I missed the memo, but Mark Bahnisch, formerly of Larvatus Prodeo is back, at the (much more sensibly named) New Social Democrat. Not posting often, but I still have a lot of reading to catch up on. This, on the Budget and the crisis of Australia’s political class, is superb.
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John Quiggin 
Thanks, John! I hope to post more regularly from here on in.
Very revealing. It gave us a real feel for what you and MB feel and care about but not a single non-totally-obvious fact or cogent argument. Not even useful for the Coalition’s backroom technicians, pollsters and PR people as you’re beyond persuasion from their point of view.
Makes one wonder though whether the Libs have the capacity to make a smooth change to Turnbull at the critical time. That assumes of course that someone who didn’t listen and didn’t understand how much experience has to be added to a high IQ in politics has learned the lesson since the days of Grech.
@Midrash
Your comment is revealing of your attitudes without giving a single fact or argument.
Yes, I am beyond persuasion from the point of view of the Coalition spinmeisters, Midrash. But that doesn’t mean the arguments aren’t cogent. You could perhaps try to criticise them if you think they’re “non-cogent”.
But there’s nothing non-obvious to write about, is there? The coalition’s run by sadistic retards, which we all knew, and everything’s a predictable consequence of that sad reality.
@Collin Street
Your passion notwithstanding, I’m offended by your use of the term ‘retard’. IMO this term is inappropriate for those of us favouring social inclusion.
@Collin Street
To have a disability is not to be an inferior person but to be different; haven’t you been listening the last 30 years?
@Collin Street
When you link my autistic son with Abbott, who is being insulted, in your opinion?
@kevin1: I apologise to your son, and to you, for linking him to the prime minister. Anger is no excuse.
Perhaps “sadistic retrogrades” would be the better way to put it.
But remember, the ALP is indistinguishable from the LNP on most issues.
i know that person who copulates with canines is out but is evolutionary throwbackstill available? it comes with “atavistic endeavour”. -a.v.
@J-D
Touché! Except that I was not seeking to do what MB was apparently seeking to do and JQ appeared to accept as achieving. (I think my appeal to the referee cancels your point).
@Mark Bahnisch
Good morning and thank you for the courtesy of response. Definitely you do not deserve an insulting riposte but to answer your question about my use of “cogent” would require me to find and read your piece again…. I think I was toying with the idea that it wasn’t really argument at all, though I suppose I might extract from it some testable propositions, which would one day be shown to be true or false, together with a sketch of your reasons forsupporting those propositions. Typical op-ed perhaps.
I don’t recall “retard” as playground abuse. When did it come into use and in what context of usage? For that matter, when did it become accepted as unacceptable – not just in the way of middle class mother ticking off her 9 year old but because it was a sign of indifference to the elevation of the disabled above and beyond the old idea of care and pity?
How does it rate to say “I congratulate the honourable member on election to the leadership of her party when she was discovered to be its first member with a triple figure IQ” – apart from a C minus for leaden wit?
@kevin1
Do we need words immediately distinguishing between the idea of “inferior 1” and “inferior 2” where 1 embodies the utilitarian judgment that in primitive close-to-subsistence societies precluded recognition of 2, and 2 which, like it or not, is probably condemned as part of the rise of Christianity and other non-primitive (e.g. animist) religions, more than as a product of natural mother love. It seems unlikely that any hunter gatherer ever said of an infant that couldn’t walk or talk “equal in the eyes of God”.
Seems there is an even more cruel insult around these days than ‘retard’.
Have you ever seen a private school girl lean out a bus window and scream “Hey you povo loser’ at a state school child?
@Midrash
So what were you seeking to do?
Insults that as far as I know imply no offence to anybody except the explicitly intended targets of the insult include ‘dimwit’, ‘dolt’, ‘dullard’, ‘dunderhead’, ‘knucklehead’, ‘pinhead’, ‘blockhead’, ‘bonehead’, ‘numbskull’, ‘nitwit’, ‘ninny’, ‘nincompoop’, and ‘buffoon’.
I prefer ‘drongo’, now that it has lost its original meaning of try-hard failure.
@J-D
What was I seeking to do? Not sure what post you are replying to.
BTW Thanks for the thesaurus for the addressing dunderheads though I too prefer drongo. I wouldn’t have thought it coonoted “hardworking” however – “earnest” more like it.
@Julie Thomas
After I had seen “My Brilliant Career ” (I think it was) and expressed astonishment at the cruelty of girls a number of women, especially those who had been to girls’ boarding schools said that wasn’t the half of it. So boys punch people and girls use their savage tongues to zero in on the socially invidious…. Actually it is not my picture of a few hundred adolescent girls that would be my sample size but perhaps it is not surprising I wasn’t taught the insider thinking and language of girls.
I do remember robust exchanges of chanted insults between schoolboys at boat races. So maybe there was mutual aggro between girls in the case you cite. I recall hearing of the riverside confrontation of two Victorian schools after one had its spectators in place early enough to capture the highest and best viewing places. “P-O-O-F-T-A Pooftah!” was the chant directed at the boarding school boys. “A-S-P-R-O Aspro” was the response, referring to the fact that the much newer day school was a ceation of Aspro-Nicholas money.
@Midrash
If you had simply clicked on the link you would have seen that I was replying to your response to me in which you wrote ‘I was not seeking to do what MB was apparently seeking to do’.
Actually Fran, now that you have drawn attention to the “retard” term, there is I believe and arguable case for the the use of the term in the present day based on the historical perception, but reframing it for the context as political retardation, PR.
“Intellectual disability is also known as mental retardation (MR), although this older term is being used less frequently.[1][2] It was historically defined as an intelligence quotient score under 70. Once focused almost entirely on cognition…..”
Setting aside the IQ value, the notion of a connection to cognition deficiencies is, I argue entirely relevent. A person with a cognitive deficiency will see the sensation of feeling cold as being an injustice projected at their comfort not recognising that everyone is feeling cold because it is winter. Such a person will also see a tax as being a restriction to their freedom, not recognising that everyone is paying the same tax and it is for the benefit of the whole community in various ways. Such a person tends not to recognise circumstance when judging the performance of others, they will only see success or failure, aid or hindrance. Empathy involves a cognitive process based on contextual cues, and in such people this process is reduced.
Talking about this with someone else it was proposed that the term “political retard” was relevant, but “moral retard” was more so.
Really Midrash, what is this idle chatter all about?
The state school girl was “socially invidious” – lol – why assume that?
Surely it is obvious that it was, and is. just spite on the part of the Nouveau rich adolescent and the expression of the less than admirable desire that all humans, male and female have, to feel superior to others. It is called the status bias and our society has been encouraging people to behave this way over the past few decades.
This has been to the detriment of our young people and their ability to grow to be adults. Christianity did once upon a time offer prescriptions against this behaviour but no longer, and so decency is no longer part of our society.