Zelensky's speech to the UN? News of he war? News that the BOM has finally got around to declaring El Niño? Talk of heat records and an early start to the bushfire season? The Canada-India row? A study that proposed that climate change made the Libyan flood 50 times more likely? Russell Brand in even more hot water?
Sorry, you'll have to google those stories. If you do, you'll find them ...
But this is loon pond, it covers the early morning reptile beat for a black hole, imploded star, blog.
Its stories begin in many different ways. This one began with the top of the lizard Oz digital edition this day ...
Not even Randy Stone could make an interesting half hour of radio over that motley assembly of useless reptiles. The pond handed out an automatic red card to nattering "Ned" - if only he keeps blathering about the Voice he might never again appear on the pond - and as for Dame Slap still rabbiting on about the Lehrmann matter, she's close to qualifying for permanent red card chairperson's club membership ...
There was the usual assault on renewables at the top of the page, disguised as news, and there was the usual assault on "woke", with Natasha Bita scoring herself an EXCLUSIVE ...
Oh Natasha of the beat up, Natasha, Natasha, the pond trooly rooly did try to go there ...
... but the pond simply couldn't do it.
That half arsed, cheap arsed graphic was the first turn off, and then the casual smearing of "climate activism", and the pond immediately wondered what sort of car that this bit of Bita reptile medicine drove, and guessed that the infallible Pope had got it right this day ...
That hits a raw nerve, that's the pond's
bête noire, and each time it sees one of those monstrosities trying to squeeze down a night carter's lane, the urge to deface it in some way is almost irresistible ... so all the pond can suggest is that Bita find a new way to try hard, even if likely to end up very trying ...The pond couldn't but help contrast this wretched, hollowed out remnant of a newspaper with the stories at the top of the local version of the colonialist Graudian ...
There was shameless Gazza Johns in trouble, studiously ignored by the reptiles, and there was Rusty, while Dame Slap carries on endlessly about the Lehrmann bee in her hive mind bonnet, and there was news of Azerbaijan, and there was news of El Niño, and so on ... and as a bonus, you could read Marina giving Rusty a good hiding ...
Meanwhile back at the lizard Oz, things were no better below the fold ...
The pond has no idea how the reptiles can charge for all this, because the pond has difficulty giving it away for free ...
Anyhoo, that's how the pond ended up with Killer, having his usual Killer time ...
As for the latest from the Donald, have a Luckovich ...
Hmm, is there space for the pond to scribble a "must do" list? Must the pond continue with the Killer? The pond must ... and what's the bet that Covid will still be buzzing around in Killer's hive brain?
As a student of Mark Felton - guaranteed to have more Nazis than SBS - the pond felt a prick in its ear at that reference to Adolf.
Of course the notion that Hitler was anti-capitalist is a little more nuanced than Killer or his sources will allow.
In pitching their book, a couple of academics made these notes about Hitler and capitalism after the great depression made things complicated for capitalists ...
...Adolf Hitler and his followers offered a way out of this conundrum. They promised to transcend the economic facts, with which the governments of the early 1930s kept grappling, through sheer willpower. And they blamed capitalism’s tensions and contradictions on putative Jewish influences. From 1933, the Nazi regime pushed German Jews out of economic life. It introduced a variety of constraints and incentives so as to marshal the energies of private business for its rearmament agenda. Despite their initial reservations about a ‘socialist’ movement and an interventionist dictatorship, the captains of industry and banking proved highly skillful at adapting to the new political framework. All the while, the Nazis loudly claimed to have ended the era of socially and morally destructive Kapitalismus.
This attractive blend of anticapitalist rhetoric and largely capitalist practice helped secure backing for the Third Reich and sustain its ferocious dynamic...
And by golly the likes of Volkswagen, Mercedes, IBM, Coca-Cola and Fanta, are still doing okay today ...because there's alleged socialism and then there's capitalism and getting good quality vehicles to charge down the autobahn while sipping on a Fanta ...
At this point the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department decided Killer needed a couple of huge snaps to make his effort feel weighty, and so trotted out the usual suspects ...
Meanwhile, on another planet, a bit of old-fashioned leftist union agitation...
And then, after that excursion with left wing unions in a rage about capitalist excess, it was on with another gobbet ... and the pond absolutely refuses to take a bet that somehow anti-vax talk will find its way into the Killer conversation...
Well the pond supposes that there could be a new descriptor deployed. How about "barking mad", a category into which uncle Elon, Joe Rogan and Killer would fit comfortably?
Some might think that Killer's current exegesis might allow a modifier, as in "barking mad far right loons", but perhaps "loon" is enough ...
And speaking of a couple of loons who went barking mad in their old age, the desiccated husk of the lizard Oz graphics department offered a few more huge snaps ...
And then it was just a mopping up operation, with thoughts and prayers for being Pilgered and Greered ...
Treated on their merit? Yep, "barking mad loon" will do the trick ...
Here, have another celebration of what used to be thought of as barking mad far right, but now is just a children's fairy tale ...
And so to the bonus, and frankly the pond only turns to Dame Groan because of the way her Groaning sets off one of the pond's favourite correspondents, who somehow manages to make her jeremiads sound interesting and worth discussing ...
It'll be hard this time, what with the Groaning about the NSW state budget, an automatic eye closer ...
At the same time as the Groaning was unfolding, the lizard Oz editorialist was also having a word on the matter ...
Dame Groan wasn't going to stand for any of that nonsense. In her usual gloomy way, she was appalled ...
Did the lizard Oz editorialist have any come back to that? Nah, not really, apparently the salt cellar went missing, and this squawk was all that was left...
And there you have it, the lizard Oz editorialist feuding with the Groaner, and the pond showing off another storm in a teacup, and let's see the pond's correspondent make something out of that, remembering that ample allowance should always be made for property developers, it being the NSW way, because you must have buildings falling down so that they can be replaced by buildings falling up ...
Time then to close with an immortal Rowe, and the pond will confess that it's now so ill-prepared by the reptiles that it had to head elsewhere to learn that
Bid was going to be heading a Senate inquiry into Kingly matters, just so the pond could understand the joke ...
That nose art almost inspired the pond to celebrate the latest SloMo cavortings and attention-seeking, but why help him flog his book. The time will come for a good flogging ... while any devotees of Q can just refer back to Killer ...
Members of the far Left and the far Right often hold some similar views - wow, startling insight there, Killer. How many decades has it been now since that became a commonplace observation? That’s out in the real world, though; in Reptileland, this is what passes for innovative thinking.
ReplyDeleteOthers are better qualified to comment on Dame Groan’s usual moan, but I get the impression that the Reptiles are planning to afford the new NSW some very faint praise primarily as a means of further condemning Dictator Dan and his evil ways.
Any revival of “Night Beat” would probably need a new title, DP; the Reptiles have abolished the night shift, Randy has been made redundant and now there’s just an office junior restyling media releases and compiling the latest cliched offerings of opinionista hacks.
KillerC: "...the vast bulk of political participants are really tribal lemmings without any real beliefs except, perhaps, for personal career advancement." He really is just so very self-perceptive, isn't he.
ReplyDeleteBut he has a point, in an approved reptile fashion: the old enforced orthodoxies are all dying: Christianity, capitalsim, socialism/communism etc. That's what comes of 'universal education', I expect - there's really nobody much left to enforce the old certainties (yes, there's still a few Catholics but they're increasingly on the way out). Plus centuries, though in some cases mere decades, of ideological failure - we all believe in 'markets' because they've been a central part of our existence even before we invented 'civilisation' but who believes in 'free market capitalism' now ?
Welcome to the age of more or less individual 'identity' as so lovingly practised by KillerC and the wingnuts.
Before I grapple with the challenge to make the Groan’s jeremiads sound interesting, might I offer a little diversion on what generates discussion, right there on the Flagship.
ReplyDeleteBack in April, a Regular Contributor to ‘Quad Rant’ (title capitalised because that is considered to be a Title by the sad old ‘Rant’) - contributed comments labelled ‘The Australian’s big blue pencil.’, which set out his dismay that the Flagship had rejected comments he had sent to them. This set of an unusual amount of comment in ‘Quad Rant’ - from others who, although espousing the Rant’s reactionary adaptation of conservatism, selectively ‘Christian’ triumphalism as cover for blatant racism, and general ‘DWAG’ philosophy (‘Don’t wanna, ain’t gonna’) saw moderators for the Flagship reject their own, carefully considered, comments.
That set off a remarkable 49 comments to the Rant - most bewailing that the Flagship was drifting. Some added that they had cancelled their subscriptions, although others, to prove their commitment to the values of the Rant, wrote of their need to read Dame Slap, Major Mitchell, and the Bromancer.
Yesterday, to show that he remains a Regular Contributor, O’Brien put up part two of the ‘big blue pencil’, to tell readers that the Flagship had not improved, illustrating his thesis with examples of his own modest work that was still being rejected. Again, it has set off an uncommonly high rate of comment. Give it a few days, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth may go past the previous 49 comments, although offering nothing new in substance.
One must be careful not to succumb to schadenfreude as one skips through the expressions of confusion and dismay, but this one does find it puzzling that devotees of the Rant are not automatically waved-through by whatever the moderating process is for the Flagship these days.
Oh - standard disclaimer - nothing that I have written is intended to persuade any other person to go to the 'Quad Rant' site, even for a tincture of schadenfreude.
Ooh, trouble at mill, Chad. My but the old orthodoxies and certainties really are breaking down, aren't they. However, I must affirm that Quad Rant (though I once upon a time - about 50 or so years ago - did read the occasional issue) has no appeal, not even for a generous tincture of schadenfreude.
DeleteTo make Dame Groan sound interesting, this correspondent has to overcome her utter indolence. Her gambit is to cite NSW government spending ‘prior to Covid’ at ‘around’ $80 billion, and some estimates from the previous government, but no mention of what Treasurer Mookhey is committing to, to complete the comparison.
ReplyDeleteIt takes just a couple of key strokes to bring up the ‘Budget Statement 2023-24’, signed by Secretary to the Treasury, Michael Coutts-Trotter, which gives a number of $120 billion for this ‘first budget in years’. It seems that was beyond our Dame’s fingers to find. Or, perhaps, she has some of that lingering aversion of the reptiles to Michael Coutts-Trotter.
At that point, this correspondent felt much less inclined to do any more of the Dame’s homework. Yes, she has scattered odd moans, with no more justification - including standard moan that ‘throwing more money at first home buyers simply pushes up property prices’, with no acknowledgement that those are stamp duty concessions (i.e. lower tax!), but it is all a lot less interesting than simply reading the Budget Statement. That is not even faint praise.
Pass the salt
Oh, I liked the bit where she said: "The creation of a $3.6bn special fund to cover higher public sector wage growth is the clearest example of a government intent on playing to its voting base rather than being an example of sound budgetary policy." But surely it's the height of "sound budgetary policy" - you can't make any kind of budgetary policy at all if you don't get elected, as Labor hasn't been for 13 or so years. Strange though that the NSW PubServ is considered Labor voting base. Down here in the country's biggest city, we always figured that the state PubServ - being highly DLP - was mainly a Liberal voting base.
DeleteThe pond thought that might slow you down Chadders, and no shame in that. Each day the pond wonders at the business model and who might spring hard earned shekels for this sort of tedium, when as you note, you could simply read the original and be asleep in a trice ...
Deletehttps://www.budget.nsw.gov.au/
So to the Groaner: "In NSW's case therewere some unforgivable initiatives, including turning Treasury into a sort of investment bank and creating a debt reduction fund and then not reducing debt." She's not criticising Gladys, is she ? Oh for shame. And what's wrong with making Treasury an investment bank ? It's got the licence for creating money after all.
ReplyDeleteSo when Groany avers that "The Minns government deserves credit for finding $13bn in savings..." then that's just wonderful because otherwise "...in three years 'the state woulld have been handing our lenders $7bn in annual interest payments'." But who are "our lenders" and why did we borrow from them when we have the Treasury Investment Bank to borrow from ?
Dorothy - meant to thank you for reminding those of us of a certain age, of 'Night Beat'. Have had time to follow up (there is only so much time one should spend fact checking Dame Groan) and find a 'Wiki' entry on Frank Lovejoy, who played Randy Stone. Further proof that the 'Wiki' pretty much justifies the invention of the internet, all by itself.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it does, and so thanks to Wiki's creators and maintainers.
DeleteThere's also YouTube, repository and dumping ground for the past.
DeleteTerrible sound, but there are many samples to be found, not that being reminded of lost enthusiasms is always a good thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHL4nP9nHPo
Oh yes, that indeed brought back some memories. Though I was a bit young when it was first broadcast in the USA (1950-1952) so I must have heard the Australian version:
Delete"Night Beat began in 1951 and first starred Australian actor Alan White played Randy for 164 then American Harp McGuire took over the role. Supporting actors included Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell and June Salter.
The series was broadcast across Australia until the mid 1960’s. It was exported to New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Fiji and the West Indies."
https://radioinfo.com.au/news/classic-australian-radio-serial-night-beatfree-audio/
So yes, much gratitude for both Wikipedia and YouTube.
Here's something I never knew: Americans (at least some of them) think that putting butter on sandwiches is "gross", it's only for cooking with.
ReplyDeleteWhy don’t Americans put butter on their sandwiches?
https://www.theguardian.com/food/commentisfree/2023/sep/20/why-dont-americans-put-butter-on-their-sandwiches
They don't like vegemite or marmite either.
There's also the curse of mayo, GB, and forms of alleged mustard that would send a French citizen into a howling frenzy of fear ...
DeleteWell there's some varieties of sandwich I could take mayo instead of butter on, but how did that become an American standard ? Can't say I've ever knowingly consumed 'American' mustard, I don't mind the French variety though and the Masterfoods 'hot English' a bit.
Delete