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MICHAEL RECYCLES
The SMH’s Mike Carlton cracks wise:
Donald Rumsfeld no longer presides over the havoc he did so much to create in Iraq, but his exquisite attempt at haiku poetry lives on:
As we know, That’s a hard act to follow.
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
This Rumsfeld-poet gag is more than three years old. Do read on for a guest appearance in Carlton’s column from accurate and concise Hal G.P. Colebatch.
In the sneering close to his piece, Carlton writes:
” Many other Australian Jews, though, wrote in distress at the destruction of Lebanon in their name."
They did? Who were these many Australian Jews? How many were there?
Are you sure that happened Carlton? Are you sure it wasn’t nothing?
An utter fabrication by an utter stooge who raised it only so he could take a disparaging swipe at the “well organised Israeli lobby”. Code if I ever read it.
I just emailed Carlton:
Sir,
You have claimed in your final column, that you are making an attempt to reply to your many emails. I hope you shall consider replying to this one.
In your final piece for the year, you make a sneering reference to the “well organised Israeli lobby”.Tell me, is the womens lobby “well organised”? Is the Muslim lobby “well organised”?
More importantly, considering you also referred to the “many other Australian Jews” who took an opposing view, just how “organised” is this lobby of which you speak?
In relation to your claim that “Many other Australian Jews, though, wrote in distress at the destruction of Lebanon in their name” I must ask, how many is “many others?”
Considering that:
a) There was no “destruction of Lebanon” in anybody’s name and
b) Any attacks on Lebanon were not done “in the name” of Australian Jews,I am inclined to believe your imagination has got the better of you and I would be interested to hear how you reached your conclusions. The claims to this effect in your piece were hardly substantiated.
I’ll be interested to see his reply.
Not this shit again. Anyone who finds Rumsfeld’s formulation baffling, incomprehensible, confusing or illogical is a complete and utter Grade-A MORON. Take your place in the ranks of the Amoeba Intellects, Carlton, you stupid smirking jackass. And may Santa bring you some functional brain cells to jam into that head of straw, so that your first column of 2007 may not be the same execrable exemplar of apalling idiocy that your last one of 2006 is.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 12 02 at 12:14 AM • permalinkPIMF
Appalling of course has two ‘p’s. Which, interestingly, is evidently exactly the number of working neurons Carlton possesses.
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 12 02 at 12:16 AM • permalinkI gotta go with crispytoast.
Rumsfeld’s comments make perfect sense (whether in haiku or their original bland bureaucratese).
They would be mystifying or funny only to people who are cataclysmically unfit for management at any level, anywhere.
Posted by John Fembup on 2006 12 02 at 12:21 AM • permalinkI, too, must go with crispytoast. Rumsfeld actually made some important identifications. Of course, one must be able to integrate more than one sentence at a time in order to understand what he said. I’m sure it was incomprehensible to those who never rose to the conceptual level (which explains the way they write), but operate on an animal’s perceptual level of awareness, and therefore, wake up in a new world every minute.
I think Carlton is just jealous because he doesn’t understand it and everyone else does.
Posted by curious george on 2006 12 02 at 12:50 AM • permalinkAt the risk of this thread starting to sound repetitious, I’m also going with Crispytoast. I have never understood why this particular piece of wisdom was the subject of so much derision. It makes perfect sense to me.
Posted by Not My Problem on 2006 12 02 at 12:54 AM • permalink... one Hal G.P. Colebatch, sent the crudest letter of the year: “You are a piece of shit.” I took it as a badge of honour.
I bet the piece of shit was offended to be associated with Carlton though.
Posted by curious george on 2006 12 02 at 12:55 AM • permalinkI understand the left’s inability to comprehend Rumsfeld’s remarks about what you don’t know: They’re not just ignorant; they’re invincibly ignorant. The idea of allowing for your own incomplete knowledge is beyond them.
It would be funny if it weren’t so depressing.
Posted by Don't Bogart that Midget, Comrade! on 2006 12 02 at 01:11 AM • permalinkI too agree with Crispytoast:
I remember seeing the unedited press conference that those Rumsfeld quotes came from. It was a typical scenario with the roomful of reporters trying to pin him down on some failed intelligence angle. I think he had responded to the same question posed repeatedly, somewhat in exasperation, by directly enumerating the possibilities. The last resort when one is presented with a dimwit that steadfastly refuses to get it. It struck me as a well mannered way of chiding the questioner for being an obtuse dickhead and to stop fishing for the stumble or quote.
Strange then that it is now considered to be an example of unintelligible evasiveness by the press. Every time they recycle it they are pretty much telegraphing the fact that they are deaf to irony and are unable to understand simple logical branching options when presented.
Quite fitting really.
I, for one, welcome our new crispytoast overlord.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 12 02 at 02:13 AM • permalinkLet me see if I can create a simple explanation for Mike:
Until today, Mike Carlton was a Known Unknown to me - I knew of him, had heard of him, but never bothered to read his scribblings, so that much was unknown.
Now that I have read one of his columns, he has become a Known Known - I now know that he is a tool.
It has also become apparent that Mike is suffering from an Unknown Unknown status - that is, there is an unknown amount of knowledge that Mike just has no idea about. The amount of stuff that he doesn’t know is unknown.
There are things we know, and things we don’t know. Does anyone have any idea of how much this twat-monkey doesn’t know?
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 12 02 at 02:43 AM • permalinkRegurgitating old material is Carlton’s particular schtik.
His Friday News Review is just reheating his old Reagan jokes from 25 years ago and applying them to Bush - or President Shrub as Carlton so brilliantly calls him.
Still, one expects the battiest of moonbats to be heavily into recycling (especially ideas). Other people’s, his own old material - doesn’t matter. When one is as bereft of original thought as Carlton, what can you expect?
# 18
Lemmy;
It struck me as a well mannered way of chiding the questioner for being an obtuse dickhead and to stop fishing for the stumble or quote.
This sort of attitude, is what I’ll miss most about that man.
Long after we are all gone, and the world is a Genocidal-Islamo-State (or not), Rummy will be regarded as having been right all along.
#23 Bonmot
President Shrub as Carlton so brilliantly calls him.
Even if I hated Bush and the Rethuglicans as much as any good Campus-Borg-Unit should, I still would not be caught dead calling GW something as lame as ‘Shrub’.
Dig a little deeper....esp. if you care to call my side stupid in all instances.
Carlton is just one of those many people who don’t know enough to know how little they know and therefore think they know everything. His is so profoundly insubstantial an intellect that he is better likened to the smell of shit than to an actual piece of the stuff. Shit does have its constructive uses whereas Carlton is merely a noisome irritant; a puffed-up, self-congratulatory, blathering fool of a man.
And, yeah. I’m with crispytoast too.
Crispy toast is going to wish he had a dollar for every reader who says “I’m with crispytoast” because so am I. Was Rumsfeld’s known knowns “speech” any more intellectually difficult than 1 + 1 = 2?
Things like plastic turkeys, Lancet studies of deaths in Iraq and now this have one redeeming feature, it saves you around 3 or 4 minutes of your valuable time working out if you are talking to an idiot or not.If you think the plastic turkey is a “known known” that resulted in 500,000 plus deaths in Iraq then you are indeed known to be “stuck on stupid” ( not one of Rummy’s I know but within the theme).
Posted by the nailgun on 2006 12 02 at 06:07 AM • permalinkHas anyone noticed this week how an awfully large number of left wing commentators suddenly are so worried and sympathetic towards our wheat farmers?
Posted by the nailgun on 2006 12 02 at 06:11 AM • permalinkI’m not only gonna jump right on Crispytoast’s train, I wanna guard the caboose!
Any mention of Mike Carlton and I totally see red. The man has to be about the greatest pseudo-intellectual, petit-bourgeois champagne socialist hypocrite this nation has ever whelped. With Carlton it’s not really about Rummy, or Bush, or the Iraq war. He’s just a rabid, drooling anti-American cur with a hateful itch that gets his hind legs jittering with practically every column he writes. Hell, back around the time of the Sydney Olympics I remember him barking uncontrollably in one of his pieces for no better reason than to ridicule America for its marching bands, for godsakes. The mongrel needs a bucket cut out and fixed around his collar to stop him from scratching his ears off.
The formerly amusing Molly Ivins has been calling the president ‘Shrub’ since the 2000 campaign.
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 12 02 at 09:50 AM • permalinkCarlton the Tool
Bellyaches about haiku:
I’m with Crispytoast.Posted by Urbs in Horto on 2006 12 02 at 10:01 AM • permalinkMUAHAHA! Fame! Power! Money! Extra-Fancy Potato Chips! All now within my grasp ...
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 12 02 at 11:58 AM • permalinkI’m not so much with crispytoast as with a thick slice of raisin toast smothered in butter and lightly dusted with cinnanmon.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 12 02 at 05:43 PM • permalinkSpeaking of smh..
“Iraqi and Afghan refugees stranded in Indonesia for five years may finally reach Australia, writes Mark Forbes.”
Stranded? You can’t be a stranded refugee to come to Australia from Afghan etc, it’s the first port of call, therefore you’re not eligable.
They could have started a life in Indonesia and got passports and residence there. \
Also, The Sun Herald appears to be pro islamic here in sydney again. News story how can the police guard the Islamic building and not protect australian uncovered meat protesters first?
“POLICE have been asked to protect Australia’s largest mosque next weekend because of concerns that a bikini march staged to coincide with the anniversary of the Cronulla riots may get out of control.
I’m sure the girls will throw bra’s at the Koran headquarters (funded by tax payers like us) and it will be an all out mud fight with the hairy back islamic men....
Crispytoast? Crispytoast????
Where was y’all when I posted this?
Criminy!
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 12 02 at 08:04 PM • permalinkMentalFloss
His posting is more recent than yours, and much as Allah’s later statements in the Koran abrogate earlier rules, Crispytoast must now be the standard.Sorry.
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2006 12 02 at 09:31 PM • permalinkI declare my complete opposition to crispytoast and take my stand alongside of buttermilk pancakes.
I could get on board the buttermilk pancake bandwagon, paco, but I’d be more wrapping myself around them, rather than standing alongside them.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 12 02 at 10:07 PM • permalink#52: Quite so, old top, quite so. In fact, I got outside of a big stack made by Mrs. Paco for breakfast, this morning, in addition to a substantial slab of delicious ham.
Quite seriously, I salute crispytoast’s smack-down of Mikey. Rumsfeld’s original statement was not at all illogical, so Carlton’s sarcasm was pointless.
#51 Steady on, me old.
Spain was too far a walk from me comfy cave on the slopes of Ararat. ‘Specially after that bloody great lake was dropped on me by you-know-who...limped through the first forty or so “begats” after that, did I, only recovered my customary nonchalant saunter in time to wander south and warn Shimshon about that bitch with the shears.
More back than brains, that one.
It’s ‘Abbasid yer pondering—gave ‘em Haroun for their money in them days...Yar!
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 12 03 at 01:02 AM • permalinkWhen Rumsfeld retired, the tired old journos fronted out his famous saying - trying to poke fun at it. Even my seventeen-year old daughter could see the logic of the saying, pointing out that it was totally in line with philosophical thought and wondering how stupid you had to be to think it was worth ridiculing.
P.S. I’m with Crispytoast, though I prefer French Toast, with tomato sauce (ketchup) and not the maple syrup preferred by our American friends.
This is a clear sign that member no. 2 needs to offer us more threads about food.
Surely some of his sandwiches have been less than perfectly sliced, or is this yet another inconvenient truth about John Howard’s Australia that he wishes us to ignore?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 12 03 at 02:46 AM • permalinkMM: A badly sliced sambo from the Tele’s cafe would still have more substance than Micky Karleton.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 12 03 at 07:41 AM • permalinkI’ve never had a problem with Rumsfeld’s statements - just a cumbersome way of saying what could have come from a Knowledge Management conference - accompanied by a slide with four quadrants:
There’s stuff that you know you know (tacit)
There’s stuff that you don’t know you know (implicit)
There’s stuff that you know you don’t know (eg competitor’s plans)
And there’s stuff that you don’t know that you don’t know (as in you don’t know even what question to ask)Where’s the problem?
#54: That’s m’boy!
Embarassing disclosure: I have long harbored the desire to write a novel about Abd-al-Rahman’s flight from the massacre of the Umayyads by the Abbasids, and his long, roundabout journey across North Africa with his faithful freedman, Badr, and his ultimate establishment of himself as emir in Spain. But I’ll never write it, so I wish somebody else would; I think it’s an inherently fascinating story that would lend itself easily to the format of the novel.
#55 P.S. I’m with Crispytoast, though I prefer French Toast, with tomato sauce (ketchup) and not the maple syrup preferred by our American friends.
French toast with ketchup? Beets on hamburgers? Fried egg on pizza? Now, look, I know you people live on the upside down part of the world, but this is just ridiculous.
But I’ll never write it
Why not?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 12 03 at 08:46 PM • permalinkFrench toast with ketchup? Beets on hamburgers? Fried egg on pizza?
I did want to go to Australia but now I don’t know—what on earth will I eat there?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 12 03 at 08:47 PM • permalinkc’mon kiddies. We’ve been through this before. As long as you lot insist on marrying peanut butter with jelly, any comments on our national tastes are just not on.
And don’t get me started on bagels (stale donuts) or pretzels (moisture collectors for damp cupboards).
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 12 04 at 03:38 AM • permalink
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I tried, but an unfortunate sweep of the mouse brought up one of Slate’s stealth menus, and I was horridly compelled to click on the following linked headline: Is James Bond Responsible For the Iraq War? It’s one of Richard Cohen’s rambling confabulations, and it’s impossible to summarize or even describe—you can only read it for yourself. Join me in my brain damage!