In which there's nothing new, just the floodwaters in quarries whisperer and the Major squatting on his far right perch ...

 

Just for variation, the pond skipped straight to the heart of reptile devilry, the comments section below the fold. 

The pond suspected that a wily old bird would be in his usual position, perched at the far right of the digital edition, and there'd be time enough for that torture ...

Sure enough there was the usual range of options. The pond enjoyed simplistic Simon's novel and revealing headline, "Things should be worse for Albanese". 

Indeed, and things should be worse for simple Simon - is he still hanging around with Bid to help with his sense of balance? 

Then there was Peggy, a special import, to announce that universities were into self-harm, as opposed to the harm being done to them by the likes of Ron DeSanctus (anyone want a New College?), Faux Noise, the WSJ, and Peggy herself, she being one of the Emeritus Chairman's minions in yet another culture war ...

The reptiles wheeled in another simpleton Simon, and the pond wondered, in its usual delusional way, if it ever might see a reptile headline, "Why eliminating Benjamin Netanyahu offers best chance at peace in Mid-East". Of course some might take this as a plea for assassination, a tactic favoured by fundamentalist Jews, but actually a stint in jail for corruption would do the trick ...

Never mind, it was all a dance around the point, because of course the pond was going to go on the usual Caterist renewables bashing trek ...

The pond was surprised that the Caterist and all the other reptiles hadn't caught up with the news from the deep north, though plenty of others were reporting on it ...

What with the Caterist being such an expert in the movement of floodwaters in quarries, the best floodwater whisperer in the land, you'd think he might have noticed ...

But it seems that these days any stories of natural catastrophes and disasters are seamlessly erased from the reptile record ... so that the Caterist can keep on publishing dirges for dinkum, clean, virginal, innocent Oz coal ...

At this point in the dirge the usual distracting snaps began and as usual the pond got them all out of the  way ...

Also at this point, the pond wondered if nuking the country would turn up ... mindful of a comment in the pond's comments section ...

"It's no surprise that the far-right supports nuclear power (if only because the 'green left' opposes it). But in Australia, support for nuclear power is increasingly marginalised to the far-right. Indeed support for nuclear power has become a sign of tribal loyalty: you support nuclear power (and coal) or you're a cultural Marxist, and you oppose renewables and climate change action or you're a cultural Marxist."

The pond is rarely given to quoting FOE stories, but it was a fun read - all those costs - and there was a handy link to an ancient Quiggins piece back in 2018 ...

...In summary, even on magical assumptions it would be impossible to get nuclear power going in Australia before 2040, by which time we would already have had to close most of the coal-fired generation fleet. It follows that the only effect of nuclear advocacy is to prolong the life of coal-fired power to the limits of technological feasibility.

In practice, support for nuclear power in Australia is support for coal. Tony Abbott understands this. It’s a pity that Ben Heard and others don’t.

The pond needn't have worried. This time the Caterist has gone sotto voce on nuking the country, content instead to do his usual nuking of renewables ...

Back in the day of course talk of cultural Marxism would have thought to have been anti-semitic ...

The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents the Frankfurt School as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity politics, and political correctness. The conspiracy theory posits that there is an ongoing and intentional academic and intellectual effort to subvert Western society via a planned culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and seeks to replace them with culturally liberal values. (wiki)

Sadly the Caterist seems to have lost his mojo, and remains blithely unaware of the increasing costs of natural disasters, occurring with some degree of regularity in country ...

Never mind, there'll be plenty of time to celebrate the work of the Caterist and his kind ...

In all this, there's an incredible skill, an ability to forget the past, or better still, rewrite it, so that no one will recall that Snowy 2.0 was a grand coalition idea, a way of avoiding the unhappy embrace of renewables ... 

Why even that beefy boofhead with an office in Goulburn was reported back in 2018 as offering in principle support ...

Taylor said the Snowy’s place in Australia’s energy mix would become more important as intermittent generation became more a feature of the electricity system, because the scheme “has unrivalled capacity to store power when it is not needed, and generate it when it is needed”.

Oh it was glorious hi-vis days ...

Never mind, if you ignore something, it doesn't exist and never happened - anything to avoid renewables - and that applies to those floods in Queensland, because they didn't score a mention at the top of the digital page of the lizard Oz, as expected ...

Instead, as promised, there was the wily old bird in his favourite far right perch, promising "home truths", which is a bit like a home search for missing Order of Lenin medals ...

It is of course nothing to do with political and media honesty. The Major couldn't walk a crooked mile with a crooked sixpence without distorting matters ...

It is an epic attempt at distraction ... but that's always been the way with reptiles when it comes to Islamophobia ...

Will the Major mention the war in Iraq? Will the Major mention Syria? Heck, will the Major show any any awareness of the current crisis, with mass starvation a new variation of ancient ethnic cleansing tricks ... (here)

Why are they resorting to drone footage? Well news is a little hard to come across at the moment, here, live, so it'll slip down the page:

Meanwhile, without any sense of irony (the pond long ago gave up on Major Mitchell self-awareness), the parrot blithely cries for modernisation ...

It's a tad hard to modernise when you're living in a gulag, open air prison if you will, ducking bombs. Getting bombed back to the stone age is hardly an incentive to move into the bronze age ...

At this point the reptiles began the usual array of snaps ...

Then it was on with the Major making meaningless comparisons ...

The pond can't remember that level of meaningless body counting since the glory days of 'Nam. But if we must do a body count, how about this one ...

The pond wishes it hadn't been distracted by all the body counting, and the mindless ethnic cleansing, because it had wanted to link to a Politico interview with Masha Gessen ...

They had escaped the New Yorker ghetto to discuss the recent fuss they'd caused ...

Well yes, the Major is living proof that we're not any better or smarter or morally more solid than people who lived 90 years ago ...

The Major is just your one eyed average basher of anything Islamic, and never you mind those wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which shall not be mentioned under any circumstances, nor the role of the British empire in creating the unholy mess in what they call the middle east, as a way of defining the racism involved in calling other locations the far east ... when all they meant was that it was far from Londinium ...

Note the glib way that the Major manages to slip in "Of course Palestinian lives matter", when clearly they don't ...

The pond decided a few more gobbets from Gessen would be more interesting ...

Ah yes, that's what's known as Peggy Noonan syndrome ... do go on ...

Ah, we're back where we started, with Peggy Noonan syndrome and New College and the Major busy finding excuses for, and distractions, from mass displacement, mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and slaughter on the killing fields ...

That final gobbet is just weird, even by the Major's ability to sound exceptionally weird. Who'd want a gig in Syria, where the chances of dying are high?

Who'd want a gig in Gaza? Has the Major been doing any reading of late?

And here ...

A mass blackout and a mass attack on the media while the killing on the killing fields go on ...

Meanwhile, another war has slipped from view, as Vlad the sociopath calmly waits the return of the mango Mussolini and his minions ...

If only this could be the proper version ....