Over on the extreme far right of the lizard Oz, Major Mitchell came up with a new level of irony this morning ...
Yes, there it was - in the lizard Oz of all the ludicrous hive mind places to find it - and for those wanting a full dose of the old bird, here's hoping the fragile archive is working:
The trajectory of former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, who has transformed her four-year-old digital start-up into a $240m media powerhouse, shows up ABC and other broadcasters’ failures on Covid, Russiagate and the Biden laptop.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist
The real news is that Weiss, after embarking on a new career as Trump panderer, has made a killing, as summarised in the archived Major headline announcing the sell-out: Paramount acquires The Free Press in $240m deal, Weiss joins CBS
The tedious old galah was still squawking about the Bidens ...
It also owes ABC audiences the truth about two other stories our national broadcaster covered up and that Berliner says NPR failed to report honestly.
On censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020 and the likely laboratory leak of Covid-19 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it is now clear papers like The New York Times and broadcasters such has NPR and Australia’s public broadcaster were hopelessly wrong.
Most large US media groups have admitted their error in refusing to cover the Biden laptop story. Several US government agencies accept the Covid lab leak theory.
But it’s crickets here from the ABC’s very expensive media watchdog. US free-to-air broadcasters are no better. This column hopes Weiss can fix CBS.
The Major using Weiss to bash the ABC?
How novel, how surprising ... and as for the Major's coverage of Jared, Qatar, Laura being startled by a Muslim base (so she thought) on US soil, and all the rest of the intertwining of King Donald's family and filthy rich authoritarian middle eastern theocrats? Crickets...
The pond suggests for those anxious to discover a bit more about Weiss should try Cathy Young in The Bulwark, though unfortunately the richest bit was hidden behind a paywall ...
The record of the Free Press shows her journey from independent to MAGA fellow traveler.
Young presents as a sometime admirer of Weiss dismayed by her fall from grace.
There's also Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic ...
She co-founded The Free Press as a bastion of liberalism in an illiberal time. Her arrival at CBS is paved with excuses for illiberal friends.
Chait thought the fix was in ...
The timing is no coincidence, given the concessions the president exacted in exchange for approving the merger between Paramount (which owns CBS) and Skydance in July. Paramount Skydance’s prompt acquisition of the Trump-friendly Free Press and appointment of Weiss as the head of CBS News has every appearance of being a sop to the president and his politicized FCC. Trump may be misreading or overinterpreting the signals, but his social-media posts seem to indicate that he believes that CBS is now in his pocket.
Weiss is an intelligent and talented editor. If the maneuvering that led to her installation atop CBS News fails to fulfill Trump’s expectations of deferential coverage, it will not be the first time his schemes went awry. But on the surface, this looks like a trade of journalistic integrity for regulatory favors. It is now up to Weiss to prove that her defense of liberal values is not so easily bargained away.
Jon Allsop tried a little balance in The New Yorker ...
A change in leadership at the network has been seen as part of an effort to appease Donald Trump. But there may be other motivations.
...Ultimately, Weiss appears to be beloved of very powerful people who are distressed by the rise of wokeness, and who for some reason see themselves as “besieged outsiders,” as The Nation’s Jack Mirkinson argued recently. To read a profile of Weiss is to be slapped around the face by the names of élite admirers; those now include the Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose Saturnalian wedding Weiss attended in Venice this year.
Yes, there was some balance, the pond was being mischievous and selective in the quote, but Alsop did cite a couple of other articles worth looking at ...
There was a profile by David Klion in The Graudian ... Disgruntled NYT journalist to ‘anti-woke’ power grab: how far can Bari Weiss go?
And Jack Mirkinson's feelings in The Nation were clear in the header ...
Paramount is reportedly set to pay between $100 million and $200 million for The Free Press and will install Bari Weiss at the top of CBS News.
Full credit to the Major for reminding the pond that there were many alternatives to his drivel.
As for the Oz, this morning it took on a much more tabloid look, with hysteria at the top of the page ...
The silly possums gratified Lidia by being shocked to their reptile roots ...
Labor silent as Lidia Thorpe threatens to ‘burn down parliament’
Amid nationwide Palestine protests, the rogue Senator’s shocking Parliament House threat has sparked outrage – but Labor won’t condemn her words.
She must be pleased, a bit like AOC living rent free in Stephen Miller's head ...
The Daily Zionist was in full swing, with Stewie stewing ...
Peaceful Jews’ dignity shows up vile activists
As Jewish Australians gathered in Melbourne and Sydney to celebrate the release of the hostages and the ceasefire, across town pro-Palestinian protesters called for the destruction of Israel.
By Cameron Stewart
Joy, trauma and hope as Trump pushes for permanent peace
The release of hostages and Donald Trump’s arrival in Israel sends a warning to the region: the US is determined to make this peace plan work and neither Hamas or Netanyahu should undermine it.
By Cameron Stewart
Hamas plans to purge Gaza of ‘collaborators’ after ceasefire
Summary executions and sabre-rattling by the militant group are intended to show it is still in control — and Israeli-backed militias are squarely in its sights.
By Catherine Philp
The archive header presented it as "fears" but the hive mind presented it as an impending fact...and as for Gazans returning to a wasteland? What of them? sorry, Not on the reptile beat.
Then there was King Donald worship ...
A hero’s welcome awaits US President
Donald Trump is preparing to land in the Middle East to widespread acclaim in the next 24 hours, as Israeli hostages were due to leave their two-year captivity on Monday.
By Richard Ferguson
So what is it reptiles of Oz, peace or war, a triumph or pending disaster?
King Donald a winner with Hamas routed, or King Donald a dropkick loser, with Hamas ready to strike?
And should we be padding up like the immortal Rowe?
Meanwhile alarmist hysteria about TG folk made it into the top of the digital page yet again ...
Parents kept in dark on secret gender transitions at school
Victorian schools are making life-altering decisions about children’s gender identities in secret, sparking outrage from parents and medical and legal experts.
By Rachel Baxendale
Over on the extreme far right it was the same story ... as the cratering Caterist continued the always present theme of reptile trans hysteria ...
Allowing a pedophile monster to serve his time in a women’s prison is the final piece of evidence to prove the Victorian justice system has completely lost its way.
By Nick Cater
Columnist
Correspondents will be aware that the pond refuses to indulge the reptiles in their trans bashing, and so it was off to the archive with him, making flood waters in quarries a little bit safer for the moment ...
Meanwhile, over on the far right Josh continued the Gaza rabble rousing ...
The weekend protests make it clear. At an institutional level, we have made radicalisation fashionable in Australia.
By Joshua Dabelstein
Sssh, don't mention the wanton destruction, the ethnic cleansing or the mass starvation Josh ...
That only left Killer un-noted, and he was, in the reptile way, echoing a "news" story EXCLUSIVE ...
Bowen heads to India, China as top mandarin says Australia can’t go it alone on climate action
Chris Bowen will court investment for Australia’s renewable energy sector as bureaucrats concede our climate targets alone won’t slow global warming.
By Greg Brown
Brownie tagged the hapless Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water division head Kath Rowley, but his opening effort was to show ongoing devotion to clean, dinkum, pure, virginal Oz coal ...
Mr Bocking is urging for a ban on foreign donations to politically active green groups and an annual report to parliament by security agencies on the state of energy security. “Including on malicious foreign interference and the dissemination of climate change and energy misinformation and disinformation through activist groups whose funding and sponsorship is not transparent,” Mr Bocking wrote in his submission.
“Secret foreign donations and deceptive astroturfing campaigns deployed by activist groups are compromising Australia’s energy abundance and security.”
It's a vast international conspiracy...
And so to Killer, and the pond had a deep sense of ennui and climate fatigue, but what could the pond do, after slashing, burning and archiving all the rest of the reptiles?
The only good thing was that the pond was reminded yet again of Killer in Milei action ...
The economists warned against President Javier Milei’s plans, but he proved them wrong
Here you go, it's been pretty grim thus far, have a relieving laugh ...
And so to fresh Killer mayhem - wearing a mask for fear of infection is recommended -and talk about the short straw ...with "zealotry" the stereotypical indication of where Killer was at ...
The header for what the reptiles called a four minute read, but which could be absorbed in a doddle, with it being a very familiar regurgitation: Climate change zealotry is a luxury pastime of rich world – ordinary voters sense the fraud, It’s fashionable to declare ‘we must do more’, but average people won’t be censored for not radically changing their lives to try to stop an alleged global climate armageddon.
The peculiar caption for a smoggy visual variation - sorry no Satanic solar or whale-killing windmills this day: The real question isn’t whether climate change is happening, but why so many of its loudest prophets behave as if it isn’t.
These are familiar Killing fields, with a favourite reptile riff. Why isn't everyone in the monastery with Killer, feasting on bread, a little cheese and watered down wine?
An Adelaide COP31 would smash Dubai’s record for the most “polluting” climate conference ever, given the immense distances attendees would need to travel to get there. Antalya would be a much more meteorologically safe choice.
The pond looks to Killer campaigning vigorously against the Commonwealth and Olympic Games, and on the shuttling of News Corp execs between the United States and their colonial realm down under.
The real reason of course was to give this keen Kean a serve ... Matt Kean at the Australian Clean Energy Summit earlier this year.
The pond would be perfectly happy to join Killer in an assault on all the billionaires cavorting around the planet - no more weddings in Venice - while building huge bunkers as a way of avoiding the impending apocalypse, but Killer is remarkably selective in his targets ...
Australia’s per capita emissions are among the highest in the world yet the government welcomes hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the developing world every year, supercharging the carbon footprint.
Conservatively, these new immigrants are adding roughly an extra four million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year above what they otherwise would have. On current trends, in 2035 they will together add 40 million tonnes of CO2, which is a very large share of the 215 million tonnes forecast for that year if the government achieves a 65 per cent reduction on 2005 levels. Boosting diversity and solving the “skills crisis” trump the planet’s survival, apparently.
Killer managed a detour, which gave the reptiles an excuse to feature an AV distraction, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky calls on United States President Donald Trump to stop the war in Ukraine. Zelensky stated, ‘If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well – including the Russian war'. On a phone call between the two, they discussed opportunities to bolster Ukraine's air defence, as well as concrete agreements to ensure the war's end.
Please explain ...
Yet the governments most in thrall to climate change zealotry – such as Britain, Germany and Denmark – are the loudest in calling for escalation. Indeed, it was net-zero champion Boris Johnson who former top Ukrainian officials say scuttled 2022 peace talks.
The prospect of a devastating escalation that could within even a few years render the Paris climate goals even more hopelessly unachievable is a risk worth taking, apparently. Still, all these governments can rest easy knowing CO2 emissions from military operations, which experts say make up over 5 per cent of the global total, have been largely exempt from national reporting since the 1997 Kyoto protocol.
And yet not a mention of Vlad the sociopath, who started it all?
Why is the pond surprised that Killer is something of a Putin quisling? A veritable Killer Haw-Haw ...
It was about time for Satan to make an appearance, and sure enough ... Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen should know that Turkey’s Antalya would be a much more meteorologically safe choice for COP31.
Killer seemed to accept that some properties might be at risk - perhaps his insurance has increased - but soon enough was off having his gore incensed by Al ...
Victoria has approved construction of the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere in Southbank, where 95 per cent of properties are already at “high or severe” climate change risk.
Two decades after its release Al Gore’s popular fearmongering film, An Inconvenient Truth, has been relegated to the fiction section in the US. Markets, not manifestos, reveal what people truly believe. Martin Smith, an environmental economist at Duke University, told The Washington Post in 2024 that demand for US coastal property “remained astronomically high” despite the supposed climate risks.
Cue a snap, Former US vice president Al Gore on the sidelines of a meeting of The Climate Reality Project NGO in Paris in March. Picture: AFP
Killer then carried on, and sure enough he managed to wangle in his fear of masks and vaccines and the like, albeit indirectly ...
It’s more important than ever to look at how individuals and institutions behave to divine their beliefs, not what they say. Just as dozens of public health zealots disobeyed their own diktats during the pandemic, suggesting their private views were decidedly less alarmist than their public fearmongering, the governments and individuals cheering on climate catastrophism don’t really believe their cant either.
Remember this, and the Bolter and the rest of climate science denialist reptile pack being outraged by this sort of corporate cant (in pdf for the easier to read original)?
Climate change zealotry is a luxury pastime of the rich world – a narrative that flatters elites and justifies bigger government. Notice how demands for “action” on climate change are stronger on the left than the right?
Ordinary voters sense the fraud. They’ll recycle, maybe buy an EV if they are rich enough, but they won’t give up airconditioning or meat, endure blackouts or stop international travel, which will be required of them if governments want to get serious about achieving their unattainable “net zero” goals. And they certainly won’t put up with being censored for pointing this out. The real question isn’t whether climate change is happening, but why so many of its loudest prophets behave as if it isn’t.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.
Well played IPA, what they did for big tobacco, they can do for the war on climate science and renewables, with Killer leading the way...
Speaking of the ABC, as the Major is inclined to do, the pond was shocked and appalled by this effort by the cardigan wearers.
Whatever would the reptiles think? What would Killer make of all those graphs? Would he do a Milei on them?
As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, Australia could be left behind
Meanwhile, that particularly despondic slough, the Herald Sun, offered what could be the laugh of the week, from the otherwise permanently sour Steve Price.
ReplyDeleteCredit to Crikey, for the tip - which took y'r h'mbl to the Hun website, yielding this mix of the term 'price'.
"Herald Sun - All your news for a great price,
(For this day - $4 for four weeks digital access.)
Price: Ley can’t lead the way, bring back Tony Abbott.
It’s time for the Federal Coalition to admit they need a radical overhaul, to get itself out of opposition, and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott could be just what they need."
Crikey Worm did include some verbiage from the (possibly human) Price, but, y'know - Steve Price. Life is too short to fritter any of it away on his blathering, or writing.
Crikey did not grapple with tricky matters such as - for Tones to be Leader of the Opposition, the convention is that he needs to win an actual seat, in an election. It often follows that, to remain LotO, that member has to outlay some time to representing the electors who put him there.
Anyway - (Steve) Price humour, way funnier than anything from the Leak.
Maybe they do need Abbott on the principle that doing the opposite of what a nincompoop recommends is usually the best option.
DeleteAnd do remember Edmund Burke in his lecture to the electors of Bristol: "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."
Who would ever expect the Muncher to "sacrifice his judgement" to anybody else's "opinion".
The Onion Muncher has been out and about plugging his new book (coming soon to a free street library near you), and generously providing helpful advice to Susssan. I’m sure she’s overwhelmed with gratitude.
Delete>>Abbott says Ley and Liberals need to learn from his stint as opposition leader
By Nick Newling
October 13, 2025 — 12.13pm
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called on the Coalition to redirect its focus to defeating Labor, as Opposition Leader Sussan Ley suffered a huge slump in her approval rating in a recent poll following a month of instability, leaks, resignations and sackings engulfing the Liberal Party.
Asked on Nine’s Today show about the troubles plaguing his former party, Abbott said a lesson he had learned as opposition leader was “to be a clear and strong contrast to the government of the day”.
His comments follow Resolve Political Monitor’s polling published by this masthead on Sunday which showed Ley’s popularity dropping by 14 percentage points in the past month, as Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and West Australian MP Andrew Hastie exited the front bench after clashing with Ley on the direction of the party.
Abbott said he was “disappointed” by Hastie’s resignation from shadow cabinet, saying “I think he’s talented” but said the party needed to take a longer view.
“It’s too easy to focus on what’s urgent today and miss what’s important for the long term. And I just think that we spend a lot of time angsting over trivia. And you know whether one individual is up or down on any particular day. In the end, mostly none of us are going to worry about it in six months time, let alone 60 years time,” he said.
Abbott was opposition leader for almost four years, from December 2009 to September 2013, before the Coalition returned to government. He was prime minister for less than two years, before being deposed by Malcolm Turnbull, and told Radio National this morning that “he wished he’d had a bigger bite of the onion”, reflecting on his short stint in the job.
Asked about Ley’s performance, Abbott said: “Naturally, Sussan has my support and encouragement, but a good opposition is a strong and clear contrast to the government of the day. Politics is a contest, and as I said when I became opposition leader back in 2009, there’s no point making weak compromises with a bad government. You’ve got to be a strong and clear contrast.”
Abbott said he was disappointed that Hastie had left the frontbench, saying he “has vast potential and promise” and that “he’s got a lot to contribute”.>>
https://archive.md/nGfMF
GB - that Woman from Wycheproof seems to have plenty of opinions, most of them sitting on her iPad, not doing much. No doubt she would be happy to polish them up for another round of opposition.
DeleteThank you for bringing forward the News Corp's 'Net Zero Transition Plan' but I have to confess that I'm simply not sure I could work my way through that in what remains of my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteMemo Killer: There was a time when people who had a fair idea of what they were talking about, even if they came from fossil fuel interests, were prepared to test the science, and give their ideas, rather than repeat partisan themes and memes.
DeleteAn influential paper, with the title THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF CARBON DIOXIDE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON TEMPERATURE was read to the Royal Meteorological Society, on February 16, 1938. It was written by G. S. CALLENDAR, then
'Steam technologist to the British Electrical and Allied Industries Research Association'
Versions of that paper are on offer for eye-watering prices, as is the way these days.
There has been one channel through which a copy of that paper has been available free. I have done this just now with 'G...le', but 'the search engine of your choice' should bring that important RMS link, for the freebie.
In ‘Google’ enter ‘G S Callendar’
This will bring up several references. The one you want was about 5 down for my ‘search’, headed
‘Royal Meteorological Society’ -
‘the artificial production of carbon dioxide’
click on that phrase, and it brings up a copy (very yellowed) of Callendar’s most cited paper, including discussion after presentation to the RMS.
Callendar has a personal 'Wiki' entry, for those interested in his life and influence.
Wuhan leaks, Hunter’s laptop, Russia Russia Russia - what year does the Major imagine we’re living in? Doesn’t matter, really - Reptile obsessions are timeless. Surely it’s long past time for the Major to provide an update on his ongoing search for Manning Clarke’s Order of Lenin ?
ReplyDeleteBtw, what exactly was the outcome of “Hunter’s laptop”? So far as I’m aware it resulted in SFA. Not that such minor details could bother an obsessed Murdochian.
Yeah, I still can't quite believe that it really was Hunter's laptop, the whole scenario of where and with whom he supposedly left and forgot it is a bit weird. Though I suppose that Hunter has been a bit weird from time to time.
DeleteI know from my own working experience that courts who still largely adhere to 'western' conventions do get kind of sticky about 'chain of custody'.
Delete