicates the level of desperation, the realisation of the extent of the follies already produced ...
Oh fuck off, as if the lizard Oz has the remotest interest in unity across the political spectrum ... as if there was anything more to it than keeping uppity, difficult blacks in their place, with the way shown long ago by the likes of Winnie and Ming the merciless ...
Poor Noel, his biggest mistake was to imagine that the reptiles and the likes of the craven Craven were fit company, but then the tale of the frog and the scorpion is rarely heeded
Meanwhile, for the closer,
the immortal Rowe was off to raise Boebert's hackles by evoking a little public urination ...
Grundle: "Nick Cater is not dishonest, simply a man capable of great self-delusion." And there we have the 'Howard defence' in full cry: if you really believe it, then it's not a lie.
ReplyDeleteAudible gasps let out in Fox News' studio as they announce the Trump indictment news
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/brenonade/status/1641555295926099969?s=20
So, how will they play this one? Has Trumplestiltskin passed his use-by date?
Or is it just his long-delayed date with destiny ?
DeleteInteresting thing about that report, Befuddled, is that the presenter said Trump had been indicted by a Grand Jury. Slip up on her part - she should have realised that the narrative had to be that he was indicted by a Democrat DA, paid by George Soros, because that soon became the line from Hannity, Tuckyo (spell predicted 'Tacky' there - smart little predicter!) and the others, extending to presenters on our very own Sky News.
DeleteSpeaking of leaving things out in historical analysis, Ergas conveniently fails to mention that Hasluck was responsible for the Welfare ordinance of 1953 which made First Peoples wards of the state and defined them as having no voting rights and that this only applied to First Nations people.
ReplyDeleteAs for “there are no utopias, no solutions valid for all time”, whatever happened to aspiration, dear Henry? Atonement is not necessary, dear Henry, unless one was wrong in the first place so what’s this about atonement placing “greater weight on being righteous than being right”. Atonement means that one is righting a wrong.
But this is about dear Henry’s fear and what did Edmund Burke say about fear?
“When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear.”
As Laura T once said when attempting to comment on Tony Abbott - where do you start? So it is with Henry. He eventually meandered around to prudence: ‘But if there is an enduring essence to the conservative disposition it is its emphasis on prudence’. Well, could someone direct me to the prudence of the Coalition in managing Robodebt? As I understand it we’re getting off lightly at compensation of $1.8b; or to put it another way, the victims are not getting off lightly. Not much prudence there - just the usual cowboy mentality of the Coalition - get your hands on the money. Henry conflates the coalition (ie its past glorious leaders) with conservatism, so perhaps the conservative disposition includes cowboy aspirations.
ReplyDeleteI thank the Pond and Anony above for enlightening us on the true nature of conservatism, as practised by some exemplar conservative politicians, just so we fully understand its breadth and thrust; no advancing the good of the community here - just the usual grubby politics of self-interest and self-preservation.
So just another day - I’m not even sure what induced me to read Henry - but well, waiting for the Trump indictments has been slow, but I observe, things are now on the move. AG.
Well there you go
Deletehttps://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/politics/donald-trump-indictment/index.html
Naah, Anony AG, you have to understand that whatever "conservtives" espouse at any given time is either how things always have been, or how things will always be (or both). Just remember that great advice: if I don't own up to it, then nobody can prove it was me. Politicians are especially good at that one.
DeleteSo the Henry (more and more, in my head, I hear the voice of Minnie Bannister, with 'her' distinctive 'Henree') - meanders about, trying to persuade us that conservatism is always open to revision and amendment; where that is of the right kind. And Hen has no more need to define that than he has to define conservatism.
ReplyDeleteI guess we may assume that Henry intends those meanderings to relate, somehow, to the Australian constitution. By choosing English writers on early questions of law and procedure for governance, he implies that our constitution - which is an act of the parliament of the United Kingdom - including a little massaging to accommodate the 'Conservative' administration of Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury KG GCVO PC FRS DL. (so much for the express wishes of the Australian constitutional meetings) - is something of a rare bird, hatched in near-ideal form.
A couple of years ago, Linda Colley wrote on the plethora of constitutions that were being bandied around in the period of almost endemic European wars, coupled with discoveries of lands and peoples not previously familiar to European nations, and therefore requiring direction in how they might set the rules of their civilization. Her book 'The Gun, the Ship & the Pen' tells of explorers and military types - Napoleon Bonaparte was an enthusiast on national constitutions from his early 20s - who generated demand for book publishers to commission compendia of constitutional outlines, so they might do a mix'n'match for whichever group they had discovered and/or conquered. This enthusiasm dated from around 1760, so perhaps Australia was fortunate that its early governors did not see themselves set for long tenure, and try refining their own recipes for constitutional administration.
Of course, we do not lack for glib, revisionist 'historians' now who tells us that none of that was necessary, because all our early administrators were distilled essence of the Enlightenment, and governed accordingly.
The Henry might have sought some lessons for us from the Constitution of what was the United States. Its history displays a willingness to amend that document, almost from when it was enacted. There was a steady flow of amendments, 33 in all, proposed to the member states, and 27 were ratified, including one so dear to the hearts of its citizens now, covering the need for a well-regulated militia. The rate of actual proposals - as distinct from forlorn attempts to raise a motion in Congress - has dropped off of more recent time, so the Henry might be able to instruct us on the nature of self-proclaimed 'conservatism' in the USA that has little inclination now to propose further amendments, even as a significant caucus in its Supreme Court is signalling that it is seeking ways to overturn long-established precedent.
I think maybe you live a frustrated life, Chad: you quite likely have read more books and other written works than Henry, and you remember more of them - and you understand a great deal more of them.
DeleteBut hey, 'constitutions' are just forms of secular doctrines for those who are not ordained priests. When you think about it, the Bible is just a comprehensive 'constitution', isn't it ?
So Henry has his worshipful words to expound on and lecture us about, and generally be about as happy as a pig in mud.
And here, just for you, in honour of Minnie, two of the all-time greatest Goon Shows:
Tales of Old Dartmoor: https://youtu.be/6yTgivHzeNk
Dishonoured: https://youtu.be/dZO0llmxCWY
Here's just a little light reading when you have some free time:
Deletehttps://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2023/03/against-schoolteacher-politics.html
And something that Nick Gruen said that sums up some aspects of our world:
"One measure of the success of a social movement is the extent to which it creates a ‘commonsense’ that even its ideological opponents get roped into. That was the great triumph of neoliberalism — bringing the moderate progressive left into its fold. In fact it was the left — fancying itself the less stupid party and full of people who think about policy — who were the original entrepreneurs of deregulation in Australia, New Zealand and even the US..."
https://clubtroppo.com.au/2023/03/28/extraordinary-measures-in-extraordinary-times/
Yep, that just about covers it.
GB - again, thank you for the ‘stumbling and mumbling’. Of course, I warmed to the observation that the western world had done little with the period of minimal interest rates. Well, had not used the money available at almost no cost to boost productivity and incomes, but had siphoned much of it into property speculation.
DeleteThe mention of ‘fundamental forces within capitalism’ took me back to the writings of Cesare Marchetti, in the 1980s. Marchetti is still with us, at age 95. Those with visionary ways of thinking do seem to live long.
In 1985 Marchetti applied that great tool, the logistic, to the technological waves that had driven the about 200 years of industrial progress. More to the point, he discussed the need for further such waves to maintain productivity. This included positive policies to dismantle spent institutions.
In 1985 Marchetti saw that motorways - in fact, the entire thinking that personal transport be based on the motor car - was near saturation, so he suggested public works for much more extensive underground railways. This also sat well with his reminders that humans’ preferred time to travel to work was within half-an-hour; spending 2-3 hours driving to work (now, and back) was a huge drain on possible productivity.
He coupled that with much more attention to design of residential areas to minimise travel time to likely employment, or to promote much more flexible working arrangements (work from home? Home computing looked promising in 1985)
Marchetti also saw coal mining disappearing - and that nuclear was plateauing - so expect a new wave of innovation in new forms of energy supply, which would flow through to all forms of transport.
Period of minimum interest rates: not only "property speculation" but also bulk 'share buyback', yes ? When you don't know what do do with all that free money: buy your own shares !
DeleteBut I do have a small query: re increasing productivity and increasing GDP (but NOT GDP per capita) and increasing population, are they all limitless ? Or will we have to come to terms some day with the idea that they've reached their limits ? When one human, and a heap of AI and technology and mechanisms, can produce all and everything that the x-many billions of homo sapiens sapiens require, have we reached a terminus ? Will any further 'productivity increases' be possible ?
And long before then, when does the 'Law of Diminishing Returns' settle in for its eternity of applicability ?
GB - as you often comment - world population when Marchetti constructed his 'waves', was 4.8 billion. Our indices would improve if we can find a way to manage reducing the numbers of those 'capitas' of which you write.
DeleteErgastric outpourings aplenty.
DeleteAnyone know, what is the name of the painting and artist, featured in the snap [perfect word] of the smug abject ass & ponce's lair? (Between the windows.)
ReplyDelete"the reptiles decided to prove what an abject ass and ponce they were showcasing by producing a snap, and this time the pond will allow it to be enlarged, so the full hideous detail might be clear ..." Tough but fair.