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