the importance of lunch

Who's the odd man out, then?

Comrades,

The opening salvo's of the campaign didn't amount to much, just the usual skirmishing, no defences were breached on either side, especially with not one, but two ceasefires being called to mark the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Our Glorious Dead. Both sides are sitting in the trenches hoping for a flaming torch issue to come along to captivate the hearts and minds of the natives, before the real stoushing begins. Better still, a stupendous gaff or humongous blunder that kills your opposition stone dead. Given the fever-pitch excitement elicited among the general populace by the opening Great Debate, it might as well have been scored as a nil-all draw. Bring back The Worm, I say.

For the first time, probably, the youth vote matters and it will be of real interest to see the way it swings. And its another era; it's not back in the day when party platforms for election campaigns meant policy, now it's the side that best manages its 'platforms' to speak to the Yoof of Today. The image of ScoMo with a lump of finest black coal in the Parliament has been memed endlessly and will come back to bite him on the arse with the millennial vote. There's always a chance young folk could be sucked in by lies, damned lies and statistics, who knows? The term 'fake news' now "calls out" blatant propaganda, when it used to just mean rabid rumour, wild speculation, and scurrilous scuttlebutt.

But in the final paralysis there's no beating the joys of retail politics. One of the marvellous attempts at small talk made by Uncle Bill on the hustings was when, on introducing himself to a clearly elderly gentleman, he asked "so, how have the school holidays been treating you?", to which the smart arse bludger replied "Doesn't affect me". The commentariat on yr SoShul Mejeeh held the Opposition Leader up to be some kind of eejit for asking that question, when for all they know the poor old bugger might be suffering under the yoke of being forced to look after his grand children all day long for no pay, and no thanks. The Senior Citizen could well have replied "Shithouse, thanks mate". Uncle Bill could have then reminded him of just how little childcare workers actually get paid, and point to the injustices of it all.

That's the way, go with the flow, roll with the punches Shortman, but whatever you do don't rock the boat or upset the apple cart, watch out for incoming artillery and keep your head low. At all times remember the proverb about the Drover's Dog.

The Country Party are of course desperately trying to avoid heading towards being a Parliamentary rump on their way to oblivion, and things were not helped when former leader Barnaby "Mad Rooter" Joyce, the former Minister for Sleaze and Officially Sanctioned Water Theft said "I am absolutely confident that I did absolutely nothing wrong" viz-a-viz the deaths of millions of fish that washed up on the banks of the mighty Murray-Darling. Them's is fine words coming from a joker who's done wrong plenty. All the Pinko's are calling for is a Royal Commission, and why not? It seems we are going back to the heydays of lawyer's picnics back in the 30's & '40's anyway, when there were Royal Commissions into bloody everything. And folks forget South Australia has already had a Royal Commission into the joint New South Wales/Victorian threat to build a bloody great dam at the border, and be buggered with the lot of ya downstream. The learned judge came down hard with a finding that the whole shooting match is a hotbed of waste & mismanagement, corruption, stealing, vandalism, skulduggery and worse The radical vegans would have Barney the Ol' Rooter stitched up on charges of fish murder, nay, endangered species genocide, for which you go to the jailhouse with no possibility of parole. They're probably all wearing Cubbie Station cotton. Sensibly for the Tories, the Inbred Tomato has been told the only thing he needs to worry about is New England. My oh my, some crazy batshit goes down west of the Divide.

Forget Clive "Jabber the Hutt" Palmer and the $30M he's given away to conventional commercial media [the fraudulent fucker's Twitter account is utterly incomprehensible and the dead-head won't know what WeChat is], the size of the cross-bench won't change all that much. There's always been that 10-15% of voters who wouldn't have a bar of the two-party Westminster System, and would never cast their ballots for either of the big two.That's it. It's just the nature of the beast, and the only thing that will happen is the stripe of the 'independents' will likely be different, again. The Pinko's only need to hang on to the heartland of the greater west of the Emerald City because that's where all the people are. They've got the vote, and they like to back a winner. The Eastern Suburbs returning Doc Phelps and the Northern Beaches sending exulted Olympian Zali Steggall to Canberra tells you more about those places than anything else. There will be nothing like a hung Parliament or a balance of power this time around.

Perhaps the best splash of the week was the exclusive in the Sunday fishwraps about some contretemps going on with the French, who are building our brand new Shortfin Barracuda $50B fleet of submarines in a dockyard in Adelaide. Remember that one? The one that a Defence Minister of not so recent past recommended highly..."I wouldn't trust them to build a canoe". Seems like we are having a touch of trouble with the contractors in regards to the uncouthness of Australians in general being incapable of comprehending the importance of lunch. Unlike Strayan public servants, who are happy enough to have a ham sandwich or a sausage roll in a bag with a squeezie of sauce while hunched over their typewriters, the Frogs, quite rightly, for their déjeuner demand plat du jour [which in my experience used to be a legislated maximum of €18 for entrée, plat, followed by entremets or cours de fromage]. Do they have any idea how long it takes to work your way through a three course lunch every day? The other gripe about punctuality for meetings in the afternoons goes out the window after a glass or three of Bordeaux. Surely a nation of piss artistes who are well used to pouring over the gin-soaked plans like us should understand that. Cultural confusion? Get used to it. It's included in the multi-million dollar contract 'variations'. The average punter would read that story and chafe about the endless opportunity for waste & mismanagement on the Gravy Train to Davy Jones Locker, and move on. Heard that one before. I hear the whistle blowing and it plays a happy tune.Toot! Toot!

Being a resident of a very solid Pinko electorate, I don't get much election material dropped in the letter box except from the sitting member Linda Burney who's been saving up on her Postal Allowance. However, I was surprised to find some literature from the Australian Democrats in there the other day. Ah, the fond memories...Cheryl Kernot and Gareth Evans immediately sprang to mind [OK, the mental image of those two on the workbench is not particularly pretty, I'll grant you that] but really you have to go back to the Year BBB...before-Bob Brown...to find the Democrats labelled as the "third force" in Australian politics. Printed on the front of the brochure in bold font is ol' Don Chip's famous saying "Keep The Bastards Honest". I thought that's quite clever of them to retain the copyright, but on closer inspection, the words were accompanied by a small symbol ™. That's where they lost me.

And remember, it's to the barricades, comrades, as pre-poll and postal voting opened yesterday for the rusted on - so as they say in the classics...vote early, vote often.

Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A Variant (artist's impression)

Bobby Three Sticks

                                           Robert S. Mueller III, at his 74th birthday party in August last year.


Legal Eagles,

Well fuck my brown dog, Harold - there's some law in here...

448 pages of it, reduced by data-search-magic to seven.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/politics/mueller-report-pdf-takeaways.html

Like the links to the report itself; e.g why they didn't get The Donald in a small room with a stack of telephone books. A sound basis in law not to call the chief witness: they already had more than enough on him...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/18/us/politics/mueller-report-document.html#g-page-225?smid=tw-share

There's seven bits of case law quoted on that page alone!

Ripped the shyster to shreds has Bobby Three Sticks. Torn limb from legal limb by a top-notch prosecutor who don't do no chicken shit. As you would expect after a two year probe. Nowhere to hide, now, DJ!

As he quotes the Trumpotus himself "I'm fucked".

Go you good thing.

"I love it when a favourite wins"

Comrades.

Election Special! Read all about it! Election Special! Read all about it!

It was most pleasing to see Our Great & Glorious Leader finally hop into Z-Car No.1 for the short trip from The Lodge to Yarralumla to get his His Excellency the Gumnut-General to prorogue the Parliament, get some flunky to fire off the starting cannon on the rolling manicured lawns, and officially pronounce "tallyho! race on!" for a mercifully short five week campaign. Although, ScoMo was a bit rude for mine, as it took just eight minutes out of his precious day, when he could have paid some courtesy to Gen. Sir Pete Cosgrove by allowing him the chance to offer a polite cup of Vice Regal tea. Protocol people, where are you?

Trust the Minister for Reffo's, the Hon. Mr Penis Head - or just Duddo to his mates - to kick off the campaign in style by mocking the crippled. He accused the unidexter ALP candidate for Dickson - who has some difficulty getting around with her peg-leg despite being a champion out-rigger canoeist - of being too lazy to pull up stumps and move into the electorate proper at short notice. Surely that's on a par with knocking the Zimmer Frame out from underneath some old dude on the street and shouting "Get a haircut! Get a Job! Ya bludger!" at the crumpled heap on the footpath. That was fine words coming from a bloke who was within a whisker of becoming PM in the party room pustch, failing only because of the last minute Anyone But Dutton push. And all that comes on top of the Govts' call the week previous that we all must respect and show more thoughtful consideration for the dignity of the halt and the lame. Not that it matters all that much in the grand scheme of things, given that Duddo is a dead man walking, and will soon exit stage right from the theatre of politics and back to the obscurity from whence he came. The same can be said for Half Term Tony, as the Mad Monk's rantings of late seem to have departed the planet and entirely lost the plot and drifted off somewhere into meaninglessness. The man must be on drugs. Although it is good know it has dawned on the Budgie Smuggler that Little Free Libraries actually exist, after seeing one in his own electorate, when there are approximately 75,000 of them in 88 countries around the world.

Taking a peeky at energy policy - who knew that Uncle Bill has the time it takes to recharge an electric car at his fingertips? That's clever. I had no idea that the next wave of tech will pump all that beautiful coal-fired electricity into your sparkly new Tesla Model S hatchback or Nissan Leaf in about 8-11 minutes. According to the Tories, we might as well all go back to steam driven vehicles, because if you believe ScoMo, the Pinko's are coming after all your money, and your ute, and your SUV, and probably your wife. Never mind the gas-guzzling Rolls Royce or the Ferrari in the garage at home. You'll be able to pick up some high-octane leaded petrol on the black market to keep your motor running when the time comes, don't you worry about that. Climate change be buggered.

Going down a different garden path, the Tories have a long history of preselecting dunderheads as candidates in unwinnable seats, so it came as no surprise that three Liberal wannabes have withdrawn from the race over suspicions that they might be closet dual citizens. Scomo The Fixer has it all in hand though. "We are looking at it, and we've fixed it". To think, these people could be citizens of Chad, Chile or China without even knowing it? That's very low in nous factor when the High Court came down hard on the side of the race card in s.44 of the Constitution, ruling "There shall be no foreign scum in the Parliament."

On the megaphone front...the ALP's current advertising on the telly is straightforward enough, but for greater clarity they should drop the references to tax loopholes, greedy multinationals and thieving banks, and just do "Hello. I'm Bill Shorten. MAKE THE RICH PAY. Vote Labor on May 18. Thank you". No need to add "Solidarity forever!", that'll do in this day and age when most people have the attention span of a gnat. And 10 second ads are alot cheaper than 30's.

Of course, the Pinko's mantra in this battle is SHUT UP BILL...everyone knows a drover's dog could win the forthcoming election, and all Uncle Bill has to do is not open his mouth and put his foot in it or make fundamental blunders, let alone get himself involved in any fatal clusterfucks. Just tow the party line on the stump, Bill. But, he has to be on-guard at all times, as there's some very shady and crafty Masters of the Dark Arts working in the Liberal Party Dirt Unit, and that means lips are sealed. Uncle Bill's made a good choice in former NSW Premier and un-elected Senator Kristina Keneally to be his "Bus Captain" and wingman on the hustings; then he can let Albo and Wongsy off the leash as his attack dogs, while Tanya can deal with policy.

The Opposition Leader can only be helped along his way by ScoMo's idea of campaigning in the Pentecostalist old school style - speak in tongues, frighten small children, wear alot of those baseball caps of the moment, drink a shitload of beer, gobble up pallets of pies, roll up the sleeves on yr cheap shirts, and say hello in Chinese to Korean women while stabbing yr chop sticks, bogan-like, into a dim sim and eschewing the soy sauce before stuffing it in yr cake hole and pronouncing with all the bilateral multiculturalism that you can muster "yum, yum, pig's bum".

And who knows? Our Great & Glorious Leader might even pick up a dose of giaradia or cryptosporidium brushing his teeth in contaminated rural water while campaigning in some god-forsaken outback town in Queensland, and as a result...finds that he's shat himself, violently.

Perhaps the highlight of the skirmishing of Week One was ScoMo being parachuted into the Members Enclosure at Royal Randwick to go faux-delirious with some swells over the millionth win by Winx, while television footage captured Uncle Bill on the Pinko Bus watching the mighty mare salute the judges for the very last time on a mobile telephone screen, and reacting with a little whoop and a small gesture of a solidarity fist, before saying with a smile on his face "(guttural noise) I love it when a favourite wins".

Anyone wanna a selfie with ScoMo? Anyone? Picture: Supplied.

the free-wheeling miracle

The Solomon Island's Prime Minister's palatial residence, The Red House, on Vavaya Ridge in Honiara.

Comrades,

Jeepers. The Miracle of Democracy is getting out-of-control world wide at the minute. After more than two years, the rest of the planet has finally given up taking any interest in what is happening in the US of A, because only God knows what is going down in D.C. The Trumpotus, after being let off by Bobby Three Sticks, with in his own tautological words "complete and total exoneration" [he might as well have put "utter" in there for emphasis], the steam has gone right out of it as The Donald continues to slide effortlessly into international irrelevance as he disappears up his own not inconsiderable arsehole. Over recent months, the New York Times has quietly stopped reporting DJ Trump!'s "Twitter storms", simply on the grounds that they are no longer news. The US has forfeited it's hard won status as the leader of the Free World, and no one cares, least of all the Chinese.

A television comedian with no political experience best known for his role as The President in a slapstick soapie is elected as the real President of the Ukraine, on an anti-corruption platform. Go figure. Let's see how he takes on Vlad the Impaler of the Kremlin, who had no trouble blatantly thieving all 27,000 sq km of the Crimea off them in a "don't argue" five years ago. Good luck with that.

There are two rival Presidents of blighted Venezuela, after blatantly rigged elections, but that's now turned into a classic Mexican Standoff, as the people who used to live in poverty after the Glory Days of the Hugo Chavez-era ended, now eke out an existence in total misery. The poor, poor bastards. Little wonder they are fleeing the country en-masse.

That hard-bastard strong-man who's running Turkey after surviving a coup d'état in 2016, Recep Erdoğan, got a very good whack from voters in municipal elections in Ankara and Istanbul, appearing to accept defeat one day, then contesting the results on another. But, he'll still run the joint as an autocrat, and that will be a very small thorn in his side.

The largest and most fractured democracy in the world, India, is set to go to the polls next week as that Hindu fundamentalist nationalist Narendra Modi seeks another 5 years in power from the 879 million voters on the books, who are being bombarded on Facebook in an astonishing fake news deluge produced by the Govt. - "the likes of which has never been seen before, world-wide". One of the many things the Indians do have down pat is the twisted manipulation of yr "Social Meejah". Just the voting in the Indian election will take five weeks, given the mind-boggling logistics involved. So the scope for electoral fraud is enormous, not that Modi will particarly need it.

In a fortnight, our nearest neighbour Indonesia is also set to easily re-elect President Joko Widodo, who's known nation wide simply by the contraction of his name, Jokowi. After four years in the job, he's got approval ratings in the 70% range due largely to his impressive spending on creative world-class infrastructure, and will win in a casual canter. Also, to his credit, Jokowi, at age 57, like many Indonesians, is a huge heavy metal fan, and the sounds of Metallica, Led Zeppelin, and Napalm Death can be heard emanating from his office at the threshold of pain, when officials start jibbering on at him about shit he don't want to hear.

In Thailand, the Miracle of Demorcay is all but dead after the latest election, which is entirely objectionable to say the very least. The Govt. refused to release the results at first blush, as they feared they might lose to the Red Shirts, which they did - technically. But it doesn't matter, the pro-Army party - who's sole platform is to maintain the current status quo of the military running the shop - will get the nod, as the Army appoints the majority of the members in the Senate, anyway. I did note that former PM Thaksin Shinawatra wrote a furious letter to the New York Times from his current hideout in Hong Kong, which the NYT editor saw fit to publish, decrying the fact that the vast population in Isan - the area in the north and north east of Thailand and home to the 'Red Shirts' - would easily win every fair election hands down through sheer weight of numbers and because they turn out to vote. To counter this, there were reports of widespread ballot stuffing in Bangkok, with some electorates reporting a turn-out of 200%. But, as Thaksin well knows much to his chagrin, there is no beating the Thai Army or the Bangkok Elite, and if you run foul of the Royal Family, then you are toast, plain and simple. So, in the Military Kingdom of Siam, it's same, same, only not very different. Isan will continue to be fucked-over for their support of the wildly popular Thaksin, who is still a hero in those parts, despite being hounded into exile in 2006 over his unfortunate habit of accepting bribes that should have gone to the State's coffers. But that's small beer, when Thaksin gave them free primary school education and a fair, regulated price for their rice.

And if all that wasn't enough, then there's elections tomorrow in the Solomon Islands, where a slew of Independents will win most of the 50 seats in the Parliament, and then it's a matter of furious horse trading as to who will become Prime Minister. After Chinatown in Honiara was trashed during riots after the 2006 elections, a total liquor ban has been imposed 2-6 April; public drinking is banned, all bars are closed, and there's no take aways, so the local wino's will be beside themselves. I encountered a weekend booze ban in Bangkok some years ago during a half-Senate election, but Mekong Whisky was being served in tea cups, and the few bars who had "arrangements:" with the cops were charging three to four times the RRP for beer. I asked a shopkeeper why he wasn't allowed to peddle the drink, and he simply replied "alcohol and guns don't mix". Fair comment.

In the light of all of the above, the New South Wales State Election pales into insignificance in comparison, especially as the good burghers of NSW voted for the status quo. Nothing happened, nothing changed. Never mind the poor campaign run by Labor, and Uncle Mike forgetting his numbers in the final Leaders Debate, and being caught out by the Govt's Dirt Unit the week previous. The Tories ended up losing six seats, but still hung onto power, with only two of them going to the Pinko's, the rest to right wing extremists. The commentariat has been saying that voters west of the Divide were waiting with baseball bats at the ballot box for the National Party. It was more than that. Much more.They were waiting with fully-loaded double-barrel pump-action shot guns, with a fairly firm uniform swing of 20% against the Country Party, with all those voters switching allegiances directly to the Shooters Farmers and Fishers Party, who picked up three lower house seats in various Hicksvilles. [I have often wondered if they had a schism with the folks who hunt with dogs? The Pig Stickers Party would no doubt be very popular in certain parts rural] The message for the Pinko's is simple enough - they have to be very very careful in maintaining their heartland in the vastness of Sydney's West - that's where the numbers are, and if they want to win Federally, then that has to be locked up and nailed down flat. No leaking of votes to the Populists and Fascists. Solidarity in the nation-wide poll in six weeks time is more important than ever for the workers. Of minor concern is the election of the extremely strange former Pinko Mark Latham - a rat in the ranks if ever there was one - on the One Nation ticket to the NSW upper house. Here's hoping that sometime in the not too distant future, the fat weirdo will be struck down with another bout of pancreatitis, and bow out disgracefully once again; his nose is looking a bright shade of vivid red and the conker is more bulbous than ever; so there's no doubt he doesn't mind a drink in a crisis. The only saving grace is that no one ever pays any attention whatsoever to anything anyone ever says in the NSW Legislative Council. The bad news is the electors didn't have a chance to toss out that freak The Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Nile, who's still got another four years to run on his term, by which time he'll be 88. A prime candidate to die in office, with any luck.

And then there's nothing like an Election Budget, due to be handed down tonight. The Tories will have a massive campiagn war chest at their disposal, and if the series of well orchestrated leaks from the budget papers are anything to go by, then the Pork Barrel will be the biggest, fattest and greasiest in living memory. Free money for everyone! Happy days! But not even that will be enough to save ScoMo, who by all reports has been the subject of scurrilous viral fake news on the "Meejah" this week along the lines that he "shat himself, violently" in the Engadine McDonald's after the Cronulla Sharks lost the 1997 Super League Grand Final to Brisbane.

I want to believe.