So quickly they change ... from annotated evidence one day to ... (click on to see the evidence large)...
Relax, correspondents, it goes without saying that the pond attended to the venerable Meade, as the pond always does, but apart from the Stokes gambit, the pond reeled away wondering just how Tom Switzer remained a thing at the ABC. He disappoints? In reptile land, he'd have been shown the door on the spot.
Speaking of showing the door, the pond won't be attending to Dame Slap ...
Sure, it's not on the voice or the Lehrmann matter, but as soon as the pond sees "virtue signal" in a reptile header, it blanches and ducks for cover ...
Ditto nattering "Ned", sounding exceptionally tedious and hooked up to that other matter ...
Instead, with a deep and abiding sense of perverse loyalty - a quality that marks much of the pond's herpetological studies - the pond stayed with the long-suffering dog botherer ...
One led to Dame Slap ...
Enough already, and while it made the yarn even longer, the pond couldn't help but note that the third link was a reference to Linda Burney ...
Strewth, as they used to say in Tamworth, has the bromancer done a Switzer and slagged off his chums? Clearly the lad is suffering, and deeply mired in his misery ...
Is the dog botherer counting himself as among the 'leets that have come together?
We all know where "Ned" stands - he's for division, hate and fear-mongering, standing proudly with Captain plodding Potato from Queensland - but all the same, this Switzerish desire in the dog botherer to call out reptile comrades is shocking to behold ...
Naturally the dog botherer had to make it clear that he hadn't gone rogue, turned identity politics heavy, and might even have started to sound all squishy and soft and sentimental ...
For the dog botherer to accuse others of shallow emotionalism and moral vanity is the icing on that reptile cake.
With all that, the pond had room for only one more this day ... choices, choices ...
Why there's Jacinta lurking just beneath the dog botherer, and the Angelic one still agitated about Calvary - what a cross she bears, and how crossly she does it - and there's the reliable Polonius, though as usual the pond will save him up for a Sunday meditation because there has to be some way to persuade correspondents to sleep in on a foggy Sunday morn (well it's foggy in Sydney for the Saturday at least) ...
So it was up to the bromancer to deliver the usual bromide of quasi-fascist authoritarianism, and lordy lordy, did he deliver in spades ...
There's a punch line at the end. It turns out this is a paid in kind piece of political hackery ... and it takes an unseemly amount of time to get to the reveal so the pond will cut to the chase and explain up front that this piece of hackery comes courtesy of the Danube Institute ...
They clearly knew their mark, and the bromancer delivered for them ...
Even US Today knows that's bull whatever ... (must keep the disapproving google bot in mind) ...
Ah, the Inquisition returns ... the pond has been to that shop before ...
Still, they couldn't have selected a better mug punter than the bromancer to sell their shop-soiled routines ...
Again it's all entirely shameful, and on the matter of Hungary's behaviour in relation to Vlad the Impaler downright deceitful ...
Eventually even the bromancer couldn't stand it, and had to break ranks with an epic billy goat butt.
And so to another billy goat butt ...
In summary, freedumb in Hungary is like freedumb in Florida...and it's all a fascinating experiment, with another billy goat at the gate ready to blather "certainly with plenty of flaws" ...
And so on...
But the Danube Institute has chosen wisely and carefully and knows that the bromancer is an artful spinner, distorter and denier of the truth of most matters, and will do his level best for them ....
Much like Florida ...
Yes, at this point, with the intent so naked and obvious, the pandering so insufferable, the pond began to think it might run a few cartoons, just as a way of making it through gobbets ...
Still, they couldn't have selected a better mug punter than the bromancer to sell their shop-soiled routines ...
It's impossible to count all the ways, but there's giving aid and comfort ...Hungary would not arrest Putin, says PM Orban's chief of staff.
And there's lickspittle fellow-travelling, and not just in the matter of keeping the gas flowing ... with this in April ... Hungary’s loyalties tested as Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on
Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban has been playing the West off against Russia and China for years, but as the Ukraine war drags on, the pressure is rising, according to analysts.
“The Hungarian government continues to maintain close relations with Russia and supports the Russian war machine in various economic ways,” US Ambassador David Pressman said on April 12.
Washington backed these harsh words up by unveiling sanctions against the Budapest-based, Russia-linked International Investment Bank and three of its directors.
The measures marked a new low in relations between Hungary and its Western partners. However, worse could be to come.
Reports suggest that the announced measures are a shot across Budapest’s bows, intended to deter the European Union and NATO country to pivot away from Russia and China.
And Hungary’s ongoing refusal to ratify Sweden’s membership of NATO is seen as the trigger.
Ah yes, Sweden ... and so to the bromancer giving full weight and attention to the fellow-travelling apologists ...
"None of this is to suggest that Hungary's policies towards Russia or China are right, or couldn't be better."
But indeed the entire point of the puff piece is to puff up Hungary and assorted policies of an authoritarian government ...
"There is room to disagree with the balance Hungary has struck."
But the bromancer isn't about to let the billy goat get in the way of the hand that paid for his trip, and so we immediately get "It is not remotely a serious breach of human rights ..."
What did Amnesty have to say about Hungary in 2022?
Discrimination against LGBTI and Roma people persisted. Women’s sexual and reproductive rights suffered significant rollback. Teachers were denied the right to strike. Pushbacks of refugees and migrants continued in violation of EU law. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Hungary had violated the ban on collective expulsions. Other judgments from the Court were not fully implemented.
How about Human Rights Watch? Pretty much the same in its 2022 report ...
The government continued its attacks on the rule of law and democratic institutions in 2021. It also prolonged a state of emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing it to rule by decree, including by imposing restrictions on freedom of assembly and access to public information.
The government continued its attacks on members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, harassment of independent media, and its discrimination of the Roma minority and undercut women’s rights. Access to the asylum procedure remains close to impossible.
But the bromancer has donned his supplied his sponsored rose-coloured glasses, being of the same sort of fundamentalist Catholic school, with an abiding taste for authoritarianism and ratbags of the onion muncher kind ...
In other times, it would have been called gilding the lily, with a faded, discoloured lily that needed a substantial amount of gilding, but these days, it's called being "a visiting fellow for one week", which a week imbibing the sponsor's message and working out the best way to spin it for the reptile readership...
In the end, it's a contemptible correspondent scribbling for a cash-starved rag intent on making almost any other media company in the country seem more honest, or at least less self-serving ...
And on that note, time to turn to the infallible Pope ...
Ah, the Bro… after all these years he’s still a National Civic Council Boy at heart…
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, why doesn’t Sky have him front a revival of “Point of View”? Ten minutes every Sunday morning should be just enough time for him to speed-recite one of his screeds (though today’s epic might need to be a two-parter). Ratings would surely be in at least the dozens.
He doesn’t seem to like Sam Francisco though, does he? I wonder what his problem is. Is it just following Trump’s example of bashing the place because it’s Nancy Pelosi’s home town, or did he have a bad weekend there once?
Ah yes, the National Civic Counsel ... is Santamaria's The Catholic Worker still published ? If so, wouldn't that be the right place for the Bromancer as Editor thereof ? And if not, he could resurrect it for the 21st century.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWhen they find themselves in a like-minded group of people it just tends to pour out, they forget how odd it must look to the rest of us. Still, he's sure we can turn the tide, distribute a few black shirts, or brown shirts if you like (weirdly, at recent fascist protests, black cargo pants seemed to be de rigueur) , and we can just rerun the worst parts of the 20th century.
DeleteFor the Bro nothing will ever change, it will just be all the same old labels, left, right, conservative or liberal. None of it makes much sense in contemporary Australia. The division seems to be between those who want to act cooperatively to benefit society and those who want to protect the status quo because they feel it may provide a personal benefit, and f*ck everyone else. I saw the former described recently as communitarian, neoliberal will do for the latter.
I have to add that one of the commenters here referenced conservatism bias recently which probably should get a guernsey. But whether it results from sloppy thinking or comes hardwired and just predisposes someone to it is unclear.
Despite being a tad old for the appellation, the Bromancer is a genuine political rent boy. Maybe it was his first bromance, the Onion Muncher, who got him that gig.
DeleteThough with Chad reminding us of Eric Blair's character Winston Smith and Smith's job of rewriting reality (eg the invention of Ogilvy) it did come to me just how well Smith would have functioned as a reptile. And here we have the Bromancer exemplifying exactly how that would have worked: rewriting reality as only they can.
So now Orban, Duda, Meloni, DeSantis et al are all identity politics free modern heroes and heroines (since I'm sure she'd prefer to keep her own gender) courtesy of the Danube Institute - which surely would have been only too happy to pay some or other 'Winston Smith' to fawn on Franco, Salazar, Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin back in the day.
Just ran across this in Inside Story, bit of background on what the Bromancer was up to waltzing on the Danube: https://insidestory.org.au/dazzled-by-the-danube/https:/insidestory.org.au/dazzled-on-the-danube/
DeleteSo Tricia Rivera would apprise us of "Charles Perkins and his freedom rights..." Actually, no, Trish, it was Charles Perkins and his freedom rides:
ReplyDelete"In 1965, as a student at the University of Sydney, Dr Perkins organised a student bus tour around New South Wales to draw attention to the state of Indigenous health, education and housing, and to try and stimulate local action. This was called the Freedom ride, and it highlighted the state of race relations in Australia."
https://www.sydney.edu.au/charles-perkins-centre/about/who-is-charles-perkins.html#:~
News Corp still saving money ?
Thanks, GB, well spotted. So much comedy and the pond misses so many lines ...
DeleteDP in her June 2 blog -
ReplyDelete"Reality is vastly over-rated, especially when you remember that we're all
caught in a butterfly's dreaming."
That's a nice piece of writing, DP. I suspected you were referencing some
work and a little research revealed it to be by one Chuang Tzu.
The things I learn here from you and your crew.
It's not my place but I'm hoping someday you might also turn your talents
into writing a book.
Like an Aussie Hunter Thompson, taking "a savage journey into the heartland."
My motives are selfish, as I have yet to find a take on Oz to match your blog.
"We're all caught in a butterfly's dreaming"
would have been a killer line to use on a English Lit major back in school.
Thanks JM, but the pond is too lazy. It's a lot easier simply to recycle reptiles and ravage them than actually having to think, and having thought, put it down in a book. The pond once wrote a novel, got it picked up by a publisher, only to have new management come in and spike the deal, and that, for the pond, was the end of that ...
DeleteI don't know just how lazy you can claim to be, DP, given how much work you put into the Pond each and every day, but I do sympathise. So much has been written, and is being written - maybe as many as a million books, most of them in English, being published every year now. So how to write just one more and yet make it worth all the effort of writing, publishing and reading.
Delete"We all know where "Ned" stands - he's for division, hate and fear-mongering..." Yeah, like these:
ReplyDelete"to persuade and intimidate the Australian people..." Intimidate ? Where exactly is this so-called 'intimidation' ? I don't feel any, do you ?
And
"to arrest the decline in the Yes vote though most polls still have the Yes case in front." Yep, exactly as Adrian Beaumont said:
"Support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament has dropped since the first polls that asked about it in late 2022. Analyst Kevin Bonham has plotted all the poll results, and the average Voice support is down from 65% in August 2022 to 57% now.
Last week’s Morgan (a “yes” lead of just 54-46) was particularly concerning for Voice supporters, given the history of support for referendum proposals collapsing as the referendum draws near."
https://theconversation.com/while-the-voice-has-a-large-poll-lead-now-history-of-past-referendums-indicates-it-may-struggle-204365
So what are the No warriors worried about ?
The pond had already run that "Ned" piece, but for those who can break the paywall, it stays at the same juicy level, ending with an hysterical bout of alarmism ...
DeleteOnce created, the voice would be a functioning political body vested with a moral mandate. It will become enmeshed with policy both in early stages and final stages. Any notion it will agree on everything is fatuous. How representative it becomes of Indigenous views is unknown.
As a political institution it will be involved in negotiations, dealing-making and public disputes. It will be a focus of media attention and obviously exploit the media for its ends. As Albanese once conceded, when the voice takes a strong stand it will be difficult for government to resist it. Just imagine the coverage the ABC would provide when the voice challenges the government or parliament? The voice will be a new arm in our governance system.
The upshot is that Australians will have different democratic rights based on race and ancestry. Our governance will increasingly incorporate separatist debates based on Indigenous and racial views put across parliamentary and executive decision making. Whether we possess the restraint and wisdom to manage this defies prediction.
There is no question that Indigenous recognition and consultation are imperatives for Australia. If the referendum is defeated, that will cause not insignificant harm in the country – and alternative responses will be essential. But defeat of the voice would be a genuine expression of Australian democracy, based on extensive, documented and legitimate concerns and it would represent a judgment by the people not to be beguiled by elites in their quest, conducted by deception, to change the country and alter fundamental principles of our Constitution and society.
Claims of “intimidation” are an ongoing theme in News Corp’s propaganda - sorry, opinion pieces - on the voice. It’s also been a repeat subject of Leak’s cartoons. I’d suspect it was a sign of a guilty conscience if I thought any of those concerned possessed such a thing.
DeleteNed really does get himself worked up over nothing, doesn't he. As though there were np other organisations with access to politicians, and even, at least to some extent, to the Executive. Why even the reptiles think they have those 'powers'.
DeleteBut as to 'guilty conscience', Anony, such a thing is dependent on having moral standards, which, as we know, develops at about age 5 in that component of the psyche that Sigmund called the 'superego'. But actually, the superego is the most easily suppressible part of the psyche to the point where, in our reptiles, it is virtually non existent.
So they basically run on the ego and, even more so, on the id. And it's the id that is the thing that's good with acts of intimidation.