Being the last bout of herpetology studies for some time, the pond wanted to go out with a bang, and for a moment was tempted to berate Joe Biden's Justice department for the wicked way it had treated the orange Jesus, but then Killer reported on a very strange result, smack dab in the top of the digital page, ma ...
Hunter guilty on all charges, just like the mango Mussolini? Something's deeply awry in Joe Biden's Justice Department ... and naturally Republicans push conspiracy theories after Hunter Biden verdict: ‘A fake trial’, Rightwing politicians repeat unfounded theories that gun trial verdict is a ‘distraction’ from worse Biden crimes (Beast update via Yahoo News, MAGA Nation Finds Reason to Be Furious Over Hunter Biden Conviction).
The pond was almost tempted to turn to Samuel Alito's Wife, Martha-Ann, Goes Full MAGA in Secret Recording, because SCOTUS is the court that keeps on giving...
But the pond had been watching Morning Joe, and they kept on talking about a WaPo piece by Eugene Robinson ... (paywall)
Robinson then went on with the shark story but he didn't actually do it in full.
The full version could be found in this transcript, available at a remarkable site dedicated to delivering transcripts ... the pond can't vouch for accuracy, but it seemed right enough (time codes removed):
The guy’s been doing it for 50 years. He sells hundreds of boats every couple of months. I mean, really fantastic guy. And they use the Mercury engines and different engines in the back, no problem. They want to take that out. They want to make it all electric. He said, “The problem is the boat is so heavy it can’t float.”
I said, “That sounds like a problem.”
He said, “Also, it can’t go fast because of the weight. And they want to now have a fifty-mile or a seventy-mile radius. You have to go out 70 miles before you can really start the boat up and you go out at two knots.” That’s essentially almost like two miles an hour.
Say, “How long does it take you to get out there?”
“Many hours, and then you’re allowed to go around for 10 minutes, but you have to come back because the batteries only last for a very short period of time.”
So I said, “Let me ask you a question.”
And he said, “Nobody ever asked this question, and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT,” very smart.
I say, “What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery’s underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?”
By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of shark… I watched some guys justifying it today. “Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was.” These people are crazy.
He said, “There’s no problem with sharks. They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now who really got decimated and other people too,” a lot of shark attacks.
So I said, “So there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, and water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?” Because I will tell you he didn’t know the answer.
He said, “Nobody’s ever asked me that question.”
I said, “I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.” But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark.
So we going to end that. We’re going to end it for boats. We’re going to end it for trucks...
As Robinson noted, behind it all there was a point to the weird shark obsession, even though it remained resolutely weird ...
Trump has told the electrocution-or-shark story at least once before, at a rally in Iowa last October. Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who received $130,000 in hush money to keep quiet about her sexual encounter with Trump — a payment that led to the former president’s conviction on 34 felony charges — has said that Trump is “obsessed with sharks, terrified of sharks.” Way back in 2013, he declared on Twitter: “Sharks are last on my list — other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!”
The White House press corps would be in wolf pack mode if Biden were in the middle of a speech and suddenly veered into gibberish about boats and sharks. There would be front-page stories questioning whether the president, at 81, was suffering from dementia; and the op-ed pages would be filled with thumb-suckers about whether Vice President Harris and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment. House Republicans would already have scheduled hearings on Biden’s mental condition and demanded he take a cognitive test.
The tendency with Trump, at 77, is to say he’s “just being Trump.” But he’s like this all the time.
Also during the Las Vegas speech, Trump tried to deny the allegation by one of his White House chiefs of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, that he refused in 2018 to visit an American military cemetery in France, saying it was filled with “suckers” and “losers.” Trump told the crowd on Sunday that “only a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person” would say such a thing while “I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery.”
But he wasn’t “standing there” with anybody. He never went to the cemetery.
Except in his mind, perhaps, which is a much bigger problem than Biden fumbling a name or garbling a sentence.
In a way, sharks are perfectly suited as a way to introduce the return to the climate wars down under, reignited by Punxsutawney Pete, which saw Lloydie of the Amazon at last return to lead the commentary section ...
Naturally the pond dropped everything to pay attention, especially as the stock photo snap evoked memories of little Timmie Bleagh carrying on about poley bears ...
The wars provoked lots of cartoon excitement, including the immortal Rowe, nuking the country ...
Speaking of targets ...
Keen students will have noted that Dame Groan was out and about this day, but on a matter of only parochial interest, and with coal offering no redemption ...but as it was the last herpetological study for awhile, the pond thought what the hell Archy, toujours groaning ...
In Britain, they at least managed to make a mini-series out of the Post Office saga ...
All this from a woman who did her best for "Lord" Monckton and climate science denialism ... and after that, try ‘Unprecedented scale’ of violations against children in Gaza, West Bank and Israel, UN report says, More ‘grave violations’ committed in occupied territories and Israel than anywhere else in world, report says
And that brings the pond's herpetology studies to a close, with this cartoon from the infallible Pope bringing together potatoes, targets and dogs, with the dog imitating a shark ...
Apparently it has failed to occur to Judith Sloan that one of the jobs of governments is to spend other people's money. That's what they do. Yet Sloan thinks spending money to reduce congestion on roads by removing railway level crossings or spending money on primary and secondary schools is "ill-considered infrastructure".
ReplyDeleteNo need to worry that the Opposition is going to the election offering nothing on reducing emissions except having nuclear zones in Nationals' electorates - perhaps the same electorates where gas fracking and wind turbines are opposed, because if you don't like turbines, you'll love a nuclear reactor. Of course, that's sometime in the future, after emissions have already created a tipping point for the planet. In the meantime, coal and gas emissions can continue unabated and be the Opposition's funders' golden goose.
It's good of Sloan to remind voters which party came up with the idea of Snowy II as a means of emissions reduction. Voters can expect the Opposition's latest nothing until the eleventh hour (then create nuclear zones) to be just as successful then?
Janet Albrechtsen whacks at every passing idea which any left-wing government has had to help people. Meanwhile, she has no criticism of the complete lack of any ideas from the Opposition to help people. As someone who is not practising as a lawyer currently, Albrechtsen's criticism of those who are actually practising law - and practising it at a far higher level than she ever achieved - hardly fits with her call for reality-based ideas.
Many things fail to occur to the Dames, but what a relief to have someone take up the tedious chore of pointing them out ...
DeleteBut t's not "other people's money", Anony, it was never theirs in the first place. It's truly funny how people think that something as variable and transient as money is somehow "theirs." Somehow people who live in and benefit from a society that is always paid for by "somebody else's money" someway entitles them to think that they can withhold their contribution because it's "their money".
DeleteBesides, as I've said before, if the whole human race just disappeared overnight leaving only Queensland - which thereby had nowhere to export coal to - then Queensland could keep "borrowing" money (from whom?) and going into more and more debt, forever. Whose "money" would it be then ?
Thank you Anonymous - this site can always benefit from cross-examination of either Dame. We did not have to guess that the ‘Contributing Economics Editor’ would frown (oh, wait, she seems to frown whenever she is in front of a camera - perhaps use ‘deprecate’) - so - that the C.E. E would deprecate the Queensland budget.
DeleteImagine - it gives back money to the citizens. How can that be ‘responsible’ budgeting. Our greatest treasurer, Peter - (oh, wait, we are 'down' on that Costello now - perhaps refer to) - in the time of John Howard, when the Commonwealth received dump trucks of revenue from minerals, that government, um - well, they did sprinkle assorted goodies on worthy taxpayers, but they weren’t short term - several linger on to this day. So there was none of that ‘irresponsibility’ our Dame finds so distressing - those goodies went to worthy citizens.
Queensland is ‘blessed’ with loads of coal. Only our Dame (never mind confusing the goose with the eggs it supposedly produced - did she not read that one to her daughters when they were little?) could claim that royalties of around 13% are onerous. The value of Queensland’s coal exports is $78 billion, from which royalties draw just over $10 billion. OK - that is, at last, positive royalty revenue from a resource that previous governments have practically given away, in the name of ‘development’. That goes back at least to the Joh period, and his deal with Utah.
Of course, a state with so much coal is ‘insane’ to even think about other ways to generate electricity. Take it as read that attempting to reduce emissions is ‘ridiculous’. This is the Flagship, after all.
Also - set aside the comment about governments spending other people’s money - just about all governments spend other people’s money, except In places like Nigeria and Myanmar, where very little money gets to ‘the people’ in the first place.
The Leader of Our Cult does, eventually, refer to Queensland ‘taxpayers’ funding projects. Her wording suggests that this is selective - to Townsville. Now, when the Dame mentions ‘taxpayers’ she means those who pay income tax. But a goodly slab of revenue to Queensland comes from GST. $17 billion, from all those one-tenths that everyone gets to pay on most of their goods, and many services, excepting what the legislation identifies as ‘financial’ services. The tax that the many, whose income doesn’t even stretch to an obligation for income tax, cannot avoid paying. But, clearly, in the Dame’s assessment, the bit over $3000 from each Queenslander should not be frittered away on anything of immediate benefit to them.
And fuel excise, Chad: most of us income-tax non-payers do pay significant fuel excise. Well at least those of us who haven't switched to EVs do.
DeleteAs always where do you start? Janet is a slow learner - even Greg the Craven had to admit that the Voice proposal did not confer rights to First Nations People, and Paul Kelly had to rephrase and refer to 'powers' (however vague those powers may be) - but Janet has a very thick head, not much penetrates. Janet seems to forget that the problems with the NDIS were well and truly embedded and known during 9 years of coalition government - at least Bill is trying to clean up the rorts while sustaining a better outcome for disabled Australians. Janet slagging off the High Court, the ICC and the ICJ is vaguely reminiscent of the Orange Jesus claiming the judge was corrupt immediately after a jury convicted him. Then Janet tells us there is room for certain idealism, but it has to pragmatic idealism - another way of saying idealism without ideals. I think I much prefer Ned with his limited aspirations. I mean, at least Ned is funny, if hopeless. Janet isn't even funny. I had a slight hope that the recent coming of Lachlan and Rebekah might purge us of this Janet, afterall, Janet is a woman, but clearly Rebekah sees no threat from such an airhead. So other more successful News Corp women may have been given the chop, but Janet is bestowed upon us for at least another term of corporate restructure. AG.
Delete"slow learner" AG ? More like 'glacial' I'd say. But really a non-learner I think - which applies to a lot of reptiles and wingnuts in general.
DeleteAs to the NDIS 'problems', well it's just one of those LNP things: if they ever lose government, which they do every now and then, then any issues, problems, failures that are still running immediately become an inheritance of Labor who therefore should have fixed them all up in the first few months of their reign - that's worked a treat so far.
Anyway: "idealism without ideals" ? Yeah, you said it. And we have to live it.
The Slap: "...entrench permanent constitutional rights for Indigenous people and forever hobble our governance...". Now is that a "big lie" or just one little lie (of which the reptiles tell many every day) that needs to chum up with other "little lies" to become an "obvious truth"?
ReplyDeleteWe really can't allow all those enormous solar farms to destroy our grazing land, can we ?
ReplyDeleteFarmers who graze sheep under solar panels say it improves productivity. So why don’t we do it more?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/13/farmers-who-graze-sheep-under-solar-panels-say-it-improves-productivity-so-why-dont-we-do-it-more
"By keeping the grass trimmed, which can otherwise pose a fire risk during dry summer months, sheep save the developer the cost of slashing it themselves."
Meanwhile, someone gets twitter gigantically wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe pushback to this tragic error will enter social media legend. The Talking Pikelet reaches out for love: https://x.com/rowandean/status/1800519317773308258
Via Collins - as one who wants to have nothing to do with 'X formerly whatever' (although I do miss Tony Windsor's great insights) I do thank you for this link. How desperate is the one I think of as the Chief Chucklehead, although that gives him status that is not demonstrated in any episode of their time on 'Sky'. There he, the fading ingenue Rita, and James with the 'you know' quotient now of the order of 200% (that is, several 'you knows' per sentence) simply talk over each other, in a way that 6-year-olds can be taught not to do, if only in the cause of clear communication.
DeleteAnd whaddaya reckon: Dean might get as many as 10 followers out of that ?
DeleteIt's a feat to the eye Chadders - Rita Panicky and Ralphy Babel have been attempting to endear themselves to the owner of Xitter for years now - haplessly tagging him in to every little brainfart they muster. I think it might have worked once for each of them.
DeleteImagine the shortness of breath when seeing that one of the creepiest men on earth had acknowledged their existence - oh the humanity!
But the Talking Pikelet has clearly been advised by he who pats the bills that his Xitter action is lacking, so out on the street he goes with a cap upturned - begging for something, from someone, anyone - PLLLEASSSEEE!