Comrades,
Crikey! It was a busy weekend for the Miracle of Democracy...
I note that My Mate Vlad has been returned for his fourth stint as President of the Russian Federation.
Wildly popular among the middle class he created, by all reports.
Who knows what the proletariat is thinking?
Backed him in with something like 77% of the popular vote by some accounts, but the powers-that-be in Russia are not generally fond of Electoral Commission's, or nuisances like that, so it's hard for the amateur psephologist to get any handle on the exact numbers that actually count.
It goes without saying that with the genuine Opposition out of the race after boycotting the poll in protest over a fraudulent bribery conviction of their leader, the Communist Party candidate was the only real alternative [and he died in the neck with the voters], and despite eight candidates on the ballot paper, Putes was a lay-down misere in this one, so there wasn't much need for vote rigging, as the election had already been rigged.
There didn't seem to be any argument about that.
There were reported cases of "ballot stuffing" - that's always a good one.
If enough people don't bother to show up, electoral officials just sternly fill out all the blank ballot papers for the authorities and stuff the ballot boxes with them, safe in the knowledge that no-one will be any the wiser.
Winner!
The only reality about the whole exercise was the turnout, but that's a State Secret, as are the number of spoiled ballots, that would have been binned anyway.
There were some legitimate concerns that folk would not roll up, blaming the unseasonably cold spring weather, but Putes had an answer to that...he adopted Abe Lincoln's old tactic of offering free booze at the polling stations, with barrels of Govt. made and authorised vodka being rolled out across the nation so people had the opportunity to raise a glass and toast "tvajó zdaróvye!!" to their Great and Glorious Leader.
And not happy with just grog, it was reported that on Russia’s Pacific coast, local officials delivered fresh eggs, tinned peas, and frozen pike to polling stations, to be sold at a 30% discount on retail.
Brilliant! Go shopping on the cheap while you vote and have a drink.
Who's going to argue with that?
Nikolai Kretsu, who's known around those parts as the Chairman of the Consumer Market Committee, was quoted as saying "we think by doing this we can increase turnout” and "the second objective is to strengthen allegiance towards the authorities.”
Too right mate, and too honest for yr own good.
Never mind being a dab hand with a light touch of nerve agent, if Vlad the Impaler doesn't do a Mr Jinping, and is still term limited in 2024, he already would have been effectively running the show for nigh on a quarter century anyway.
Talk about the quintessential autocrat.
Meantime, over in the Free Colonies, you've gotta love the South Australian Liberal Country League Cartel, who think they were born to rule, if anyone was.
Steven S. Marshall - a former furniture salesman and wool broker - ironically represents the good burghers of the electorate of Dunstan [formerly Norwood]...he of the Pink hotpants, Our Don, on course, would be revolving in his poor shallow grave knowing that a Tory is representing the seat he famously nicked off the arch-conservatives, and is now named in his honour.
Mortified, he would be.
There was some of the usual hanky-panky going down with the Pinko's apparently forced to make something like 40,000 robocalls through the reverse phonebook, and send a few thousand texts in the days before the election reminding old folk that not only do they have the right to vote, but that they are obliged to vote, after the Tories spread a scurrilous and fictitious rumour that Senior Citizens were exempt from the ballot.
That hoary old chestnut - spreading postal vote forms in nursing homes has long been a Pinko ploy on the campaign trail - but now it's same, same, only different; just run a 'don't vote' scam on the platform favoured by the elderly, Facebook, and watch it take off.
Uncle Jay looked like the heavy burden of power had been lifted from his shoulders while conceding defeat with an excellent punting analogy "like a four-time Melbourne Cup winner, who the handicapper has finally caught up with - on this occasion".
The handicapper being the Surveyor-General or whoever drew up the "radical redistribution" which effectively made four solid working-class seats very marginal, so the odds were indeed stacked against him, and the L.C.L jumped at their chance.
Lets face it, Labor did preside over closing a car factory or two, a submarine base that according to a former Tory Defence Minister "couldn't build a canoe", and a whole lot of windmills falling over in a 'once in 100 year storm' and frying the electricity grid to buggery.
But what could have been 20 years in power is a long long time, and nobody has a mortgage on the Miracle of Democracy.
The Pinko's just lost the popular vote.
Croweaters' opted for change for change's sake, surely confident that not much will actually change in the Rust Belt, apart from schools and hospitals and the like going down the S-bend us usual.
And it wasn't as if the Lefties were "swept from power" in a landslide or anything, it was more like a "brave, honourable defeat" given the near-impossible task.
Apart from being redistributed out of it - in the end, it was the "incumbency problem", plain and simple.
In a scary unstable world, the punters left their Protest Votes at home, and went with self-interest and stability, as everyone knows what a minority Govt. looks like - just ask Julia Gillard, she'll tell you.
It was most pleasing to see that complete & utter freak of nature, Corey Berandi, go entirely nowhere, while that show-pony Nick the Greek is now also a goner, a spent political force.
There is no way back for Xenophon, as South Australia polarised - scared to death of the unknown - left to the left and right to the right, thanks, leaving no middle ground to contest, and sensibly the wily bastard won't have yet another lash at the Senate as his comrades in the Nat Cap are splintering like Mintaro slate, and there's simply no point beating yr head against a limestone wall, anymore.
He's had his day in the sun, and is now very tanned.
So Nick goes from wannabe power-broker and king-maker to schmuck, and will just have to return to "no win, no fee" lawyering to earn a crust, as even his handsome Parliamentary pension from Canberra is unlikely to keep him in the manner to which he is accustomed.
It's everyone for themselves on that part of the island, I'm afraid.
It was heartwarming for an Old Red to see the Pinko's and common sense triumph in the Batman by-election, where they were the under-dogs to end all under-dogs...but it was a classic example of a very old adage..."all politics is local".
Global warming be buggered, folk in inner-suburban Melbourne [where there's long been "four seasons in one day"] could not give a blue root about a "stranded asset" that is highly unlikely to ever become some Indian coal mine in outback QLD more than two-and-a-half thousand kilometres away as the crow flies.
Reffo's? Nah, no votes in them.
The Greens did themselves no favours at all by fielding a perennial loser, a very ordinary party hack who has now contested the seat SIX times and lost [although she still has a very long way to go to beat Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party who still holds the world record for the most number of contested elections lost].
The tofu hanging off the Hipster Proof Fence along yr Bell St there did not turn Green with mold, and the tree-huggers' candidate was also dogged by vindictive bickering in her own party and was blatantly and very publicly accused of being a bully and an all-round not nice person.
Now that's not white-anting, that's eating the whole house.
In stark contrast, the Pinko's had the sense to run an actual real worker [a former nurse], with enough political nous to rise to the top of the Australian Nursing Federation and then follow the RJ Hawke route through the ACTU.
She knows a thing or two about organising - don't you worry about that - and reportedly worked very hard at retail politics.
If she personally didn't knock on every door in Batman, one of her envoys did.
The Labor vote actually increased south of the Quinoa Corridor as the Greens were deserted in droves by the Millennials - so there's hope for them yet.
While the Hon. Bob Brown down on his little farm in Tassy is consumed by incandescent rage at the wrecking of his noble intentions party by ignorant fools, the un-reformed Trots are way up shit creek without a paddle, after a disastrous election in the Apple Isle, losing big-time ground in SA, failing to secure a certain win in Batman, and are now being wholly consumed by their own long-running internal backstabbing - ask Lee Rhiannon, she'll tell you.
The way they're going, it's likely to all end in tears and go the same way as the Australian Democrats.
Remember them?
The Greens, of course, just blame shady preference deals and everything else under the sun, so instead of putting it on everyone but himself, the only decent and honourable thing for Dr Dick Di Natale to do is to fall on his sword and go back to pushing pills for a living, or going off-grid to navel gaze in an isolated rustically trendy log cabin on a freezing cold Victorian mountainside, never to be heard of again.
The Tories couldn't even be bothered running a candidate.
Solidarity forever.
