"Where Interesting Happens"

Comrades,

With complete political idiocy on display on both sides of the vast Pacific Ocean, who knew that I am required to go to the polls in a little under three weeks?
Crikey!

The folk at Ancestry Dot Com are making a fortune selling dodgy DNA testing kits in Canberra, as pollies don't usually queue up at the Registry Office of any country, let alone inquire as to where their grandparents used to call home through OTC.
Dual citizenship, anyone?
Haven't I've been through all this before?
And I still haven't heard of any particular concern about s.44 of the Constitution; there is no great push for change there.
Anyway, everyone knows what happens when lawyers and High Court judges become involved, interpreting extremely fine detail of Constitutional Law in a case that, to most people, seems to be as clear cut as black and white.
Pardon the pun.
If that's not enough, something that doesn't need a referendum to fix and can easily be sorted out by an Act of Parliament now becomes some kind of $122M [plus variations] "postal survey" asking enrolled voters a vague question about whether or not those perverted poofs and lezzo's should be allowed to no longer live-in-sin, to be run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the same mob who made the recent Census into a world-class cock-up, you remember, those people.
And good ol' Australia Post are apparently in charge of deliveries, after getting away with reducing the standard of service while jacking up the price of stamps.
Crazy.
That's no VOTE.
Where's the Miracle of Democracy in that?
Are these Tories right outta their brains?
Some kind of weak half-hearted joke at taxpayer's expense?
Haven't I've been through all this before, and still they bark on about it like rabid dogs?
I mean, really, can someone please just tell me what the faark is going on?

First thing I knew about being told to go to the polls was when a card that looked like it had been printed by the bloke who prints schmick slick real estate agents cards telling me to VOTE 1 JENNIFER lobbed in my letterbox.
Ah yes, the NSW Local Govt. elections are on, amid the hue and cry of the recent amalgamation of local councils which instead of the mad Tory intention of cutting red tape, actually increases ridiculous duplication.
Jennifer Azzi is from "Our Local Community" at noamalgamations@gmail.com.
Enough said.
Then, nothing more in the letterbox.
When the local Canterbury City Council was forced to merge with Bankstown Council by the former Premier Vile Mike Baird, they sacked everyone at the top and put in an unelected Dictator, officially known as an "Administrator", to run the show with the promise of elections in Sept 2018!
Hang on...almost two years without any democratic representation at all sounds a bit dodgy to me.
So, the elections were fairly promptly moved forward to Sept 9, 2017.
In one of his first jobs, The Administrator took out an ad in the local papers and put out a suggestion box, asking for ideas on a snappy new slogan for the newly merged council.
It seems my contribution of "If anyone can ban it, CanBan Council will!" didn't make the cut or was simply ignored.
"Where Interesting Happens" was announced as the winner, after being vetted by a mob of highly-paid PR types over a very long pissy lunch.
Fingers down yr throat territory there, no?
Anyway, one of the two local rags boasted that the newly merged Canterbury-Bankstown Council had a "population as big as Tasmania!".
Well, not quite; there are about 385,000 people in my district, and counting, while Tassy struggles to maintain a population of half a mill.
Still, no more flyers.
So, a quick look at the publicity-shy NSW Electoral Commission's list of candidates for the Canterbury Ward, reveals that its been a stitch-up.
Everyone knows that the area 'round here is rock solid Pinko, so they'll just divide up the seats on Council in what is effectively a multi-seat constituency, and Labor will always have a majority.
So the choice we get at the polls are VOTE 1 JENNIFER and the two bozo's on her ticket, three Greens, three Liberals and three from the Labor Party.
No lunatics, space cadets, extremists, god-botherer's or nut job independent candidates at all.
None.
Just four tickets of three candidates each.
That's it.
The preferences have already been clearly rigged.
Simple.
Gotta be happy with that.
Done deal.

Meantime, on the other side of the "endless" Pacific, the continental United States has been plunged into darkness by a total eclipse of the sun while the DJ Trump! presidency continues to crumble before our very eyes as he punts his Chief Strategist while making inflammatory remarks about some rioting someplace.
Nothing wrong with a good riot in the Land of The Free, but that Stephen K Bannon bloke; jeez - a nasty piece of work from the off.
Just look at him.
Not satisfied with that, Trumpy then sacks all of his business advisory boards as the country's CEO's announce will have nothing to do with the Trumpotus, after they didn't buy his hair-brained one trillion dollar infrastructure package.
No siree.
Who needs 'em anyway as DJ! knows everything there is to know about business.
However, a little birdie is singing that The Donald may now be beginning to look for a way out of a bad deal [i.e. being elected President] when it all goes pear-shaped and the fecal coliform covered fan starts to really fling turds back at him - done it before, can do it again - like, say, sack Special Counsel Three Sticks looking into them pesky Ruskies, and then promptly resign the Presidency, so no-one's got nothing on him, nothing at all, then return the keys to the Oval Office to the Grand Old Party, go to home to Trump Tower in Manhattan and in a very worst case scenario, lean on Mike Pence for a pardon down the track, but only if required.
You might be thinking "in your dreams", but stranger things are happening.
Done deal.

And who knew that across the Tasman Sea, our cuz in New Zealand will be gripped by the Miracle of Democracy when they go to a general election on 8 November?
In a brave move, the Pinko's in the NZ Labour Party knew they were a country mile behind in any run for the Beehive, so their leader Andrew Little [not a great name for a Leader of The Opposition anyway] graciously fell on his sword 22 days ago in favour of another one of those so called "rock-star" politicians with charisma, brains, and talent - or so they say - in the form of their Deputy Leader, Jacinda Arden, who's just turned 37.
Never mind that a rock solid trade union man like Little is toast at age 52.
Plus, Arden looks presentable on the television by all reports [I've never seen her on the telly] and is always good for a quote to keep the press happy.
NZ Labour's popularity has shot up from a very low base, and Jacinda's been described as a "young Bernie Sanders" [who is an agrarian socialist if there ever was one]; she is also sometimes mixed up in the press as a "young Jeremy Corbyn in reverse" and some tabloid fishwraps have even gone so far as to say that she is on the verge of creating a wave of "Jacindamania!".
Woot!
New Zealand has the most stable democracy in the South Pacific, has for a very long time.
They don't churn through Prime Ministers like we do, but that could, might, but only perhaps, change.
Who knew that both sides can still play this populism game?
Done deal.

Only in the Land of The Long White Cloud.