In which the pond tries a positive reptile experiment and pays the petulant price, plus the bro and mein Gott and Dame Slap ...
For all the pond tries - tri anti wonti - the pond can't get excited about the alterations to the tax cuts.
Apparently those on lower incomes will get more and rich bastards will get less, and that news has sent the reptiles into a right royal frenzy ... with the digital edition full of suppurating horror and fierce indignation ...
There was simple Simon - here no conflict of interest - perched on the far right, howling into the void and leading the pack of fear-mongering reptiles ....
It was the same in the comments section down below ... with much gravity, as tiresome Tom talked of doom ...
The pond could only offer a couple of cartoons to the grieving, wailing reptile horde ...
The reptiles were so distracted no one paused to note another reptile story, posed beneath a disturbing, terrifying snap of those satanic windmills ...
Meanwhile, Albo had decided that the ABC needed an arrogant narcissist who'd been hanging around for some time with nothing to do (the pond speaks from painful personal experience).
Naturally Dame Slap had some words of advice ...
The pond is always delighted at the way that the activist reptiles expect the ABC to just lie back and take it, but sadly the ABC manages that feat with some skill ...
...The ABC’s social media policy is designed to dissuade its presenters and staff from posting privately at all, although it claims that it neither encourages nor discourages that. The fact that the ABC has closed almost all its official social media accounts tells us how cowed it has become by the decade of Coalition/Murdoch-led torment it has endured. It runs scared now, by default.
The rules tell presenters to treat their private posts as if they’re speaking for the ABC. In practice, if a post attracts criticism, the ABC has been increasingly willing to throw its people under a bus.
Lattouf’s case exemplifies the problem: before she was hired, she had been posting very stridently about Israel’s actions in Gaza. So she was given the ridiculous injunction that, during the week she would be on air, she must not post on anything controversial. What does that mean? Nobody could pretend to know. But the subtext was obvious: Lattouf, and specifically Lattouf, was not allowed to talk about Israel.
When she did repost HRW’s report, which the ABC had already published as news, that breached her terms of engagement, not because it was inherently or obviously controversial (objectively, it could not have been), but because she had been warned off the subject matter entirely.
If she was terminated, then the legal question is why. Was it, as the ABC originally argued, because she was told “don’t do X” and she did X? Or was it because she had been placed in a special box of impossibility, to exist in which she was obliged to sacrifice fundamental human rights enjoyed by her peers?
If Lattouf was not an outspoken woman of Lebanese ethnicity who had not hidden her opinions on what Israel is doing, would she have been so pre-emptively constrained? Having published a post that didn’t express an opinion at all but simply reported what a leading human rights organisation had claimed, would she have been summarily silenced?
An organisation in touch with its own values would know the answers to these questions. The ABC, it is painfully clear, has no idea. Its staff has declared zero confidence in the managing director. It’s spinning in the void.
Back to the thuggee, busy with the cowing, and the making of the cardigan wearers run scared, a never-ending reptile task ...
It says everything you need to know about Dame Slap that she thinks getting agitated about the murder of thousands of civilians, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, starvation, disease, etc, is merely a "colourful" flashpoint ...
Luckily the rest of the cowing, and the herding of the cardigan-wearing sheep, and the getting of them running scared was short ...
It's a lie of course ... the reptiles don't wish the ABC well ...they just want to go on kicking and hitting the piñata so that their own peculiar brand of angertainment has a place in the sun ...
And speaking of angertainment, at that point the pond decided on a bold experiment, because petulant Peta has returned from her ABC hours style holydays, and in her own words promised "a true celebration of the positive."
The pond knows this will agitate some, what with petulant Peta having been effectively banned from the pond by public demand, but the pond wanted to know if the undiluted, raging bigot could manage anything positive ...
In the immortal words of Dirty Harry, the pond's gots to know ... proving yet again that the pond is a mug punter who will fall for any reptile claptrap ...
Cultural Marxist claptrap? Well it's alliterative, but the pond suspects this bigot doesn't have the first clue what it means and would never resort to the wiki on cultural Marxism, what with wikis being a gigantic conspiracy doing immense damage to Florida ...
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.
Although similarities with the Nazi propaganda term "Cultural Bolshevism" have been noted, the contemporary conspiracy theory originated in the United States during the 1990s. Originally found only on the far-right political fringe, the term began to enter mainstream discourse in the 2010s and is now found globally.The conspiracy theory of a Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media, and white supremacist terrorists, and has been described as "a foundational element of the alt-right worldview". Scholarly analysis of the conspiracy theory has concluded that it has no basis in fact.
But it reminded the pond of an ideal reptile way for petulant Peta to celebrate impending Oz day ... with some black bashing ...long a favourite Oz pastime ...
Indeed, indeed, they were great days ...
Sorry, the pond couldn't resist remembering the good times ...
Phew, did no one ever explain to petulant Peta the art of the paragraph? Perhaps not needed when in full rant mode, and what a ripper way to end that almost endless ranting paragraph.
Yes, the closer was talk of good old politically correct virtue-signalling, and it turns out that - as the pond had been warned by everyone - the bigot was incapable of a single positive note, just a prolonged whine, petulance carried to the extreme ...
Well the pond was now steeped so far in the petulant carry on that it might as well finish the job ...
"A true celebration of the positive"?
Pass the nausea pills, and it'll be a long time before the pond is tempted to break its vow again ...
Meanwhile, the bromancer has been out and about celebrating the mango Mussolini's victory.
The difficulty here is to appear disinterested, while secretly yearning for a strong leader, as Catholics loyal to General Franco are wont to yearn ...
Note the skilled way that the bromancer involes Winnie. No Ron DeSanctus goose step for him and note the skill of his both siderism ...
You see? It turns out that the mango Mussolini is the least worst and has great strengths, even if there are great weaknesses that might need a little glossing ...
Here the reptiles interrupted with snaps and the pond as usual got them out of the way ...
Then it was back to the bro celebrating the right-thinking wannabe authoritarian dictator ...
Indeed, indeed. Perhaps for once the bromancer and the mango Mussolini are right.
Letting bloody furriners in has long been a problem in the United States, what with other countries exporting the worst of the worst, and not just the illegals. Somehow thousands of legal immigrants have been allowed to pollute American blut ...
Then it was a just a short romp to the end, with the bromancer trying the old ploy of a pox on both their houses, but hey, in a pinch a dictator will do the job ...
Could it happen there? Well it's been there before, and even though this is just chapter one, a promo, it provides some fascinating images ...
The pond threw that in because, mein Gott, it has a special mango Mussolini bonus ...
There's a kicker coming, but the pond is still sad at the way the reptiles have downplayed our latest export, and it turns out instead of sending the worst of the liverwurst, we're sending the US the best of the best ...
Now, mein Gott, it's time for those policies ... and what great news they are ...
Mein Gott, there's a kicker coming, and the pond will note it, but in the meantime, best be philosophical ....
Now, mein Gott, it's back to celebrating those polices, we're only half way through the top ten ...
Ah yes, tranny bashing, that's the way to sort out everything, though the pond is disappointed that there's no sign of a nation-wide ban on any book that mentions sex...
Perhaps that was a condom too far for a man accustomed to being whacked on the bum by a porn star wielding a magazine, perhaps that's too much to expect.
Mein Gott, how the time has flown, and this is the last gobbet, and here comes that kicker ...
And there's the kicker: "Many Australian will want Australia to follow the rump in some policies ..."
Translation: "Many reptiles can't wait for a authoritarian fascist and wannabe dicator to seize power and fellow travel with the rest of the authoritarian dictators that run the show in various parts of the world... and the sooner Captain Spud is put in charge so that climate science denialism and tranny bashing can flourish, the sooner the country will be on the right footing".
And so to end with the immortal Rowe, back where the pond started, a manly man with just a few nicks from the old reptile cut throat blade ...
"colourful" flashpoint. A unique search term DP. Keep using it please.
THIS is a real colourful flashpoint. Dame Slap's version is to wage war in attacks on walls of the house of culture.
"f. Direction of Assault Technique of Direct Fire Planning and Control. In this technique, building numbers are assigned in a consistent pattern in relation to the direction of assault. In the example shown in Figure 6-13, the buildings are numbered consecutively, in a counterclockwise manner. Further, the sides of the buildings are color-coded consistently throughout the objective area (WHITE--direction of assault side; GREEN--right side; BLACK--rear side; RED--left side; BLUE--roof). An odd-shaped building is also shown. Note that a "four-sided" concept was retained to minimize confusion. Further designations of WHITE 1, WHITE 2, WHITE 3, and so on from left to right can be added to specify which wall will be engaged. Apertures on the buildings are also labeled consecutively using rows and columns, as shown. In the example, "OBJ 4, WHITE, window A1" is the lower left-hand window on the direction of assault side of OBJ 4. All designations are labeled in relation to the direction of assault. (See FM 34-130 for additional information on building shapes and structural labeling.) https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-21-9/chap6.htm
Add "colourful" flashpoint fearure to your HBS Battletech game. https://flashpoint.fandom.com/wiki/Tactical_Colour_coding
A fine entry in the Patronising Stakes today from Dame Slap. It’s the closing “Oh dear” that really tops it off. The Dame, of course, has no evident skills or expertise in overnighting a major broadcasting organisation.Sure,, she may have spent a period on the ABC Board but I don’t know if her input ever amounted to anything more than regular potshots at her favourite ABC targets. I’m sure the minutes of her actual contributions at Board meetings would make fascinating reading.
Come to think of it, did we ever discover the reasons for the Dame’s apparent departure from her former oversight position with the IPA? I don’t believe there was ever any formal announcement, and the whole affair seemed extremely murky.
That reference to flags by Credlin was particularly interesting given how the onion muncher surrounded himself with flags. She fails to mention the current Australian flag favours those of British ancestry with its reference to our position as an outpost of Britain with its monarch as our leader, rather than acknowledging the contribution of other immigrants and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Peoples to the nation, so perhaps the current flag only represents some of us.
Steve Smith has now supported Pat Cummins to change the date of Australia Day, so looking forward to Dutton calling on Australians to boycott the cricket. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-24/steve-smith-pat-cummins-australia-day-change-the-date/103385786
A political party which stood behind derogatory sexist signs denigrating a female PM certainly had let itself down.
DP. For your professional development - and subversive cartoons for subversive reptiles.
"The political cartoon is the art form of our deeply troubled world; a chimera of journalism, art, and satire that is elemental to political speech. Cartoons don’t tell secrets or move markets, yet as Cherian George and Sonny Liew show in “Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship,” cartoonists have been harassed, sued, fired, jailed, attacked, and assassinated for their work." https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/an-illustrated-guide-to-post-orwellian-censorship/
Consider the pond developed Anon, that's a good link. It'd have been great if they'd done Florida as well as China and Turkey :) but maybe another day.
Rather bold stuff for a prof at a Hong Kong university to be talking Orwell to dictators, and it was a good idea to join forces with a cartoonist and illustrator...
The besotted Bro pretends to be on the fence about Trump but his truth is hidden in plain sight...as modern pundits say. Apologies to Deniece Williams and her songwriters.
Let's Hear It For The Bro!
Bromancer just won't commit He won't come out and say But he loves him, loves him, loves him We know that he loves Trump anyway
And we know his acting shy Is just a thin disguise 'Cause every time he gets in gear You hear the Donald cheer
Let's hear it for the Bro Let's give the Bro a hand Let's hear it for my patsy My wish is his command
I'm his New York Romeo And he's my little Oz bozo Oh - oh - oh - oh! Let's hear it for the Bro
The Bro lays it on so rich His technique is so sublime Yes he loves me, loves me, loves me He does it for me every time
And maybe this sounds off-key But that's alright by me yeah 'Cause what he does he does so well But I won't kiss and tell!
:), the Bro probably thinks of the Donald as a soul mate ...
I went to Trump’s rally on Saturday night in Manchester, where he didn’t address the Haley-Pelosi mix-up but assured his supporters that he “took a cognitive test” and “I aced it.” He has previously boasted of his ability to identify an image of a “whale” on said assessment, but, as The Post’s Ashley Parker and Dan Diamond pointed out, there is no such marine mammal on any version of the test. (Maybe he was being “sarcastic” about the whale, too.)
But I listened carefully to Trump that night — no easy feat because he went on for 100 minutes — and noticed that, even though his text was fed to him through a teleprompter, he told many of the same stories over and over again, repeating some lines almost word for word in the same speech, with no apparent awareness that he had done so.
Unlike so much of what Trump does, his memory lapses aren’t disqualifying — only hypocritical. Trump routinely calls President Biden, 81, “cognitively impaired,” but the 77-year-old Trump seems also to have lost a step. He mangles names and words — a visiting foreign dignitary becomes a “foreign dignity” — and occasionally just talks nonsense.
Many in the news media don’t make much of this; while they focus on Biden’s mental acuity, in Trump’s case they rightly focus more on his authoritarian outbursts and gratuitous racism. Last week, for example, he bastardized Haley’s Indian name and falsely suggested she’s disqualified from the presidency because her parents weren’t citizens... ...
he’s still saying and doing the sort of things that, had Biden done them, Republicans would cry: dementia!
“Each drug dealer kills on average 500 people during his or her lifetime,” he informed his audience early in his speech.
“Each dealer is responsible for the deaths during their lives of over 500 people or more,” he informed them late in his speech.
He told them early in the speech about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell, right, where the 51 intelligence agents said, oh, no, it was from Russia.”
He told them late in the speech that “Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell was Russian disinformation,” according to “51 intelligence agents.”
During the Trump presidency, he declared, “Hamas, Hezbollah, they didn’t have any money because Iran had no money to give them.”
Later, he announced: “Iran was broke under President Trump. They didn’t have the money to fund Hamas, Hezbollah.”
Near the top of his speech he vowed to end “Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate,” because the vehicles “don’t go far. That’s true: They don’t go far.”
Near the bottom of the speech, he complained that “we are a nation whose leaders are demanding all-electric cars, despite the fact that they don’t go far.”
Some stories were so good he told them three times.
“We’ll end up in a world war because of this guy,” he said of Biden.
Later: “We have the serious danger of going into a World War III.”
Still later: “We’re going to end up in World War III with this guy running.”
This was somewhat of an improvement for Trump, who in September warned an audience that, under Biden, we will soon be “in World War II.”
Trump similarly told and retold a tale about Biden’s competence. “He’s a threat to democracy,” Trump said, for “a couple of reasons. But, you know, the first reason why, he’s grossly incompetent.”
“He’s a threat to democracy,” Trump repeated later.
And again, still later: “Joe Biden is a threat to democracy for a number of reasons,” primarily because “he’s grossly incompetent.”
Sounds as though somebody needs a nap.
And it wasn’t just one off night. At a rally the next night, Trump mispronounced the name of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), his devoted ally who had just come to campaign for him in New Hampshire. He mentioned the name of a pollster — his pollster — Tony Fabrizio, with an Italian accent, then asked, “Is he a relation to Al Capone?” The following night, he served up this puzzler: “We are an institute and a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”
It’s perhaps easy to lose all this in the grotesque carnival that is a Trump rally.
There’s the abuse offered by Trump, his warm-up acts and his supporters whose shouted epithets get woven into the performance: CNN’s Anderson Cooper is a “pervert.” Nikki Haley is a “birdbrain,” a “globalist fool” and “Hillary Haley” backed by “radical left communists.” Ron DeSantis got “a new pair of high heels.”
There are the gratuitous, extravagant lies. There were but 4,500 souls in the arena, which has a maximum capacity of 12,000, but Trump told them they “set every record” for attendance. Turnout in the Iowa Republican caucuses was only 15 percent, the lowest in years, but one lawmaker Trump called onstage announced that Iowa just voted in “record numbers.” Trump falsely complained that the state’s anti-Trump Republican governor, Chris Sununu, “allows Democrats to vote in the Republican primary” to help Haley; state law has long allowed independents (not Democrats) to vote in either primary.
There are the barely veiled appeals to white nationalism. A video played on the big screen before Trump takes the stage had the tagline: “Make America Great For Us Again.” Of his political opponents, Trump told the crowd: “This nation does not belong to them. This nation belongs to you. This is your home. This is your heritage.”
Above all there was his apocalyptic description of America, now recited over orchestral music. Trump told his followers: “We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 50 years, where banks are collapsing. … We are a Third World nation. … Fake news is all you get, and they are indeed the enemy of the people. … We are a nation that, in many ways has become a joke. … We are a nation whose economy is collapsing into a cesspool of ruin, whose supply chain is broken, whose stores are not stocked.”
The Bro can truthfully say that "Trump is a temperamentally unstable, pathological liar." but it only means that the Bro, and all of Trump's followers, love him the more and want him to be President for life.
The Bromancer and Gott Im Himmel appear fairly sanguine about the prospect of another Trump Presidency, evidently they find the thought of a “strongman”, albeit one with tiny hands, comforting.
What struck me, was that this had been commissioned and animated at cost by the “In the Pink” Financial Times. Maybe the markets don’t see Trump’s market isolationist policy as good for their business.
Ah, but isn't it interesting that with Ms Atwood, the first "freedom" we get is "freedom of religion"; which is really "freedom to believe irretrievable nonsense and to impose it on others". And isn't that exactly what Trump is promising: total freedom to believe his irretrievable nonsense ?
So, Credlin has been given space. Picking up the reference to the film, there's a cautionary from a review of Dirty Harry in The Guardian: "Siegel silently conveys Nietzsche’s enduring adage about how those who tangle with monsters are destined to become one." I really prefer to have nothing to do with Peta.
The pond has been tangling with reptiles for well over a decade, and never bothers to look at the picture it keeps in the closet, but likely it makes Dorian Gray look angelic ...
What struck me, was that this had been commissioned and animated at cost by the “In the Pink” Financial Times. Maybe the markets don’t see Trump’s market isolationist policy as good for their business.
A mite concerned that the ABC was "non-existent on serious issues on The Voice to Parliament" - really Slappy? I wonder why the ABC could have failed in that area. Have you checked in with Cindy? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/04/jacinta-price-declined-52-abc-interview-requests-voice-referendum#:~:text=Jacinta%20Price%20declined%2052%20ABC%20interview%20requests%20to%20discuss%20Indigenous%20voice%20referendum,-This%20article%20is&text=High%2Dprofile%20no%20campaigner%20Jacinta,referendum%20coverage%20review%20committee%20report
Poor pet! I can well imagine, given the quality of men that inhabit her working life, the sight of a well-rounded, very successful, and hugely well thought of young man must drive her to distraction. He really has triggered the News Ltd life and cricket writers beyond distraction hasn't he?
“My personal opinion is I absolutely love Australia. It's the best country in the world by a mile and I think we should have an Australia Day but I think we can probably find a more appropriate date to celebrate it.”
Yes, haul him off to the gallows - have you heard such treason before???
"colourful" flashpoint. A unique search term DP. Keep using it please.
ReplyDeleteTHIS is a real colourful flashpoint. Dame Slap's version is to wage war in attacks on walls of the house of culture.
"f. Direction of Assault Technique of Direct Fire Planning and Control. In this technique, building numbers are assigned in a consistent pattern in relation to the direction of assault. In the example shown in Figure 6-13, the buildings are numbered consecutively, in a counterclockwise manner. Further, the sides of the buildings are color-coded consistently throughout the objective area (WHITE--direction of assault side; GREEN--right side; BLACK--rear side; RED--left side; BLUE--roof). An odd-shaped building is also shown. Note that a "four-sided" concept was retained to minimize confusion. Further designations of WHITE 1, WHITE 2, WHITE 3, and so on from left to right can be added to specify which wall will be engaged. Apertures on the buildings are also labeled consecutively using rows and columns, as shown. In the example, "OBJ 4, WHITE, window A1" is the lower left-hand window on the direction of assault side of OBJ 4. All designations are labeled in relation to the direction of assault. (See FM 34-130 for additional information on building shapes and structural labeling.)
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-21-9/chap6.htm
Add "colourful" flashpoint fearure to your HBS Battletech game.
https://flashpoint.fandom.com/wiki/Tactical_Colour_coding
A fine entry in the Patronising Stakes today from Dame Slap. It’s the closing “Oh dear” that really tops it off. The Dame, of course, has no evident skills or expertise in overnighting a major broadcasting organisation.Sure,, she may have spent a period on the ABC Board but I don’t know if her input ever amounted to anything more than regular potshots at her favourite ABC targets. I’m sure the minutes of her actual contributions at Board meetings would make fascinating reading.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, did we ever discover the reasons for the Dame’s apparent departure from her former oversight position with the IPA? I don’t believe there was ever any formal announcement, and the whole affair seemed extremely murky.
Oh dear.
That reference to flags by Credlin was particularly interesting given how the onion muncher surrounded himself with flags. She fails to mention the current Australian flag favours those of British ancestry with its reference to our position as an outpost of Britain with its monarch as our leader, rather than acknowledging the contribution of other immigrants and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Peoples to the nation, so perhaps the current flag only represents some of us.
ReplyDeleteSteve Smith has now supported Pat Cummins to change the date of Australia Day, so looking forward to Dutton calling on Australians to boycott the cricket.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-24/steve-smith-pat-cummins-australia-day-change-the-date/103385786
A political party which stood behind derogatory sexist signs denigrating a female PM certainly had let itself down.
Okay Bro, I’ll bite - just what was the “clear criminality” that was revealed by Hunter’s bloody laptop?
ReplyDeleteThe Bro. could also show us an acceptable chain of custody - couldn't he?
DeleteDP. For your professional development - and subversive cartoons for subversive reptiles.
ReplyDelete"The political cartoon is the art form of our deeply troubled world; a chimera of journalism, art, and satire that is elemental to political speech. Cartoons don’t tell secrets or move markets, yet as Cherian George and Sonny Liew show in “Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship,” cartoonists have been harassed, sued, fired, jailed, attacked, and assassinated for their work."
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/an-illustrated-guide-to-post-orwellian-censorship/
Consider the pond developed Anon, that's a good link. It'd have been great if they'd done Florida as well as China and Turkey :) but maybe another day.
DeleteRather bold stuff for a prof at a Hong Kong university to be talking Orwell to dictators, and it was a good idea to join forces with a cartoonist and illustrator...
The besotted Bro pretends to be on the fence about Trump but his truth is hidden in plain sight...as modern pundits say. Apologies to Deniece Williams and her songwriters.
ReplyDeleteLet's Hear It For The Bro!
Bromancer just won't commit
He won't come out and say
But he loves him, loves him, loves him
We know that he loves Trump anyway
And we know his acting shy
Is just a thin disguise
'Cause every time he gets in gear
You hear the Donald cheer
Let's hear it for the Bro
Let's give the Bro a hand
Let's hear it for my patsy
My wish is his command
I'm his New York Romeo
And he's my little Oz bozo
Oh - oh - oh - oh!
Let's hear it for the Bro
The Bro lays it on so rich
His technique is so sublime
Yes he loves me, loves me, loves me
He does it for me every time
And maybe this sounds off-key
But that's alright by me yeah
'Cause what he does he does so well
But I won't kiss and tell!
Let's hear it for the Bro...
:), the Bro probably thinks of the Donald as a soul mate ...
DeleteI went to Trump’s rally on Saturday night in Manchester, where he didn’t address the Haley-Pelosi mix-up but assured his supporters that he “took a cognitive test” and “I aced it.” He has previously boasted of his ability to identify an image of a “whale” on said assessment, but, as The Post’s Ashley Parker and Dan Diamond pointed out, there is no such marine mammal on any version of the test. (Maybe he was being “sarcastic” about the whale, too.)
But I listened carefully to Trump that night — no easy feat because he went on for 100 minutes — and noticed that, even though his text was fed to him through a teleprompter, he told many of the same stories over and over again, repeating some lines almost word for word in the same speech, with no apparent awareness that he had done so.
Unlike so much of what Trump does, his memory lapses aren’t disqualifying — only hypocritical. Trump routinely calls President Biden, 81, “cognitively impaired,” but the 77-year-old Trump seems also to have lost a step. He mangles names and words — a visiting foreign dignitary becomes a “foreign dignity” — and occasionally just talks nonsense.
Many in the news media don’t make much of this; while they focus on Biden’s mental acuity, in Trump’s case they rightly focus more on his authoritarian outbursts and gratuitous racism. Last week, for example, he bastardized Haley’s Indian name and falsely suggested she’s disqualified from the presidency because her parents weren’t citizens...
...
he’s still saying and doing the sort of things that, had Biden done them, Republicans would cry: dementia!
“Each drug dealer kills on average 500 people during his or her lifetime,” he informed his audience early in his speech.
“Each dealer is responsible for the deaths during their lives of over 500 people or more,” he informed them late in his speech.
He told them early in the speech about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell, right, where the 51 intelligence agents said, oh, no, it was from Russia.”
He told them late in the speech that “Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell was Russian disinformation,” according to “51 intelligence agents.”
During the Trump presidency, he declared, “Hamas, Hezbollah, they didn’t have any money because Iran had no money to give them.”
Later, he announced: “Iran was broke under President Trump. They didn’t have the money to fund Hamas, Hezbollah.”
DeleteNear the top of his speech he vowed to end “Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate,” because the vehicles “don’t go far. That’s true: They don’t go far.”
Near the bottom of the speech, he complained that “we are a nation whose leaders are demanding all-electric cars, despite the fact that they don’t go far.”
Some stories were so good he told them three times.
“We’ll end up in a world war because of this guy,” he said of Biden.
Later: “We have the serious danger of going into a World War III.”
Still later: “We’re going to end up in World War III with this guy running.”
This was somewhat of an improvement for Trump, who in September warned an audience that, under Biden, we will soon be “in World War II.”
Trump similarly told and retold a tale about Biden’s competence. “He’s a threat to democracy,” Trump said, for “a couple of reasons. But, you know, the first reason why, he’s grossly incompetent.”
“He’s a threat to democracy,” Trump repeated later.
And again, still later: “Joe Biden is a threat to democracy for a number of reasons,” primarily because “he’s grossly incompetent.”
Sounds as though somebody needs a nap.
And it wasn’t just one off night. At a rally the next night, Trump mispronounced the name of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), his devoted ally who had just come to campaign for him in New Hampshire. He mentioned the name of a pollster — his pollster — Tony Fabrizio, with an Italian accent, then asked, “Is he a relation to Al Capone?” The following night, he served up this puzzler: “We are an institute and a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”
It’s perhaps easy to lose all this in the grotesque carnival that is a Trump rally.
There’s the abuse offered by Trump, his warm-up acts and his supporters whose shouted epithets get woven into the performance: CNN’s Anderson Cooper is a “pervert.” Nikki Haley is a “birdbrain,” a “globalist fool” and “Hillary Haley” backed by “radical left communists.” Ron DeSantis got “a new pair of high heels.”
There are the gratuitous, extravagant lies. There were but 4,500 souls in the arena, which has a maximum capacity of 12,000, but Trump told them they “set every record” for attendance. Turnout in the Iowa Republican caucuses was only 15 percent, the lowest in years, but one lawmaker Trump called onstage announced that Iowa just voted in “record numbers.” Trump falsely complained that the state’s anti-Trump Republican governor, Chris Sununu, “allows Democrats to vote in the Republican primary” to help Haley; state law has long allowed independents (not Democrats) to vote in either primary.
There are the barely veiled appeals to white nationalism. A video played on the big screen before Trump takes the stage had the tagline: “Make America Great For Us Again.” Of his political opponents, Trump told the crowd: “This nation does not belong to them. This nation belongs to you. This is your home. This is your heritage.”
Above all there was his apocalyptic description of America, now recited over orchestral music. Trump told his followers: “We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 50 years, where banks are collapsing. … We are a Third World nation. … Fake news is all you get, and they are indeed the enemy of the people. … We are a nation that, in many ways has become a joke. … We are a nation whose economy is collapsing into a cesspool of ruin, whose supply chain is broken, whose stores are not stocked.”
Etc.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/23/new-hampshire-primary-2024-scene-trump-phillips-haley/
The Bro can truthfully say that "Trump is a temperamentally unstable, pathological liar." but it only means that the Bro, and all of Trump's followers, love him the more and want him to be President for life.
DeleteAnd thanks for the intro to Deniece Williams, Kez. One more that I won't have to confess that I've never heard, or heard of.
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Cheers DP and GB. I think that was her only hit GB. I remember my daughters singing it incessantly at the time.
DeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteThe Bromancer and Gott Im Himmel appear fairly sanguine about the prospect of another Trump Presidency, evidently they find the thought of a “strongman”, albeit one with tiny hands, comforting.
Margaret Atwood however would seem to disagree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFkxJSCzjcw
Interesting link DW though the pond preferred the monologue to the FT animation.
DeleteHi DP,
DeleteWhat struck me, was that this had been commissioned and animated at cost by the “In the Pink” Financial Times. Maybe the markets don’t see Trump’s market isolationist policy as good for their business.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-rise-sparks-isolationist-worries-among-us-allies-americans-focus-home-2024-01-17/
Ah, but isn't it interesting that with Ms Atwood, the first "freedom" we get is "freedom of religion"; which is really "freedom to believe irretrievable nonsense and to impose it on others". And isn't that exactly what Trump is promising: total freedom to believe his irretrievable nonsense ?
DeletePerhaps the Bro sees Trump as a replacement Pell-figure in his life?
ReplyDeleteSo, Credlin has been given space. Picking up the reference to the film, there's a cautionary from a review of Dirty Harry in The Guardian: "Siegel silently conveys Nietzsche’s enduring adage about how those who tangle with monsters are destined to become one." I really prefer to have nothing to do with Peta.
ReplyDeleteThe pond has been tangling with reptiles for well over a decade, and never bothers to look at the picture it keeps in the closet, but likely it makes Dorian Gray look angelic ...
DeleteHi DP,
DeleteWhat struck me, was that this had been commissioned and animated at cost by the “In the Pink” Financial Times. Maybe the markets don’t see Trump’s market isolationist policy as good for their business.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-rise-sparks-isolationist-worries-among-us-allies-americans-focus-home-2024-01-17/
Wrong Place
DeleteOh Slappy!
ReplyDeleteA mite concerned that the ABC was "non-existent on serious issues on The Voice to Parliament" - really Slappy? I wonder why the ABC could have failed in that area. Have you checked in with Cindy? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/04/jacinta-price-declined-52-abc-interview-requests-voice-referendum#:~:text=Jacinta%20Price%20declined%2052%20ABC%20interview%20requests%20to%20discuss%20Indigenous%20voice%20referendum,-This%20article%20is&text=High%2Dprofile%20no%20campaigner%20Jacinta,referendum%20coverage%20review%20committee%20report
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ReplyDeletePoor pet! I can well imagine, given the quality of men that inhabit her working life, the sight of a well-rounded, very successful, and hugely well thought of young man must drive her to distraction. He really has triggered the News Ltd life and cricket writers beyond distraction hasn't he?
ReplyDelete“My personal opinion is I absolutely love Australia. It's the best country in the world by a mile and I think we should have an Australia Day but I think we can probably find a more appropriate date to celebrate it.”
Yes, haul him off to the gallows - have you heard such treason before???
But, BG, butt, for true patriots isn't every day 'Australia Day' ? Don't we all salute the flag on every single day of our lives ?
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