a very different time

Comrades,

When I learned that George H.W. Bush had shuffled off This Mortal Coil, I immediately thought...there's a man who came from a very different time...1989 was his first year in his only term as POTUS.

When George took the oath and moved into the Oval Office I'd only recently knocked up the missus who I'd just "shacked-up" with [and of course these days you can't say 'knocked up the missus' without attracting opprobrium] and my first child, who was born a bastard, was just weeks old when the Mighty Balmain Tigers RLFC were robbed blind in the Grand Final and Backdoor Benny still has nightmares about that drop goal attempt that hit the black dot.

The music was absolute shite, the Baby Animals and the Bondi Cigars had only just started off on their brilliant careers as a for instance, and the Jackson 5 and Gladys Knight and the Pips called it quits. Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were the best they could come up with in popular movies.

I had to look that up in the encyclopedia because if you got me around a dining table now and asked "righto, Craves, take us through the 80's" I'd be struggling big time. But, as a radio news journalist who's stock-in-trade was the telephone, I do remember that any kind of hand-held mobile phone was a real rarity and devices like "The Brick" were still a few years off for common use back in '89 [the radio station did have a couple of 'mobiles' about the size of a car battery and as heavy], the internet was a weird fledgling universe known only to geeks with science degrees, [primitive computers with fuzzy green screens on cathode ray tubes had just replaced great clunking Olivetti typewriters in the newsroom, much to the dismay and resistance of the Luddite old guard - "they'll never catch on. if it's not broke, why fix it?"], Google was still a decade away, Mark Zuckerburg was five years old, and everybody chain-smoked at work.

While Comrade Bob Hawke was cheating on his wife and was well into his third term in office and the former Oxford champion can still chunder a yard of beer at age 88, George Snr's best buddy on the international cocktail circuit was the unlamented Maggie Thatcher and he wanted to spend one last summer at the family beach house at Kennebunkport, Maine, before he died and he ate a few oysters and drank whisky in his final weeks and is consistently rated by the pundits in hindsight as about the 6th or 7th worst US President in history [not including the incumbent].

George did jack-shit about Tiananmen Square, [Jiang Zemin got away with blue murder and he's still hiding in plain view at 92], his military adventure in Panama to depose the late Manuel Noriega is now a footnote to history but The War on Drugs didn't go so well, and then sending in Gen. Mad Dog Schwarzkopf to chase them damned Iraqi's out of the strategic oil reserves in Kuwait [yeah, right, a good cause for a Texas oil man] with pointless loss of life was a swift victory and an abject failure simultaneously. Bush the Elder presided over a world wide recession as the American economy went down the S-bend and he didn't have to do much to end the Cold War; the Berlin Wall astonishingly crumbled overnight to almost everyone's complete surprise and the Soviet Union imploded all by itself, but to his almost singular credit H.Dubbya did sign the START 1 treaty which finalised Reagan's work to the end of the plainly insane nuclear weapons stockpile, and resulted in an 80% reduction in the number of nuclear tipped warheads that could be loosed upon this world - which then stopped worrying about The Bomb. But that's where my praise ends.

I was scouring the new-fangled World Wide Web for a single image that might best sum up the Bush presidency, and was having a hard time of it, before this one popped up.

How little we remember, how much we forget...

a Goose drowns his sorrows

Social Drinkers...

You have to question the widsom of Anheuser-Busch's marketing dept. getting tied up with a god-bothering loser - but then again, an excellent name...what a Goose!

Everyone knows some crazy bat-shit goes down in the countryside, but the only question is...does 300 bowls of ScoMo's Super Special Curry from Ceylon go down well in West Wyalong with a flat-top truck stacked with Goose stubbies?

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/24/scott-morrison-thought-he-was-promoting-australia-instead-he-advertised-an-american-beer

Always comforting to know a Massive Piss Tank is in charge...

ScoMo has gone too far this time

Comrades,

Since when did the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks RLFC become the South Pacific Sharks? They've got Pacific Ocean coastline down there in The Shire, that's for certain, but really? Sure, a lot of big beautiful boofy blokes from the islands play rugby league in Straya, but ScoMo has gone too far this time, in the traditional cross-dressing exercise at APEC, last weekend in Morseby.

Lord Jesus Christ, save us...

Never mind that handing out commemorative tropical leitmotif footy jumpers is as about as tasteful as gifting a hand-knitted Juventus soccer jersey to the Pope, doesn't Our Scott cut a dashing figure on the international stage?

The Prime Minister has such a total grasp of all the fine minutia of diplomacy and foreign policy that it came as no surprise to learn that he was surprised when he found out our major regional trading partner had taken umbrage at his perfectly muddle-headed plan to move the Strayan embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to it's spiritual home Bethlehem - where it belongs - deep in the heart of the sweet Baby Jesus. How was he to know it wouldn't work with the electors of Wentworth or wash with Jakarta? ScoMo is so on top of it, he might as well just leave the aid budget to Her Excellency The Minister for Foreign Affairs the Hon. Senator Marise Payne, because she well knows, and will tell anyone who'll listen, that the south sea islanders are "only in it for the money".

Who knows what went down in Singapore, but didn't ScoMo do a fine job flying into the Top End with Old Mate Shinzo "the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit Darwin since World War Two" [does that mean one of his predecessors was flying one of the bombers? Never mind]. And what about that fabulous scheme he cooked up with Old Mate Pencey to chuck all the reffo's off Manus Island and move the US Marine Corps straight in to ward off the wicked advances of the Chinese? Brilliant! Of course, nobody would have bothered to ask the good folk of the Admiralty Islands what the think of it, but that's neither here nor there. They're probably heathens anyway. Now, Our Scott is hosting the President of India, the first to ever make a State Visit here, so it's big. God, the three-ringed circus never ends. The PM likely got some choice kangaroo cuts curried up for him for dinner last night at Admiralty House. Likes to impress, does ScoMo. And tonight they're going to the cricket together at The G. Woo! Hoo! Just in time to hit the hustings, the scallywag.
In the meantime, the Miracle of Democracy really has gone wild in Melbourne, where the Greens - who have a peculiar "toxic culture problem" - are in a death fight with the governing Pinko's for the hipster/yuppie scum vote in the bellwether battleground seats of Brunswick and Richmond. My Spy on the Ground in the seat of Richmond has been besieged by doorknockers to the point where she can barely go out for the shouting mobs of rent-a-crowd campaign workers milling around outside. The Greens have been caught on yr social meejah calling out a perfectly honourable female Liberal MP as a "disgusting bitch-faced slug-parrot", and by all reports Pinko campaign posters have been defaced with lurid green coloured unauthorised stickers saying VOTE-ONE-FOR-A-FUCKED-FUTURE. The authorities, quite rightly, want to know what little shit's done that.

Be that as it may, running down the lists of candidates, I was most disappointed to see that the Australian Sex Party has now somehow morphed into Fiona Patten's Reason Party while no-one was looking. WTF, is an over-used phrase, but hey? What is the reason? Is this a clever ploy to confuse and deceive lily-white innocent voters into casting their ballots in favour of filth?

At least this fine upstanding Melburnian wannabe pollie pulls no punches in his election advertising...

As a footnote, it was pleasing to see the Victorian Electoral Commission release this map clearly defining the demographics of the most hotly contested region of Victoria to assist psephologists in the whirl-wind of tomorrow night's tally room.:The enemy are at the gates! To the boxes!

an "uncooked pig's head"

Comrades,

Never mind geo-politics or Scomo looking sensational in a fancy satin shirt waving from the back row at APEC, one of the major stories of the recent "summit season" has been shamefully overlooked by the media.
The Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa, ran into a touch of trouble when he in dropped in at Brisbane, having an "uncooked pig's head" chucked at him amid a barrage of Samoan invective...maybe he's not universally loved in the Samoan diaspora?

http://sobserver.ws/en/16_11_2018/local/38507/Australian-Police-investigate-attack-on-PM-Tuilaepa.htm

BTW...recently I got together some stories from Samoa, and finally cranked my arse into gear to put them up on the Internet thingy.
It's a bit more than 10,000 words, so I don't expect anyone will read them, nor do I care really, but you can see them here if you want...

https://postcardsfromupolu.blogspot.com/

the Tuesday after the first Monday in November

Comrades,

The beautiful chaos of the Miracle of Democracy was on full display in the US Mid Terms. Oh, yes siree...serious psephologists with the election fever would have been wetting their pants in delight. No one else does it quite like it.

Only in America could a dead white male be elected, with a cadaver winning a seat in the Nevada state legislature. Never mind that the recently deceased candidate was a prominent legal brothel owner who's as dead as a muthfukka's corpse was found in bed in unsuspicious circumstances during his 72nd birthday celebrations at the Love Ranch, by a notorious male porn-star. Dennis Hof's platform of hyper-pro-Trumpotus far-right redneck policies was enough to push his ghost over the line, so it can only be assumed that the Nevada State Capitol in Carson City will now be haunted by a pimping poltergeist.

In the starkest of contrasts, more than 100 women of all shapes and sizes and political colours and stripes were elected to the House of Representatives for the first time since universal suffrage was introduced for federal elections in The States back in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act. "Coloured Peoples" of every description were also elected to a myriad of offices for the first time; Afro/Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Asians, crikey, even Red Indians got a look in [not counting Elizabeth Warren], and there's never been any shortage of cowboys. There might have even been some Russians in there somewhere.

Then there's the curious idea of holding all the elections you could possibly think of every two years on the same day - the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

All 435 seats in The House were up for re-election [MHR's have two year terms, so they all know they are only really ever short-term part-time politicians], a third of the Senate went 'round again, then there were Gubernatorial races, elections for state legislatures, polls for judges, sheriffs, mayors, town councils, and voter propositions [read 'local referendums'] on all kinds of weird State issues. Like legalising weed in the Great State of Michigan; a proposal which got up by a wide margin 56%-44%. Out there you can now grow 12 pot plants and have 2.5 ounces of wacky tobaccy floating around the house without coming to the attention of the authorities. Yoo! Hoo!

But when all was said and done, in Congress there was an exact "flip" across the country, with the Dems winning precisely the same number of seats that the Grand Old Party lost. A two-party preferred Democracy if ever there was one. Let's not go to the contests for the US senate, which is the most unrepresentative of unrepresentative swills in all the free world.

The problem for the Yanks is that elections are run by the States along partisan lines, and all 50 of them do it differently, so the opportunities for disgraceful wholesale gerrymandering are legion and endless. To tackle the problem, the New York Times did an earnest editorial calling for the size of the House of Representatives to be bolstered to 593 seats, while Time magazine went much much further and proposed an astonishing 930 bums on seats in The House. Of course, all they have to do is establish an independent National Electoral Commission to do the "re-districting" along world's best practice lines and it's problem solved - right there - but that'd trample all over State's Rights, and would require an amendment to the Constitution, so that aint gonna happen. Or they could just adopt compulsory voting, but that would be dead against all the known precepts of The Land of The Free.

Much song and dance has been made about how the American electorate was so as mad as hell about The Donald that they went to the boxes in droves in an "historic turn-out" for the Mid-Terms to teach the low brown dog bastard scumbag a lesson in democracy. Really? OK, 100 million ballots were cast for the first time ever, however, the best estimate - and it can only ever be a best estimate even if you used an abacus and slide-rule - was that the average nationwide turn-out for the The House and Senate was about 48% of eligible voters. So, as usual, half the electorate couldn't be damned and/or give a blue root.

Same as it ever was:

Everyone knew, well before the election, that DJ Trump! was stuffed. Good & Proper. Losing the House means His Turdness will never get another penny in Federal money to do anything even mildly contentious. The Big Beautiful Wall along the Mexican border will never be built. Space Wars will never happen. The planet might implode, but nothing will happen. The Donald will be pulling out what's left of his outrageous bouffant and will be fully bald as well as suffering from meat sickness in two years time with complete & utter frustration and too many cheeseburgers & Cokes, as he is thwarted at every turn by a bitter Democratic Party consumed by rage and hatred and hell bent on revenge. United we stand, divided, we fall. Good luck America...see you later.

Meantime, back in The Most Unstable Democracy in the South Pacific, I heard the Tongue Speaker in Chief get himself completely tied in verbal knots when a local journo buttonholed him about his campaign bus, and how it could possibly keep up with him without breaking the long-standing world land speed record as he hitched a ride on aviation all over the vastness of Queensland. He wasn't campaigning or nuthin', just acquainting swinging voters with his now trademarked True Blue Fair Dinkum Ordinary Suburban Pie Eating Beer Swilling Baseball Cap Wearing Bogan Bloke Next Door image. In Tory circles it's known as "Project Sell Scomo", now that the fundamentalist fascists have disposed of that Poncy Prick from Point Piper as unelectable.

I knew that Scomo likes to introduce himself to folks he doesn't know as Scomo, but I had no idea that the Hon. Prime Minister is so taken by the contraction of his own name, that he now signs his moniker on all official documents, autograph hunter's books and campaign buses as Scomo.

Of course, nothing will ever beat the now-disgraced dodgy Chinese donation trouserer, the former Hon. Sen. Sam Dastyari's absolute corker of a Pinko Bus on the campaign trail back in '16.

the staggering Champagne bill

Comrades,

God only can imagine the staggering Champagne bill in downtown Nouméa after the 48 hour public-drinking ban was lifted following the weekend's independence referendum. Oh man. Millions of euro's on the good stuff shipped in especially.

Tchin! Tchin! C'est mignon! Champagne corks flying through chic bars and across the bows of all that useless boatage in the Port Plaisance marina like it's New Years Eve! In a city that flies more French flags than Tricolours in Paris, the Caldoche would have been partying like there's no tomorrow.

Upcountry on their sprawling cattle ranches, they would have spent days rooting around in le caves finding themselves some choice vintage Château Lafite Rothschild to swill after quaffing all the Vintage Champagne Krug 1998, in grand celebration. C'est la France!!

THIS IS FRANCE, alright. Oh yes "voila! we want to given them independence, sure, but not just now", the Caldoche cry. There are dark clouds on the horizon. Yeah right. Yawn. Haven't we heard that one before?

It was very very cheeky of the kid President Macron to remind the Néo-Calédoniens that "we have kept our promise for 30 years" and then he repeated himself to emphasize the point in his address to the Republic.

Wot! 30 years! Oh, c'mon Emmaunel, you were barely out of short pants when the Matignon accords were signed with the clear intention of giving the French ample warming to sort out their affairs before the Elysee cut the purse strings and the Kanak took over. In '88, mate, the promise was that in '98 there would be a vote on the "transfer of sovereignty and full autonomy" to New Cal, and what did the Kanak get? The Nouméa Accord. 20 more years of shit.

The bloke who got Matignon together and polished that particular turd, Michel Rocard, died last year of old age it's been that long, and the Nouméa Accord was just another warning, this time, with 20 years notice if you hadn't heard the first time. Self-rule was coming to town and there would be an agonizingly slow electoral process chiseled in stone to finally achieve full self determination, three decades on...oh no, sorry, not now...in due course, but only if the Kanak put their guns away.

So, you had to be astonished by the absurdity of the typically French over-reaction on Sunday evening after a few of the local boys started chucking rocks at the local cops, and then dragged a stack of old tyres onto the main road out of Nouméa and set them ablaze with some gazoil and handy tree branches. The authorities responded with a fleet of armoured personnel carriers driven by honourable French tank men, led by one which had an armoured bulldozer attachment stuck on the front, and about 150 heavily armed gendarme in full combat gear toting fearsome looking shooters. But, by the time the French got to the "protest", the Kanak kids had well and truly scarpered, leaving the pile of rubber to burn, baby, burn. So laughable, so Frenchy. A random young Caldoche interviewed on the telly news said in English "they were just throwing a few stones, y'know, it happens all the time here".

The vote was closer than expected, phphh! we know that, but unlike previous proposals designed to obfuscate, at least this one was a sensible enough question in simple French:

An 80.63% turn out in 2018 was admirable and respectable, and so the Miracle of Democracy worked mighty fine there for the colonialists - for the moment. And don't they love their "moments" However, you better party on now, baby, because the local indigènes know where you live and they're coming to get all yr stuff. Just have a look at the map. You're hemmed in.

Back in May, on a "goodwill tour" of the colonies, Macron went to the site of the Ouvéa massacre out there on the Loyalty Islands, but did he say anything close to "je suis désolé". Oh, non, non, not on your Nelly. Laid a couple of wreaths and wore a silly garland on his head that made his idiot grin look even more childish. The land he was standing on is the thing in question, sonny boy, and he just didn't get it.

Never mind the UN "Committee of 24" getting involved, which they will, Kid Emmanuel don't understand that the Kanak have very long memories; way way before 1853. After being unconscionably rat-fucked for 165 years, another generation is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things for the locals. Two more votes and four more years are in the glacial democratic pipeline - for Chrissake! - before the inevitable peaceful transition to true independence which is, as everybody knows, the only thing that will finish it.

I'm entirely certain I'm not alone when in exasperation, all I can do is cock my snoot in the direction of metropolitan France and say...Kanaky Pour La Kanak!

mushroom clouds in the morning

"The Soviet Threat". Missiles & Rockets magazine, 14th Jan 1963


Comrades,

This one made p.17 in the papers and rated a brief mention in the back half of some news bulletins for one evening, as it was too true form to see DJ Trump! being flippant with the seething masses of humanity, so it wasn't seen as very newsworthy. The under 40's are just not shitting bricks about The Bomb like they used to.

Having been considered as "unworkable" and a "treaty in name only" for years, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF] - which effectively bans the use or development of any nuclear missile that travels between 500 and 5,500 kilometres - has now been unceremoniously junked.

All that good work Ronnie and Gorbie did back in '87 to finally settle the peace question in Europe [not counting the Balkans] - gorn...ripped up and tossed out a White House window like so much ticker-tape by some wack job in the Oval Office.

Of course the Ruskies have the full arsenal of INF range missiles, but they say that's perfectly fine because none of them are nuclear armed, but they wouldn't need much tinkering to pop on a multi-pronged atomic warhead capable of lobbing a few megatons about willy-nilly, if required. The Americans say that China has to sign on to the treaty, when Peking has never shown any interest in Intermediate Range Missiles, and are happy enough to claim that they're only in The Bomb caper, because they have to be.

The Yanks have any number of INF toys on the drawing board too - yikes! - there's now even talk of them also developing a nuclear-tipped torpedo, I mean that is just such a great idea; they could blow up Vladivostok before anyone even noticed.

People are saying it's the start of a New Cold War, but a renewed nuclear arms race has been going on for years...Vlad and Barack were very leery of each other, let's face it. Putin didn't have a "pee-pee tape" to play on Obama

Treaty or no treaty, Russia has the entire planet covered with the Devil's Own Death Delivery System - the SR-28 Sarmat Super Heavy - anyway... https://themiracleofdemocracy.blogspot.com/2018/03/comrades-idea-of-them-damned-ruskies.html
If they're well enough resourced - which they are - neither side has any trouble getting their boffins to bang their heads together to come up with all sorts of very freaky missile combinations. MAD needs to be guaranteed on both sides, because there is no such thing as tactical nuclear warfare. They're working on the pretty standard assumption of "never pull a gun on anyone, unless you are going to use it"

Of course the Trumpotus is a little distracted at the minute on the hustings, in a crowd pulling competition with the former POTUS at those last minute campaign rallies in the latest round of barely-contained chaos in the Miracle of Demorcay, known as the US Mid-Terms. DJ! is likely to lose control of the House and then nothing, absolutely nothing, will get done in the USA for the next two years. Congress has been well used to the stupendous cost of funding a nuclear weapons program for nigh on 80 years, so nothing will change there.

As a result, The Donald didn't have the time to break the news that he was planning to pull out of the INF to Old Mate Vlad in person, so, to make sure the electorate knew he wasn't soft on nuclear weapons, DJ! promptly dispatched his leading hawk, Secretary of State Lil' Micky Pompeo, to Moscow.

When Pomps - who's only been in the job five months after almost everything else he's ever touched has turned to shit - showed up in the gilded meeting hall in the Kremlin, Putin button-holed him with a shot of vodka and said "oi, Micky...wuz this I hear? Has your eagle eaten all the olives and left only the arrows behind?" in a clever allusion to the Great Seal of the United States of America. Them damned Ruskies know their insignia.

Outwitted from the off, Lil' Micky reputedly replied "I'll get back to you on on that, but I didn't bring any more olives".

Ike's military/industrial complex is rubbing its hands together in glee with all the shiny new nuclear hardware they're itching to sell for a king's ransom, so, as usual, the best we can do is keep our heads down and scan the horizon for mushroom clouds in the morning.

"Shelter from Atomic Attack in Existing Buildings". US Federal Civil Defence Administration technical manual, 1952

Wentworth Falls

Comrades,

Not much point going the Pinko gloat after the Tories disappeared up their own poop-shooters in Wentworth -- watcha gunna do when they come for you, ScoMo?

Acres of old growth forest have been taken out to supply the newsprint for this one, suffice to say here that Australia is in a for a glorious bunfight for the next six months with a Hung Parliament, and hey, they're even talkin' about that old Inbred Tomato making a triumphant return to lead the Country Party once more, after just nine months in Purgatory.

Bring it on.

Absolutely nothing - nothing - will get done between now and then, with the Govt. utterly paralysed after the pinnacle of entitled Conservatism fell to the hoi polloi...

Bud Drop Day in Canada!

Comrades,

The Miracle of Democracy at work...Bud Drop Day in Canada!

I'm moving to Saskatchewan, which will have more than 50 dispensaries; just a shame about the weather.

The Liberal Party of Canada won the 2015 general election on the legal weed platform and got a thumping majority, and it took exactly three years to work out how to set up a legit market for the gear and how to rake in the windfall of tax dollars.

After the excise, it's not terribly cheap, tho', at roughly $A225 an ounce, especially given "legal marijuana will have lower levels of THC, the chemical that brings on the buzz, than most products now on the black market".

Unsurprisingly, "illegal drug dealers across the country have already responded by lowering their prices. Some in Montreal, for example, are offering two joints for the price of one". Buy one, get one free! Same as it ever was in the supply & demand caper.

What would Justin do? - according to the Canadian papers he's had a puff or two in his day but "he said he never really liked it."
Didn't like it? Nah, he loved it, just like these wacky pot-heads and midnight tokers.

[People gathered at a concert hall in Toronto to watch the bud drop at the stroke of midnight in celebration of the legalization on Wednesday 17-10-18 of recreational cannabis use in Canada. Photo: Ian Willms/Getty.]

Wonderful Wentworth

Comrades,

Jo Drinkwater, a former features editor of Tatler magazine, once remarked "the upper classes don't get angry, darling, they get furious".

And it seems the good burghers of Wentworth are indeed furious, and are about to inflict their mighty wrath at the ballot box as the Miracle of Democracy gets another run.

The former Local Member and honest dealer, as far as they're concerned, was unceremoniously robbed blind of the top job for no good reason at all. How dare they do that to a good, well educated, very successful Point Piper boy? It's said that all they ever talk about in Wentworth is the price of real estate. So what if the last PM wasn't popular? Mal & Lucy's current pile is worth a conservative $50M [as a price guide, the Fairfax family sold their Point Piper estate Elaine last year for more than $70M, the most expensive patch of foreshore dirt in that part of the world, nah, in the whole damn country, to date, ever]. That's got caché. Somehow, you just can't see them bothering the Bondi Junction Centrelink office.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't pretend to know anything about Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, despite it being just across town, no more than 20km as the crow flies from here in the Emerald City's Armpit. All I've been told is that "different people" live there. Very different. Another world again. Official Govt. stats show it's the second most densely populated electorate, it covers some of the richest suburbs in the country, and has the highest number of obscenely wealthy families of any seats in the Wide Brown Land. Just the names out there are evocative - Bellevue Hill, Bondi and Bondi Beach, Elizabeth Bay, Paddo, Point Piper, Rose Bay, Vaucluse, darling, Watsons Bay, Woollahra, etc etc etc. roll off the tongue nicely, just dripping and drooling with privilege and entitlement. You know, a very nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.
However, despite all that, if voter-intention polls are to be believed, the Tory primary vote has collapsed by about 18% [think the recent state by-election in Wagga Wagga], leaving the field wide open for the 16 snoozers who've put their rings in the hat for this one. At least the Fishers, Shooters, and Farmers Party couldn't be bothered to nominate.

Despite that many choices, in the denouement, it'll be a three cornered contest that comes down to preferences between Kerryn Phelps AM and the Liberal [David "You can call me Dave" Sharma] and Labor [Tim Murray] party stooges.
I've only ever had dealings with Doc Phelps, when she was National President of the Australian Medical Association [AMA] - an ordinary lobby group for self-interest like any other - in the early Naughties when I was a radio news reporter. She was a piece of work then and I have no doubt she's a piece of work now. There's something not quite right with "militant" doctors pretending to be GP's. Doc Ric Chalesworth ran his sole-operator general practice when he was the Labor MP for Perth back in the 80's and made no secret or apology for it, but he didn't make a song and dance about it either, or use it as some kind of power trip.

Phelps, of course, whinges that the Liberals are "spending a million dollars campaigning to discredit me", but she has first rate Eastern Suburbs credentials down Potts Point way, and has that peculiar habit of "independents" being able to change their political stripe - chameleon like - to suit any occasion at all. Just ask Tony Windsor, he'll tell you. And good luck to her. But, why she allows her Wikipedia entry to say she was once described as "one of the 25 most influential lesbians in Australia" and is, by her domestic arrangements, a converted Jew, only she can say. Is that a thing in the Eastern Suburbs? I don't know.
Also of note is that Alex Malcolm Turnbull Jnr has been actively campaigning via the good ol' antique desktop-cam attached to a tin can on yr 'social meejah' for the "Anyone But A Liberal" ticket, claiming that dear Papa's Grand Old Liberal Party has been ambushed and ruthlessly taken over by ult-right Christian fundamentalist fascist extremists who don't take no prisoners and couldn't give a blue root about Global Warming. You know what they say, "like father, like son". There's probably a conspiracy theory that they're closet unreformed Trots. And the day after, Phelpsy suddenly latches onto Climate Change. Funny like that. Doesn't everyone know the harbourside mansions will be the first to go under when the sea comes in?

As it is, The Rich Dude must be having a jolly good time in his super-luxe mortgage-free New York apartment at the minute, knowing that revenge comes cold.

Mr Trundle knew full well that resigning from Parliament exposed the ScoMo/J-Fry Govt to the risk of losing their one seat majority in the House and creating a hung parliament. "Up yours for the rent, mate!". The people hate hung Parliaments. No one's in charge. The markets hate instability. Capitalist running-dogs hate unstable markets, and calls for a General Election early in the new year will reach fever pitch, in the highly likely event the Tories go down in a screaming heap. Rupert Murdoch reckons he can put up with anything for three years if necessary. But don't hold yr breath. That last member for Wentworth is going to do them slowly.

Due to the extremely curious double-dissolution Don't Call Me Mal foisted on the long suffering taxpayer last time around, a half Senate election must be held by 18 May 2019, but the Govt.'s three year term doesn't run out until November next year. Imagine that? A stand-alone half Senate election! Hasn't been one since 1970. So by my reckoning, the December Victorian State Election gets in the way, the silly season doesn't officially end until Jan 27, then there's a NSW State Election in March, so they'll have to squeeze in an April campaign for a May General. What happens during the current votin' season in The States is anyone's guess, with the Trumpotus let loose on the praries.

And, with the Govt. about to implode and disappear up its own budgy smuggler for about six months, hasn't You Can Call Me ScoMo come up with some ripping policy initiatives of late?

While the Pinko's promise Govt. subsidised kindy/pre-school for three-year-olds at the cost of billions, in return for millions of parent's votes, the Chief Speaker-In-Tongues wants to chuck homo's out of private schools because they are perverted. Genius! ScoMo's also pledged to tip the legions of good-for-nothing god-forsaken lazy-as-fuck Dole Bludgers off their arses and into some tough, back-breaking, very lowly-paid agricultural piece-work picking fruits. Winner! Brilliant thinking. That'll get rid of the sexually maladjusted from the hoity-toity education system - send them off to be cured of their evil ways on the public purse, save them from eternal damnation - while simultaneously solving all the farmer's problems by Christmas. And while we're at it, why not move Australia's diplomatic mission to Israel from the capital to Bethlehem. A miracle! Oh, sweet Jesus. Praise be the Lord.

That'll get the votes flooding in for the Tories, nothing surer.

"you can't make fun of a clown"

NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, on the hustings in Wagga Wagga, 8 September, 2018.

Comrades,

The Miracle of Democracy is spinning right out of control at the minute, and aint that gooood?
So, why not start with the Wagga Wagga state by-election a while back now, where, after all the jiggery-pokery and brou-ha-ha in Canberra, the Tories primary vote collapsed by fully 29%, allowing a conservative "independent" stooge to take the seat - the first time the Liberals have lost there in 60+ very odd years?
That'll do.
I'd never heard of the winning candidate, Doc Joe #givejoeago McGirr, who by all reports is a reasonably well-known local medico [and academic] who's been a long-time rabble-rouser in the Rural Doctors lobby, but what he intends to actually have a go at remains something of a mystery.
As it turns out, if it wasn't for the preference swap, the Pinko's had a fighting chance of pinching that seat, at least until the next State Election in five months time.
That's very very bad news for the poor ol' NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who was shitting bricks after the Wagga ballots came in; knowing full well her Tory Govt. faces wipe out, a complete rout, extermination in the forthcoming poll, where the Liberal and Country parties will be reduced to a Parliamentary rump in a history-making landslide.
Crikey, the good burghers of the Riverina couldn't give a blue root about the multi-billion dollar debacle that is Sydney's WestConnex [they still can't work out how to hook up a staggering 32kms of new road tunnels to the airport], or the utter shambles that is the "Tram to Nowhere", construction of which has ground to a complete halt as the contractors take the Govt. to court over 'variations' worth billions - it should have been finished by now.
And don't get me started on the fanciful Metro, or the Sydenham-Bankstown Development Corridor, that will/is converting huge swathes of suburbia out here in Sydney's armpit into shoddily-built towering high-rise ghetto's.

All the votes are in Sydney, so the Tories are busy preparing themselves to cop a gigantic tusk up the runter when that mob of electorates inflict their mighty wrath.
It's no co-incidence that the Emerald City is going backwards and becoming increasingly unlivable, while Melbourne - under a Pinko Govt. - is booming if you believe the statisticians, with folks flocking to the Athens of the South to buy 'reasonably-priced' real estate and take up the apparently endless supply of quality jobs on offer there, when you'd be lucky to get a gig mucking out dunnies on this side of the island while living in a dog box that's not yours.

Of course, there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and no blaming the Wagga result on "state issues", after "You can call me Mal" Turnbull was monumentally rat-fucked by the fundamentalist evangelical ult-right, who inserted a compromise PM "Call me ScoMo" Morrison.
And isn't he trying ever so hard to create an image of being a "man of the people"?
Sorry Scotty, but rolling the sleeves up on yr open-necked shirt for the television cameras pretending you are working dosesn't cut the mustard.
It just gives the expression "on the nose" a new meaning.
The problem with ScoMo is most folks don't relate at all well to a baseball cap wearing, Cronulla Sharks [who, in a sweet irony, lost the preliminary final to Melbourne 22-6] supporting, weirdo happy-clapper Shire boy, going 'round saying that everything is sorted because "I've fixed it" - in cahoots with his toe-rag mates JoFry and "yes, that's right, it's Christopher" Pyne [who's now the Minister for Adelaide Submarines, God help us all].
Move on, nothing to see here.
My arse.
Little wonder Mal decamped to be amongst his monied mates in marvellous Manhattan for a Rich Dude's quality sulk, while he plots his revenge on those responsible for the party-room putsch he didn't see coming.
You aint heard the last of it, oh, no siree.

Meantime, on the International Front - where the Miracle seems to be under siege everywhere - I did hear Shaun Micallef on the radio the other day explaining that he would not be doing any Trump jokes in his current series of Mad As Hell on the telly, because "you can't make fun of a clown". And even if you could, with the demented psycho making a total tool of himself on a daily basis, it would be out of date anyway by the time the show went to air.
Never mind that The Donald is in a B-double 18-wheeler truck-load of trouble; the "lodestar" op-ed by anonymous in the NYT, Bob Woodward's new "explosive" tome Fear [which surely can't be better than Hunter S Thompson's final book on the vagaries before he shot himself - called The Kingdom of Fear], the sleaze bag who will be forever known as the "Trump Appointee" to the Soopreeme Court, or Bobby "Three Sticks" Mueller sneaking around in the shadows getting legions of the Trumpotus' criminal cronies to 'roll over', or the 25th Amendment "nuclear option"- I've been saying this for quite a while now - the Great Stormy Daniels will prove to be his final downfall.
After years of investigations, the best they could get Al Capone on was tax evasion, so when the hush money paid out to Stormy is found to be as illegal-as-fuck under the campaign finance laws, I may very well live to see the day when Donald J Trump starts to serve his stretch in the Federal Penitentiary.
That's the problem when you think with yr dick, mate, and then have to take yr dirty laundry to the lawyers, er, cleaners.
But I'm not holding my breath because it's notable that under the US Constitution, an impeached President is the only person who cannot be pardoned by the new incoming President, but that's really neither here nor there, as the fraud & shyster will make a strategic decision to resign the Oval Office, to re-open the pardon possibility, regardless of his high crimes or misdemeanors.
Nixon did it, so why not The Feak?
It's impossible to make this kinda stuff up. Besides, it's all too hard to keep up.
And they haven't even got to the "mid-terms", where the Dems will take the House, no Republican legislation will ever be passed, any Democrat legislation will go down in the Senate or be vetoed, and the Donald will become a classic powerless Lame Duck in the last two year's of his Presidency - providing he doesn't ship on out to Mar-a-Lago before that.
Absolutely nothing will get done, and the Americans can be left to wallow in their own pitiful angst.

Winding around full circle back to my local stomping ground in Sydney's inner west, and there's been some interesting political posters going up around the place...it's pleasing to see ahead of the upcoming campaigning season, as there must always be room for anarchists in a robust Miracle, even tho' they are dead set against Democracy or any kind of organised system of governance for that matter.
We all know the usual tired old Anarcho-Commo trope of the clenched fist and a slogan or two SMASH-THE-STATE! FUCK-THE-POLICE!, but these are a touch more creative - seen on the streets of Dulwich Hill and Newtown last Thursday:

sandwich board man

Comrades.

There is a loveable old rogue, Danny Lim, who likes to hang around on the streets of Sydney's inner-west with a sandwich board slung around his neck.

It's his life's work. He must be in his mid-70's and he's been at it for many, many decades.

He makes his own colorful placards for the sandwich board, lately with a new innovation - smilies - that make a blunt, pithy, and to the point statement about this week's political difficulties facing Australia.

He's never been a big fan of corrupt or hyocritiocal politicians.

Danny always has a smile on his face and wears shoulder length hair and sometimes has some flowers about him, either holding a bunch or some stuffed into the pocket of his jacket, and he used to have a small dog with him there for a while, but it must have died.

Recently, he was for the innumerable time warned off the streets of one of his favourite haunts, Strathfield, for "offensive language" - which is hard to fathom given that he never speaks and remains silent, even when provoked.

So, it was a delight to see him pop up yesterday on the streets of Newtown, standing on the traffic island at King Street and Enmore Road, up to his usual standard with this week's sandwich board, that read:

mad, stupid...

Tourists,

Having recently returned from the islands, I found you've gotta love the Prime Minister of Samoa, 73-year-old Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Neioti Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi.

He's a hard ruthless strongman, [who is always referred to by his chiefly title Tuilaepa, Sailele is his Christian name by the way ABC], who's been in the job for 20 years as leader of the Human Rights Protection Party which holds a 48-2 majority in a highly convoluted Parliamentary democracy, where only matai [chiefs] can be elected as MP's, and universal suffrage has only be going since 1990 [until then, only matai had the vote].

That said, the dude's a funny guy, who has a hugely popular Sunday afternoon radio show on 2AP, where he spins his favourite Poly toons, does talkback, and tells jokes and hilarious stories. Talk about larf!

So it's little wonder he's suggested that all climate change denialists in positions of power should be confined to mental institutions - that'd be the entire right wing of the Australian Liberal Party, no?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/samoan-prime-minister-hits-out-at-climate-change-sceptics/10185142

Tuilaepa is also very leery of anyone with patronising colonialist tendencies...

the most unstable democracy in the South Pacific

Comrades,

Prime Minister Scott Morrison might be a godfearing Pentecostal Shire boy who flips around on the floor and speaks in tongues as a party trick and has a perverse penchant for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, but who will ever forget that he's also the bloke who single-handedly unleashed Lara Bingle on this world, thereby destroying the public image of the best batsman of his generation and former holder of the second highest office in the land - Strayan cricket captain - Michael J. Clarke?

So, sorry, Scotty, mate, but, ah, nah, you will never be forgiven for that.

OK, the Hon. Member for Cook, a great sea-faring man, "stopped the boats" by declaring all yachting regatta's illegal and sang the praises of a lump of good ol' home-grown coal he brought onto the floor of the House of Representatives to demonstrate global warming - "don't be afraid, don't be scared" - but presiding over years of stagnant wage growth as Chancellor of the Exchequer will be his ultimate undoing.

People hate change and Prime Ministerial churn, but perhaps one of the most remarkable things about the robustness of the Miracle of Democracy on this island is that there can be a 'bloodless' far-right Evangelical fundamentalist coup d'état led by a drafted compromise revivalist boss cocky, and it barely raises a ripple across the real world landscape.

The Commonwealth may well be the most unstable democracy in the South Pacific, but nobody turns out in massive streets protests, there's no throwing "poor shattered mannequins through a window in a riot", let alone anyone starting to take pot-shots at each other with Kalashnikov's, or lobbing mortar shells into Canberra, all over some Queensland Tory sitting-MP's shitting bricks.

New PM Friday - Bran Nue Dae Monday - and life continues to plunge on unabated.

Fancy Julia Gillard's lap dog Uncle Bill being able to enormously enjoy having the Comrades around to his place for a weekend BBQ and rollicking good piss-up in the full and safe knowledge that a Drover's Dog will come along and bite ScoMo's arse within 6-9 months in a Pinko landslide as the electorate inflicts their Mighty Wrath.

Vote the Bastards out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1LLsw1lcuA

the rise and rise of Imran Khan

Comrades,

It was very pleasing to see the Miracle of Democracy in Pakistan somehow contrive to elect former national cricket Captain and 1992 World Cup hero Imran Khan as the new Prime Minister.
Far from being a scholar of Islamic politics, I'm old enough to remember seeing the great man play, and God, he was good.
He prowled around the ground like a Prince he was so obviously a cut above the riff-raff, he was a damn fine fast man; quick superb swing and seam were his thing - taking a 'Michelle Pfieffer' [five wickets in an innings] no less than 23 times in test matches.
"Style and grace" were the words that came to mind watching him bowl - and he was lethal with a cherry in his hand - and he was also a very good late order batsman...with a handy average in the 30's batting at six or seven.
The quintessential all-rounder, and clearly a leader of men.
But you couldn't help but think during Immers' press conferences and other public utterances as Captain that he had a certain snakeyness about him, and that peculiar kind of shadyness that would make for a perfect politician.
And what's more, in an ideal entry on a pollie's CV - he was [is?] a major league womaniser, carrying on all sorts of affairs with much younger women during his first two marriages, particularly his first to his Spooky Girlfriend Jemima Goldsmith, and his current wife is the other half of a now-legitimised tryst with a woman 25 years his junior, but, hey, that comes with the territory when you are a charismatic former cricket star and you are well used to having groupies throwing themselves at you. In the end, it just becomes second nature for man like him.
Imran gave the game away at 30 - he's now 65 - and he's been in the Pakistan parliament since 2002. He's been working on this for 15 years, so he's no Johnny-come-lately. The main question is - has he left his run too late?
It is a miracle that his party, the PTI, has broken the various factions of the Muslim League's iron grip on power that they've had since the '60's, so the electorate are obviously are looking for change and are pinning their hopes on a bloke who was once a Matinee Idol.
Never mind the allegations that last month's General Election was rigged to buggery in Imran's favour, and it's no secret that the military was involved in a fair bit of foolin' around.
Given Imran comes from a Noble Game that is deeply rooted in honour and chivalry, but has so many ridiculous contradictions, and the Laws surrounding the concept of "fair" and "unfair" play are so obscure and opaque that attempts to codify them have only exposed the impossible complexity of it all, would make him perfectly suited to the Byzantine nature of Pakistani politics - where hanging by the neck, assassination, long-term incarceration and exile, not to mention coup d'état, are all legitimate weapons in the political arsenal.
So, on the face of it, Imran is well equipped to tackle corruption, with anti-graft being his major platform plank on the hustings. That said, one of his principal bowling partners back in the '80's and early 90's was "The Sultan of Swing" Wasim Akram - who was as corrupt-as-fuck - being perhaps the original and best ball tamperers of the Modern Era before the Sandpaper Scandal, and Wakka's was found by an official inquiry to be "not above suspicion" when it came to match fixing.
Goodluck Jonathon when it comes to wiping out corruption, Imran, in a system where trousering rupee's and cold hard greenbacks has been developed into a high art form - everyone is on the take [the former PM Nawaz Sharif is now doing ten years in the jail house and former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf is in hiding in Dubai], MP's claim having their snouts in the trough as an inalienable right, never mind that everyone else from the ordinary cop to the top judge, the clerk at the public service desk to the Boss Cockies in the Army brass and all the Big Men in the Big End of Town consider bribery as par for the course.
And you can't really blame MP's as every vote is for sale; the only value in the vote for dirt poor peasant farmers in the back woods or city slum dwellers in Pakistan will always be their right to sell it - to the candidate who is the highest bidder, so that can't go on forever without dipping into the public purse from time to time, can it?
What Imran is going to do with Pakistan's pathetic nuclear arsenal, and foreign policy in general, is anyone's guess.
Relations with China are a mess as usual, the United States just don't care about nobody no more; how's it going with India and the quasi-partition of Kashmir, then? And what about his next door neighbour - that intractable infernal labyrinth - Afghanistan? The best thing he could do there is junk The Bomb, and broker a peace-deal with the Taliban. Both highly unlikely prospects, you'd imagine.
I note that he said in his inaugural address to the nation hat he wanted to be known as the "Austerity PM" by doing away with the traditional motorcade of 80 bullet-proof vehicles, and eschewing the "sprawling" Prime Ministerial Residence in Islamabad [which comes with 524 servants] in favour of the military secretary's "ordinary three-bedroom" suburban gaff. That's a top start for a populist.
But on the downside, he mentioned that if he manages to stamp out corruption, then everyone, and he means everyone, will have to pay their taxes.
Now, everybody knows there's two Herculean asks right there, that are for all intents and purposes, impossible.
All power to yr oars, Immers, you'll need 'em.

Speaking of the Laws surrounding "fair" and "unfair" play, it came as no surprise whatsoever that that dick-wad nut-job turn-coat, that most unrepresentative Senator of the motley crew making up The Unrepresentative Swill, The Hon. Senator for Queensland, Fraser Anning, would drop the "race card" in his maiden speech to the Senate, nine months after being duly elected by the High Court sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns.
This from a bloke who found One Nation was not sufficiently fascist, so he threw his galling lot in with Crazy Bob's Katter Party, just to prove he's much further to the right on the political spectrum than Genghis Khan ever was.
Of course it called for and got widespread condemnation - even the Hon. Senator Hanson described the speech as "appalling" - but people so easily forget the Australian Constitution is littered with race cards that have no hope of ever being repealed, and that a re-introduction of the White Australia Policy would go down a treat with the rednecks among The Deplorables. But you'd have to doubt that it would gain much electoral traction in 21st Century Straya? .
But, what got up my goat was the tree-hugging unreformed Trots down at the Greens calling for a Code of Conduct to be introduced in the Senate. Code of Conduct? What next? Who are they kidding?
Parliamentary privilege is not called a "privilege" for nothing - it should be rarely and wisely used, but MP's, surely, must have the right to get up in the Parliament and say whatever they bloody well farkin' like, without fear or favour - or with fear and favour in the case of this certain Queensland publican.
Anyone remember Wilson "Iron Bar" Tuckey? A much better hotelier that Fraze will ever be. And Wilson could do right-wing vitriol right out there with the very best of 'em.
In any case, Anning faces re-election at the next poll as he's a short-term Senator, where he will be plunged into well-deserved life-long obscurity and the entry for him in the little history books will be shorter than that reserved for the likes of everyone who has been disqualified from sitting in the Parliament since PM Trundle's disastrous Double Dissolution - and even the likes the late, great Senator Albert Field will shine like beacons in the texts, compared to this miserable steaming turd.

Seems I didn't miss much being abroad for the "Super Saturday!" round of by-elections, but I did hear that the Pinko's went rather well.
Certainly looks like it put The Fear up PM Trundle - who doesn't like The Fear up him - and now he's made a complete and utter bungle of that world-class cluster-fuck known as The NEG [a bit like that pre-historic shark The MEG, Malcolm, it's coming to eat you whole, after all that flip-flopping you've done on Climate Change through the years. Don't you know that Global Warming is such a hot button issue right now? The Curse of the Former Environment Minister? CO₂ emissions coming clean out of your arse?], and finds whatever credibility he had left in tatters.
So, it's little wonder that a Bald-Faced Dome-Headed Freak Show should creep up behind him and threaten to stab him the back.
How 35 Conservatives in a Party Room of 83 could possibly think that that bonce and that dial could be remotely electable as Prime Minister is beyond mere mortals like me. Is Mr Potato Head the best they can do?
Gorn for all money, they are.
Disunity is Death.
Dead Mal Walking, as one of the fishwraps had it.
There are few finer sights in the Miracle of Democracy than Tories squabbling amongst each other and tearing themselves apart.
After going through the exact same thing during the J.Gillard/Kevin07 Era, the Pinko's must be gloating over the bloodbath.
All good, clean, fun.

the days of the Ol' Red Finger have gone away

Comrades,


It was somewhat saddening to hear of the demise of the seat of Port Adelaide, which has now be redistributed into extinction by the requirement to slash South Australia's representation in the House of Representatives from 11 seats to ten, on account of a complete lack of population growth compared to the rest of the nation [NSW, in contrast, has 47 seats].
The Federal Electoral Commissioner sat down with old mates, the South Australian Surveyor-General and the South Australian Auditor-General, and after banging their heads together for a while and looking at a helluva lot of maps, determined that Port Adelaide just had to be abolished, even though it's been rock solid Pinko since being established in 1949.
To fit about 105,000 voters into a seat without too much gerrymandering, the redistribution leaves Boothby as the only marginal seat in the state.
So, for all intents and purposes, the vote in the South Australian rustbelt from now on will be of very little or no consequence at all at Federal Elections - and the state will be simply dismissed by major party politicians as a given.
Sorry folks, but there will be no pork-barrelling or fresh French submarines for you anymore - none, ever.
It's a only a shame for me because I have fond memories of the late Dr Alan Finger, who was the perennial Communist Party candidate for the seat of Port Adelaide, safe in the knowledge that the Commo's would get their best vote there among the ship-builders, stevedores and warehouse workers, even though he knew he'd never have a snowflakes of ever getting elected.
Dr Finger was the much-respected decades-long head of Adelaide Hospital's Venereal Diseases Clinic.
Nominative determinism at its finest - this was a Commo who poked all the orifices of sickly mad rooters every day of his professional life for 40 years.
While all the time in public service, he espoused his straight Marxist-Leninist [he was no fan of Stalin] rhetoric on the stump when elections rolled around, and he had a strong personal following and fine reputation among the downtrodden proletariat as the best pox doctor in all of South Australia.
But, no one seemed to have any problem at all with the fact that if Doc Finger had cured you of the clap on the public purse, you would probably not have much hesitation in voting for him, no matter his political stripe.
That's proper democracy, right there.
When I was a mere child, I remember my father perusing the paper when the list of candidates for up-coming elections was still published in the press [as political party affiliations were not allowed on the ballot paper, just the name] and saying with faint amusement "oh, I see Dr Finger is running for the Commo's again..."
But the days of the Ol' Red Finger have gone away - a long, long time ago - and now the memory fades to almost complete oblivion with the wiping of Port Adelaide off the electoral map, so it must be the end of some kind of era, surely?

Enough of that nostalgia, let's do some more yearning for the past in downtown Hobart and consider something I pretend to know a little bit about - when the arts and the Miracle of Democracy collide.
It's always great fun!
You've gotta love the Lord Mayor of Hobart, Alderman Ron Christie, being given a slap-down by the Tasmanian Chamber of Business & Commerce for being a "throwback to the 1950's", after saying rude and reactionary things about David Walsh's DARK MOFO thingo, that brings in real honky dollars by the bucketful from odd, strange, arty-party types from the mainland.
And talk about Hobart City Council being over-represented to buggery by a swill of freeloaders.
With just 19,128 valid ballots cast in the last non-compulsorary election for 12 alderpersons [a turn-out of just 51.7%] - each local Govt. pollie in that neck of the woods has little more than fifteen hundred active punters to represent.
And all the alderpersons are either Greens or Independents - the major parties just couldn't be bothered with it, as it's such a non-event.
Christie reckons hundreds of fools leaping nude into the Derwent on the winter solstice definitely does not "preserve the unique history and beauty of Hobart".
Fair enough, you might say - goose-pimpled soggy bottoms, pert nipples on sagging breasts and shriveled old todgers with nutsacks forced back up into the scrotal cavity by the freezing cold is never a good look.
Maybe next year, just to liven things up a bit, they could beat each other with birch sticks in some S&M action before they dive in?
But I digress; Cranky Christie obviously hates all these cashed-up weirdo strangers coming to town as he doesn't like their "unhealthy culture" and doesn't want Hobart to go "down the same path as the larger internationals like Rome, Barcelona and Paris where citizens are screaming enough is enough — go home, don't destroy us", and is pining for a return to the good ol' days of "Slowbart".
Hobart and the "larger internationals", eh?
I've got not idea where he got the "Lord" in Mayor from, but Riled-Up Ronnie is very small beer indeed, up against one of Tasmania's richest men, the entirely 100% eccentric Walsh.
I've been to his architecturally extraordinary Museum of Old and New Art which houses his considerable personal multi-million dollar art collection on the banks of the mighty Derwent, and I've read his autobiography A Bone Of Fact - both of which I can recommend highly.
For decades, Walsh has been, by his own admission, obsessed with ending the evil and corrupt Farrell family's casino monopoly in Tasmania, and building a 7-star "high-rollers only" hotel/casino next door to his Museum - he reckons simply to fund the joint that's costing him an absolute poultice to run and remove the admission fee for non-Tasmanians - and that's where his interest in politics begins and ends, because he don't need no Govt. funding for Y'arts.
He's paying for the whole shooting match out of his own pocket.
Walsh is one of the very few independently wealthy people who truly could not give-a-fuck about who says what about him, let alone what they might think of his taste in art.
He has said nothing about the brouhaha; he's a loyal Tasmanian and would dismiss Alderperson Christie - who's up for re-election in October, btw - as beneath his dignity, let alone worthy of his consideration.
If he did give interviews, Walsh would probably call Christie out for being the golden-chain bedecked backward redneck clueless philistine dickwad local politician that he is.
Not meaning to be "looksist" or anything, but, I mean, just take a gander at the bloke - I rest my case.

[The Rt.Hon. Lord Mayor of Hobart, Alderman Ron Christie]

Summit of the Century!

Comrades,

The last time the Korean Peninsular was mentioned in these scribblings, it was the one page letter from DJ Trump! on White House letter-head to the Pyongyang Palace calling the whole thing off.
Whappen?
Obviously, that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, so the 'Singapore Declaration' will be worth even less.
There is no mention of cheeseburgers, Choco Pies, or Diet Coke's, in the joint communique, so it can't be for real, must be fake news.
It's quite ironic really that the reality television game show 'Summit of the Century!' should take place in an autocratic police city-state, where the show of the Miracle of Democracy is a mere sham, and anyone not towing Lee Kuan Yew's hard-right People's Action Party line won't see outside the four walls of a Singaporean jailhouse for quite a time.
Then you've got a dead-set certified 24-carat card-carrying despot with a very long family history in the authoritarian caper in Fatboy KIm, coming up against a POTUS who is hell bent on destroying the institutions of the Miracle of Democracy in The Home of the Brave, in a bid to hang onto his illegitimate and tenuous grip on power.
On one hand you've got "Little Rocket Man" who loves nothing more than disposing of his enemies execution-style with a rocket propelled grenade, and a Leader of the Free World who pardons his criminal mates, and even has legal advice to the tune that he can pardon himself, even though he has done absolutely nothing wrong. Nothing.
The utter lack of credibility from this particular pair of outrageous buffoons is simply breathtaking.

Never mind that The Donald just cannot resist some lovin'-up for the television camera's, or that Fatboy can't resist playing him like a fiddle, the best yarn to come out of the whole sad schemozzle is the unconfirmed report that Mr Chairman bought his own toilet with him in the cargo bay of the Air China Boeing 747 he flew in on [an Ilyushin-62 and Airbus A330 were also flown in as decoys.]
No ordinary bog-hole for him, oh no siree, he required the one that is perfectly moulded to The Glorious Leader's not insubstantial arse plumbed into the Presidential Suite in the St. Regis Hotel Singapore, so he could take a dump in the manner to which he is accustomed.
All class.

Of course, as a Drinker for Disarmament, I'm all for getting rid of The Bomb for all time, but why not go the whole hog here and de-militarize the entire Korean Peninsular?
That'd solve the 65-year-old armistice problem instantly.
Yeah sure. When you tot up the standing armies of both North and South, along with the reserves and various paramilitaries, you've got about 1.6 million military personnel on the Peninsular, and that's not counting the 23,468 US troops permanently stationed in South Korea. Abandoning that in the name of world peace would put a whole lot of people out of work.
And what Trump's hard-core supporter base back in The States makes of all of this is anyone's guess; you'd have to think that the 'deplorables' wouldn't know where or what Korea was, or care, as they want the USA out of Foreign Policy altogether, unless it involves building Big Beautiful Walls to keep the hordes of job-stealing murdering rapists out.
Out!

Fed up with the whole meaningless circus, I decided to spin some of DJ!'s remarks to reporters post the Summit of the Century into a word cloud, to see what it spat out.
Normally, you can quickly see the main point folks are trying to make, but here is the classic scattergun approach; bamboozle the other negotiating side with a vocabulary of gobbledygook and meaningless gibberish - the only thing the cloud does reveal is that the Trumpotus doesn't know whether he's coming or going.
God help the poor Korean translator in the one-on-one talks, who might as well have done the spinning of the finger thing indicating The Donald's off-his-rockerness...and translate as "I've got absolutely no idea what he's saying, Glorious Leader, but this turkey is clearly fucked-in-the-face", or whatever that phrase is in Korean.

Photo: Doug Mills/NYT.
Word Cloud: Crazy Craves.

the Irish & the Miracle of Democracy

Comrades,

% of Yes vote by constituency, abortion referendum 24 May 2018. Source: Irish Referendum Commission.

Comrades,

The Irish seem to have a fairly laissez-faire attitude toward the Miracle of Democracy.
They have no independent Electoral Commission - they've even had a Constitutional Convention to try to set one up, with no result.
Elections are currently run by a higgeldy-piggeldy collection of Govt. Depts and agencies that think they have a finger in the democratic pie; even the Garda have the responsibility of policing the polling stations.
So, every time they want to get a referendum going, a brand new Referendum Commission has to be set up each time to run the show, charged with presenting both sides of the argument evenhandedly without fear or favour.
And they also have an odd history of referendum voting.
Everyone knows the Irish went rainbow and approved of same-sex marriage [which required constitutional change] long before Australia had the entirely unnecessary and stoopid "postal survey" just to change the Marriage Act, that could have been easily done by a simple majority vote in the Parliament.
And still we have this strange notion of the Irish as a backward conservative society - wrong! - they approved of all sexes shagging each other with gay abandon within the institution of marriage by 62.07% with not a single constituency voting NO, while Australia approved it by 61.6%, with a very substantial NO vote in New South Wales.
And then think again -- Ireland decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, a year before most of Australia, with Tassy holding out until man-on-man rum buggery and similar acts of depravity were finally made legal in 1997 - that's only twenty years ago.
And yet, before 2012, children in Ireland had no legal entity, let alone any status, and essentially had the same rights as cattle, before the 35th amendment to the Irish Constitution was voted in, to put the rug-rats under the umbrella of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. After a round of legal challenges, it didn't become law until 2015.
So, it strikes me as rather odd that, until a couple of years ago, the unborn in Ireland had more or less the same rights as adults, but as soon as they popped out of the womb, they had absolutely nothing until they turned 18, and were legally regarded as the chattels of their parents, with which the State had no right to interfere, except under "exceptional circumstances".
The old Irish Constitutional code even went so far as to define children's rights as "indescriptible".
In this one, it was a vote to repeal the 8th Amendment to the Constitution which was approved by voters 35 years ago -- abolishing s.40.3 (3) "The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right. This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state. This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available, in the State, subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services lawfully available in another state" and replacing it with "Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy".
Back in the early '80's the Irish were clearly operating on the NIMBY principal, but feel free to do it elsewhere.
The referendum question was effectively, in a round-about way, "Do you approve of provision being made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancies?"
While the YES vote won more easily than expected at just over 66%, and the turnout was fairly healthy in a non-compulsory referendum - 2,159,655 punters showed up at the polls -- 36% of electors were no-shows, taking the "don't care" or "couldn't be bothered" position.
Let's face it, the once totally dominant and all powerful Roman Catholic Church has not been getting good press lately, having world-wide credibility and hypocrisy issues surrounding the child buggering priests protection racket, so given Ireland's track record in this grey area, the NO vote had a lot of difficulty taking the moral high ground.
Forget my personal view that the grubby hands of Govt. have no place in the sexual proclivities or reproductive rights of anyone.
As far as I'm concerned, folks can get it on in anyway they can as much as they like, and whether or not they wish, want or need to spawn issue is entirely up to them - that's beside the point.
For mine, the YES vote is still on the shifting sands of time, regardless -- all they've really done is given Govt's. the power to make provision under the law regarding the termination of pregnancies.
What happens in the unlikely event of a hard-line anti-abortion Govt. getting up via the Miracle of Democracy some-time down the track?
Work all that out, if you will, and yr better than me.
Here endeth the lesson in curious Irish Constitutional Law.

Speaking of credibility and hypocrisy, the timing of "Super Saturday" [five by-elections on the same day, never before seen in the history of Federation] was an act of utter utter political bastardry pure and simple, so so typical of Tories.
Never mind the bald-faced two-fingered "up you, Pinko's!" of it being scheduled on the same weekend as the ALP National Conference or that it defies the accepted principal and logic of never holding elections during the school holidays - people can see straight through that for what it is - just pity the poor good burghers of Braddon, Fremantle, Longman, Mayo and Perth, who have to suffer through a nine week by-election campaign.
No one is saying "Damn the High Court!", but nine weeks?!
It's just postponing the inevitable; the coalition won't even go to the time and trouble of running candidates in seats they can't win, and it won't be hard to run the ex-Xenophite, Rebekha Sharkie, out of town in the Adelaide Hills, and replace her with Alexander Downer's arch-conservative daughter Georgina - yet another bloody lawyer, and diplomat.
I know nothing of 38-year-old Georgie, save that she comes from "old Adelaide money", which is just about as perfect a credential as you can get to become a Tory MP.
Her great-grandfather, Sir John ["bull-headed, and rather thick-necked"], was twice a premier of South Australia who was also elected as a Protectionist Party candidate to the very first Australian Senate, but got jack of Melbourne and went back to Adelaide.
Her grandfather, Sir Alick, was the Minister for Wogs in a Menzies government, and finished up with the top diplomatic cherry as Australia's High Commissioner to London.
Her father, Alexander AC, was the shortest-lived Liberal opposition leader ever [8 months] but Australia's longest serving foreign minister [11 years 8 months] and most recently, just like grand-pops, was also Australia's High Commissioner to the Court of St James.
Just a shame they don't have any of the charisma of any of the people in Dynasty, none of them.
Little wonder then, that Georgina reportedly has the Downer knack of putting their foot in their mouths and rubbing people up the wrong way, and her main aim in life appears to be becoming the next "Iron Lady" -- you can see where she's from, and where she's at.
With the recent spotlight on Royalty and to paraphrase the words of the Great Gough "God Save The Queen, because nothing will save the current Prime Minister".

no Nobel Peace Prize for nobody

Comrades,

No-one was ever going to go to Singapore.
Leaving aside the fact that I can't see Fat Boy Kim ever getting on no lil' airplane, when he's got that famous British Racing Green armoured train to get around in, "Mr Chairman" was never going to let DJ Trump get away with any kind of grand-standing, let alone score any political points, whatsoever.
Nothing in that for the Glorious Leader; so no Nobel Peace Prize for nobody.
Fat Boy was never going to agree to a "complete de-nuclearisation of the Korean Peninsular" without a binding non-aggression pact and more rare vintage wines and Choco Pies for the Pyongyang Palace.
It's so easy to forget that the POTUS is now onto his second Secretary-of-State in that fat buffoon Mike Pompeo, after the sensible-in-the-context, Rex Tillerson, lasted just 427 days in the job before he was so completely flabbergasted by the utter non-existence of any foreign policy agenda, there was no point in going on.
Pompeo's people in State who are on the ground had to break the news to him that nothing was doing in the way of any sort of concessions, and then he had to tell DJ! that it was no deal.
And of course, if there's no deal in it, any mild interest The Donald may have had in foreign policy is immediately lost.
It was all a hastily cobbled together sham to make DJ! look good domestically, in keeping with his grand "getting things done" mantra.
Oh well, cheesburgers, Diet Coke's, and a round of golf anyone?
In any case, the communique that the Trumpotus has sent via the US Postal Service to North Korea is not diplomatic [only the "tremendous anger and open hostility" bit is]; it's more like a fawning love letter..."a wonderful dialogue building up" a "beautiful gesture" "very much looking forward to being there" and "please don't hesitate to call, 24/7"...a pleading remember me? I'm still here!

In any case, who needs the real folks to turn up in good ol' down town Singers when they're both play acting mannequins anyway - anyone can pop on one of these you bewt silicon numbers [and by the way, I want some of those t-shirts for my mates in the Drinkers for Disarmament movement] and look the part, with you-know-who looking over their shoulders.
All you need is a Mr Ping of China mask to complete the quadrella.

It might not be the End of The World as we know it, but it's sensible to keep yr head down, and scan the horizon for mushroom clouds in the morning.