On the entertainment front, there's John Crace doing over Jimmy Dimly, aka James Cleverly, and there's the inimitable Marina Hyde doing over both GB news and the British regulator, of the order edentata - toothless mammal - making it of the same order as Australia's wielder of warm lettuce leafs.
On the alarming news front came Earth’s ‘vital signs’ worse than at any time in human history, scientists warn.
Earth’s “vital signs” are worse than at any time in human history, an international team of scientists has warned, meaning life on the planet is in peril.
Their report found that 20 of the 35 planetary vital signs they use to track the climate crisis are at record extremes. As well as greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature and sea level rise, the indicators also include human and livestock population numbers.
Many climate records were broken by enormous margins in 2023, including global air temperature, ocean temperature and Antarctic sea ice extent, the researchers said. The highest monthly surface temperature ever recorded was in July and was probably the hottest the planet has been in 100,000 years.
On the high comedy front, the pond is now expected to learn about the latest contender for the Speakership, one Tom Emmer, only to read A gigantic pool of nos": Dozens of Republicans reject Tom Emmer, GOP's third nominee for speaker.
Then came news that he'd kissed the ring and grovelled for the gavel, so the pond lost interest
UPDATE: Tom Emmer Drops Speaker Bid After Trump Knifes Him (Daily Beast paywall)
Just after noon on Tuesday, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) won the House GOP's nomination to be Speaker. About four hours later, he dropped out. ...Emmer's bid was undone by about two dozen GOP holdouts and a forceful statement from Donald Trump that made it clear to him and every other Republican that he would never have the 217 votes needed to win the gavel on the floor.
Talk about revolving doors. It's too hard to keep up, can't the pond have breakfast in peace?
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: It's the Mafia. '5 Families' and Factions Within Factions: Why the House GOP Can't Unite ...
Republicans have made no secret of their divisions. They openly refer to their various factions as The Five Families — a reference to warring Mafia crime families. They consist of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, the conservative Republican Study Committee, the business-minded Main Street Caucus, the mainstream Republican Governance Group and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. Not to mention the People's Front of Judea and the Judean Popular People's Front.
Meanwhile, the pond is starting to lose count of the flippers, with Jenna Ellis doing the flip ... and shedding tears in the process: Ex-Trump Lawyer Jenna Ellis Cries as She Cops a Plea
Ellis also agreed not to discuss the case on social media. In August, she posted a defiant message on X, formerly Twitter, saying: “I am resolved to trust the Lord and I will simply continue to honor, praise, and serve Him. I deeply appreciate all of my friends who have reached out offering encouragement and support.”
As a meme aware blog, the pond wanted to shout "Where is your god now?"
Over at Nine, they were wildly excited by the return of Jolly Joe ...Joe Hockey says entitled politicians are a cancer on the community
The pond is laying odds that Latika ran with the yarn just so she could give some work to the house cartoonists ...
London: Former treasurer Joe Hockey says politicians who shun cutting government spending to stay popular with voters are a cancer in the community, and that the age of entitlement has only worsened since he gave his landmark speech more than a decade ago.
He was speaking in London to the Institute for Economic Affairs, the same centre-right think tank where he delivered his End of the Age of Entitlement speech when in opposition, and said that nothing had changed since warning that societies had to curb entitlement culture in order to make life sustainable.
“Today I am warning our legislators and leaders that it is their entitlement that is the problem,” he said.
“The entitlement to hold on to power. The entitlement to be popular no matter what the cost.”
Oh come on Latika, fair grab of the raw prawn, the pond knows the real game ... as if the in house cartoonists couldn't do a hard day's yakka, rather than settle for this easy sport ...
Meanwhile, it turns out that Benji's son has a shocking case of bone spurs - who knew the condition was so viral? - while another lawyer for the original bone spurs man was busy spilling the beans, Michael Cohen tells court Trump tasked him with reverse-engineering asset classes by ‘whatever number Mr Trump told us’ – live
The pond knows what you're wondering by this point. Did any of this, did any actual news, penetrate the thick hide of the reptiles at the lizard Oz? Or if news is not their game, is any of them up for a good Craceing or a dinkum Hydeing?
The pond anxiously scanned the top of the digital edition to see how the reptiles were doing ...
Oh come on, nattering "Ned" shedding crocodile tears over the drover's dog - does reptile hypocrisy know no bounds? Red card.
And what about Dame Slap blathering on yet again about Canberra beaks, legal eagles and such like, and somehow apparently a columnist of interest to the long absent lord alone knows who? Red card.
What about the rest of the 'leet commmentariat reaching out from their inner city Surry Hills bunker? Is there hope and signs of life below the fold?
Sheesh, what a bummer.
Oh dear long absent lord, it's going to be a bludger day for the pond. There's Jimbo supporting the Chairman Emeritus's by keeping his message to Australian voters behind the chairman's paywall, and there's the rest of a motley bunch doing the usual ...
With a deep sigh, the pond reached for the off the shelf serve of an already heavily shop worn bromancer for an update on the war with China by Xmas ...
The pond doesn't have the foggiest why the bromancer's sounding a tad agitated about Congress. This after all is the fruit of Faux Noise and the Chairman Emeritus ...
The pond knew that baloney was just a place holder because what's left of the graphics department decided to go a huge holiday snap ...
The pond returned to the bromancer knowing there wasn't going to be any meat, just the usual bleat ...
Well there's something to gripe about. All the links in the bro's story are to inside the house, in a way designed to keep the punters inside the tent and away from the outside world.
Would it have been so hard for the bro and the reptiles to have provided a link to Michael Shoebridge's
"brilliant piece online"?
The pond had to go looking and ended up on X, when it hates XXX'ing as much as it holds Uncle Elon in contempt ...
As for the bro, a whine about not being able to bung on a do by Xmas and he was done ...
Oh okay, it was a great line from a fundamentalist Catholic who believes in miracles, angels, pie in the sky bye and bye, and so it was worth hanging around to read
"those of us suject to the tyranny of facts..."
Would you like a blessed, gluten-packed holy wafer and some holy wine with that, or perhaps just sprinkle a little holy water on the way in and on the way out ...
What about Killer? Surely his letter from America would be full of rich goodies and the latest goss?
Killer getting agitated about the liberal democratic order? Sure it's rich, but that calm, complacent acceptance of the need to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy was simply beyond the pale. The pond is going to dob in Killer to Dame Groan, and then he'll see what's what.
As for the rest, Killer seems to be losing his touch, and his capacity to deliver a decent quota of reptile verbiage ...
That's it? Blather about a front row seat, and talk of the likely success of liberal democracy, as if the mango Mussolini was just a Faux Noise fever dream?
The pond knew the reptiles had fallen badly short this day, and so the pond, and the pond did try to make up for it by reading Salvatore Barebones scribbling furiously away No safe space on campus for support of Israel ... but when the pond came to this ...
...My colleagues say they are not anti-Semitic and I take them at their word. While not vilifying Jewish people or the Jewish faith, they do claim “Israel is a brutal, colonising power” that has “laid the ground for a second Nakba”.
That’s an interesting choice of words. The Arabic word Nakba (catastrophe) gained prominence in the 1990s as a Palestinian counterpart to the Hebrew shoah, which carries the same connotation. In the Shoah (more widely known as the Holocaust) roughly six million Jews were systematically murdered between 1941 and 1945. By contrast, during the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, roughly 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes or were driven into exile. Their departure was prompted by a UN resolution to divide Palestine into independent (and roughly equal) Jewish and Arab states. But they didn’t leave peacefully.
They left after attacking their Jewish neighbours, with no thought for negotiation, on the declaration of the State of Israel. At the same time, the armies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria all invaded Israel in support of the Palestinian cause. In short, Palestinian Arabs and their allies attempted to expel the Jews from the Holy Land but failed. That was their catastrophe.
... the pond came to a screeching halt and simply couldn't go on, stuck on a gloating example of how to celebrate the work and deeds of a brutal colonising power, and anti-Semitic to boot, in the sense that the generally meaningless use of Semite must perforce include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites
and so on ...
To make up for the pond balking at the Barebones bit, the pond turned to Cameron Stewart, a novelty item, and perhaps the first time this reptile has made it into the pond ...
So that's why the pond never bothered with this reptile. He's a nervous nellie, anxiously quoting some bloody useless socialist from Kenya ...
Being a flipper and a dobber, the pond is going to report him to Salvatore Barebones for being a complete wimp ...
Overplay its hand? A couple of hundred thousand dead should sort out the Palestinians and see them return to their open air prison and appreciate the benefits that apartheid offer ... a bit like the trade skills that slaves picked up in Florida back in the nineteenth century ...
The pond began to wonder if this Stewart was even a genuine reptile ...
What is this insanity? The pond prescribes a reading of Salvatore Barebones shouting Zionists 'r Us ...
... It is near-impossible for a committed Zionist to get on the academic ladder, never mind get an academic job.
Indeed, indeed, and who will stand up for the rights of Scientologists and Jehovah's Witnesses, and Thetans and a young earth, and dinosaurs mingling with mammals?
And with that, it's time for an infallible Pope to wrap up the day's proceedings, because there must be a few signs of hope ... uh oh, is there a dragon on the pond's couch?
Follow the influencer.
ReplyDeleteDame (please) Slap "janet-albrechtsen/trump-takes-on-the-experts-to-save-democracy"'s mate, Salvatore Barebones - "Lacking in sources and notes, he did not intend it to be an academic monograph but rather a political screed".
"Salvatore Babones (born October 5, 1969) is an American sociologist, and an associate professor at the University of Sydney.
"In 2018, Babones published The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts on Donald Trump and his administration.[9] Lacking in sources and notes, he did not intend it to be an academic monograph but rather a political screed.[10] Babones welcomed Trump's populist approach to governance as a dissent against the usual "tyranny of unelected authoritarian experts" in liberal democracies. Rejecting allegations of authoritarianism, he found Trump's administration effective and credited Trump with strengthening democratic ideals by returning power to the electorate.[10][11][9] On the overall, populism was a legitimate political position in liberal democracy.[12]
"Markus Heide of Uppsala Universityfound [clarification needed] Babones' "apolegetic approach" to ignore the anti-democratic rhetoric of Trump and his supporters.[12] Dan Glazebrook, reviewing for socialist newspaper The Morning Star, found the work to be an exercise in "Trumpian obfuscation".[13] However, the book was favorably received in conservative media: Janet Albrechtsen, reviewing for The Australian, commended Babones for an "overdue ... corrective about populism";[9] it went on to feature in the 'Best [Books] on Politics 2018' by the Wall Street Journal.[11]
"Babones has since held the January 6 United States Capitol attack to be a "mostly peaceful protest";[14] he argued that Joe Biden was still a bigger threat to democracy on account of being supported by the press.[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Babones
Reptiles Oz ...Albrechtsen, Janet (21 November 2018)."Trump takes on the experts to save democracy". The Australian.
PS. Salvatore's illegitimate brother's name, I heard, is Ray "Get Shorty" Babones.
:)³ For the record, here's Dame Slap on 21st November 2010, celebrating Barbones ...
DeleteA US academic published a little red book this month. Yawn. It’s about Donald Trump, populism and the threat of the new authoritarianism to our liberal democratic order. Cue eye roll.
Wait a second. This American academic says Trump is not a danger to democracy. In fact, social scientist Salvatore Babones suggests the populist US president is the unlikely hero who may help mend what is wrong with modern democracy.
It gets better. Babones teaches within the arts and social sciences faculty of the University of Sydney. And his book, The New Authoritarianism — Trump, Populism and the Tyranny of Experts is just what his academic colleagues should read.
Here is an overdue and rational corrective about populism and authoritarianism that challenges the Trump hatred so common among many Sydney University academics. For them, Trump-loathing is a default setting, along with loathing former prime minister Tony Abbott, which explains their frenzied opposition to a degree funded by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.
Babones publicly questions some of the nutty objections to the Ramsay offer and is becoming quite the campus iconoclast. The author and co-author of seven books and dozens of academic articles jotted down notes for his latest book while watching Trump’s inauguration. The result is a standout from what The New Yorker calls the growing “library of anxiety” about Trumpism.
While others drew crazy comparisons between Trump’s speech and Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies, Babones heard echoes of American populism. Whereas others described Trump’s populism as toxic, Babones mulled over the reality that “most ordinary Americans fail to see any inherent evil in the idea of an American president putting America first”.
Babones debunks the growing hysteria that Trump is an authoritarian threat to democracy. Given that “authoritarian” means a system of governance that demands deference to authority, the author asks those who call Trump an authoritarian to answer a simple question: “To what authority does Donald Trump defer?” Franco’s Spain demanded obedience to church, monarchy and military. Hitler and Stalin drew authority from their totalitarian political parties. Vladimir Putin’s authority rests on Russia’s security apparatus with a nod to the Orthodox Church. “The common thread (of authoritarianism) … is that people should not think for themselves,” writes Babones.
Dame Slap part 2:
DeleteTrump asked people to put faith in him, and him alone. He is a narcissist, to be sure. He is also a populist, says Babones, not unlike that early populist US president Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) who portrayed himself as a man of the people, attracted crowds at his inauguration that really were the largest ever recorded, rode his white horse to the White House, and made policy calls that endeared him to regular voters and enraged elites.
“Jacksonian Democracy” has become a byword for “government controlled by the people” — the same words Trump used at his inauguration.
Trump’s election hasn’t challenged the US courts, stymied congressional oversight or stopped the presses. All are still open for business. Some might say business is booming for those entrusted to check and balance presidential power.
Babones’ central thesis is that 21st century authoritarianism is not about Trump, it’s not even right-wing or nationalist or even conservative. The real threat to democracy comes from a form of liberal authoritarianism. “It is the tyranny of experts,” he writes.
His diagnosis of what ails modern US democracy is a warning shot for us. He starts with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: government “of the people, by the people, for the people”.
Babones interprets the celebrated three-part phrase to mean that all three political traditions must be in balance, in healthy tension. “Of the people” implies a classically conservative view of the people as a single society, not a collection of individuals and special interests; “by the people” evokes the historically liberal program of extending equal rights to all; and “for the people” alludes to devising programs for the people, the core of the progressive agenda.
Babones presents a sobering account of how the liberal part of the equation has thrown democracy out of kilter. “Political liberalism,” he writes, “has evolved over nearly three centuries from a philosophy of safeguarding freedoms into a philosophy of demanding rights.” He contrasts the First Amendment in the US Constitution, which records freedom of assembly, religion, speech and the press for Americans with Article 25 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which purports to grant myriad new rights to food, clothing, housing and so on.
This evolution from reserving freedoms to creating rights happened for sound reasons, but it begs a series of pertinent questions. Who gets to create rights? For whom are they created? How are new rights to be applied and interpreted? The new liberal project draws on a growing army of unelected experts to decide these matters.
Dame Slap part 3:
DeleteBabones says that while conservatives and progressives slug it out at elections across the Anglosphere, liberals don’t need to win elections to hold real power. Their political aims are implemented by a growing cadre of educated professionals, from academics, lawyers and judges to civil servants, social workers, doctors and lobbyists, in an expanding state with increasingly complex laws and regulations.
Drawing on experts is understandable. If you need brain surgery, you ask for brain surgeon. But politics is a unique field of human activity, says Babones. It draws on the consent from the people for its legitimacy.
Yet, from education curriculums set by bureaucrats and university policies that infringe on free speech to unlegislated climate change agreements to trade agreements drawn up behind closed doors, large swathes of public policy are influenced by unelected experts aligned with a new form of liberalism.
While others can debate whether this shift leads to good outcomes for people, Babones’s central point is harder to dispute: the transfer of power to a new and growing class of “liberal” experts entrusted to create and implement new rights is inherently undemocratic. Groomed for loyalty, this self-selecting expert class speaks with one voice. Ordinary people are discouraged from thinking for themselves.
Here, says Babones, is the new authoritarianism.
“The greatest spiritual danger facing 21st century democracy is that liberal intellectuals increasingly dismiss the moral right of less-educated people to have opinions that conflict with the consensus wisdom of the expert class,” he writes.
And populism is the last-gasp strategy to up-end this liberal authoritarianism. Populism forces lofty-minded experts to engage seriously with the mundane views of ordinary citizens. Brits caught the attention of experts with their decision to leave the EU, though the Remainers are trying desperately to quell the democratic Brexit rebellion. If the experts succeed, the new liberal authoritarianism will have rendered British democracy impotent.
Now for the truly scandalous conclusion to this little red book: Trump may be democracy’s saviour in this epic tale. His election remains the first serious challenge to a growing global consensus among “experts” on everything from immigration to trade and climate change. The least humble of politicians paid the most attention to ordinary people. And that explains election day 2016 when, as Babones writes: “(Hillary) Clinton’s basket of ‘deplorables’ looked the country’s liberals dead in the eye and said, ‘you’re fired’.”
Just for anyone wondering why the United States is in a mess, and in celebration of the small role Barebones and Dame Slap played celebrating the mess ...
Yes, I think I remember that, but wish I didn't. As, I sincerely hope, a 'deplorable' myself but of the inverse conviction, I can only wish that we 'liberal deplorables' could fire the Slappy.
DeleteSlap & Barbone blinker opener.
DeleteAnd "Just for anyone wondering why the United States is in a mess, and in celebration of the small role Barebones and Dame Slap played celebrating the mess ..."...
"... Between rampaging wildfires, a rise in political violence, and the public’s trust in government at record lows, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that America could go up in smoke".
...
"What matters most, the Complexity Science Hub’s study posits, is inequality and political polarization. Declining living standards tend to lead to dissatisfaction among the general population, while wealthy elites compete for prestigious positions. As pressures rise and society fractures, the government loses legitimacy, making it harder to address challenges collectively. “Inequality is one of history’s greatest villains,” said Daniel Hoyer, a co-author of the study and a historian who studies complex systems. “It really leads to and is at the heart of a lot of other issues.”
...
" Of course, there’s no guarantee that a better system will replace the vulnerable, unequal one after a collapse. “You still have to do the work of putting in the reforms, and having the support of those in power, to be able to actually set and reinforce these kinds of revisions,” Hoyer said. “So I would argue, if that’s the case, let’s just do that without the violence to begin with.”
https://grist.org/culture/climate-change-societal-collapse-explained/?
GINI Index for the United States
(SIPOVGINIUSA)
2021: 39.8 | Index |Annual | Updated: Sep 19, 2023
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA
USA Gini "In 2022, according to the Gini coefficient, household income distribution in the United States was 0.47. This figure was at 0.43 in 1990, which indicates an increase in income inequality in the U.S. over the past 30 years." Statistica
Exceptional + Inequality rising. What could go wrong?
Living as I do in the electorate that ranks amongst the very lowest in the country for formal education and (coincidentally?) for income - I would have to welcome Barbones' analysis. Voters here in Mar a No a have not been seduced in any way by parliamentary candidates with claims to be any kind of educated liberal expert in anything; the evidence stands up - occasionally - as D Littleproud. Barbones might even include the career of 'LittleJoh', as Tony Windsor used to call him, in the next revision of his great book.
Delete"...does reptile hypocrisy know no bounds?" Nope, never has, never will.
ReplyDeleteThis will be front page of The Oz, won't it? Prominent journal editor fired for endorsing satirical article about Israel-Hamas conflict
ReplyDelete:)³ Interesting story Joe, and lordy lordy a hot link too ... the pond doesn't anticipate seeing it in the lizard Oz before the twelfth of never ...
DeleteDame, teh Oz business model, LOGIC and..."If O analytically entails R and R commits us to a condemnation of its object, then O already commits us to this negative attitude. O* should then likewise commit us to a negative attitude towards its object." - The Oz in a nutshell. Note; if anyone can understand this at first reading - you wil get a big grant from Stanford. DP?
ReplyDeleteDiscuss.
"Thick Ethical Concepts"
...
"Atheists are likely to regard blasphemous and sinful as objectionable on similar grounds, and a laissez-faire capitalist who thinks that there is nothing bad about selfishness may well regard selfish as objectionable in its normal negative use. Whether one regards a concept as objectionable depends on whether the values the concept is associated with are ruled out by one’s own values; a concept is in fact objectionable if the values it embodies ought in fact to be rejected. Consider now inferences that are identical in form to Foot’s but deploy objectionable thick terms:
- O*: x is an overt sexual display
So,
- L: x is lewd
"If O analytically entails R and R commits us to a condemnation of its object, then O already commits us to this negative attitude. O* should then likewise commit us to a negative attitude towards its object. ... The point is clearer still if thick claims entail thinner claims to the effect that something is good or bad in a certain way.
x causes offense by indicating lack of respect.
- So, x is rude.
- So, x is bad in a certain way.
...
"... The idea is that evaluative terms can be distinguished in terms of which sort of meaning is less likely to change when speakers alter their usage of a term. If laissez-faire capitalists begin to use selfish positively, we are much more likely to still understand them than if they started using selfish to describe generous acts. We would be less likely to be accused of misusing kind and generous if we began to use them negatively to condemn bleeding hearts than if we started using them to describe cruel and selfish acts."
...
"... Any complete theory of normativity and value must therefore reckon somehow or other with the fundamental issues concerning thick concepts."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thick-ethical-concepts/
Refs for Dame Slap to study:
Bolinger, Renée Jorgensen, 2017, “The Pragmatics of Slurs”, Noûs, 51(3): 439–62. doi:10.1111/nous.12090
"TWO HONOR SLAPS AND SWORDS
Jerome Neu
Pages 33–56
December 2007
Abstract
"Insult may essentially involve a kind of shock, a disruption of expectations, a slap in the face. In honor one seeks to save face and social status may be preserved by social rules and rituals, such as dueling, [now dedine as Writing for newscorose] which may in turn raise problems of their own. Notions of competitive honor are entangled with images of masculinity." [Slap'd Dame]
https://academic.oup.com/book/12807/chapter-abstract/163001192?redirectedFrom=fulltext
"Picturing placelessness: Online graphic narratives and Australia’s refugee detention centres"
Aaron Humphrey https://www.academia.edu/32106093/Picturing_placelessness_Online_graphic_narratives_and_Australia_s_refugee_detention_centres
Aah, the unending bounty of Australia:
ReplyDeleteVegemite turns 100: how the spread changed the way Australia eats, from nostalgia to Noma
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/25/vegemite-100-years-anniversary-australia-national-treasure
"Born out of imitation in the 1920s, the pantry staple with a global reputation is also increasingly used in Australian professional kitchens"
Who would have thought what "spent brewer’s yeast from the nearby Carlton and United Breweries" could become.
Not a comment but a link to an article in 'The Extra', a free weekend paper centered in Albany. A photo caption worthy of a Sunday meditation. Hopefully the link shows page five, https://edition.albanyadvertiser.com.au/alx/Default.aspx
ReplyDeleteCheers.