As correspondents have noted, The Weekly Beast is once again full of essential information, not least the penny-pinching antics at News Corp, as the bean counters draw the line at tree killer rags infiltrating the bunker ...
Meanwhile, delusions of grandeur erupted last night and continued apace this morning, in a splendid Sharri-style shyte show... with one illustration the pond's personal favourite ...
For those wondering, the first source cited in this lizard Oz World Exclusive Investigation was this dude ...
It's
outside the paywall, and there's a lot more elsewhere circulating about this Trumpian official enjoying the powers of fiefdom, and in it there's a link to the WaPo original (possible paywall issue), and so the pond had no trouble continuing its ban on simplistic Sharri ... though it did remind the pond of a cartoon that popped into the letter box this morning ...
Letting go of that megalomaniacal delusional flourish of a World Exclusive Investigation meant the rest of the day was a bit of a bummer, with the usual dog botherer outing, time with the bro in Israel and yet another chance to climb the "Ned" Everest.
The pond lists all the topics, because it's easy to get discouraged when the pond refuses to serve up a paranoid piece of Fauci bashing and reptile conspiracy theories ... how about a bit of Neil Young instead, just to establish the demographic the reptiles routinely pitch to ...
This opening gambit reveals a lot about the dog botherer. Presumably it comes with old age, hair loss and a sense of mortality ... but there will be one vital bit of information revealed, and it's not the routine demonising of EVs, the inevitable next stop for reptile climate science denialism when other stops seem to have led to floods, fires and famines ...
To be clear, even the NRMA's ancient magazine, with ancient ads appealing to an ancient demographic, has gone electric - why they even have an app - while the dog botherer has gone nuts, or at least barking mad ...
Then came an indication of where the dog botherer's heart had stopped, many years ago, with the reptiles lashing out on a Getty image ...
But what provoked this Graudian reading bit of EV bashing nuttiness, especially given that Uncle Elon has turned as X-rated as any dog botherer might require? Alas it turns out that the dog botherer is part of the inner suburban deep state sinister 'leet, and for all the pond knows, his blather about virtue signalling and woke and such like might conceal a dire threat to suburbia from this inner city dweller occasionally inclined to motor out west with a toot toot and a poop poop worthy of a toad... oh yes, to be in love with gas guzzlers, and to do a deeply professional and detailed survey while doing the poop pooping ...
Indeed, indeed, and the reptile routine goes on, so just stick to the gas guzzling, and enjoy the Kudelka ... out and about as usual at the
Saturday Paper ...
And so to a final gobbet from this Graudian-reading member of the inner city urban 'leet ...
Of course it goes without saying that it's impossible to run out of petrol and gas guzzlers never break down, and why not enjoy a relevant infallible Pope?
The pond offered that cartoon because it's likely many will now decide to turn to other more useful, profitable ways to waste their time, while the pond feels obliged to note a fundamentalist Catholic's attempt to deal with fundamentalist Jews...
It's incredibly long and chock full of illustrations, with the penny-pinching reptiles deciding to spend up big at Getty images ...
Might it also be about a notorious crook who wants to escape punishment? Ah, but the bromancer has long looked favourably on Netanyahu ... and the lizard Oz graphics department even lashed out on a snap of the lad ...
Meanwhile, it's best not to mention the deeply corrupt Netanyahu, and instead rabbit on about the court going leftie, as opposed to barking mad fundamentalist bigoted right ...
At this point the pond snapped. Not only did it have to listen to talk of the crazy quilt coalition of crazies that currently constitutes the government of Israel, the pond was fed up with all the snaps, and so took steps by doing an Eisensteinian montage...
It meant the bromancer could be reduced to satisfyingly small gobbets of gibber ...
Ah yes bloody furriners, always ruining things for Europeans, but might the pond note at this point that anyone with a serious interest might be better off
taking a look at Haaretz ...
Now back to the bromancer marketing Netanyahu's coup to the world ...
That's as opposed to any Israeli leader attempting to make peace facing assassination from fundamentalist barking mad Jews ...
But enough, there's another gripping story which would have tremendous appeal to the dog botherer ...
A complex issue requiring ream upon ream of learned theology, while the bromancer tries to keep distracting the pond ...
Eek, they're breeding like rabbits ... but please, no demonising rabbits... or the deeply weird religious views of said rabbits, because who knows, next thing you might start rabbiting on about the weird and wondrous believes of fundamentalist Catholics ...
Now there's a tricky one for the bromancer, what with the court somehow managing to sound extremely far left and deviant in its assessment of the behaviour of barking mad fundamentalists ... and just as the pond's patience had run out, huzzah, just two gobbets to go ...
At this point, fundamentalist tyke decided to offer some solutions for dealing with fundamentalist Jews, and the pond was pleased it only took up a very short final gobbet ...
Luckily there's nothing in that list that mentions that climbing the Everest known as nattering "Ned" is forbidden, and so to the final challenge for the day ...
The pond has no idea of which remnant of the graphics department selected that snap of the beefy boofhead, but the one in the body of the text was just as bad - why it almost made Jimbo look like a real politician instead of someone in the grip of indigestion, or something worse...
The pond just wanted to get the snaps out of the way so it could nod off to sleep while others took on the "Ned" Everest challenge ...
Is there anything more tedious than "Ned" channeling the beefy boofhead with an office in Goulburn, apparently a town where the dog botherer wouldn't stop ...
Okay, okay, it's childish of the pond to delight in the words "Tooze said", because that's what "Ned" does, sayeth the stuff of others, and if that involves
"the polycrisis term has a real utility descriptively", then that is what a climate science ducking and weaving "Ned" must do, even if it involves talk of
"the natural environment blowing back at us."The reptiles have spent decades denying any blow back, what's to change now? Tooze said ...
Say what? There's an environmental crisis looming ahead? Let's forget
"Malware v. Ned", back in 2020, let's remember
Manne v. "Ned" ... way back in September 2011 ...
And now here we are, and twelve years later "Ned" has discovered there's a looming crisis ... which is very strange for a Chicken Little accustomed to running about and clucking that we'll all be rooned by Xmas ...
At this point, knowing that there were only two relatively short gobbets to go, the pond tuned out and switched off. Would there be an immortal Rowe at the end as a reward for scaling the "Ned" Everest? You can take that one to the Banks ...
There was a recent dearth of "Ned's" natter and the pond wondered where it went, and now that it's returned, the pond can't wait for it to go away again ... that way the pond can avoid contemplating blather about a coming environmental crisis with blather about the needless destruction of coal-fired power stations.
There's only so many things the pond's brain can compute in a day ... and so it's off to the Sydney Institute for a final gobbet, even as Polonius waits in the wings to deliver his prattle for the pond's Sunday meditation ...
There it blows again ... what are these "climate forces" that "Ned" blathers about? Has he suddenly become an expert in this matter? Nope, he ducked it then, and he keeps ducking it now ... always with the ducking and the weaving and the endless, interminable navel-gazing and fluff-gathering blather ...
And if anyone made it to the end, they did better than "Ned" participating in a debate, and so earned an immortal Rowe ...
As always it's in the details, if you want to discover who's sleeping with who ... or whom if you must know who's on first base and watt's on second ...
"A post-servo highway? How electric vehicles are changing the Australian roadscape ..."
ReplyDeletePost servo Porche pampered privileged power pooches.
Shades of Qantas Lounge. Maybe Dutton will buy a Porsche and we can chinwag whilst changing!
"Going further, “Analogue and digital media" available. Phew! The reptile rags will still be dumped there to fatten circulation figures! And! You may read it while in narcisis mode, in "front of a smart mirror".
911's will still be eFuel - at $12.50 a litre! Everything else Porche will be electric after 2025.
“The lounge is glazed from floor to ceiling, creating a smooth transition between inside and outside. Bright colours and light wood provide an atmosphere that promotes a sense of well-being.” ...
"Going further, “Analogue and digital media and a high-performance WiFi network are also available. Workouts can be done in front of a smart mirror to keep the driver fit for the journey ahead. Interactive Porsche content can also be selected here.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/26/porsche-opens-1st-charging-lounge/
Wouldn't you think a new EV buyer would learn how to use the charging ports before taking off on the Great Australian Road Trip?
DeleteThe pond's partner routinely uses an EV to drive between Sydney and Melbourne and has got it down to a fine art. It's a little bit longer because of the charging, but you can actually find a good coffee at Goulburn (just not at the chargers), and while newbies might experience range anxiety or not understand the 80% rule, it's just a matter of planning and also realising that the infrastructure still has a way to go before you try to head off to back of Bourke ...
DeleteIt goes without saying, Merc, that the dog botherer would find all this deeply threatening and challenging, especially as he doesn't accept that climate science is describing a reality that exists in his alternative world ... so any excuse to stick with the fossil fuels and fools ...
Even without an EV we take a couple of long breaks on that trip (Goulburn is one). If you are having a meal you need a bit of a walk before hopping back in the car.
DeleteYep, any long trip should be broken up and Goulburn's a nice stop. We always check out the sub too and sometimes drop in to the mighty Wang. The dog botherer possibly got nose bleed or a fear of dragons at straying as far west as Parramatta, far from the safety of his inner city 'leet eyrie ...
DeleteDP nails Ned: "Nope, he ducked it then, and he keeps ducking it now".
ReplyDeleteThe Quigginator duck ducking the Oz - this needs a full page in the Oz...
JQ: "if you think of the Australian as a rightwing group blog (readers can fill in their own examples), everything makes sense.".
Ha! A group blog! DP, how about adopting "The Oz as a (dysfunctional) group blog" as a category moniker, ala the usual suspects. Because newscorpse, koolaid imbibers, group thinking opinionistas and media mogul manipulator is too damn long.
"The Oz as a (dysfunctional) group blog"
SEPTEMBER 19, 2011
JOHN QUIGGIN
108 COMMENTS
"The latest round of controversy between Robert Manne and The Australian has followed a pattern that is now familiar. Manne presents the evidence that The Australian routinely distorts the news to fit its political agenda, and equally routinely denies that it has any such agenda. The Oz responds with a stream of opinion pieces, snarky items in Cut and Paste, objectionable cartoons and so on.
"If we try to understand this in old media terms, it’s a bit hard to follow. Not only does the Oz violate basic rules like separation between news and opinions, but its reactions seem absurdly oversensitive. As I and others have demonstrated many times now, a single piece of criticism from a relatively obscure academic can drive the country’s only national newspaper (not counting the Fin with its special focus) into absurd paroxysms of rage.
"On the other hand, if you think of the Australian as a rightwing group blog (readers can fill in their own examples), everything makes sense.
"Looking at the Oz now, it’s easy to imagine it as a rightwing group blog that started up in the Triassic era of blogging (say 2002). Lines weren’t drawn so sharply then, so the contributors included some a bit more leftish or just less ideological than the group as a whole. Over time, some have been pushed out, and the others have been forced to demonstrate group solidarity on appropriate occasions, such as attack from the left.
"By now however, a tribalist mode of groupthink has taken over the blog. Its members spend a lot of time reassuring each other that, in spite of all contrary evidence, they are right about everything. Even when they are demonstrably wrong on some particular point, they are still right in a way their opponents can never be. Conversely, no matter how bogus the argument, if it’s on the right side it has to be backed all the way.
"And, thanks to the marvels of Google, Twitter, RSS and so on, the group is instantly aware of any attack on them, even from a lone blogger in the furthest reaches of cyberspace. Each such attack is treated as an existential threat, as if a few harsh words are one step away from the imposition of sharia law (whatever that means!). But since any notion of logical reasoning has long since been lost, the response consists of snarky gotchas, dark mutterings, absurd hyperbole and total lies.
"As I mentioned a while back, with an individual blogger, this process typically ends with the sudden closure of the site. But group blogs with this kind of pathology seem to carry on for a long while. So, until Murdoch runs out of money to back it, I imagine the Oz will continue to amuse us."
https://johnquiggin.com/2011/09/19/the-oz-as-a-dysfunctional-group-blog/
I just couldn't decide which bit to clip, as the whole is such a good skewer. Hence the lot.
Delicious, and yes better the full banquet ...
DeleteWe are at the Reptile Quack's Group Blog mercy.
Delete"The only way that democracy can be made bearable is by developing and cherishing a class of men sufficiently honest and disinterested to challenge the prevailing quacks. No such class has ever appeared in the United States. Thus the business of harassing the quacks devolves upon the newspapers. When they fail in their duty, which is usually, we are at the quack’s mercy. -H.L. Mencken, Minority report #172
[By the way, Minority Report is no longer science fiction ]
Doggy B: "Let us call this slur out for what it is, the typical ploy of the virtue signaller where they demonise others to assert their own superiority." Oh my, what a great piece of reptile 'projection' - Doggy Bov is just so very good at that.
ReplyDeleteAnd also at this: "...an EV requires six to seven times the mineral resources used in a conventional vehicle, with quatities of lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and the list goes on." With sundry repetitions it would appear. But hey, what about these 'micro' EVs for old folks like, well, like some of us:
Low-cost tiny electric cars like these could be the next big thing
https://electrek.co/2023/01/23/low-cost-tiny-electric-cars-lsv-nev/
They'll never compete with a LincVolt, will they.
One can only call Kenny’s article self-inflicting criticism, as Kenny himself states that:
ReplyDelete“From our teenage years they [cars] are freedom and independence. They take us to our most vital places and events, we have many of our most memorable conversations, and more, inside them, and their style and contents tend to reflect something of our character.”
and then further on:
“Across the past century cars have become so intrinsic in our lives that we know people might judge us according to what we drive; like our clothes, our wheels say something about us.”
So here Kenny berates Nogrady while simultaneously doing the same by claiming cars are indeed part of our pilgrimage of personal development and “intrinsic to our lives”, but apparently not on the great Australian road trip, whatever that is.
One can only conclude, Kenny is upset that what he drives – he doesn’t say what he owns, but it seems to be petrol fuelled – might be seen as a lesser status symbol of his personal development.
Moving on to further illogical thought, Kenny states:
“Our entire economy relies on road transport” but then he suggests using rail to transport freight.
As for draining our resources, the mental drain of reading articles like this in The Australian sure addles the mind.
Deepest sympathies Anon, and that's why the pond didn't suggest he catch a bus back to Adelaide, for fear a latte drinker might be lurking nearby ...
DeleteI recall, some years ago, a senior Dept of Transport (Vic) manager explaining it all fairly clearly; at present 98% of freight (probably excluding dedicated ore trains from mine to ship at some remote diggings) goes by road; even if you could quadruple the amount of rail freight, 92% would still be on road; trying to put more general freight on rail, with all the double handling from truck to train, train to truck, etcetera, is not going to be the answer. In the future there will be low polluting trucks - which will happen because it must (there are already some in the market now). Investing in rail is not a solution, except for dedicated bulk movement (including bulk people into and out of a CBD day in and day out). Kenny is deluded. AG.
DeleteSmall correction, AG: Kenny is deluded again.
DeleteTrust Greg to make an issue of the actions of an elite, authoritarian extremist into a religion versus secularism issue. He’d make choosing a brand of coffee in the supermarket about the religious and the secular.
ReplyDeleteHow he can claim that there is a case for these “reforms”, which remove the very purpose of the courts, when he acknowledges that the court is the only check or restraint on the decisions of those who control the Knesset, defies any notion of “reasonableness”.
Greg’s basic argument for what he terms compromise comes down to: “Demographics have moved Israeli politics to the right while the court has moved to the left.”
The obvious question for Greg is: if the demographics had shifted to the left while the court had shifted to the right, would Greg advocate his compromise or suggest there was a “strong case” for these changes? Well, perhaps he might be conflicted by the complication of the extremist’s trivial corruption charges. Yes, corruption in politics is always a frivolous issue.
I threw a handful of darts at Ned today, blindfold on, and as always, bullseyes, absolute gems, every time.
ReplyDelete'It's the Treasurer against the shadow treasurer, a contest over whether Labor or Liberal is the superior economic manager - ... '
Well if the daily horror show of dodgy deals and money wasted by the previous government is any indication, let alone the 2022 election outcome, I'd say that most Australians would consider that the Liberals are the undisputed runners-up.
'Law No.1: genuine productivity gains are the basis of prosperity and higher real wages, Taylor says.'
There's a sort of Law No.0: do the right thing. No amount of productivity is worth a pinch of stuff if you are doing the wrong thing, for instance, I have no doubt we could build coal-fired power stations more efficiently than in the past, but if doing so exacerbates climate instability, well, the costs do add up. I was rather hoping that we might have some of the further basic laws of economics listed, but Ned seemed to drift off to a polycrisis, so we will have to work it all out for ourselves.
'While Peter Dutton has opposed for political gain several of Labor's economic measures, there is a bigger point - ... '
Ok, so clearly Peter has no actual credibility, he's just an opposer; a sort of Abbott 2.0, and we know how that ended. So I think we can dispense with the bigger point.
Did I mention polycrisis - dart no 4 nailed it.
'It is a consequence of the polycrisis. The Liberals will need to understand and ride this wave ... means the Liberals will need to project a new set of ideas."
Given Peter the Opposer, I doubt we will see anything remotely new to navigate the polycrisis; and I'm not waiting for Ned to come up with anything.
Great entertainment for a Saturday - thanks DP. AG.
Sheesh, you actually read "Ned" to the end AG, and could find something sensible to say about him? The pond has proposed you for a Junior Woodchuck merit badge and who knows soon you might score a merit badge for the most merit badges, though that would require you trying week after week to make sense of "Ned" ...
DeleteI suspect there is some stiff competition out there for a badge. AG.
DeleteAwww c'mon DP, we all like to run our regular 'Ned' marathon - if you don't waste your life, then it won't waste you. Any'ow, a few more comments:
DeleteStrewth, Neddles: "It's Jim Chalmers against Angus Taylor". Yeah, right, pistols at 10 paces at dawn !
So anyway, Ned tells us: "This is the age of high inflation, energy transformation, great-power rivalry, rising government intervention, stagnant productivity and, above all, volativity amid rapid and unpredictable change." But the one thing it clearly isn't about, according to both Ned and Angus, is that it isn't about "global boiling".
However, we're told: "Once revered ideologies - from Marxism to free-market libertarianism - look dated." They "look dated" because they always were 'dated' but hey, will reptiles and wingnuts now finally disown the destructive outcomes of 'free market economics' ? Or are those the 'laws of economics' that Angus clearly thinks have been passed down to us from the Trinity.
And a Junior Woodchuck merit badge to you too GB. Who knew Marxism looked dated? Who knew that Law No. 1 was dated? The last time the pond saw an increase in productivity in the beefy boofhead was in producing quality figures about Clover ...
DeleteOoh [blush] thank you, DP.
DeleteAnd in return, here's a little expansion on free-market libertarianism looking "dated".
How supermarkets are profiting from Australia’s cost-of-living crisis
"Food prices are increasing about 8% a year, but some products are rising at nearly double that. What is going on? Is it price gouging?"
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/28/cost-of-living-supermarket-grocery-price-rises-australia-woolworths-coles-aldi
Yep, that's definitely "price gouging". Isn't good old-fashioned free-market capitalism a lasting joy ? And how much of our inflation is due to conscienceless exploitation like that ?