Late morning extra … climate science denialism runs amok at the lizard Oz ...

Last night the pond nodded off after a quick check of the herpetarium, with American triumphalism top of the page and all well in the world … except for this ominous note to the side of the Donald …

The boofhead was on the move, and the pond braced itself for what it knew would follow in the morn … and sure enough …trees died, and the onion muncher was top of the digital edition, and climate denialist Lloydie was joining in, and so was the reptile editorialist, and the braying rent the earth ...

  

Where to start?

Well probably the pond should start with the lesser member of the Kelly gang, one Joe, because you see, the whole point of this sort of crusader exercise isn't just to run the onion muncher, it's to amplify and celebrate the onion muncher message, dressed up in the guise of "news" reporting …

Go to it, lesser Kelly gang member …

Now here the pond should pause at the get go, and note a remarkable irony …

There's more at the Graudian, here … but now it's back to climate denialism central, for some more "news" reporting by the lesser member of the Kelly gang ...

Meanwhile on another planet ...

She says it’s time to see the climate change-driven transition under way in the energy market as opportunity, rather than something to resist. “I think farm representation and farmers generally have come quite a long way in their attitude to climate, and climate change and climate variability and dealing with all of these things, and accepting some of the facts behind the science.” “We have turned quite a corner ourselves, and our approach now to this is quite different than it was in those days [when Labor pursued emissions trading], when the [previous NFF] leaders chose that path.” 
She is supportive of the efforts of the agriculture minister, David Littleproud – a next-generation Queensland National – to reset the resting disposition for the Nationals on climate change and energy. Littleproud is happy to acknowledge that climate change is happening and he characterises the shift to renewables as “exciting”.

Back to climate denialism central, and the lesser Kelly gang member ...

Well enough of the "news" reporting … it's time now to head off to the onion muncher himself …naturally perched at the top of the digital opinion page …

The pond doesn't recall when it became passé to refuse to spell passé the way the perfidious French insist on spelling the word (the pond's irritating auto-correct keeps on insisting on it and refusing to allow passe) but perhaps it's an obscure protest against Paris, France, those bloody superior frogs and all the rest that's embedded in the onion muncher's dinosaur mindset ...

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

She says politicians “need to stop picking winners. This is not about coal versus renewables ... it’s a bit like a farm, we are probably going to need a bit of everything. Surely, let the market decide is the best way rather than one politician thinking what’s going to be the technology of the future”. Simson notes that Australian farmers love markets. They are entirely comfortable with competition. So the same rules should apply to the energy market. “For us it is very important that the policy be technology neutral, and let the market decide.” She says politicians also need to understand that voters have had enough of the internal intrigues and the brinkmanship. “People are really frustrated at the moment with the politics, whether it is internal politics and infighting within the parties, or whether it is party against party. People are wanting now to have outcomes. People are facing skyrocketing energy prices. Some of my members are facing bills triple what they were a few years ago.”

Of course the onion muncher has just embraced full Trumpism because that's what a desperate sniping, wrecking, undermining dinosaur climate denialist with another agenda must do …

Yesterday in joking and in passing the pond noted that the onion muncher was a terrorist … but really, is it a joke? Note how he trots out all the usual denialist lines, in a way designed not just to terrorise Malware but to terrorise the planet ...

And so to Lloydie … though this is where the pond scrapes the very bottom of the denialist barrel …

It should go without saying - it's almost a core truth - that the pond has a profound contempt for good old Lloydie … and this little outing shows exactly why ...

Note how Lloydie, with an apparently straight face, manages to both note that the onion muncher's summation of climate science will produce howls of derision, but then offers as his scientific defence, "but Abbott's views are widely shared."

So sharing a view is now a sufficient reason to hold it? Does that mean Lloydie has signed up for Scientology?

And then Lloydie proceeds to parrot the undiluted crap that came from the onion muncher's keyboard.

The pond doesn't know how Lloydie manages to get himself up of a morning and look at himself in a mirror and feel no sense of shame.

Perhaps that's why he's got the hipster beard … he only has to look in the mirror every so often to do a trim, and that helps him manage the shame.

"It is political mischief but not beyond the pale."

And that's why the pond will never offer a cent to the reptiles, always beyond the pail and the  pale …

And so to the lizard editorialist ...

Just as Lloydie makes a fine parrot, so does the reptile editorialist ...

It's strange days, isn't it? Here's the pond suddenly involved in bemoaning tariffs and encouraging free trade and worrying about debt … and there's the Donald wanting to ruin international trade and bankrupt his country … and the pond wouldn't mind that so much, except that he might well produce a world recession within the year ...

And here's the reptiles encouraging the agrarian socialists to embark on a a bout of five year state planning worthy of the best Stalinists …

And yet, somewhere on an entirely different planet ...

So while there are still questions to answer about the detail of the policy framework, the Neg must be approached as opportunity. Simson says affordability, reliability, technology neutrality is fundamental, and the farm sector needs a tailored solution where emissions reduction can be built into the core of the business. “We think there are a lot of opportunities for small-scale energy generation and it’s already happening”. “We would particularly like to take advantage of some of the heat generation that some of our intensive industries are using. For example, the pork industry has been amazing at capturing methane and then using that as energy generation – all the manure, the slurry going into the pits, having the methane captured and then driving a lot of the technology.” “Things like that on farm are amazing opportunities.” She says farms are often at the end of the power grid and are not well served by the status quo. She says the Neg framework could allow farmers to band together, and small communities to band together, to build their own energy infrastructure.

Amazing opportunities?

The only opportunity anyone gets at the lizard Oz is the chance to go full hog climate denialist … and the methane let into the air is something shocking to smell ...

Well anyone who made it to the end of that bout of climate denialism possibly feels like a cartoon, and what better way than celebrate Malware's dedication to free speech, with more papal pleasures here …

Of onion munchers and Caterists ...

 

Speaking of the glories of Western Civilisation, as the onion muncher is wont to do, the pond came across this reminder of terror and terrorism in the NY Review of Books, Pity is Treason by David A. Bell (sorry inside the paywall), which interalia said…

"… as Ronald Schechter shows in his remarkable new book, A Genealogy of Terror in Eighteenth-Century France …terror .. was once held to be quite an admirable thing in the Western world, not just as something to induce in one's adversaries but as something one should feel oneself. Writers often paired it with the adjective 'salutary.' Terror was purgative, restorative, and perhaps even salvific. Terror was good. When Robespierre declared, in the winter of 1794, that 'terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue,' he was not being deliberately perverse, paradoxical, or provocative. According to Schechter, he was expressing a belief that drew directly on centuries of European writing and thinking on the topic …"

After stuffing that in dashing Donner's pipe, the pond turned to the doings of that domestic terrorist,  the onion muncher, featured in the usual lizard Oz way on the front page, as he seeks to assassinate Malware, yet again …

The Brutus of our times made us aware he was available for leadership duties …

The blunt knife our Brutus was wielding in his assassination attempt was the usual one …and as usual the reptiles handed our simple Simon the spear-carrying duties ...

Some will blame the tedious onion-muncher for all this, but the pond understands that, much like the scorpion, it's in the terrorist onion muncher's nature.

The issue is why the reptiles keep giving him, and his usual blather, a free ride ...

How many times will they let the onion muncher blather on about dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi, and climate science denialism and all the rest of it? 

Well, probably as long as they blather about Western Civilisation, perhaps in celebration of the way terrorism and assassination is a long and honourable tradition in western history …

But oh how tedious it is to read ...

Some days the pond suspects that it's a cunning reptile plot to generate sympathy for Malware, but deep down the pond knows that the reptiles are - on a daily basis - pretty much as silly as the onion muncher …

And so to the Caterist. The pond at one point thought of deliberately and provocatively ignoring the Caterist, but sending him to the late arvo specialist sin bin seemed a better punishment, and to have him follow the onion muncher's posturing felt like an even crueller penalty …

The reptiles clearly felt the same way because there was no cult attention from Lobbecke, just a dullard lizard Oz tweet carrying a standard block image, as if the trolling of the greens for having a good idea would remotely interest any sensible reader ...

It set the tone for the usual, up-himself preening condescension for which the Caterist is famous ...

Even when writing favourably about renewable energy, the Caterist in his smug simpering manages to be intolerable.

Take that cheap joke about "rational tree-huggers, if there is such a thing."

What a fuckwit, no really, how else to talk about that sort of snide aside? What, most days of the week, he's a rational tree-hater? Is there such a thing?

The pond will admit to hating the gum out the front, but only because the pond rather than the council has to attend to the leaves. But really, is it irrational to have an affection for trees?

And there's the usual stuff about holding hands and singing healing songs … and the pond could imagine the Caterist, stiff upper lip and stoic in the family home, as someone proposed a little hug for comfort's sake.

"Don't give me any of that lovey-dovey huggy shit," the Caterist would scream at the unfortunate who wanted a little holding of hands. We're bloody British, and even if we're in Australia, we must conform to the stereotype of being incapable of human feelings …how else could we appear as insensitive wretches lined up in queues to attend a movie of the Brief Encounters kind?

And the Caterist can't even get his jokes right. Surely the whales heading across the Bass Strait should be crippled lesbian whales?

Oh there's no way around it, really, what a fuckwit he is, and so to the wrap-up, though it won't be complete without a standard Caterist joke at the end ...

The problem with socialists, Margaret Thatcher famously said, is that you eventually run out of other people's money …??!!

Well the pond sees no signs of that coming true for the Caterists … they never seem to run out of other people's money …

And now, with that joke done, and in honour of the Caterists and the onion muncher, while the United States is sweltering, the pond chose to interpret this cartoon as having something to do with climate science …

In which the pond enjoys a game of nuclear tableaux vivants with the bromancer ...

The pond makes no apology for marking down the latest Caterist exercise, and the latest "onion muncher for leader" routines, and sending them to the late arvo specialist slot, because the bromancer is rightly at the top of the opinion page as he grapples with the Donald and Kim …and marvellously proposes theatrical exercises and a little role playing for the strolling players ... 

Oh please, miss, that's an easy one, pick the pond, pick the pond. There'll be more lies, more excuses, and more devious apologies and explanations from the Murdochians for their lion king …

Phew, if only all the questions were that easy to answer ...

And if ever a pond reader wanted further proof that the Murdochians don't have a clue, and that Kim is doing the Donald and his acolytes like a dinner, the pond invites doubting reader to contemplate again what the bromancer just scribbled …

But did the pond mislead with its talk of theatre and role-playing? Is cricket a more apt metaphor for the game that needs to be played?

There's a breathless hush in the nuke factory to-night - 
Ten nukes to make and the match to win - 
A bumping Donald and a blinding light, 
An hour to play and the last Kim in. 
And it's not for the sake of a irradiated coat, 
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame, 
But the bromancer's hand on Kim's shoulder smote 
"Play up! play up! and play the game!" (with apologies to Sir Henry, the original here)

Well just to bulk it up, the reptiles also ran a piece from the WSJ, which showed a similar level of befuddlement …

The reptiles followed with a photo, as if that meant something ...

Now on with the delusions ...

Every time the pond reads this sort of guff, as it reluctantly reaches for a Trumpian tweet …

… the pond is reminded of this image …

Of course that's terribly unfair to that ancient flourisher of the piece of paper, who at least wanted to be nice ...

And by a curious coincidence the pond happened to be reading Robert Darnton's The Greatest Show on Earth for the NY Review of Books this breakfast - sorry, inside the paywall ...

It's a survey of some books on how weird the United States is, and how it's been comprehensively stuffed by religion and racism, and reality television, and the new world of Barnum hokum and bunkum that litters the full to overflowing intertubes, and it ended this way …

One result is Donald Trump. He denounces news he dislikes as fake, but he rode into office on the wave of fake news that flooded then Internet from sources in Eastern Europe, notably Russia, during the election campaign. We may never know whether Trump owes his victory to fakery, but, McIntyre insists, we must learn to recognise the fabricated character of what passes for reality in a power system where facts to not matter and bunk cannot be proven false.

Although McIntyre's route to this conclusion is shorter than those taken by Andersen and Young, he arrives at the same place. All three of them quote Stephen Colbert on "truthiness" - the conviction that what you feel to be true must be the truth. All three invoke a famous remark by Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts." They take a stand on ground that Andersen describes as "rationalism and reasonableness." And the convergence of their views points to a danger greater than Trump. McIntyre cites Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust: "Post-truth is pre-fascism."

Actually a trial conducted under the cloak of secrecy is another way to head well down the road to fascism, and Malware is taking the country there, as noted in Media Watch's Timor Spying last night … featuring the silence of the lambs, or at least the lizards of Oz …

But enough of all that and the selective treatment of News Corp and the sheer and utter scandal of it all, it's time for a last WSJ gobbet, as they try to cope with the Donald's unadulterated bunkum ...

That last line is worth repeating: "The Trump administration hasn't said which site Mr Trump was referring to…"

As if he had the first clue about the first thought that popped in to his noggin.

Yet still they live in hope, still they trust in the Donald, still they have faith in their Lion King …

And now there's just time for another ...

In which the pond calls for help to wrangle dashing Donners ...

There are many lively reptiles out and about today - the onion muncher has let the world know he is once more available for leadership duties - a tremendous relief for Western Civilisation - and it's Caterist day, with the reptiles realising the error of making Wednesday Caterist day - and the bromancer is anxious about North Korea, as if the Donald would lead him astray - but when it comes to the ongoing Crisis in Western Civilisation, the pond is always front and centre …

Now it's true that the regurgitating machine known as dashing Donners hasn't had an original thought in his noggin for many years, and these days gets out a thousand monkeys, so that miracle of miracles, they can come up with exactly the same thoughts he had the day before, but today there's a new twist, in that Donners decides to make it personal, a regular old ad hominem routine …

Seeing that's how the game was going to be played, and being well over dashing Donners, even as a joke, the pond decided to import someone else to have a go at Donners.

Come on down Guy Rundle, scribbling for Crikey back on 23rd February 2017, merely a blink in primordial time compared to the many columns dashing Donners has churched out over aeons …

Okay, that sets the scene for dashing Donners, and it has to be said that, while being vacant of thought and meaning in the usual way, Donners is mercifully short ...

There you go, and it should be noted that it's a favourite trick of authoritarian regimes to mount attacks on the personal opinions on others for daring to have opinion on anything, and for refusing to tug the forelock and toe the line …

But enough of the pond, let Guy Rundle finish his thoughts ...

Of course in the matter of abortion Ireland is no longer a part of Western Civilisation and instead is at the forefront in the Crisis in Western Civilisation, but the pond was beguiled by Rundle's line "The Oz publishes him because they'll publish all and any of that crap."

And just as the reptiles must plead guilty to the charge, so must the pond, because over the years, without any sense, taste or style, the pond has routinely featured any and all of Donners' remarkable regurgitations of crap …

So here's the final gobbet of the usual Donners crap … doing the rest of his ad hominem assaults, because when you're out of fresh crap, why not just keep recycling the same old crap in a personalised way...

Lacking in reason?

And that, the pond notes, is from a loon that works at an institution, which is an offshoot of an institution, that preaches that on a Sunday, the faithful can indulge in human flesh and human blood, and in due course in the bye and bye, there'll be pie in the sky … and so endlessly on and so stupidly forth ...

Lacking in reason? What a first class futtock of futility he is …why doesn't he just eat a human wafer and drink a little human blood, and take a vow of silence, lest he trip up and end in an eternity of superstitious hellfire?

And now, with the great news of the return of the Rowe, with more rowing to be done here, it's time to celebrate another great example of Western Civilisation at work, with a dash of Catholic attitudes to women still lurking there in the mix ...

And thankfully, that's all the pond needs to say about that bit of attention-seeking …

A little late arvo comedy for reptile and our Gracie specialists ...

Good on Andrew Wilkie for plugging away on the East Timor matter …with a Hansard extract here …

The pond rarely gets outraged at a scandal, but this one is a doozy, all the more so when you see the likes of Niki Savva turning up on The Insiders to peddle the shameful party line …and no one saying boo to this particular goose or to Porter …

Search for a lizard Oz piece on the scandal, and you'll find the reptiles still doggo …and by a curious coincidence, this morning the pond was reading the NY Review of Books over breakfast, and stumbled across Cass Sunstein's It Can Happen Here (currently outside the paywall).

What a salutary read it was for these Malware, Trumpian times …recording what happened when Milton Mayer talked with some ordinary Germans about their experiences of Nazi rule …

...When Mayer returned home, he was afraid for his own country. He felt “that it was not German Man that I had met, but Man,” and that under the right conditions, he could well have turned out as his German friends did. He learned that Nazism took over Germany not “by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler.” Many Germans “wanted it; they got it; and they liked it.” 
Mayer’s most stunning conclusion is that with one partial exception (the teacher), none of his subjects “saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect.” Where most of us understand Nazism as a form of tyranny, Mayer’s subjects “did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now.” Seven years after the war, they looked back on the period from 1933 to 1939 as the best time of their lives. Mayer suggests that even when tyrannical governments do horrific things, outsiders tend to exaggerate their effects on the actual experiences of most citizens, who focus on their own lives and “the sights which meet them in their daily rounds.” Nazism made things better for the people Mayer interviewed, not (as many think) because it restored some lost national pride but because it improved daily life. Germans had jobs and better housing. They were able to vacation in Norway or Spain through the “Strength Through Joy” program. Fewer people were hungry or cold, and the sick were more likely to receive treatment. The blessings of the New Order, as it was called, seemed to be enjoyed by “everybody.” 
Even in retrospect Mayer’s subjects liked and admired Hitler. They saw him as someone who had “a feeling for masses of people” and spoke directly in opposition to the Versailles Treaty, to unemployment—to all aspects of the existing order. They applauded Hitler for his rejection of “the whole pack”—“all the parliamentary politicians and all the parliamentary parties”—and for his “cleanup of moral degenerates.” The bank clerk described Hitler as “a spellbinder, a natural orator. I think he was carried away from truth, even from truth, by his passion. Even so, he always believed what he said...”

...The killing of six million Jews? Fake news. Four of Mayer’s subjects insisted that the only Jews taken to concentration camps were traitors to Germany, and that the rest were permitted to leave with their property or its fair market value. The bill collector agreed that the killing of the Jews “was wrong, unless they committed treason in wartime. And of course they did.” He added that “some say it happened and some say it didn’t,” and that you “can show me pictures of skulls…but that doesn’t prove it.” In any case, “Hitler had nothing to do with it.” The tailor spoke similarly: “If it happened, it was wrong. But I don’t believe it happened.” 
With evident fatigue, the baker reported, “One had no time to think. There was so much going on.” His account was similar to that of one of Mayer’s colleagues, a German philologist in the country at the time, who emphasized the devastatingly incremental nature of the descent into tyranny and said that “we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.” The philologist pointed to a regime bent on diverting its people through endless dramas (often involving real or imagined enemies), and “the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise.” In his account, “each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’” that people could no more see it “developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”

And so on … with the corn currently  growing over the heads of a lawyer and his whistle blowing client … and the brave, bold reptiles still lurking deep in their craven caves …

But this is a comedy blog, and so it's time for a little light comedy of the best kind.

The pond offered a tricky set of questions earlier in the day, but our Gracie topped that on the weekend …

Indeed, indeed, and they don't come any more utterly puerile than our Gracie … and so to the quiz ...

Now the pond can sense a few readers might be struggling with those wonderfully clever questions, so it decided to get in a few hints and prompts for the next question ...

The data's here, but the trying hard to be helpful pond collected just a few names, and lordy lordy, look who's head of the list ...

Right, now absolutely no excuses, everybody should be able to get the answer to the next question, and understand the urgent need to throw even more money at long-suffering big business ...

Utterly peurile and a complete futtock to boot is our Gracie … but the pond promised comedy, and surely it has fulfilled its duty …and just to round it out, here's a cartoon for our Gracie …