In which there's the bro, the Ughmann and "Ned's" latest tediously long natter ...

 

The venerable Meade as usual delivered the goods for aspirational herpetologists in yesterday's Weekly Beast,  Peta Credlin nominated for Kennedy award despite Uluru statement report failing factcheck. 

As well as that profound irony of petulant Peta being up for any kind of gong, there was another - the Kennedy awards were Named after the trailblazing indigenous journalist Les Kennedy, and initially conceived in 2011 to recognise excellence in journalism in the state of NSW, and now live without shame in a petulant Peta world...

Is there a grave handy, for the rolling over therein?

The venerable Meade also reminded the pond that the Murdochians were singularly good at one skill, or emotion ... hate, with a palpable flavouring of revenge ...

There was one editor-in-chief of the Australian who did not receive an invitation to the big bash hosted by Lachlan Murdoch and attended by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the governor general, Sam Mostyn.
David Armstrong, the long-serving editor-in-chief who preceded Mitchell, confirmed he had not received an invitation. So what did Armstrong do to be cast out of the club of former editors? Well he certainly was not sacked, but he did dare criticise the newspaper publicly.
In 2019 he posted on Facebook that he had cancelled his subscription to the Oz: “I thought, do I really need so many rightwing columnists in my life? I know I don’t have to read them all but if I subscribe, I have to pay for them.”
He followed that up by defending former reporter Louise Milligan when the Australian published an editorial attacking her and former ABC journalist Sally Neighbour. Armstrong, who had worked with Milligan, said he was “distressed” to read the editorial and the “heading and the final sentence are defamatory verbal abuse”. Oh and he donated to the Crikey defence fund when Lachlan Murdoch sued for defamation.

Either you're in the mob, or you're a heretic and an exile, and there was a terrific assembling of the mob this day in the lizard Oz ...

In the pond's usual perverse way, the pond is saving the best for its Sunday meditation ...there you'll find Polonius prattling away, and the Angelic one, and perhaps even Dame Slap ...

Today has a bit of a second eleven feel about it, what with "Ned's" natter right at the bottom, way below the raining golds ... while the bromancer kicks off proceedings with as good a bit of both siderist blather about the US as he can manage ...

Speaking of ghastly misrepresentation, the bromancer can play that game too ... but first to get all the interrupting, distracting snaps out of the way ...

Then it was on with the bromancer doing his own form of mud wrestling ...

The pond has always thought of the bromancer as a closet Trumpian, and there's a classic Trumpian lie, "legal from conception to birth." (And never mind the additional lie about the orange Jesus's position).

Harris has been deliberately moderate in her positioning, as reported in Politico on 29th July:

The Harris campaign told POLITICO the stance the vice president took in a September interview with “Face the Nation” hasn’t changed — support for restoring Roe, which protected abortion until the point of fetal viability, around 22 weeks of pregnancy.

“I am being precise. We need to put into law the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Harris said in that interview. “And that is about going back to where we were before the Dobbs decision.”

The details come as Harris finds her footing as a presidential candidate separate from Biden. While progressives hoped she would tack significantly to Biden’s left on an issue they see as pivotal to winning in November, the promise to restore Roe is the latest example of the more moderate path she is taking as likely presidential nominee compared with her platform when she first ran for the office in 2019.

Even as abortion-rights groups embrace her campaign and insist they aren’t surprised by her stance, they argue that restoring Roe has always been the floor and the onus is on activists to push for policies that allow abortions later in pregnancy — and a Congress willing to pass them.

But the bromancer has long had a taste for devious Trumpian misrepresentations, together with bald-faced lying (and as for the Vancian hirsute-faced lying, don't get the pond started).

The bromancer is dutifully pretending he's being balanced and statesmanlike, so the pond thought it might ginger up the yarn, add a little juice in the form of the Chauncy DeVega/Salon interview, Historian Timothy Ryback: "Hitler could only have dreamed" of Trump's fanatical support, Parallels between America in 2024 and Weimar Germany "astonish me," says eminent historian of the Nazi era

DeVega: What, if anything, about the conventional wisdom regarding the age of Trump and our current democracy crisis most troubles you as a historian? Does it leave you rolling your eyes?

Ryback:  spend more time rubbing my eyes than rolling them. The parallels between America and Weimar Germany astonish me. Legislative gridlock, political polarization, a deluge of incendiary news stories (some fake, some real), a proliferation of handguns. It’s like déja-vu all over again.

What troubles me most? The fact that Hitler and his National Socialists never received more than 37% of the national vote in a free and open election, and Trump is polling at around 50% or higher, according to some sources. These are percentages of popular support that Adolf Hitler could only have dreamed of achieving in a free and open election. The big question is how much Joe Biden’s historic decision and Kamala Harris’ historic candidacy will have on polling numbers and ultimately at the voting booth...

...While political contingency certainly precludes historical inevitability, it does not mean that there are not resonances, parallels and lessons to be taken from the past. Perhaps it is best to view them as warning signals. I think this is what we are seeing with the repeated comparisons between Hitler and Trump. There are, in fact, some rather disturbing rhymed couplets, if you will. Here are a few of the most striking...

Presidential elections: Hitler loses the spring 1932 presidential election by 6 million votes, then goes to court to have the results overturned amid claims of voter fraud and irregularities by state officials. Trump loses the 2020 U.S. presidential election by 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes (306 to 232), then goes to court amid claims voter fraud and irregularities by state officials to have the results overturned. In both instances, the cases were dismissed out of hand.

Trump’s 24-Hour Reich: Trump said he would be dictator for a day, while Hitler promised a thousand-year Reich. Whether we are talking about 24 hours or a millennium, it is as chilling a rhymed couplet of stated political intent as one could envision.

Political vengeance: Hitler vowed revenge on his political opponents, promising “heads will roll” as soon as he came to power. Remember the Night of the Long Knives? In June 2024, exactly 90 years to the month that Hitler had his key political opponents murdered, Trump vowed vengeance on his own political enemies with the phrase, “Haul out the Guillotine!”

Finally, in the run-up to the November 1932 Reichstag elections, Hitler urged his followers to rally, with the promise, “Es wird wild werden,” an almost too perfect rhyme with Trump’s call to his followers for Jan. 6, 2021, “Be there, will be wild!”

There's a lot more but there's nothing like a little breaking of Godwin's Law to add spice to the proceedings, as the mango Mussolini moved from deeply weird to deeply racist, and the bromancer into the deeply tedious, thereby avoiding a learned discussion of octaroons...

Salt Lake City? Don't get the pond started on Mormonism and underwear, or the approach that the CLDS took until quite recently in relation to black people, though apparently Harris isn't black because she's got a Jamaican dad rather than a black one ...

Is it too early for a cartoon reminder?

Never too early for a 'toon, as the pond presses on ...

Um, just like the bromancer tried to pin a radical abortion policy on her? Just as the bromancer lied about Harris allegedly ducking the conference?

Never mind, the pond is always relieved when some sign of sanity in the US is served up by the pond's logarithms, with Beau of the Fifth Column sometimes popping up on the Tube with a beguiling southern accent (and Miz Beau has a mighty appealing accent too).

It means the pond can get through the bromancer with ease ...

The pond can see what the bromancer is doing. In a most subtle way, he's trying to put lipstick on a pig, deploring a few pigly aspects, but celebrating what a little lipstick might do ... 

In short, deploring the Donald only so he can deplore Harris, apparently unaware that the Biden/Harris team had a big win in terms of publicity with that prisoner swap ... what with the pig claiming that Vlad the sociopath would only do it with him ...

Yes, the pond can see what the bromancer is doing ... it's what his kissing cousins at Faux Noise have been doing ever since Harris got the nod, and if not putting lipstick on a pig, then certainly putting paint on a train wreck, as illustrated by Luckovich ...

One more time with the Godwin's Law breaking, just to wash the taste of bromancer out of the mouth...

...To my eyes, these denials are willful attempts to avoid the ugliness of racial authoritarianism and fascism here in the U.S., as seen with Jim Crow apartheid, chattel slavery, the American Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, racial pogroms, the genocide against Indigenous peoples and so on.

Americans may exercise willful blindness to this “ugliness,” but Hitler did not. He looked to America as a source for some of his most toxic ideas. For a time, he had a portrait of Henry Ford hanging on his office wall and, in the foyer, translations of the Ford treatise, "The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem." In his private library, he had a copy of Madison Grant’s racist treatise, "The Passing of the Great Race." Hitler allegedly called it his Bible. Hitler’s original copy is in the rare book collection, along with 1,200 of his other books, at the Library of Congress. 

And what about that internet "rule" which holds that whoever brings up the Nazis first automatically loses the argument? How has such denialism limited the American people’s ability to understand the extreme danger they are facing?

If memory serves, Time magazine considered featuring Hitler as its “Person of the Century” back in 1999 but opted for Einstein. Hitler haunted the second half of the 20h century. He continues to stalk the public consciousness today. As “silly” as that "law" may be, Hitler remains the ultimate go-to example for vilifying an opponent. As you will recall, JD Vance, back in 2016, called Trump “America’s Hitler.” As far I know, he did not mean it as a compliment. But if Trump is indeed America’s Hitler, what does that make JD Vance, now that he is Trump’s running mate? Possibly Joseph Goebbels, the Hitler disciple who vowed that once he and Hitler were in office "they will have to drag us out as corpses” — which was, in fact, the case in the spring of 1945.

And now the pond makes no explanation or apology for offering up an indignant Ughmann going full outraged, shocked Xian yet again ... 

He's there, and the pond must do it because he's there ...

There were a couple of snaps to help explain the Ughmann's Xian rage, though strangely they noted that the ceremony - which the pond deliberately missed - featured Dionysus, surely a big plus for Ergas devotees ...

The pond proposes it could have been worse. The Ughmann is well behind the times, and he could have devoted his time to doing a Rowling form of malignant, malicious transphobia in relation to Olympic boxers. Thank the long absent lord the pond doesn't have to go there...

Could the pond provide a gossipy answer to that question. Why in the long absent god's name, it's all about Her taste for queeness.

Found here...

The Last Supper owes some of its creation to a sodomy charge against Da Vinci.

Most scholars believe that da Vinci was a homosexual due to his penchant for surrounding himself with young men, though some believe he was bisexual. Sigmund Freud even published an essay in 1910 that came to the conclusion that he was gay, but sublimated all his sexual urges into art and research. Whatever the case may have been, he seems to have enjoyed the occasional liaisons with men and he was publicly accused of sodomy in 1476. Though the charges were dropped, the case nonetheless scared the artist – sodomy was punishable by death in Renaissance Florence – and he quickly fled Florence for Milan. While there he worked for the ruling Sforza family as an engineer, painter, party planner, and sculptor.

His masterpiece in Milan should have been the largest equestrian statue ever made, in honor of the Duke, Francesco Sforza. But true to form, he only got as far as creating a 24-foot clay model before a series of wars saw the bronze he had been allocated used for cannon balls by the Milanese and the model used for target practice by invading French soldiers. Luckily, he did finish arguably the world’s most famous fresco: the Last Supper. Located on a cafeteria wall of the Dominican convent attached to the beautiful Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, the fresco was deemed an instant masterpiece but it was also fraught with problems. The foremost of which was that da Vinci’s remarkably slow process meant a normal quick-drying fresco technique (in which paint is applied to plaster that is still wet) simply would not work. Instead, the ever-experimental artists developed a new fresco technique in which he painted directly onto a dry wall.

Bloody gays, always trying to get into the act and claim credit. If only they'd listened to the Ughmann, because it's all about perspective ...

Now there's a genuine insight, what with the Ughmann apparently having lost his mind long ago, or at least lost his nerve and forced to leave the cloisters ...

Never mind, this is the last gobbet of wailing to the heavens about Western Civilisation ...

Don't worry about that last link. It leads to the hysterical bromancer having a nervous breakdown, already covered in the pond, and there's a lesson in that. You're never allowed to leave the hive mind, you're always stuck with a reptile. 

On any other planet, you might have been referred to the Milan museum that houses the painting ... but the reptiles aren't interested in wandering wild and free, they're shackled to the Murdochian machine, always desperate for shekels ... you can book into that hotel, but you can never leave.

And so to "Ned", and again the pond makes no apology or explanation, or perhaps just one. 

In the usual way, "Ned" has sat down with a politician, transcribed his thoughts, and then dressed them up as a "Ned" column ... and between the pair of them, do they go on and on, or what?

This day's bunny is the SA Premier, and the pond knows it has at least one crow eater reader, and so the pond will head south west to discover the latest news on why eastern staters are completely clueless ...

The pond never said it would be easy, it's an interminable head scratcher, as that snap suggests, but after the intro, it's on with the scratching, and whether it's lice or fleas, who can say ...

Funny, only the other day, the pond's logarithms turned up a video about Don Dunstan's grand dreaming for Monarto, done back in the day when the pond resided in Adelaide ...

Make of that what you will, all the pond can remember is Don in his PJs ... so here are a few snaps to replace that vision ...

Sorry, that doesn't get rid of the vision ...

... nor the memory of the night that Dunstan explained to the pond at length his Monarto dream and the virtues of SABCO ... (who knew a Premier cared so much about mops? Or AUKUS?)

Sorry, all that's an aside for aged croweaters.. back to AUKUS and the new dreaming, and yes, you too, eastern staters, you can be part of the dreaming ...

As soon as a politician says "Let's be frank about things", the pond realises that Frank has left the room, and all that's left is "Ned" diligently transcribing and then dressing it all up in column form ...

The pond is glad someone "gets" the AUKUS project, because the pond will be long gone from this planet before the country gets the first bit of kit, and by then, it might well be as useful as the remnants of the Russian fleet holed up on the wrong side of the Black Sea ... but what would the pond know?

Perhaps the pond had been reading too much Quiggin ... The case for AUKUS falls apart. (links by following the link) ...

../Here’s a story from 2020 on underwater drones, specifically contrasting them with the Virginia class submarines central to AUKUS. The RAN already has its own drones on order and is confident of their ability to make life very difficult for hostile submarines. This material isn’t hard to find - it was old news when I tweeted about it last year.

As for the UK, the fact that it is a declining force, irrelevant to our region, has been obvious for a long time, though apparently not to everyone. But if you read this response (ignore the headline and read the text) from Labour leader Keir Starmer, it’s obvious that AUKUS will be at the bottom of UK priorities once the Tories are out of office. Albanese was apparently more impressed by Rishi Sunak.

As for cutting NDIS, or some similarly important domestic program, it’s a matter of simple arithmetic. Labor came into office with a commitment to delivering a big tax cut to well-off households, while reducing a large deficit. Add in a gigantic weapons program and the implications are inescapable.

If the MSM had made some of these points a few months ago, we might have seen a more cautious approach from the Albanese government. As it is, they’ve made AUKUS their own, and will have to live with the consequences.

Sorry, back to the dreaming ...

Ah, that would explain his deeply aware thoughts, written up by croweater Penbo in the lizard Oz on 9th May 2024 ... (no link, it's the lizard Oz) ...

That was then, back to "Ned", in now SA time, which means only a half hour lag ...

It would be remiss of the pond not to include the rest of that Penbo piece, explaining why we needed to gas the country to save the planet, even though it makes the "Ned" piece unendurably long ...

And then there was just one short gobbet of "Ned" transcribing Pete to go, with a little daunting on offer, though the pond has always thought a mop could take care of most problems ...

Uh huh, yeh, and when in Monarto, make sure to visit the zoo ... on the basis that if you can't have a grand new city with 500k of people in it, you can always have a zoo full of creatures ...

And so to end with the immortal Rowe celebrating the Olympics ...