Apparently Britain is in turmoil yet again, and yet again the pond learned a couple of things - just how weird Russell Brand had become in all the years the pond hadn't been paying attention, and all the various channels available to "influencers", which the pond knew nothing about ...
The pond blames vulgar youff, but luckily the stories were everywhere in the lamestream media...
Then there were seasonal issues - apparently you can see Brand and the Bjorn again one debate climate change if you've got an interest in high science.
Meanwhile, records are being broken, bushfire warnings issued, heatwave alerts are on high ...
Naturally the pond turned to the alleged national newspaper of record to find out more ... they'd surely have the Brand matter and the heat featured at the top of the digital edition, and no doubt Dame Slap would be mounting a valiant defence, linking the Brand and Lehrmann matters.
Irony alert ...
Say what? Rusty had been completely disappeared, and the heat wave and the records completely cancelled? The hive mind's cancel culture has never been so busy?
Never mind, at least the washing will dry quickly ...
As expected, talk of nuking the country was all the go, with Dame Groan in her usual pride of place, but the pond decided that Groaner devotees should wait for their fix ...
First a few notes on the nuking the country controversy, though just the headlines ...
...This day, Sky News started with the ubiquitous Keith Pitt for comment on the '387 billion'. It was entertaining, because Pitt said that the number were drawn from 'GenCost', which had been 'discredited entirely' by, wait for it - Claire Lehmann, in 'The Australian'. He added his own 'alternative facts' on supposed source of the GenCost numbers.
When asked for Coalition numbers - for anything - he hand balled to the (absent) shadow minister, Ted O'Brien. Another interviewer for Sky linked to O'Brien a couple of hours later, and asked for coalition numbers. Ah, in a spirit of economic responsibility, and transparency, and yada yada - the coalition would give the results of its comprehensive study of power supply - nearer the election. O'Brien did not cite our eClair for her economic analysis, but one does wonder if members on that side do swallow what the eClairs, and Dames, cite as they struggle to write a policy or three.
No actual numbers? But of course, who needs numbers when chasing unicorns?
There was one troubling report in the lizard Oz ...
Not a team player Col ... please report to the lizard Oz editor's desk, and have an explanation for that snap of a power planet ready ...
Meanwhile, there was a loaded Chamber firing blanks in the comments section, maintaining the rage about the fallout, and backfiring spectacularly and yadda yadda, because you can't stop the reptiles from celebrating the mutton Dutton's desire to nuke the country ...
Is it too early for an immortal Rowe?
That unicorn said more than enough, what with the unicorn's fuel falling plippity plop on to the road ...
And that was all the pond had to say on nuking the country, but there were sundry other delights and reptile pleasures this day, and the pond thought it might start with the lizard Oz editorialist.
Anybody who watched Media Watch last night, what with tales of lizard Oz deceit and betrayal and beat ups - Langton, Mob tix, and so on - will be astonished at the cheek of the dissembling lizard Oz editorial, but cheek and humbug are entirely the point ...
Did Mundine (he's intimately connected to the Sydney Institute) get a mention? Is it too soon for an infallible Pope?
Oh and there was an afterthought of humbug by the lizard Oz editorialist ...
What next? Well the grave Sexton was also on hand to offer a trifle, and it took the pond away from local matters, as the grave Sexton took on the task of defending a grifter, a snake oil salesman and a lying crook ...
Suddenly Mitt - not the Mitt the pond once knew - was being hailed as a straight shooter, a dinkum rider of the range, a man up there with Randolph Scott in a Bud Boetticher westerm, but he was leaving town ...
All the pond was left with was Boetticher's bad men, and the grave Sexton sounding remarkably stupid and drawing false equivalences, because where the pond came from, lying about a blow job wasn't quite the same as trying to overthrow the United States government ...
Never mind, there'll be another day and another reptle ready to spring to Benji's defence ... and so on with another short grave Sexton gobbet ...
It shouldn't be forgotten that the grave Sexton is, in his usual way peddling assorted bald faced lies, and it might have been right and proper for him to note how the chief facilitator of several of those lies, the Janus-headed William Barr, had turned on his very own lies ...
But no, before embarking on an epic bout of both siderism and false equivalences, perhaps a 'toon showing how an honest criminal goes about the business of responding with respect to the law?
And with that it was on to the last gobbet from the grave Sexton ...
With a bit of luck, that sort of grave Sexton thinking will see the mango Mussolini back in power, and what fresh hell will follow after that ...
And now, just as devotees of the Groaning are at last expecting a dinkum decent Groan from Dame Groan, the pond will turn to a standard rant from the bro ... one of those "all be rooned" outings much loved by assorted reptiles ...
It comes from the lad's deep faith in AUKUS being shattered, though it's unlikely his faith in pie in the sky in the bye and the bye will be as rooned as his deep, abiding fear that there will be no war with China by Xmas ...
What a jolly bad show, and the bro was showing all the signs of narpoo ...
Correction, it's a tragedy for the bromancer's war on China by Xmas ... there's a decided lack of preparation for that war, and then there's that other war, also featuring ships in trouble ...
And so at last to satisfy the cult of Groan ... and it's a bit like that build-up to Xmas morning, and the rush to the pillow or the stocking or whatever, only to discover that Santa had entirely missed the point.
Luckily the economic managers have arrived to set things straight ...
The pond has no idea why it associated that Wilcox image with a dinkum groaning ...
Meanwhile, the pond gets the message. Take your ugly paws off Dame Groan's wealth, and let her hand it out to whomever she likes ... and by golly she's got the trusts and offshore dodgy accounts in tax havens to make it happen ... though at the very end the Groaning did strike a strange note ...
Paul Krugman? And he's opining and being quoted with apparent approval by Dame Groan?
The pond almost fainted at the shock of it. Was this the same Krugman who furiously scribbled in the NY Times back on 30th December 2009, Stop, you're killing me ...
Was this the same Krugman back on 14th June 2000?
And now, because the pond always likes to end on a cartoon note, the pond acknowledges that it rarely pays attention to First Dog these days, but that's because he can still be reliably found at the Graudian, and for once the pond will make an exception, for this day First Dog helps complete the pond's virtuous circle, which began so long ago, way up there, with potatoes nuking the country ...
"It shouldn't be forgotten that the grave Sexton is, in his usual way peddling assorted bald faced lies...". Well there's nothing else in word and his life, it there. Besides lying is just SOP for the reptiles - today's Mr Ed was replete with lies, as always.
ReplyDeleteA belated thanks for yesterday’s Onion Muncher Extra, DP. He really is pathetic, trying to talk up his failed PMship and his wider role in the Liberal Party. I suspect such behaviour will only worsen as the years go on. He may well hope that when Howard eventually drops off the twig, he’ll inherit the role of Party Elder Statesman; let’s face it, that’s the best that he can hope for in life. I would have nominated his piece as this year’s most delusional claims by a former leader until I read the reports of Liz Truss’ overnight speech attempting to rehabilitate her reputation (ie, it was everyone’s fault but mine, and I was the victim of a lifestyle conspiracy), which made Abbott’s effort seem sane and rational by comparison. Entertaining though John Crace’s sketch was, the straightforward reporting on the event was even more absurdly entertaining. We can only hope that at some point Liz & Tony hit the speaking circuit together - what a comedy duo they could make!
ReplyDeleteOur Dame fires a couple of shots in the direction of the incoming chair of the Productivity Commission. Yet - her comments seemed familiar. No, I do not retain all her contributions. This one had been egregious, even by her, um, 'standards', so there it was, from December 2021. If she can recycle, then, with your permission Dorothy - I might also. Herewith my comments from December 2021.
ReplyDelete'Well - it seems either or both of our Dame for this Day, and the Productivity Commission (that is its name - we do not need to diverge into discussion of how appropriate that name might be, any more than we do for the alleged ‘Human Resources’ section of public and private bodies) - anyway, the Dame - a sometime Commissioner of that body, and the PC, have been gulled by a trick pointed up by John Allen Paulos. They try to make a case that wealth transfers reduce inequality because what goes to the already quite wealthy is a smaller proportion of their wealth than what goes to those lower down the distribution scale.
Implicit in that is that parents tend to divide the inheritance fairly equally across their offspring. That is generally the case for the middle part of the wealth distribution - don’t look at how Western Australian billionaires regard the supposed entitlements of their offspring, or what they are prepared to spend on lawyers to divide unequally.
So - yes - a million clams to the son who has ten million is lower in proportion than the other million going to the daughter who is trying to live on what comes from centrelink - assuming that the parents have not sought to help her previously.
Had our Dame ever shown any sign of having read Thomas Piketty, on the nature of capital in our time, she would not have cited this bit of mathematical flannelling, because inheritances of that order have very different effects on the recipients, and on their capacity, in turn, to provide for the generation that they have spawned.
She waves an ‘hypothesis’ that death duties alter the incentives to make a motza. In Groan world that is supposedly true of all taxes, charges, imposts, and yet we see, right here in Girtby, that CEOs of particular corporations continue to require more salary, and particularly more bonus, to do their job, in the face of sustained evidence that many show no correlation between pay, effort expended and success for the corporation.
Oh - and there is her observation that countries like Sweden and Norway do not have death duties ‘notwithstanding these countries being high tax ones.’ Well - duh - trying to get a fix on inheritance tax without seeing it in context of what citizens of each nation see as desirable functions of government, and the structure of the economy that will provide those functions, is a waste of time. If Australia had mining royalties at the rate of Norway, or - Qatar - our other taxes could be quite different as would our annual ‘Rich List’ .
As with the other reptiles - this is a lazy tabulation, unblessed by any inclination to discuss the entire nature of taxes. Or, come to think of it, that elusive good ‘productivity’.'
Ah well, I hope nobody will mind if I join the recycle cycle. It's all about the CEOs of GM and Ford in the 1950s (I think, may have been a tad earlier) when GM paid their CEO US$500,000 per annum whereas Ford paid theirs just a bit less. But then, because of the anti-wealth nature of taxes back then, the Ford CEO actually received just a bit more in take-home pay. So GM would have had to pay its CEO a little bit less in order to pay him a little bit more.
DeleteDoesn't happen now though. But both of the CEOs were on the 'rich list' of the times.
Hey Dude!
ReplyDeleteHey Dude, you think you're rad
You bought Twitter, to make it better
But meddling, has ripped the platform apart
You thought you were smart, but you've just wrecked it
Hey Dude, so much you paid
In your plan to, be a trendsetter
The minute, we saw you walk in with a sink
We started to think, how is this better?
Now every time that you complain, we feel disdain
At how you were caught, by your own hubris
The whole world knows that you're a fool, who thinks he's cool
And is plainly enthralled, by his own dudeness
Hey Dude, X stocks are down
They have foundered, beyond all measure
Remember, as millions of users depart
That you were the spark, for their displeasure
So just bow out and pull the pin, hey Dude, don't whinge
Stop thinking that you, are so important
And quit those things you shouldn't do, hey Dude, yes you!
Like posting troll tweets, when you, just oughtn't
Hey Dude, don't feel so bad
There is a way you, can make it better
Sign up, for a one-way mission to Mars
Then things will start, to get much better
Better better better better better
Oh!
Na na na nananana, nananana, hey Dude!
(Repeat X number of times then fade into digital oblivion...)
The muses were certainly musing today - that should be posted on the website formerly known as Twitter.
DeleteCheers GB.
DeleteQuite a day it was. Mr Ed opining that "ABC must be open to all voices" and therefore should seek regular input from the local brand of Nazis, amongst others. But really, he only meant that people and causes he supports and approves of should be heard on our national broadcaster.
ReplyDeleteThen there's the Bromancer who still can't quite grasp that for Australia to mount a significant self defence force capability would require an annual expenditure that would leave all of us in desperate poverty and therefore having nothing worth defending. Except for the weapons makers, of course, they'd have everything to fight for.
And lastly, the Groaner, who seems to think that because the (very) wealthy pass on an amount that is proportionally a smaller part of their inheritor's wealth than those of "middle Australia", there therefore should be no 'inheritance tax' on anybody. Yep, that makes sense to her, but does it make sense to anybody else ? Other than the very wealthy, that is.
But great to see how the reptile press has fully adopted the wisdom that "No news is good news".