Nick the Greek on the hustings

Comrades,

As I predicted when Nick the Greek left the Senate of his own accord to return home [no need to go via the High Court], there was an outside chance he could become the Premier of the Great State of New South Wowser.
The glory of riding back into town like some kind of knight mounted upon a white steed with a sandwich board really appeals to him, it seems to me.
I'm sure that is his aim - grab the top provincial job by hook or by crook [otherwise, why would he be in it?] and then Ban the Pokies and Close the Pubs.
Nick would ban bonking too if he were in charge.
He's probably a Methodist also, and doesn't like dancing either.
No problem, just ban it.
It's as if its Old Home Week in Adelaide.
It's so easy to forget that Nick terrorised the upper house of the South Australian Parliament for more than ten years as leader of the No Pokies ticket [How much has been achieved, Nick? SA still has about 12,000 poker machines, doesn't it?], and then did the same for Canberra, but even he in the end couldn't hold his own in a house full of wackjobs & misfits, as more loopy folk than you could poke a stick at started getting elected to the Senate.
There are others in on the scam now; "preference whisperers" are a dime a dozen.
A bloody circus, it is, so he decided to take his ball and go home.
So there's a 20+ year political apprenticeship right there for Nick "No Win No Fee" Xenophon & Co.
He didn't come down in the last shower.
But for mine, you can never trust those shifty lawyer types; too prone to hectoring and getting on their hobby horses [and, Joisus, he's got a few], and in Nick's case, silly stunts.
God, I wonder if he will parade a goat on a rope down the Rundle Mall urging punters not to "kid about" with their vote this time around?
Don't mention the mule/donkey thing, or someone will dob Nick into the RSPCA and try to pin animal cruelty on him.
Still, the SABEST experiment should be a good one, as Xenophon knows that all he needs to do is pinch a few marginal seats off the Liberals, safe in the knowledge that they're full of flip-flopping voters, while all Pinko Uncle Jay has to do is hold the Labor heartland and job's right, job's done.
Just keep beating Tories, Mr Weatherill, and let the others get on with splitting the Conservative vote and throwing away some bargaining chips.
According to Nick there will be "no cosy backroom deals", "no power-sharing arrangements", "no compromises" [unless, of course, you agree to implement his scattergun agenda - but what do you actually stand for, Nick? Apart from the simple pleasures of holding people over a barrel. Have you ever kept a bastard honest?]
Don Dunstan would be revolving in his grave.
According to Don, the Miracle of Democracy works best if it's a straight out knuckle-fight between left & right.
You can run all the side issues you like, but there must be a solid platform
And don't get Nick started on wind power OK?; hates it, reckons wind turbines ruin people's lives - the constant woosh, woosh, woosh of the blades rots yr brain - and he's looking to be Premier of a state that puts a massive wack of renewable energy into the grid?
Now, if you mention this opposition to wind farms on the basis of the mental impairment of the people who live near them, Nick will accuse you having a "brain fart".
Go figure.
Harnessing the breeze?
Shootin' the breeze?
What the?
Whatever, just ban it.

In Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail [1972], Hunter S.Thompson advocates taking the Miracle of Democracy very seriously at the retail level, as he contends that fully 25% of voters have no idea who they are going to vote for until they see a campaign poster that appeals to them, which you must then re-reinforce at the polling stations by plastering as many you can all over the shop on the day of the vote without earning the ire of the Electoral Commissioner's deputy.
And it's always the face that does it when you say "vote for me", so it better be a great shot of your good side; the slogan comes a distant second.
It's excellent that the candidates in the Rust Belt election know this, and have continued to uphold the grand tradition of South Australians outdoing themselves.

Some nice Stobie Pole action.
As always, a quality field there.
And there's still three weeks to go in this one...

[Photo's. Instagram: ShitAdelaide/Betoota Advocate. Twitter: Rod Moffat]

the bloody brilliant Bonking Ban

Comrades and Mad Rooters,

Up until now, I have purposely refrained from making any public comment on the private life of the Hon. Leader of the National Party, Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce, MHR.
But I simply can't go past the Bonking Ban as it is absolutely bloody brilliant, isn't it?
What a masterstroke of knee-jerk running-dog Govt.
A unilateral ministerial no-exceptions ban.
For a Minister of the Crown, in and out and all about with anyone in the office is finished.
Male or female, it's done.
It's over.
There will be no more a rootin' and no more a tootin'.
None.
Voila!
That's it.
Problem solved.
Ahhh...what happens if Canberra is actually one gigantic office?
No, no, no.
Shagging each other senseless is out the window...gone...and it will, must, most definitely stop - immediately.
No, no, no more "bits" or "pieces" "on the side".
No more going around setting up sneaky little '"love nests".
Has no one ever heard of the word mistress until now?
Good, because it is never to be heard again, under the new Ministerial Code of Conduct.
Somehow it smacks of locking the gate after the horse has bolted, never mind that ordinary back-benches can continue to get themselves fully involved in the fuck-fest without fear of public sanction.
It's not terribly surprising, of course, that Mr Trundle called Mr Joyce a "low bum" who was more or less involved in "a shocking misjudgement, a world of woe, and general appallingness".
I love that word - 'appalling'
Of course the Prime Minister finds it all "appalling".
It's political poison; Mr Trundle can hear his own death rattle here, because he knows he can never rule without a coalition partner - however "appalling" their leader may be.
And, after being lectured with a public reading of the Riot Act, the Deputy Prime Minister only compounds his "appalling" persona by seeing everyone and everything, except himself, as "inept".
The Country Party rump has been exposed as weak and gutless - no news there, everyone knew that all along anyway - but more importantly, both Malcolm and Barnaby have shown their hands as the hypocritical bastard individuals that they are.
Hoist, by their own petard.
Being the low-grade, scumbag, unscrupulous journalist well known for his morals that I am, I've never been perturbed by the concept of "getting a bit", as long as it's done in the right and proper fashion following all the rules and customs - let alone the complexity of human frailty - but the screaming-naked bald-faced hypocrisy of it all is what shits me to tears.
Who doesn't despise elected officials doing one thing and saying another?
And you don't need me to tell you about the Country Party's misogyny, staunch upholding of 'traditional family values', and their reactionary denial of and outright opposition to gender equality, viz a viz trying to sabotage the gay marriage 'postal survey'.
The list goes on.
In my more than 30 years as a working journo, banging around in commercial radio and TV newsrooms, I had a fair bit to do with the Canberra Press Gallery.
Back in the day when "off-the-record" still meant something there was only very rarely any problem with the NatCap lifestyle.
Pollies of every stripe, journo's, press secretaries, spin doctors, lobbyists, influence peddlars, ordinary staffers, political departmental people, the typing pool, number's men, the honest toilers and public servants, hangers-on, handsomely paid loafers and masters of the dark arts in general all knew there was very little chance of being caught out as long as you conducted yourself according to protocol, because the cone of silence had been well and truly lowered and screwed down tight.
What happens in Canberra stays in Canberra.
"This is not 'Nam! There are rules!" This is politics.
With the Great Unwashed kept in the dark, there was endless hanky-panky going on; it was one of the Canberra radio bureau's who coined the popular, but rather brutal phrase "who's up who, and for what?" while making polite enquiries about people's personal arrangements.
It was the sole concern of a vast Parliamentary gossip machine that had its network of tentacles squirming their way into every festering nook and cranny, but none of it, not a single word, was for publication, even if it was outrageously blatant common knowledge and the worst kept secret in the National Capital.
Of course not.
It was/is one of the best protection rackets going.
Someone was always "getting their broccoli cooked" which was code for two or more people in, around, beside and behind the Press Gallery fucking each other like Duracell rabbits.
In another era, the whole sordid business could have continued on unabated, unreported, even if Joycey hadn't made the fundamental error of "getting the mistress up the duff", [more a case of being very neglectful rather than anything else, I hear the Country Party cry], but now, in a #metoo world, having a "love child" at 50 is more than likely to be fatal for the Govt. with a big swathe of the electorate thinking the hypocrisy is beyond the pale.
Keep up - women have got the vote now too, you know.
All sorts of people have got the vote and they'll make up their own minds.
And now former reporters who've seen it all are telling me that we should be pissed off, because us filthy journo's - who have always been up to our own grotty grubby groins in it ourselves - are now being asked to pass judgement, and decide what gets published and what doesn't.
Talk about shifting the goalposts.
Clearly, that's an untenable position to be in.
Doesn't anyone read the gossip columns anymore?
To mix some metaphors, once Pandora's Box has been opened, and the genie is out of the bottle, where do you draw a line in the sand?
Or do we go along the Fleet Street route and just do away with the sandbox altogether?
I used to have a News Director who all through the long-running Bill "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Clinton tawdriness, would delight in doing a fabulous impression of the Pope saying in a long, slow Gregorian chant "head...jobs...are...O...K..."
As far as he was concerned, as long as the "tunnel of love" wasn't involved, there was no story. Full stop.
And as he pointed out, it was only a man who happened to be in the Oval Office who "had a mole on his back and an extremely small penis", after all.
It goes without saying that wherever power, influence and money is involved - never mind the rorting and corruption - there will always be sex, drugs and rock'n'roll bubbling along somewhere there just beneath the surface.
In the highly charged constantly changing 24-hour full-on atmosphere of a sitting week, everyone knows that 'after hours' drinking and bonking go hand-in-hand into that good night, raging and rooting is rampant, and everyone, and I mean everyone, is backing the horse called "Self Interest".
But not anymore.
Oh no siree.
It's over.
In the books under "Bonking Ban".
Dead, buried, and cremated by Prime Ministerial edict.
My arse it is.
It was nice knowing you Malcolm, and even nicer knowing that you'll go down in the little Canberra history books as the Great and Glorious Banner of the Bonk.
A drover's dog could lead Labor to easy victory if an election was held this weekend without the Pinko's even having to say or do anything, with the wreckage of the Coalition now in flaming ruins.
And they have no-one to blame except themselves.

a modest selection of scuttle-butt

Comrades,

I offer you this modest selection of scuttle-butt that appeared on yr Social Media in Oct/Nov 2017, without comment, finishing with a snap shot of the Beetrooter's Facebook page, on Father's Day, 2016.
Charming stuff.

"it is not a birthright"

Drinkers for Disarmament,

I've noted the rumours that are rife within military intelligence circles at the minute that them damned Ruskies are working on developing a nuclear torpedo.
What a jolly jape that would be!
You can understand My Mate Vlad's response to DJ Trump!'s promise on the campaign trail that, while he really would prefer a world without nukes, but seeing the USA has got them, he's going to build the Biggest, Best and most Beewdiful thermonuclear weapons there are.
Putin has probably already got the biggest muthafukka, so why not get a sneaky one going too?
If you just want to blow up a random port city or some naval installation, then why not let a Big One go underwater from a submarine, and see what happens.
It'd make a right mess of whatever they were after, but it's likely they're heading down a dead-end street.
The only comparable thing I can think of is the one and only nuclear artillery shot.
That's right, shoot The Bomb out of a gun.
Great idea.
It was Upshot–Knothole Grable [the boffins must've thought that one up over a long pissy lunch].
It happened at the Nevada Test Site back in '53.
They managed to lob the artillery shell - which weighed about a third a tonne - only about ten kilometres away before it went up...bahoompha!
It had an yield of about 15kt, roughly the same as Little Boy at Hiroshima and it was of the same type of atom bomb, but it wasn't very successful.
Far too close to the very heavy artillery to be of any use to an advancing army, and it only knocked over a few jeeps and armoured personnel carriers due an unforeseen shock pressure wave anomaly it created due to it's detonation height and weird physics I don't pretend to understand.
Nah, not worth it, the Yanks concluded, and they never did it again, despite a fairly impressive mushroom cloud.

16mm film courtesy US Dept. of Energy.

But The Donald reckons he's gonna get one up on Putin, who's been accused of violating the 30-year-old Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty [INF - remember that one? The Reagan & Gorbachev rapprochement], which effectively bans the use or development of any nuclear missile that travels between 500 and 5,500 kilometres.
The US and the then Soviet Union dismantled more than two and a half thousand nukes because of it.
The idea originally was to protect Europe from tactical nuclear warfare.
Never mind the nuclear torpedo fantasy, the Pentagon says straight up to anyone who'll listen that the Putinites have also been secretly working on a rapidly deployable cruise missile system for that exact range, which may or may not be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
No, no, no.
So what does the Trumpotus do?
He orders Defence to start work on their own submarine based missile, with a live warhead, to do the exact same thing.
Voila!
After many decades of disarmament from the insanity and stupendous cost of the enormous nuclear stockpiles held during the Cold War - don't you worry about Fat Boy Kim - the real serious nuclear arms race is now back on.
Have no doubt about it.
The level of mistrust between the superpowers is like a smouldering volcano hanging out for an eruption, constantly simmering; it never stops once it really gets going.
That's dangerous.
With The Donald in the White House and the mid-terms this year and Putes struggling to get out the vote in a one-party election while he's still busy being in the meddling caper, it's only going to get worse.
This week's edition of Time magazine has a couple of excellent yarns on The Bomb for the layman, and in there is a grim warning to the generations coming on in a quote from Air Force General Paul Selva, Vice-Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicating that the phenomena of a world without nuclear warfare for 72 years is just plain lucky:
"Strategic stability in the world between our nuclear competitors and our nuclear peers has been assumed. It is not a birthright".
And not only has the President of the United States made it clear he also wants to violate the INF himself in some tit-for-tat, even scarier is the fact that he's apparantly ordered the Nevada Test Site [which has been very effectively mothballed for yonks - they even do monthly visits for nuclear tourists] to be put back on enough of a footing so they can test a nuclear weapon there within six months if required [bugger the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty], according to Time.
Nothing sinister of course, just to make sure the damnable things still work, as he's planning to spend about $US1.2 TRILLION on 'modernising' and maintaining the entire US nuclear stockpile of at least six and a half thousand weapons in various states of repair and readiness, and build more, and he doesn't want to waste that kind of cash.
The sheer scale of the greenbacks required would go a long way to reconstructing America's rotting civil infrastructure and build many, many Big Beautiful Walls, if you want, but not only does Eisenhower's all-powerful military/industrial complex have a friendly ear in the Oval Office, they've got a complicit Commander-in-Chief, and aren't they going for it?
There is a shitload of money to be made in mass destruction, as always.
I know, I know, you've guessed it, I've got a bee in my bonnet about The Bomb...again.
Of course I'm simply farkin' outraged by all of this, but why doesn't any of it surprise?
This is not sabre rattling or even international posturing anymore, it's spoiling for a fight.
Five-star generals and their military strategists who have this fanciful notion that "tactical" nuclear warfare is actually possible are fools to themselves and are a very heavy burden on the planet, because in this caper, it's all or nothing, baby.
The Trumpotus, of course, is enamoured by the concept that you can selectively annihilate your enemies for all time in a "limited" way, at the push of the Big Beautiful Nuclear Button.
Along the lines of the most hated Senator in Washington, Ted Cruz, who openly says he wouldn't mind if he could see if "sand glows in the dark".
Little wonder the "Doomsday Clock" has shifted forward by 30 seconds.
Two minutes to midnight...and counting.
If Armageddon don't get ya, climate change will.
What a wonderful world...