Wednesday, June 28, 2023

In which the pond wakes up early to discover a reptile wilderness ...

 


The pond got up early, bright-eyed and bushy tailed and keen to crack on, full of get go Tamworth spirit, and keen to continue its herpetological studies in the bright dawn light, only to be shocked to discover what the reptiles get up to in the wee hours ...




Three lizard Oz editorials as filler! Why that's more padding than you'd find in the average mattress ... and it didn't get any better after the six o'clock swill, and the changing of the guard..




Something about the rankings rankling, yadda yadda? That's just another bloody mattress ...

When the pond looked at the commentary above the fold, the pond realised it had been duped yet again, and had pretty much wasted its time, and should have stayed abed, and to heck and beyond with herpetology studies...


 



Dame Slap, apparently finally exhausted by blathering about the Voice and the Lehrmann matter, returning to an old favourite, activist judges? No thanks, why waste time with activist reptiles? 

As for a hearty dose of homophobia, with even the reptiles feeling the need to put scare quotes around the scare, no thanks ...

But what to do? Having got up so early the pond had to do something, so the pond ran with the surviving bit of lizard Oz filler ...




Well, yes, speaking of ugly realities, there was this Pew poll, not so long ago on 15th June, More than four-in-ten Republicans now say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine ...





That's the News Corp readership and viewership in a nutshell. Must they all become Democrats now?

Of course security has been much on mind in recent times ...






... but that's another story, routinely avoided by the lizard Oz ...

And so to another bit of mattress padding, this time imported from the WSJ ... not that the pond expected to learn anything ... what with it being a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in an enigma ...




Meanwhile, speaking of civil war, A Republican ‘civil war’ on Ukraine erupts as Reagan’s example fades ... (sorry, WaPo paywall, 15th March)





Well yes, and here we are ...

The pond has made no secret of its bloodlust in support of Ukraine, and is perfectly happy to give gifts to the participants in sundry special military operations ...






If only the gift could be given to a wider circle ... but back to the enigma, naturally featuring a snap ...




Everything that happens in Russia elicits a library of conspiracy theories? 

Sheesh, Russia's just the same old, same old oligarch routine, money and power and corruption ...

It's America that delivers really genuine crackpots ...





And once you've got a crackpot, other crackpots are attracted ...




And the crackpot keeps on cracking on, and soon enough you have campaigning crackpots...




That was just the headline ... the full yarn was in The Atlantic under the header The First MAGA Democrat, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is feeding Americans' appetite for conspiracies ...

Perhaps just a sample, because it turns out this crackpot has a lot in common with the addled Kari Lake when it comes to Ukraine ...





There's a lot more, beyond the valley of the average fruitcake, but that talk of Ukraine brought the pond back to the topic at hand, and an immortal Rowe ...





Some days you win, some days you lose, it's the way it goes in military aid and herpetological studies. 

The pond has at least delivered one decent conspiracy theorist, and might have even discovered an explanation ...

The United States has grown only more conspiratorial in the half century since the publication of Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” There are those who refuse to get the COVID vaccine because of the slim potential of adverse side effects, and then there are those who earnestly fear that these innoculations are a way for the federal government to implant microchips in the bodies of citizens. The line between fact and fantasy has blurred, and fewer and fewer Americans are tethered to something larger or more meaningful than themselves.
Kennedy was raised in the Catholic Church and regularly attended Mass for most of his life. These days, he told me, his belief system is drawn from a wide array of sources.

From a giant Ponzi scheme to a vast array of conspiracy theories ... and that link to the yarn by Hofstadter in Harpers in 1964 was working and well worth a visit ...

And now the pond should finish up with another pic-led gobbet ...




Actually there have been a few Americans willing to put their lives at risk, and even died for the cause, but it's hardly surprising that many Americans would much rather go fishing ...






12 comments:

  1. This will be a bigger coup.
    Imagine Trump Inc, Adani, Amazon and Twitter (proxy for Musk) voting in Tamworth!

    "In an effort to expand the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which gave corporations personhood and free speech rights, Delaware’s Democratic-controlled legislature is considering a Republican bill that would give corporations the right to vote.
    ...
    "Democratic president Joe Biden has called his home “the corporate state of Delaware,” and Republican senator Mitt Romney has insisted that “corporations are people, my friend.” Embodying that bipartisan spirit in post–Citizens United America, Delaware Democrats are now advancing a Republican bill that would allow corporations to directly vote in a municipal election.

    "As GOP states across the country aim to limit voter participation, Delaware’s Democratic-controlled legislature has been considering a bill to allow the expansion of the franchise to businesses. The Republican legislation would explicitly permit the city of Seaford, Delaware, “to authorize artificial entities, limited liability corporations’ partnerships and trusts to vote in municipal elections.”

    "The legislature has until June 30, when the legislative session ends, to vote on the bill.

    "With hundreds of thousands of corporations officially headquartered in a small Wilmington warehouse, Delaware has long been known for its business fealty. The state’s new legislation would allow corporations to upend the balance of power in Seaford, a small eight thousand–person city twenty miles north of Salisbury, Maryland. Just 340 people voted in the most recent election on April 15 — and the bill would potentially provide as many as 234 votes to businesses in the community.
    ...
    https://jacobin.com/2023/06/delaware-corporations-voting-legislation-citizens-united

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And after that, they can go on to give the vote to all sorts of organisations: mother's clubs (Mothers for Liberty maybe ?), chess clubs, charities and sporting clubs and teams - hey, how long would it take for the US to get to at least a billion votes for every election ?

      Delete
  2. Yes, lovely Rowe and standing in a reminder of once great ABC TV. And then Baker: "If even the Wagner Group's leadership can see through the official Kremlin fictions, is it too much to ask that prominent American political leaders and so-called strategic thinkers cease peddling them?" Really ? He reckons that some prime denizens of the land of RFK (and Greene and Boebert and Lake and ...) could maybe see through a bunch of fictions ?

    If you want to "see through fictions" then first you've got to open your mind and eyes and actually look, don't you; feats that are way beyond the capacity of many such as, for example, Tuckyo. And what about Hannity - don't seem to have heard much from or about him of late, so what's happened ?

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  3. Kennedy's adviser might look up the symptoms of tetanus, (for which there is a vaccine). They are too horrible to print in a family blog like this, but if you must, look at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetanus

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    Replies
    1. Bit by bit we're getting vaccines for just about everything - except for inherent stupidity that is, which is probably the most rampant 'disease' that humanity suffers from.

      But will we ever manage another smallpox ?

      Delete
    2. I think it is useful to keep reminding the public that it was Brian Deer, writing in Rupert's 'Sunday Times' who exposed the main features of what the 'Lancet' eventually called Andrew Wakefield's 'elaborate fraud' trying to link MMR vaccine to autism. Fundamentally, an attempt at good ole grifting, which may explain why the idea still appeals to those who deliver their 'opinions' to a too-avid American public.

      A couple of nights ago, Sharri, on Sky, interviewed Rand Paul. Well, Sky's idea of 'interview' - trading of long statements, repeating the same supposed debating points, which the other interlocutor would then confirm; feedback upon feedback upon, er, regurgitation. The current 'New Scientist' has article on very current research into using viruses, bacteria and possibly fungi to combat tumours in humans. It gives brief overview of the methods that various research groups are using to make these microorganisms more readily recognisable to the human immune system - usually by genetic manipulation. One significant point from this is that these now common methods in trying to combat effects of human pathogens, cover much of what Senator Paul was trying to implicate in 'gain of function' manipulations, in his administrative harassment of Anthony Fauci.

      Delete
    3. Do you really actually watch the likes of Sharri on Sky, Chad, or do you just catch the transcript somewhere.

      Delete
    4. GB - I do a quick scan across 'YouTube', looking for entertainment. Sharri provides that in the same way that Hannity does for Fox these days - the fun of finding out just how far they are prepared to go to try to maintain a particular narrative around events. In Sharri's case, you can also tick off how many times she refers to 'My book', even though so much evidence has accumulated since she churned that one out that shows a genealogy for Covid-type viruses that simply does not fit her chain of dubious anecdotes about unnamed persons who had unconfirmed, possible viral, infection in Wuhan.

      In a given day, it takes perhaps half-an-hour, often when I come in for lunch.

      Delete
    5. There's one thing then - I only ever think of YouTube for music, not for providing the likes of Sharri expostulating. Oh well, if I run out of other things, I guess I could go that way too even though I much prefer reading and transcripts aren't always provided.

      It would probably remove more than half an hour a day from my life though.

      Delete
  4. Amazing how many words a reptile can take to say I didn't anticipate this happening, my sources probably don't know any more than I do, I've no idea what's going to happen, but I need to write another column and pretend I know what I'm talking about.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Talking about columnists, have you any idea who Stuart Heritage is ? No, neither do I. But he can sure write a pile of hate:

      Terrible ideas, tedious shows, zero talent: Meghan and Harry’s trainwreck podcast career
      https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jun/28/terrible-ideas-tedious-shows-zero-talent-meghan-and-harrys-trainwreck-podcast-career

      Now why on Earth would a supposedly 'serious' media mob as 'The Guardian' publish that ? And who, apart from idiots like me, reads it.

      Delete
  5. Well now, on the one hand we have:

    "US space agency plans to send Americans to the moon by 2025, including the first women and person of color"
    Nasa aims to mine resources on moon in next decade
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jun/28/nasa-mining-moon-2032

    And on the other hand, we have:

    "Study finds extreme rainfall at higher elevations increases by 8.3% for every degree Fahrenheit world warms"
    Global heating making extreme rain and catastrophic flooding more likely
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/28/global-heating-extreme-rain-flooding-more-likely

    What an exciting time the next 50 or so years will be. And even the next 10 years which I might be still around long enough to see.

    But really, just who is up who, and who is pretending they know what's going on.

    ReplyDelete

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