Thought for the day: Most people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed tha the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those I do understand. Mark Twain.
There was some good news this day. The pond was reminded that the old stye of desk calendar was still being sold, and by a dinkum local retailer, so there was no need for a squillion in postage from the US ...
The downside is that the holder is "durable, long-lasting acrylic" - back in the day they used metal - and of course once you get started they have you hooked on the refills.
The pond is tempted to do a lockpicking lawyer (see YouTube if you don't get the reference), and say that's all the pond has for you today ... but instead on with a trudge though the Oz wilderness ...
They dragged two moth-eaten old fogies out of the cupboard, exuding the stench of mothballs, to top the digital edition?
They were front and centre of the tree killer edition, and there, yammering away, on opposite sides, were Dame Slap and her minions and the dog botherer ...
Sorry, red cards all round and pass, and on to the comments section. Say what? Before you get there, the reptiles want you to watch a video?
The glowering visage of "Ned" is supposed to be a temptation, an inducement or an incitement?
Sorry, the pond would rather go beyond the biblical injunction and poke out both its eyes. As for the comments section, what a wasteland ...
It pains Stevo to say no? What patent tedious nonsense. It doesn't pain him at all, it doesn't pain any of the reptiles, they love it ...
As for the whining Angelic one and grieving Gemma, maybe the pond will pick up the strength to mention them tomorrow, alongside the usual Polonial prattle, and maybe not, and in the meantime, that only left the bromancer ...
The pond's patience with the bromancer is wearing exceptionally thin. Week in, week out, he's a bro one note ... and jocular references to Seindeld mean nothing when he should be joking about F Troop ...
The pond did appreciate a reader's attempt to cheer the bro up ...
But these days the bro is determined to be inconsolable ...and the lizard Oz, apparently realising he's indigestible, flung a flurry of visual distractions into the mix ...
Is it wise to get them out of the way so quickly? All that leaves is the bro howling into the gathering storm ...
Did you hear the one about the cardboard box man? It's at ABC here ...
It's at the Graudian too, as Trump allegedly shared potentially sensitive information about US nuclear subs with Australian billionaire.
And yet the pond gets lumbered with a bro listicle ...
Did you hear the one about Faux Noise going full fascist? It's behind the Beast paywall, Fox News' Greg Gutfeld Floats Civil War Because 'Elections Don't Work', and Justin Baragona began with the angertainment ...
Gutfeld, whose rhetoric has grown angrier and more extreme in recent years, declared during Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News’ The Five that American democracy was no longer feasible. Instead, because crime has supposedly spun out of control—despite homicide rates falling this year and crime just a fraction of what it was 30 years ago—he suggested a radically violent solution.
And then this was the nub of it ...
There was just one tasty addendum the pond couldn't resist ...
Gutfeld did not acknowledge the fact that the U.S. is 13 months out from a presidential election in which one party’s frontrunner refused to accept the results of the previous election. He also failed to clarify that he was speaking on a network that had to pay $787.5 million to settle a lawsuit over allegations it had knowingly peddled voter fraud lies to boost ratings.
It has to be said that reading the bromancer rail and rant about kit isn't anywhere near as entertaining as Gutfeld gutting democracy ...
It's a crisis, the pond is running low on cartoons, and the bro is only up to three ... maybe four can hang in there too?
Really? All we need to do is send over a cardboard manufacturer and the US's best nuclear secrets will be ours ...
And so to a coda, simply because the lizard Oz editorialist had something to say about the climate, and the pond will always drop everything to listen to the reptiles on climate ...
But didn't the Pope have something to say? Turns out the Catholic Boys' Daily could only toss that off in a short final par ...
They didn't have at the Pope for his heretical thinking, vile thoughts that should have damned him to eternal hell?
Meanwhile, the pond came across this infallible Pope, and realised that nothing had changed ... except for the many and varied ways they keep on burning the building down ...
I note that the Bromancer opens his latest stream of hysteria with a plan on how an invading force might take out Australia’s defences. Thanks a lot, Bro - you’ve given the means of destroying our great nation to whatever low-level clerk in Canberra’s Chinese Embassy has the dreary task of scanning your columns! Would that fit a former US President’s definition of “treason”?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, given that the Bromancer has never displayed the slightest whisper of actual military experience or expertise, perhaps this is a classic disinformation exercise with the Bro used as an unwitting pawn, providing leaked false tactics in order to lure the dirty Commies into a trap?
Wheels within wheels…..
The pond would vote for disinformation but perhaps chairman Xi and his minions are aware of the old tale told of the time of the Three Kingdoms (Sānguó 三国, period 07) and Marshal ZHŌU Yú 周瑜 was encamped across the river from his enemy CÁO Cāo 曹操,..
Deletehttps://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/chtales/story263.html
...Zhūgě Liàng argued that ten days was too long to wait to engage Cáo in battle, and promised to find the necessary arrows within three days or subject himself to whatever punishment Zhōu Yú might provide. Zhūgě Liàng asked only to be provided with 500 soldiers to go to the banks of the river to collect the arrows at the end of the three days. Zhōu had difficulty believing this, but he accepted the offer.
Zhōu Yú sent his assistant LǓ Sù 鲁肃 to look into what Zhūgě Liàng was actually doing, but LǓ Sù was Zhūgě’s old friend, and agreed to lend him 20 boats and about 30 soldiers per boat, as well as about a thousand of the straw men used as target practice. He was puzzled just what was involved, but it was clear that Zhūgě Liàng had something up his sleeve.
Zhūgě Liàng waited until there was a heavy fog, which as it happened did not occur until the third evening. Then he led out his soldiers in their boats under cover of darkness and fog, instructing them to hide under heavy black tarpaulins, while leaving straw men standing along the sides of the boats. Then they tied the boats together and towed them down the river, beating drums and shouting, as though there were about to cross the river and attack Cáo Cāo’s troops.
The night was dark and the fog made it difficult or impossible to see anything. When anything could be glimpsed by Cáo’s troops, it was the shadowy forms of the straw men tightly massed along the sides of the boats, slowly moving towards them. Cáo Cāo worried that he was about to be the object of a sneak attack by Zhōu Yú’s troops, and he ordered ten thousand archers to attack from the shore, even though it was too dark and dangerous to risk entering the water. They fired volley after volley of arrows at the river, trying to hit the “men” in the boats. Eventually the boats and their strangely motionless crews floated away.
The next morning, while the fog still had not dispersed, Zhōu Yú sent his 500 men to the river bank, as promised, to “harvest” arrows. In addition each of the boats had about five or six thousand arrows sticking into its straw men, producing over a hundred thousand arrows even without those stuck into the mud along the river.
It seems all we might need are 500 soldiers collecting a hundred thousand drones ...
Just as well that arrows aren't as expendable as bullets, isn't it.
DeleteOn Commonwealth: “You can’t raise the expectations that you’re going to have equality of opportunity in every part of Australia, in every corner of Australia."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/11/noel-pearson-blasts-abbotts-lifestyle-choice-comments-as-shameless
It's kinda hard to think of anything much to say about the Bromancer's madness - anything much sensible anyway. Provided he has reported accurately and honestly about his "five government decisions" then there is some point to all of them whether or not Australia is ever invaded by anyone, let alone by a major power. But in fact there is only two real 'major powers' nowadays: the USA and China with Russia fading and India developing.
ReplyDeleteIs there really any other nation that might want to plaster us with missiles (and/or drones) prior to invading ? Japan and/or South Korea might have enough of the right kind of missiles, but does anybody else ? Indonesia maybe ? So when the Bro says that "A competent military attacker would first destroy our air force by missile attacks..." who has he got in mind ?
As for effective 'self-defence' does Bromancer have any real understanding of just how much that would cost and how long it would take ? Au$trillions perhaps and at least 20 years ? Is any government subject to elections every 3 years going to come out and say that, especially now ? The Bro tells us that "Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie commented when DSR was released: 'There's no new money, only cuts, cannibalisation and lack of ambition'."
But surely, that's how it's been for decades now, as the Bro himself says: "That's true, but the Coalition's record in government was a woeful as the Albanese government is today." And it might be worth remembering that of the nearly 23 years of this century, the Coalition has been in government for all but about 7 years of them.
Besides, in but a few more years everybody, including China, will have much too much 'climate change' hassle to worry about, and maybe even spend some money to attempt to reduce, to be planning on 'invading' Australia.
Isn't today's Mr Ed a wonder, as always. He reckons that "shutting down the nation's most important export industries would devastate the budget..." and not only that, but also "[the budget] and the revenue needed to fund increased defence and social spending and repaying Covid debt." It's just never going to get through to him or his like that unless we do start to end the fossil fuel madness we'll have a lot more to worry about than armed defence, pensions and Covid "debt". They still seem to think that 'global heating' is just some minor blip that won't affect us much and won't get any worse.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't only wind turbines, then:
ReplyDeleteAt least 1,000 birds died from colliding with one Chicago building in one day
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/07/chicago-mccormick-place-building-bird-deaths-windows