Thursday is always a grum day because petulant Peta stalks the lizard Oz pages, and the presence of the bromancer in the top, far right, much desired, much fought over perch in the digital edition brought little comfort ...
First a minor note ..."support drops for renewables", tossed away beneath talk of a mine, and placed besides that "move over boys" yarn worshipping the filthy rich ...
As usual, it began with a snap of Satanic mills ...
There were a few more pars, but there was nothing about the methodology, the size or nature of the polling, or anything else that might be construed as useful in interpreting this casting of the runes ... so it's only real purpose was to create a bit of filler before the pond could run a cartoon ...
And so to the trouble with the bro ...
It's not just the pond that's been noticing the weirdness in the bro, which has translated into a general tone of weirdness in the rag.
There was this note in Crikey's media notes ...(paywall)
In short, the bro has become a comical figure, fit for laughs and a small amused toss away note, and this day's outing provides no relief ... as he pleads for the country to go full Houthi...
Gone are the glory days of the bro joining Boris in celebrating Brexit; gone are the carefree exuberant days when the bro could sit down with the coalition and plan wild spending sprees on subs or whatever other expensive form of kit took his fancy ... (except tanks, what with tanks never being used in land warfare these days, as demonstrated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine).
Now the bro finds himself pointing out that all his former glory days talk of subs and nuking the country to save the country was just a kind of cargo cult ...
(Bear that image in mind, it'll come in handy)
What's more, when he gets on to his young days as a tyke or waxing lyrical about Billy Joel, the bromancer can go on forever.
Given the task of sorting out defence and acting in his role of Reichsmarschall des GroßdOzchen Reiches, he's only worth a couple of gobbets.
That's because he's turned into a one trick pony, always whining and moaning, and being exceptionally tedious ... and because deep down, he knows if the mango Mussolini gets in, there'll be a new era for sociopaths of the Vlad the impaler kind, and average common or garden dictators and authoritarians in the Viktor Orbán way ...
And so the Bro is reduced to plan B, go full Houthi, and when away from the Swifties and the tykes, even his Wodehouse-inspired stylings fall away.
Back in the old days he would have ended with a strong thrust: "Biden's defence policy is nutty. Ours is even nuttier".
These days he can't even shout "nuts" at the clouds.
What use is the old warrior when even the infallible Pope can be more adept?
It's always in the detail, and such lovely details ...
And so to the rest of the day's offerings ...
Naturally the pond had to go with Killer, if only because Killer attempted to troll by suggesting he'd vote for the orange Jesus ... when everyone knows he's more a mask-fearing, mask-avoiding, vax hesitant RFK Jr sort of dude ...
Still the pond is always up for a Killer trolling, pretending that nothing would go wrong with a dose of mango coloured madness ...
No need to show off the mango madness in his pseudo-Hitler pose, instead the pond will cut straight to the Killer troll ...
In this "pox on both their houses" routine, naturally Killer leaves out the fate of Ukraine at the hands of a sociopathic war monger and sundry other matters, and just to make the work seem more significant and filling - call it the lizard Oz photo porridge principle - the reptiles inserted huge snaps ...
Stripped of the snaps, all Killer could do was trot out three relatively short and pathetic gobbets ... revealing that he simply can't let go of his Covid fixation or the fun he had during the killing fields days ...
The orange Jesus could, of course, cut off all Ukraine funding, and
promised a tinpot dictator he would ... (in fact, thanks to the GOP it's already happening, with the US scrambling about to find a little loose change)
And so on and on, but of course that's all just grist to the Killer mill ... because apparently the orange Jesus simply isn't enough of a far right loon for Killer ...
But if the orange Jesus fails Killer's test, who would he favour?
You guessed it, that mention of Kennedy's assassination, and the conspiracies attached thereto, was a cue for a mention of Killer's real, much ignored or maligned favourite ... anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. ...
Has the pond built up a herd immunity to this form of Killer trolling, or do the reptiles right at the moment have a problem with confused and conflicting messages?
Take this offering from the rustic one - take it as far away as you like and treat it as you will ...
After Killer's assurances that nothing would change and everything would stay the same, suddenly the rustic one was getting his knickers in a knot and shouting at clouds ... suffused by fear that the orange Jesus would take control and all might be lost ...
At this point, in an attempt to introduce a sense of gravitas and history, the reptiles began to roll out assorted images designed to remind the pond of the old joke
Lloyd George Knew My Father ...
With the snaps cut down to size, again all was left was a very small portion of fear-mongering and paranoia in the rustic manner ...
And there's your reptile mixed messaging problem in a bromancer nuttiness jar. The bumbling boy from the bush in warrior mode is a weird sight to see ...
One moment the bromancer's in turmoil, the next minute Killer's saying there's nothing to see here, though we should be hearing from RFK Jr, see, and then the rustic one is erupting over the kind of talk a vulnerable country shouldn't be hearing from the orange Jesus ...
Who knows what the average lizard Oz reader makes of it all? But then who knows why anyone would pay for this peculiar brand of angertainment ... with the once much-loved subs now just a form of SloMo liar from the Shire cargo cultism ...
Actually after the Battle of Britain, plucky little England woke up in time to call on the United States, and got an even bigger break when dopey old Adolf decided to conduct a war on many fronts ...
The rustic one is so wretched he can't even conjure up the bromancer's Houthi solution as a way of tackling dictator Xi ...
Talk about a bunch of impotent eunuchs in the wannabe emperor's palace.
Never mind, these days it's all just spacing and filler until the pond can get to the concluding 'toon ...
Once again it's all in the detail. As Colbert is fond of saying, "whale" ...
Geoff Chambers: "Public sentiment about the shift to renewable energy has plunged, with only 53 per cent feeling positive about the transition, down from a high of 70 per cent in August 2022." So, if you don't know, vote No ? Deja vu all over again ?
ReplyDeleteAlways the question.
DeleteThe Transition NOT renewables.
Wicked interpreation.
And rust-ic John Anderson! He provides the lede under the headline on the bottles of Oz Koolaid;
"Leaders lead, whether or not there is a constituency"
The Bro: "Drones could give us the potential to hurt powerful adversary navies. We apparently have no interest in this." Powerful adversary navies ? Yeah, whose ? Not Malaysia or the Phillippines or Thailand or Myanmar or even mighty Indonesia ? Japan ? South Korea ? Maybe the combined navies of NATO ?
ReplyDeleteIt couldn't just be the Chinese could it ? And where would we site all these drones if it's the Chinese ? Distributed evenly all around the Australia (not counting Tasmania) coastline ? Really, wouldn't the Chinese prefer to send their massive invasion fleet (complete with all those tanks and a million or two soldiers) to New Zealand which it could pick off pretty easily ? Then they could in turn pick us off bit by bit over the next decade or three.
And we still won't have an AUKUS sub by then, and even if we did, where would we berth it ?
Oh my:
DeleteUkraine has sunk a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet
https://jabberwocking.com/ukraine-has-sunk-a-third-of-russias-black-sea-fleet/
But Ukraine has no navy at all (hint !) so it's all done by:
"The victories have been all the more surprising because Ukraine does not have a traditional navy or a fleet of warships. Instead, Ukraine has used sea drones and missiles to attack Russian ships."
And Russia even has nuclear weapons and nuclear submarines !
The Bro clearly has not checked in with Coalition Central, to ensure that his ‘facts’ align with theirs (at least for this week).
ReplyDeleteHe says it takes the US 8 years to build a nuclear submarine - something at which they have a lot of experience, perhaps back to the time of USS Scorpion.
By contrast, last night the ‘presenters’ on Sky - Bovverer, Woman from Wycheproof, Blot, Sophie Ellsworth - would have had little to say if it were not for interview t’other night, on ABC, of Ted O’Brien on the Coalition’s energy policy. ABC interviewer had the temerity to, well - question the worthy Shadow Person on what he was saying. Which is how I came to know that he assured watchers that the world’s best experts (not otherwise unidentified, as far as I could determine) were saying that Small Modular Reactors could be in place in ‘3 to 5 years’.
I had thought they were going to drop reference to SMRs, because, as Ms Henderson reminded Ted - there aren’t any, and none of the likely suppliers is offering any kind of delivery time.
Thus Ms Henderson became the target - fancy questioning anything a Shadow Person wanted to say. Where did she think she was - on Sky, ADH?
That still leaves the Bro at odds with this week’s Coalition (will it gradually become the Nukualition?) timeline for SMRs. No doubt someone within the reptile network has brought that to his attention.
No, no: 3 to 5 years is right, Chad; it's just that they mean 3 to 5 years after the first working SMR design is operating, and then after the factories have been built to manufacture the 'modules' and the construction team have learned how to assemble them.
DeleteOr maybe they just left a few zeros off and they really meant '30 to 50 years'.
Still, GB - you must admit that the artist’s impressions are gorgeous.
DeleteGB - I thought '30 to 50 years' was the development time for routine fusion generators - which, as the man once said, would deliver electric power so cheaply that the power companies wouldn't bother to meter it. I shall wait for Ted O'Brien to move on to fusion. I'm sure he has it somewhere in his policy statement.
DeleteOh yes, good point Chad; fusion it will have to be.
DeleteThe doubling-up curse - experts otherwise unidentified. Another matter on which Ms Henderson queried O'Brien, but seems he did not offer names, or other identifiers.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am here - how good is David Pope? Surely some organisation advocating for the mental health of the nation will nominate him as a National Treasure
And - further correction, with apology in several directions - Sarah Ferguson is on ABC. Ms Henderson used to be on ABC, is now a Liberal Senator, was one of the further interviewees from Sky yesterday. (What was that about staff at ABC all being lefties?)
ReplyDeleteMemo to self - leave the keyboard alone until you have finished your coffee.
Heh. Since I have to go out for my coffee (what ? learn to make a large soy late at my age ?) I'm always clear eyed and bushy tailed for my Pond time.
DeleteOk, KillerC: "For all the talk of 'draing the swamp, Trump didn't abolish a single federal agency." Now one might have thought that by now, KillerC would have understood the modus operandi of one such as Trump: most of his dedicated 'followers' pay no attention whatsoever to actual reality; all they're interested in is what he says. So he says "I will build a fence and make Mexico pay" and nothing further need to be done, it is already a fait accompli. The average citizen of a modern democracy pays basically no attention to what is actually happening unless things really, truly go bad. Then their response is just to vote for somebody else and let the circus go merrily around for one more time.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's how we got 9 years of LNP (Abbott, Turnbull, Morison). I'm still not sure what was seen to be so very bad that Morrison had to go even if it meant voting for those Green-Left-wokies (and 'teals').
Anderson has no shame was a partner in the crime of invading Iraq and the death of thousands of innocent people who did no harm to Australia. So we do not need to lectured by war criminal.
ReplyDeleteYes, but it’s always entertaining to see such a display of hypocrisy, fellow-Anon. It’s particularly hilarious to see Anderson, who spent a couple of decades as a mediocre National Party drone, trying to reinvent himself as some sort of conservative thought-leader. If his show is “Australia’s pre-eminent sociopolitical podcast”, I shudder to think what rounds out the remainder of the top Ten.
DeleteOh gosh:
ReplyDeleteTennis anyone? Bad news for skiers as snow season could shrink by 78% this century
https://theconversation.com/tennis-anyone-bad-news-for-skiers-as-snow-season-could-shrink-by-78-this-century-225581
Fell off my chair laughing with the line - Trump is more likely to pick/appoint judges who believe in the constitution
ReplyDeleteOn the SCOTUS not barring Trump under the 14th amandment, see https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/03/06/the-constitution-turned-upside-down/
Delete" the brazenness with which the majority exercised its power to reach a decision in flagrant contradiction of the Constitution’s plain meaning has deeper significance. It offers final proof, if any more were needed, that textualism and originalism, the doctrines on which conservatives have long based their judicial philosophy, are nothing but instruments of right-wing activism to produce prearranged outcomes. "
"Final proof", Joe. Final proof is whatever the reptiles and wingnuts say it is whenever they choose to say it.
DeleteNice to see that various media outlets - well, at least Crikey and the Graudian’s “Weekly Beast” - are finally recognising that the Bromancer is deeply weird. I assume that until recently they’ve never actually read any of his work.
ReplyDelete