A quiet day at the lizard Oz, with Dame Slap plaintively whining that she's been muzzled ...
... which was a relief to the pond, because it saved the pond the trouble of handing out a red card ...
Meanwhile, the feuding inspired by the potato head continued and meanwhile, below the fold choices for the pond are becoming slimmer by the day ...
The pond has no idea which reptile decided that Polonius's media watch dog prattle should turn up on a Tuesday, but then the pond has always ignored those days when Polonius turns into a dog and runs around biting ankles.
The pond doesn't have anything against furries - even the ones that allegedly crap in litter trays in the Sydney Institute - but Polonius dressing up as a dog to crap on about the ABC is just too weird ...
Besides, if the pond wanted to crap on about the ABC, it could find its own bone to chew on ... skipping over the deplorable state of The Insiders, the pond might note the recent supine response by the ABC to Uncle Elon. Dubbed government-funded media, which is to say a propaganda arm of government, the ABC decided to keep on tweeting and responded with a fierce bout of waffle: "We’re liaising with Twitter regarding changes to account verification and labels," an ABC spokesperson said. (their ABC).
Why? Not even an NPR stand? The answer probably can be spotted in a recent John Naughton piece about tweeting junkies:
Last October, the richest manchild in human history fell into the trap he had dug for himself. Elon Musk was forced to purchase Twitter at an absurd price. He had no clear idea of what to do with his new acquisition, other than realising a fatuous idea about “free speech”. It was like watching a monkey acquire a delicate clock: the new owner started thrashing wildly about, slashing the headcount (from 8,000 to about 1,500) – in the process losing many of the people who knew how the machine worked – and generally having tantrums while tweeting incontinently from the smallest room in the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
All of this frenetic activity was watched – and avidly reported for weeks – by the world’s mainstream media, for reasons that would have puzzled a visiting Martian anthropologist. After all, in relation to the other social-media companies, Twitter looked like a minnow. Most people have never used it. So why all the fuss about its acquisition by a flake of Cadbury proportions?
The answer is that there is a select category of humans who are obsessive users of Twitter: politicians; people who work in advertising, PR and “communications”; and journalists. These are people who spend every waking moment on the platform, and use it to disseminate information, argue, troll, boast and engage in relentless virtue-signalling. Given that some (many?) of these people work in media, their obsession with Twitter meant that it had become, de facto, a significant part of the public sphere. If you wanted to be anyone in that networked world, you had to be on Twitter.
All of this frenetic activity was watched – and avidly reported for weeks – by the world’s mainstream media, for reasons that would have puzzled a visiting Martian anthropologist. After all, in relation to the other social-media companies, Twitter looked like a minnow. Most people have never used it. So why all the fuss about its acquisition by a flake of Cadbury proportions?
The answer is that there is a select category of humans who are obsessive users of Twitter: politicians; people who work in advertising, PR and “communications”; and journalists. These are people who spend every waking moment on the platform, and use it to disseminate information, argue, troll, boast and engage in relentless virtue-signalling. Given that some (many?) of these people work in media, their obsession with Twitter meant that it had become, de facto, a significant part of the public sphere. If you wanted to be anyone in that networked world, you had to be on Twitter.
That noted, the ABC still brings a spectacular level of gormless gutlessness to the battle with manchild Uncle Elon ... and even the reptiles noted the contrast between broadcaster and cowardly custard ...
Last week NPR confirmed it would be “officially de-emphasising”, claiming that its “inaccurate label” sought to undermine its credibility.
“I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility,” CEO John Lansing said.
The ABC told news.com.au it has no such plans.
“The ABC doesn’t currently have any plans to shut down all its Twitter accounts,” a spokesperson said.
“I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility,” CEO John Lansing said.
The ABC told news.com.au it has no such plans.
“The ABC doesn’t currently have any plans to shut down all its Twitter accounts,” a spokesperson said.
Pathetic. Is it something to do with having been abused over the years by Liberal governments, Murdochians and the likes of prattling Polonius that the ABC now has a cardigan mindset as a matter of principle? (And to avoid people screeching 'we are one, we are many', the pond has found the best solution is to turn off the telly).
Never mind, when all was looking gloomy, and it seemed only a standard groaning was in the offing, along came the bromancer to save the day ... as he always does, with a howling at the moon and a splendid set of solutions, and inspirational coaching of a kind only the bromancer can deliver. Wayne Bennett, eat your heart out (yes the pond knows a little about a lot, and a lot of it is of little import) ...
Ah, the old billy goat butt ploy, beloved by reptiles everywhere. "This column is no admirer of Donald Trump...", but billy goat butt, you've got to admire the old snake oil seller, the ethnics love him, and if the ethnics love him, then what's good for barking mad Roman Catholic fundamentalists must be good for the planet ...
Say what?The bromancer advised the liar from the Shire to stop talking about war with China all the time?
Oh sacred aunt and soiled uncle Elon, irony is at last dead ...
And so on and on ... the pond can't begin to count the amount of war mongering that the bromancer and the reptiles and the Sky mob have indulged in over the past few years ... though a quick search will produce a treasure trove ... the latest only a few days ago, with the hot war turning into a cold one ...
The bromancer's war mongering war talk sent Sam Roggeveen right off, and reminded the pond that we don't need no MTG so long as the reptiles have the bromancer ... because his ability to forget everything he's written in a nanosecond so he can come up with the opposite is a special skill, of the sort usually attributed to gnats or pigeons ...
Meanwhile, in anticipation of the opening of the next par, the pond urges passing readers and correspondents to remember the golden days of their vulgar youff ... when far left extremists talked of dominoes and the need to bomb Vietnam back to the stone age, and the need to control women's bodies, and the dangers that homosexuality posed to western civilisation, and the wonders and joys of priests being able to molest children ...
Yes, that sets the tone, and so everyone can cherish the line "When I was growing up, all the extremists inhabited the far left."
No, the pond didn't make it up, the pond lacks the imagination to make this sort of stuff up ... take a bow, extreme leftist Curtis LeMay, and let us carry on ...
It's the ethical thing to do ... much like giving uppity, difficult blacks a hard time is a mark that love of the mango Mussolini's style of politics is deeply embedded in the bromancer's heart.
Ah glory days, fond memories, but that Winnie is no more, this time it's delusional Winnie ...
It seems selective deafness and blindness and memory loss is the major requirement for being a reptile, but the pond will pass over the likes of Gary Johns and Gra Gra infesting the lizard Oz for years, and instead will marvel at the Lesser bashing ...
Yep, that last par was as good a word salad as the Groaner has come up with in recent groanings ...
Still waiting for solutions from the Groaner, or the merest mention of the ownership structures for GP practices in large cities in Australia ... and is it any fault of the pond's that this day the cartoonists are much more interested in the war with China, bromancer style?
It took enormous will power on the part of the pond not to insert that immortal Rowe in the middle of the bromancer piece, and it took incredible stamina and dedication to finish off the groaning ...
Yes, the pond could have skipped over that line about the Donald's willingness to fight politically, a meaningless phrase when applied to an authoritarian narcissist with fascist tendencies, but it harks back to the time when the bromancer sat at the feet of Santamaria and learned the lesson that it didn't matter what you fought about, all you had to do was pick a fight ... with books, drag queens or the house of mouse or whatever ...
Sorry, it's not the pond that conjured up the idea that Australian and US politics are in any way comparable ...
It's the "irony is dead" bromancer, because after noting the combative style of the narcissist snake oil seller in an approving way, he then goes on to deplore that psychology ... with yet another "irony is dead" moment, this time featuring Winnie's delusional psychology ...
Even a gormless minor gesture by a lesser figure brings out the fundamentalist in the bromancer. You don't even have to scratch the surface to find the onion muncher lurking within ... the surface is at the core, the core is at the surface ....
If the bromancer is the future of the Liberal party - forget that meaningless blather about the liberals, there'll be no small "l's" in the house - then surely a potato is his dream leader ...
A conservative? Is potato ...
And speaking of potatoes, as a matter of duty, the pond will record the groaning for the day, though it hasn't the slightest interest in the analysis to hand ...
Uh huh, but will the groaner get to the heart of what ails GPs? The way that most of them in urban hubs have been herded into practices owned by sharklike investors, whether Singaporean or private equity owned ... and therefore with a keen eye on maximising dollars and patient turnovers.
Most likely not, nor will the groaning contain any solution for regional areas, where herding GPs into profit-making practices is a bit trickier...
Instead, the Groaner will offer her own version of a word salad ...
It took enormous will power on the part of the pond not to insert that immortal Rowe in the middle of the bromancer piece, and it took incredible stamina and dedication to finish off the groaning ...
Is it any wonder that the pond's own GP is down at heart and talking of retiring?
You have to get past the Partnered Health brand blather, Partnered Health was established in 2013. The group is made up of a number of established businesses that have been delivering health services to more than five million people over the last 25 years. Our brands include Jobfit Health Group, Partnered Health Medical Centres, Baseline Onsite, Fuel Your Life, and Northcare Physio,...
... before you arrive at the real owners, Quadrant Private Equity ...
Quadrant Private Equity was first established in 1996 (firstly as Quadrant Capital) and is a leading Sydney-based mid-market private equity firm investing in companies in Australia and New Zealand. We have raised $8 billion and 13 funds since inception.
Quadrant has extensive investment experience, having led 90 investments in the past 13 funds (with 63 exits) across a range of sectors including retail, healthcare, media, consumer foods, financial services, eCommerce and other sectors.
Quadrant’s investors include leading Australian and global superannuation funds, investment funds and sovereign wealth funds. Many of these investors have been investors across multiple Quadrant funds.
Some of Quadrant's current and former investments include Affinity Education, My Muscle Chef, Fitness and Lifestyle Group, Darrell Lea, Prime 100, Quad Lock, Love To Dream, APM, Arq Group, Probe CX, Qscan, ICON Cancer Care, and Zip Water.
Somewhere in there, between My Muscle Chef, Darrel Lea and Zip Water, you'll find some GPs ...
Is it any wonder that the pond prefers the intoxicating brew whipped up by the bromancer? Time to put on dancing shoes with the infallible Pope ...
As always, it's in the detail ... dancing shoes fit for any dancing queen ... (no, the pond isn't going to do a makeover of the lyrics) ...
Whatever Sheridan is on, steer clear of it. While claiming not to like Trump, Sheridan spends a lot of time admiring him. Not sure if Sheridan has somehow seen the four horsemen of the apocalypse approaching, which is why he gives four injunctions to the Liberal Party (seems even Sheridan thinks the Nationals are irrelevant), but he does not seem to realise injunctions are usually court orders to stop certain actions. True, Sheridan does suggest the Liberals not go to “batshit crazy extremes”. But they have already gone to those extremes and are following his advice to fight on no matter what.
ReplyDeleteI almost feel a mite sorry for the Bro today. Sure, it’s the usual hypocritical, contradictory drivel that he always pours out, but the poor chap seems a bit dispirited and down in the dumps. Perhaps he finally has a glimmer of realisation that the interests he’s been championing all this time are basically shit? Not that he’d ever be able to admit it to himself, of course. Still, a few decades of the Rosary, or a couple of days wearing a celice, and he’ll probably cheer up. I see that Pope Frank has denied there’s any truth in a rumour that JP2 used to go secretly cruising for underage girls - that should rev the Bro up and get him back to his old, frothing at the mouth self!
ReplyDeleteA Double Headed Doozy. Shireen nails Greg every time. Greg confusing the past, liberal, conservative & misrepresents The Voice. Polar opposites the Voice bell curve.
ReplyDelete"The Voice: The case for and against
"Shireen Morris: Senior Lecturer and Director of the Radical Centre Lab, Law School, Macquarie University. Greg Sheridan: Foreign editor,The Australian
"Is the Liberal party doomed?
"The party does face major problems but is it premature to write their obituary? The pundits have been wrong repeatedly in the past.
Gerard Henderson: Director, the Sydney Institute.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/betweenthelines/the-voice-libs-doomed/102173864
DP said: "But Henderson is just the methadone of commentariat writers, a total bummer, delivering the glazed eyes and the sense of numbness, but without the euphoric kick, the rush, the high where you can touch the sky"
http://loonpond.blogspot.com/2011/10/gerard-henderson-and-time-to-unleash.html?m=1
Dear sweet long absent lord, did the pond really say that? Has the madness been going on that long? Note to self, must get new script for the drugs doing the rounds in 2011 ...
DeleteI can only suggest that News Corp should be recognised for its stellar all-field performance. After Paul Kelly on the weekend, then Greg Sheridan and Dame Joan today, every line a winner; suggestions include How Low Can You Go medal, Dilly Dally medal, Worst And Extremest, Most Valuable Liar, Irrational Treasure, …, you name it they would win it. I will pick out one - blind fold on, spin round three times, throw dart, and we have:
ReplyDelete‘Ron DeSantis may ultimately disappoint as a presidential candidate, but as Florida Governor he combines a willingness to fight politically with genuine professionalism and overall common sense’.
So placing immigrants (illegal or otherwise) on a plane, and delivering them to the street outside the home of a political opponent in another state is ‘professionalism’. Some have suggested it is people trafficking, but perhaps Greg would call it professional people trafficking. By the way, the trafficking suggestion seems to have curtailed this professional DeSantis service, for the time being.
More and more I am enjoying the comedy capers of the reptiles, but things to do today, so must be off. AG.
Yes, so “professional” is Ron that’s he’s focussing much of his time and energy on a tit for tat feud with Disney, in which it seems that he’s being outsmarted -
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/17/ron-desantis-prison-near-disney-theme-park
As they’ve been saying in the entertainment business for decades - “You don’t fuck with the Mouse”.
The pond enjoyed this in The Bulwark ... there's more, but this is a tidy sample ...
Deletehttps://plus.thebulwark.com/p/think-of-trumps-election-as-year-zero
CONSIDER THE CASE of Ron DeSantis. He is the only viable challenger to Trump at the moment. He has remade Florida in his image, becoming America’s premier culture warrior. He is notable primarily for:
∙ Taking stands against vaccines
∙ Hiring quack doctors for public health positions
∙ Yelling at college kids
∙ Demonizing gays and lesbians as pedophile groomers
∙ Making it illegal to discuss race in schools
∙ Attacking Disney’s corporate status because the company’s cartoons are too “woke”
∙ Shipping refugees to Martha’s Vineyard
More than any other politician in America, DeSantis has labored to turn himself into a mini-Trump.
And what is DeSantis’s big weakness in his looming primary fight? It’s his BT political career.
Because before he became Trump’s handpicked governor, DeSantis was a normie mid-2010s Republican: He had Tea Party credentials. He was hawkish on Russia. He was a founding father of the House Freedom Caucus. And like all good Ryan-era conservatives, he wanted to privatize Social Security as a means to save our unsustainable entitlement system.
Trump is already trying to hang DeSantis with his BT record, attacking him as beholden to “Establishment RINO Advisors” and a “RINO in disguise!” who would gut Social Security and Medicare.
There are early signs that these attacks are working. You can see it in DeSantis’s declining poll numbers. But I hear it in the focus groups, too. Voters I talked to recently say they’re “a little concerned” about DeSantis “because he’s still establishment,” and that “he seems like more of an open-borders, Paul Ryan kind of guy.” Others called him “more of a politician than Trump is” and said “he is very much one of those political, swampy guys.”
Words that stood out when we asked voters to describe DeSantis: “wishy-washy,” “a little shady,” and “not trustworthy.” One said, “I just don't have a good feeling in my gut about him.”
Can he turn it around? Better get a photo op of Ron with a 2 year old armed with an AR 15 taking out a mouse...
Hmm, so Sloany wants to say that: "The truth with most policy problems is that common sense is the best route to finding solutions." Which, apart from assuming that 'solutions' are possible to all, or at least most, problems in 'policy', relies on 'sense' being common. Whereas in fact genuine 'sense' is, in fact, exceedingly uncommon.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise why would we have so much commonality combined with a wide array of problems that have remained unsolved for years.
So here's a fine example from Groany: "The bigger issue is whether Australia should really be relying on overseas-trained doctors, whose services are likely needed in the countries from which they come, rather that training our own."
DeleteRight, Groany, so what's the "common sense" solution to that ? There has to be one, right ?
Anyway, is or isn't the Australian medical profession given to favouring the sons - and maybe even the daughters nowadays - of existing practitioners ? Don't we have to recruit overseas to get round the doctors' practice of keeping the unwanted interlopers out ?
GB - if our Dame fell backwards into some acquaintance with the study of economics, she could have told her readers that medical practice is essentially a service industry. The 'common sense' of service industries is that public administration does not try to restrict qualification for entry to that industry. It should encourage practitioners to meet an acceptable level of training and practice intelligence, but otherwise allow people to enter, and leave, the industry as demand for their services dictates.
DeleteAn interesting observation of quasi-medical industry now is the growth of all the health and wellness businesses around us, with none of the controls on entry that our country's most successful union manages to maintain with governments of both colours - and no sign of diminishing demand.
That sounds a bit like you think there's nothing "common" in Groany's "sense", Chad. How can this be ?
DeleteNevertheless, I do have this faint memory that medicine in Australia was/is more than a little ingrown in being, at the higher (more profitable ?) levels, somewhat controlled by the 'senior' members of the profession who tended to keep 'hoi polloi' out of the game - if a close (male) family member wasn't already a doctor, you weren't going to be. Rather like the ingroups in a few professions (eg law) over quite a few centuries.
Maybe not so much now that we are seeing lots of medicos immigrating and taking up professional places.
Re all the above Anony's comments on the Bro's offering today.
ReplyDeleteSheridan: "This column is no admirer of Donald Trump."
Come off it Bromancer, your column stands skyward 90 degrees for Donald Trump!
No, no Kez, the Bromancer has it right: he's no admirer of Trump, he'd just a besotted worshipper of him.
DeleteFair enough GB it's probably more a case of fixation than admiration. I think we can both agree that when the Bro states that "this column is no admirer of Donald Trump" he is psychologically distancing himself from what he has actually written. As observers of his duplicitous comments on Trump over the last six or so years we all know how he really feels about the Donald.
DeleteYair, like that thing of "gotta say one right thing up front to set the tone so that then I can say a lot of wrong things to follow".
DeleteOver at ‘Crikey’ - declaration, I am a subscriber, mainly to support their battle with Lachlan Murdoch - Charlie Lewis has article headed ‘Purest star in the Murdoch firmament’: Miranda Devine does us ‘proud’.
ReplyDeleteThat in turn takes the reader to this - complete with what seems to be a politician-class picture (taken about 15 years ago).
https://www.semafor.com/article/04/16/2023/meet-the-murdochs-newest-star
The article, of necessity, is a listing of some of the unlovely one’s contributions to the journalism of mismanaged ‘facts’, so read at your own peril.
The Charlie Lewis article is actually interesting because it includes this observation ‘she perfected a technique of logic looped back on itself and meeting at an ultimately predictable centre like a lemniscate. The repeated argument that bushfires have nothing do with climate change but are the fault of “green ideology” was just the most basic demonstration of this talent. ‘
Gotta like a writer who uses ‘lemniscate’, and correctly.
Gold Chadders, and the link was a good one too, and you caught the pond out because where was the in harm having a Wednesday nostalgia moment?
Delete"Even a gormless minor gesture by a lesser figure brings out the fundamentalist in the bromancer. You don't even have to scratch the surface to find the onion muncher lurking within ... the surface is at the core, the core is at the surface ...."
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why we call him the Bromancer.
Ah, Marina, you've done it again:
ReplyDelete"The whole interminable saga is afflicted by more than a touch of the Schrödinger’s invitation, with a yes/no able to be both right and wrong at the same time, if likely to induce fatal error one way or the other."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/18/britain-coronation-sussexes-mugs-quiche-articles-california