In which the Major goes entertainment value and the Caterist goes desiccated coconut ...

 

As an esteemed correspondent noted, the mango Mussolini is allegedly cavorting with Laura the deeply weird Loomy, and if Bill Maher says it, it allegedly must be true, or surely a court action will follow for the entertainment of all ...

That's why the reptiles are struggling at the moment ... the entertainment, the sociopaths conducting genocides, the sociopaths indulging in war under a special operations name, are abroad and the local scene is extremely dull, and the digital edition of the lizard Oz shows it ...

Talk about parish pump politics, but it explains why the Major felt the need to get out and about, travel abroad, forget berating the ABC for once, and do a bit of sane-washing - as the fashionable term goes - for the Donald and JD, though no amount of sane-washing can sort out the deep weirdness of JD ...(if the Politico paywall bothers you, try incognito).

Major Mitchell scribbles this opening line about bubbles from within his very own bubble, and then it's on with the sane-washing and the both siderism ...as if there's any way to explain the "eating the pets" meme outside bigotry, profound racism, a lack of care for others, and by trotting out relevant memes...

Best to slip in a little insanity before the Major's sane-washing makes the pond think the insanity should be taken seriously ...

Never mind that they were and are deplorable, and that the Major is also a deplorable. 

There's a festering level of fascism abroad in the United States at the moment that evokes memories of Father Coughlin in his hey day ... and some of this can be attributed to the barking mad behaviour of the Major's US kissing cousins at Faux Noise, always on the hunt for the most deplorable angle they can find.

The reptiles provided the Major with a couple of passingly normal snaps ...

But when you look at the stories coming out at the moment (Yahoo version), it's all beyond the valley of the deeply showbiz weird kind...

Meanwhile, the Major was intent on pretending all this was normal and that some had got the mango Mussolini wrong, while running through some standard far right memes ...

Ah, Faux Noise, of course, of course ...

But is there anything that wrong in suggesting that the mango Mussolini is in an advanced state of decline and brings out a blizzard of memes as he descends into a frothing, flailing maelstrom of his own making?

That's why it's hard to take the Major seriously. It's all show biz ... and the man is worried about his crowd sizes and his ratings, and why wouldn't he be ...

The Major does his level best to find firmer ground ...

Strange the Major should rely on the NY Times poll, when subsequent polls have slightly leaned the other way, and the only truth about US polling is that none of it can be trusted, but when you're a Major mounting a desperate defence of a mountebank, a charlatan, any poll port in a storm ...

And so to the last gobbet of sane-washing, and the pretence that this is somehow normal politics, as opposed to Liz Truss posing as a lettuce ...

How weird is the Major himself? Anyone citing Glenn Greenwald is surely living on another planet ...

And so the Major holds out hope that Faux Noise and their deplorables will save the day for the king of the deplorables, and that entertainment and cartoonists will be given refuge for the next four years, and the immortal Rowe will have the mango Mussolini as grist for his mill ...

So many details, and while some might prefer the mob on the far right, for once the pond preferred those clustered on the left ...

As for the Major's thinking, it's a cunning ploy ... give the man a final season, even if he's overstayed his welcome, the jokes are repetitive and dull, the windmills and Hannibal seen better days, the senility showing, like The Simpsons after season 12 (and never mind the 23 they've ploughed through since).

Speaking of parish pump, the pond hesitated to finish the day off with a serve of Caterism. The poor lad has gone provincial dullard, abandoned the glories of climate science denialism, and come up with an exceptionally tedious piece ...

Parish pump politics and even worse Queensland ... and even worse apparently the Caterist was unaware that the bribery has been mutual, with this story showing both are in on the act ... Queensland government and LNP promise to make 50 cent public transport fares permanent.

The opposition has matched the commitment, telling media the LNP has its own plan to improve the state's public transport offerings. 

The pond likes the idea ... one of the chief glories of a visit to Melbourne is the chance to hoon around the CBD on a tram for free ... 

Back in the day the pond would have spent the entire day on its favourite form of transport ...and there's an argument that recouping the costs of public transport via fares is a clumsy mechanism at best ... you know, academics asking All aboard! Should public transport be free for everyone?

Inter alia:

“Every member of the public should be able to use public transport regardless of their means. Nobody should be excluded because it is simply too expensive or because they have a pet,” Dr Harris says.

“Even if it’s not entirely fare-free, making public transport fares much more affordable would still improve the liveability of our cities for people and help them run more smoothly.”

But of course the Caterist is so dry he's determined to make desiccated coconut feel like a water-laden swamp ... and then came the visual distractions ...

Meanwhile the desiccated coconut was on the case ...

Presumably there are some forms of fiscal incontinence the Caterist still favours ... how else to be able to afford to have idle time to be able to comment on assorted fads of voodoo economics?

It's a pond oldie but an eternal grant goodie ... though these days the poor lad is just a fellow, a chap on the gravy train ...

Still he was in on the grant glory days and has sat at the trough ever since ... and that's how he can be incredibly severe on others sitting at the trough with him ...

Indeed, indeed, what we need is growth ...

Oh, the pond just had to slip that one in because of its nightmare vision of the Menzies Research Centre turning up with wheelbarrows to cart away the Department of Finance cash ...

And with that bit of trickery there was just one gobbet go go, and no doubt the pond's correspondents might like to have a word about the Caterist on the matter of economics ...

Can ride their trains and buses to their heart's content until February? Why if the LNP have their way, they can keep riding them until the 12th of never, which is a long, long time ...

And there you have the pond's simple solutions to help sort out the productivity crisis ... more free tram rides and more cash in paw to the Menzies Research Centre, and that'll boost productivity at the lizard Oz by all of a red cent or perhaps a crooked sixpence ... 

And with that time to shout into the ether with Kudelka ...

Oh come on Kudelka, we always had comics ...and that's how we learned Caterist economics ...

In which Polonius goes all fear and loathing and "Ned" offers the usual Everest climb (though some might mistake it for Olympus Mons on Mars) ...

 

After the dog botherer's epic bout of fear-mongering and shouting at clouds yesterday, it was decidedly weird to see Polonius crawl out from the arras and join in that game ... and yet the terrified member of the Sydney CBD  'leet was in full cry, and in an hysterical, blind panic ...the leftists was cuming, the leftists was cuming, no, wait they's already here ... and the nation is consumed by fear and panic and deep anxiety (don't bother taking a pill for the cure, just abstain from the lizard Oz's panic merchants for a day) ...

In recent times, left-wing intolerance and violence is more prevalent than the right-wing alternative? 

Well if Polonius says so, it must be true, a bit like when the orange Jesus goes oracular he must be believed - someone save the cats - and yet it might well depend on where you happen to be living at any one time ...

If, for example, you're somewhere near JD Vance, you might read this tribute to slavery and slaveowners ...

American history is a constant war between Northern Yankees and Southern Bourbons, where whichever side the hillbillies are on, wins. And that’s kind of how I think about American politics today, is like, the Northern Yankees are now the hyper-woke, coastal elites. The Southern Bourbons are sort of the same old-school Southern folks that have been around and influential in this country for 200 years. And it’s like the hillbillies have really started to migrate towards the Southern Bourbons instead of the Northern woke people. That’s just a fundamental thing that’s happening in American politics.

As Jonathan V. Last noted in his piece, 

To his credit, Vance has enough sense not to say “slaveholders” out loud. Instead, he deploys a classy euphemism, calling those Very Fine People “Southern Bourbons.” That’s nice...

... In Vance’s telling, the Yankee coastal elites are a . . . novel . . . group of people. But the “Southern Bourbons” are just the same folks who’ve been around for 200 years. You might even call them Real Americans, I guess.

Real slave owning Americans, you might guess. They fought one of the most brutal civil wars in recent times over that one, and yet the violence, verbal and physical, still plays out ...

Then there's the current set of stoushes around one Laura Loomer ... amazingly she's managed to get up the noses of the likes of MTG and Miss Lindsey ... and had the cheek to turn up to a 9/11 event despite being a promoter of conspiracy theories ...

3,000 plus people died (if you include first responders after the event), and it was an inside job.

Weird, deeply weird, but the pond digresses, as you have to for entertainment value when reading Polonius in a state of quivering, jelly wobbling fear. 

You see, Polonius was peddling the same line of rampant fear and incandescent anger as the dog botherer did yesterday ... if those bloody, pesky, difficult, uppity Palestinians would just give the game away, cede all the land from the river to the sea to Israel, and enjoy being bombed out of existence, it could all have been sorted within a week ...

The pond began to realise the problem. Polonius seems to have given up his addiction to the ABC. How else to explain his going back in time to give the Grundle a hard time for being the reincarnation of Bob Ellis?

There was even further proof that the reason the funny old thing had given up on the ABC was that he'd allen for the charms of Sharri (disrespect), and he now spends hours glued to her show, and so is up for a Krogering and talk of Aboriginal extremists and global warming extremists and such like ...

Why it was enough to make him seek comfort in the thoughts of a certified IPA graduate,  or so the reptiles suggested by flinging in a click bait video...

If Polonius had stayed watching the ABC, he might have found stories such as Six UN workers were killed in an Israeli air strike on a Gaza school compound, and he could have railed against that.

Heck, he might have even stayed in house and been astonished to read Deadly Israeli strike on Gaza school draws global condemnation (global, excluding News Corp).

That might be a bit too close to home, so why not head off to Haaretz (paywall), for a story celebrating the complete end to Palestine as a concept or a reality ...

Annexation, Expulsion and Israeli Settlements: Netanyahu Gears Up for Next Phase of Gaza War

The entry into a new phase of the war did not begin with a multidivisional maneuver or some daring raid into the enemy's heartland. Instead, it came via a bureaucratic statement and will have Benjamin Netanyahu's dreaming about what his supporters will see as a lifetime achievement

Israel is entering the second phase of its war in Gaza, when it will strive to complete its takeover of the northern Gaza Strip from the previous border to the Netzarim corridor. We can predict that this area will then gradually be made available for Jewish settlement and annexation to Israel, according to the degree of international outcry that such steps might incur.

The pond keeds of course, Polonius is still brooding about 'Nam ... and it should be remembered that Polonius is still a devotee of that war and thinks it a jolly good thing ...

Yes, it stopped the dominoes from falling and saved many a nation, and yet for some reason those damned lefiists are still everywhere and still ruining everything ... why you can't get on with a land grab and a genocide without some of these ratbags protesting ...

Hmm, must remember to read Polonius's doctoral thesis to see where he pandered to his left wing supervisors. (Well they surely couldn't be right wing. That must be still sticking in his craw, all that to get a doctorate and then to realise calling yourself a doctor is a tad specious).

As for the intolerant left being dominant, does Polonius think so little of the valiant lizard Oz, Sky News after dark, and all the Murdochian tabloids? Are they just straw dogs blowing in the wind while wild-eyed ravening dogs stalk the land?

Who knows and who cares, because the pond has a "Ned" Everest to climb ... despite the best medical advice ...

Here the pond must interrupt at the get go, to note the astonishing ineptness of that photo montage and to beg the reptiles to hire someone with PhotoShop skills to revitalise the flailing, failing graphics department ...

In fact the snaps that littered "Ned's" piece were like seafood extender, protracting the suffering, elongating the sense of being stuck in verbal hell ...

Really? All that visual dross to pad out "Ned" to an eternity of suffering, the reader bound upon a wheel of fire, such that their own tears do scald like molten lead ...

Sorry, the point of the exercise is a simple one, it's to celebrate dig baby dig, drill baby drill, and to use the diggers and the drillers to smite and smote the dangerously radical left wing anti-mining federal government.

This is a familiar reptile theme, as noted by Media Watch a number of times ...

"Ned" tries to be a bit more subtle than the average Murdochian tabloid, but the net effect is pretty mush the same ...

It turns out that this is just "Ned" doing his best to match Kezza, noted by Daisy Dumas, subbing for the venerable Meade in this week's Weekly Beast ...

What an inspiration ...

In the meantime, you could be forgiven for thinking that the planet is under siege, and that everywhere you look, or at least in the Graudian, there's all sorts of bad news which might make people think twice about where we're headed, and why digging everything up and shipping it out for a mess of pottage might be short-term thinking ...

But you'd be wrong, in the world of mining, and "Ned", it's all poor, pitiful me, persecution and suffering, and just unfairness on all fronts, when all they want do to is dig, dig, dig and the world be damned ...

Indeed, indeed, the pond hears that Russia, North Korea and Venezuela are all safer markets than Australia.

This is the section where "Ned" faithfully transcribes all Captain Spud's talking points, good for talking potatoes, and even better for "Ned" because transcription is much easier than thinking or questioning ...

Ah, the old nuclear rag again. As someone recently nuked, such that the pond hoped to be able to glow in the dark like one of those ancient clocks ...

... wandering up and down King street irradiating the vulgar youff, and in lieu of an SMR in the back yard, feasting on their young energy the way that Robert Lansing  did in 4D Man ...

Sorry, the pond digresses, it's all so familiar and predicable, "Ned" tending to the needs of squawking miners, though perhaps not needs so much as lusts and desires of an unhealthy couch-orientated kind ...

The pond swears if the reptiles keep keep blathering on in this way, the pond will become so dangerously radicalised it might even think of voting greenie. Hmm, there's a council election on today, what better way to ensure mining in Camperdown Park is banned for the foreseeable future?

We keed, we keed, it's so hard to keep up, there's the Caterist blathering on about the existential environmental threats posed by solar and wind farms, and won't someone think of the land and all the suffering or dead creatures, and the next minute there's the usual climate science denialism, because who truly accepts the science or gives a fig about the creatures ...

Climate change presents the gravest threat to life on Earth in all of human history. The planet is warming to a degree beyond what many species can handle, altering or eliminating habitat, reducing food sources, causing drought and other species-harming severe weather events, and even directly killing species that simply can’t stand the heat. In fact, scientists predict that if we keep going along our current greenhouse gas emissions trajectory, climate change will cause more than a third of the Earth’s animal and plant species to face extinction by 2050 — and up to 70 percent by the end of the century. Such a catastrophic loss would irreversibly diminish biodiversity, severely disrupt ecosystems, and cause immense hardship for human societies worldwide. (here)

Such talk isn't going to fly in the lizard Oz or in the land of "Ned"...

Around this point the pond began to lose interest, as usually happens with "Ned". 

It's a bit like that point in the Everest climb where you find dead frozen bodies off to one side, the ones that for some reason didn't make it ... but buckle up me hearties, just two more gobbets and you're at the summit ...

And there we have it, unimpressed miners and never mind an unimpressed planet. If you live outside the world of the lizard Oz, you might think that the federal government was inclined to be supine, almost doormat status when it came to environmental matters, and you look on optimistic papers as some kind of fever dream...

Looking on the upside, it's better to live in hope than to live in "Ned's"world and to see the federal government doing its best to pander to special interests, or to contemplate a rampant Captain Spud ...

A policy rollout? The pond is still waiting to hear when it can acquire an SMR for the back yard ...

And so there's nothing else to do than apologise to those who were given a "Ned" irradiation and yet stayed with it to the bitter end, with a very real risk of dangerous exposure ...

The equipment carried up Mount Everest could not measure the full range of radiations that individuals on the mountain were being exposed to however the information contained in ICRU Report 84 was used to account for the radiations not measured by the equipment carried.

The measurements confirmed that someone travelling from the United Kingdom (UK) to climb Everest would receive a radiation dose of around 1 millisievert (mSv) each time that is in addition to the amount of natural background radiation dose that they would have received at sea level in the UK in the same time period.

And if that sounds too difficult, head off to the RPA for a cyclotron isotope blast ...

All the pond can offer for the suffering is a couple of closing 'toons, nothing to do with "Ned", but a warning as to what happens when the loons get too close ...