the cars in Iowa

 

 

Comrades,

Once you let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, that's it. There is no putting it back in. It's on the loose, and if yr not very very careful, it has a tendency to get right away from you. Like every anti-nuclear activist from way back, I was simply horrified by the nuclear submarine deal that gives the unsuspecting world AUKUS, and fundamentally changes geo-politics. The French, of course, were blindsided and mightily indignant about being ratfucked by the Australians, and who could blame them? So many acres of old growth forest have been felled for commentary on the atomic submarine switcheroo, I won't subject you to more. Suffice to say, Le Kid President Macron is up for re-election in six months time, and will probably win with the weight of incumbency, so of course he's quite right the French have been outrageously insulted, and Gallic Pride is something that is not to be messed with, oh no siree. They have very long memories, too, and Emmanuel will take great pleasure in cocking his not inconsiderable snoot at ScoMo for evermore. You can also read all about how former Defence Minister David Johnston said back in 2014 "I wouldn't trust the Australian Submarine Corp to build a canoe", and draw yr own conclusions. You can thumb your way through endless reports on the Collins class sub being a slow, noisy dog of a boat if you want, back to the years when we had less than one of the six Collins' in seaworthy order at any one time, let alone finding a crew. And, among the general public, nobody gave a shit then, just as they don't now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fprYfInkErg

DJ Albo was as flummoxed by this one as anyone and had to look up the Labor Party platform to get a handle on it (which is, most unfortunately, just go with the flow). PJ Keating - who well remembers the days of the Three Mines Policy - was spot on - we give up our sovereignty for a very expensive, dubious defence asset that we then have the privilege of paying for, and what with variations and what not the final chit will be well north of $100B. Kevin07 just called it unnecessary "chest-thumping". The Greens "floating Chernobyl's" analogy didn't fly (do yr research: every nuclear reactor built since 1986 has been designed to make another Chernobyl impossible - it was a once off that can never be repeated that way again), but that said, you wouldn't be too certain that the average punter in Sydney would be all that thrilled to find nuclear reactors floating around on the Harbour in some grim dystopian future. Surely Lucas Heights is enough to supply nuclear medicine? Of course these ships that our Great & Glorious Leader has signed up for are not nuclear armed, but come on, are we are buying silent long-range  weapons platforms to just launch conventional shooters? If so, just what are they good for then? The Poms run nuclear subs for the sole purpose of delivering The Bomb. There is no other way they can drop The Big One - and their submersibles can carry up to 36 nuclear tipped warheads. Now, that's what you call clout.

None of the above really bothers me, except for the nuclear bit. Back in the day, we would've taken to the streets en masse in 'waddawe want? No nukes! Whenawe wanit? Now!" protest marches, but the anti-nuclear movement in Australia - such as it survives - has barely raised a whisper or whimper of discontent. Never mind that there is no enthusiasm for the Ban the Bomb folks anymore despite the Maralinga debacle and howling shitfight that went on what seems like eons ago now, the Yoof of Today (i.e. anyone under 60) never experienced their parents having a genuine fear of The Bomb. One split atom is one too many for mine, but no-one gives a shit about that anymore, and that's what shits me to tears about the whole damned brouhaha. The righteous outrage seems to have gone away, replaced by fascists, neo nazi's and stark raving lunatics masquerading as builder's labourers. Learning from the past so you can clearly see the thin edge of the wedge seems to have gone right out of fashion.

But you can just imagine the cars in Iowa bouncing along nicely and being furiously tumbled end-over-end on the crest of the shock wave and ending up with a dent in every panel - what a ride! Ma, Pa and the kiddo are doing the right thing with their backs to the blast, but they all have that "we're seriously fucked here" look on their faces. As you would:

 

 

the COVID CANYON

 

Comrades,

Phew, at last...as of today 12 Sept 2021, you can drive, cycle or walk clean through NSW from south to north from the Murray to the Tweed and return via the thoughtfully created COVID CANYON, proudly brought to the all-singing all-dancing Berejiklian Govt.

 

it checks out

 

Hallie Bateman, "C'mon Gladys".

 

Comrades,

Everyday it becomes even more political/public health be buggered.

I do not get this:

"Parts of the Mid North Coast, North Coast, north-west, Albury, Riverina and Murrumbidgee will emerge from lockdown on Saturday. However, Queensland border restrictions will remain in place and Premier Gladys Berejiklian cautioned the state is 'definitely not out of the woods', with 39 regional areas remaining in lockdown for now, along with Greater Sydney."

On the one hand, The Ruby Princess is trumpeting all these fancy new "freedoms" we will be granted once 70% of the state's population is fully vaccinated - and yet the regions above "emerge" from lockdown at the weekend, when they have not reached anything like anywhere near 70%...not even 1st jabs.

Hello? Is it any co-incidence then that the Country Party holds the seats of Tamworth, Monaro, Myall Lakes, Cootamundra, Clarence, Upper Hunter, Northern Tablelands, Oxley, Tweed, Dubbo, Coffs Harbour, Bathurst...all of which - with the exception of Dubbo and Upper Hunter - will be out of lockdown on Saturday. Let's have a look at just a few of the fully vaccinated rates in the bush then, shall we? Tweed 36%, Coffs 33%, Clarence 32%, Tamworth 34% and on it goes - all of them well short of 70% first jabs. It's virtually the same everywhere in the countryside.

Whatever happened to one-in all-in? Are we all in this together? Nah, of course not. One rule for the Squattocracy, another rule for those filthy bastard Labor voters - godless people who live in squalor - all of them.

Can the NSW Tory Govt. spell E-Q-U-I-T-Y?

That's all, folks.

Hallie Bateman, "It Checks Out".

 

no turkey for you kiddo

 Comrades,

Here's a joyous thought - there will be no children at Xmas this year. Why? Because they will all be unvaccinated.

"Freedom!" (whatever that might mean in the Brave New World) is limited to the vaccinated only, right? 'Vaccine passports' and all that. That can only mean "you haven't got the papers, so no turkey for you kiddo, stay right there in the laundry", or is that wrong? With all the mixed messaging you'd be hard pressed to have even the faintest idea. 'Generation Alpha', the 0-14 year olds, number very close to five million in Australia. Imagine the nightmare scenario of a city the size of Sydney jammed full of kids, and you start to get the picture. And they're all a big fat doughnut zero % inoculated.

Never mind the entirely forgotten 40-59 year olds who desperately want, and are advised by their doctors, to get a Pfizer vaccine but are unable to obtain one for love nor money. The lengths they go to are legion, many even taking the Govt's lead and resorting to downright deception - but let's put them to one side for the moment because as far as the Govt. is concerned, they don't matter, even if the last time anyone looked they've still got the vote. Let's cut to the chase - going by the disgraceful debacle that's happening in Dubbo and Wilcannia, if you're black, then you better stand way back. If you're white, then join the queue here, please. If you're poor, ethnic, old, mad, unemployed, crippled, halt or lame then you're on your own. So if these mythical 70% and 80% targets are to be achieved across the board, including all the most vulnerable and marginalised segments of society - you'll be waiting way way beyond Christmas just for a start off.

And if you think the anti-vaxxers aren't a problem for you because you are a fine upstanding member of the community, think again. Studies suggest that somewhere between 6% and 8% of the adult population will never get a vaccine of any kind, ever. Add in those who just couldn't be arsed, and you've got a good ten per cent, right there. And some folks have a pathological fear of needles. It's a given you will never get beyond 90% full vaccination rates, 80% is a huge ask, and even 70% will be very difficult to achieve. Just as more people are jabbed and supply ramps up in Dec/Jan, demand will inevitably plateau - as it has in the rest of the developed world - and like Singapore, we'll end up giving away our "use-by-date due to expire next week" Pfizer vaccines to some poor suffering souls worse off than us.
In the UK, where supply now vastly outstrips demand, the 'at least one-shot vaccination rate' has all but stalled, taking almost two months to get from 69% to 72%.
They are really struggling to even get the 70-80 numbers among staff in nursing homes for Chrissake, when 100% is mandated by September 17 deadline. WA and QLD - predictably - are dragging the chain, with both achieving just 50% one-shot coverage only yesterday (51.0% and 51.1% respectively, SA no better at 53.2%); they're taking ScoMo's words very much to heart: "This is not a race". So amid all the sacrosanct "modelling", why isn't anyone asking the question - forget the Federated States Border Wars - what happens if 70% can't be reached, let alone 80%? Is that just forget it, we've arrived in Doomsville? Let 'er rip? Or what, precisely?

If those numbers are to include every last man, woman and child, regardless of race, creed, class or custom in every last corner of the vast Wide Brown Land - as they bloody well should, never mind must - before we get to ScoMo's famous "snap back", we will be waiting a very, very long time indeed: read forever. Since the Delta mutant arrived, the term "herd immunity" seems to have mysteriously vanished from the lexicon. And if you are thinking things will rosily "get back to normal" or even a "new normal" if and when the arbitrary round number targets are met, you're dreaming. Scotty from Marketing is waving an appeasement roadmap around 'I have a piece of paper', so he's obviously oblivious to the fact that street directories went out of fashion years ago. And double dip recession be buggered, ever heard of The Great Depression? The free money tree in the economic forest will fall eventually. The fear is no one will be there to hear it.

Whatever happens, Our Great and Glorious Leader's famous words "we will be living life different at Christmas than we are now" will, without a shadow of a doubt, come back to haunt the Bogan-in-Chief. Now there, that's a nice lovely downer for the 10th week of a two week lockdown, eh? Brighten up. Be happy. It could be worse. A lot worse.

 Homeless person sleeps outside a closed Coronavirus testing station, 26 August 2021, Vienna, Austria.

the fourth wave

 

Comrades,

If you think we've got it bad here in Hotbed City, which the Ruby Princess has seamlessly managed to strictly divide along wealth and class lines...try The States. According to Associated Press, in the current Covid19 "fourth wave", 1100 people are dying every day, and 'influential modelling from the University if Washington' suggests a further 98,000 Americans will die of the Delta mutant between now and the start of December, bringing the total US death toll to a staggering 730,000. In Florida, which has a population similar to Australia's at 22M, folks are shuffling off at the rate of close to 200 a day. Full vaccination rates go from 67% in Vermont to 36% in Alabama, and they've had full unfettered access to plentiful supplies of Pfizer since 11 December 2020. ScoMo's magical mystery target of 80% fully vaxxed is but a hollow pipe dream.

So, now it's time to follow the lead of New York City, and get some first class guerilla advertising going across this beshitten ol' town:

 

history repeats

 

Boys fly a kite above Kabul, Afghanistan, July 2016. Photo: Wakil Kohsar/AFP

Comrades,

Another very hard-learned lesson in the futility of trying to impose the Miracle of Democracy on those who don't want it and for whom it does not work, and God knows - whichever one you choose - I'm no expert.

Any foreign power who has ever tried to invade Afghanistan has failed, with the exception of Genghis Khan who made a good fist of it way back in 1221, but that required slaughtering pretty much the entire population. The "Infernal Triangle" will remain just that for Western powers. Never mind the Taliban having to get on with it before the end of "the fighting season" - the country is ripe for a long-running simmering civil war, especially with the northern warlords now very unhappy they've lost territory. They will re-arm, and Afghanistan will return to its natural state of self-governing warring fiefdoms. Central authority has never worked, and never will. The Russians could have told you that.

The utterly pointless loss of life and the mega-billions in American (and Australian) treasure lost over the past 20 years becomes yet another page in the lil' history books, but the British really did set the benchmark in 1842. Nobody ever learned from it, ever...history repeats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_retreat_from_Kabul

shared blame

 

Comrades,

You have to hand it to our Great and Glorious Leader for this oh-so reluctant offering: "I'm certainly sorry that we haven't been able to achieve the marks that we had hoped for at the beginning of this year. Of course I am." Apart from it being gobbledygook, it's also 'shared blame'. Really sorry that we have been unable to get the marks, of course we were hoping for better, so that means everyone's to blame, right? including you, yes you, and I'm sorry about that.

Well, I'm really sorry too old mate Scotty, but you don't get it, do you? It's your clusterfuck, and not only do you have to take care of it, and mop the fucker up because it is your fault, but you also have to own up to it. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. You can't go around blaming the public servants, when the poor bastards down at ATAGI are only doing their jobs as per the well established protocols and not making up policy on the run, which is the job of Govt. And at the moment, the Govt has but one job. The clearly demonstrated Miracle of Modern Medicine has come up with vaccines aplenty in a staggeringly short period of 12 months, so where's the difficulty here, ScoMo? In a world awash with vaccine for those who can afford it, how come you backed the wrong horse? Appalling mixed messaging killed the poor ol' Astra-Zeneca stone dead in the water despite it being a very good vaccine indeed, and just how much cold hard cash did QldUni burn through coming up with what an apparently brilliant vaccine with one fatal flaw - it tends to return positive AIDS tests? You could measure the money lost on that little one alone in the multi-millions - there were 51 million doses of that failure on order. But if it was just a petty argument with Pfizer over money, for fuck's sake, we are an affluent nation and can afford it. This "vaccine hesitancy" nonsense is an enormous barrow load of horseshit; Australia is one of the most vaccinated countries on the entire planet. God Help Me.

At least Captain Corona, Lt. Gen. J.J.Frewen, was speaking truth to power and had no trouble not beating around the bush chasing his own tail by saying in reply to the plaintive cry from the Ruby Princess for truckloads of more vaccine to be rushed to that hell hole - south west Sydney: "The Commonwealth does not have extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine to distribute". Yet, the next day, the Minister for The Sick managed to pull thousands of extras out of his arse, oh that's right, he was merely re-distributing them. Frewen is by all reports the dude getting the gear into chemist shops, where they should have started organising the cold logistics a long, long time ago, with big signs out the front screaming Get Your Free Covid19 Vaccine Here! No Waiting No Delay! 99% protection against death! Works in 14 days! Absolutely Free!

While State Premiers front the media microphones almost every day, ScoMo takes the "I refuse" position on leadership - glibly deflecting everything...you know, it's OK, nothing to see here, we'll vaccinate our way out of trouble, sure thing, don't you worry about that blah blah...And then there's the PM's grammatically incorrect bogan corker "we will be living life different at Christmas than we are now." How so, ScoMo? How different? How much worse? Vaccinate, schmackcinate; with 39.5% of the Strayan adult population now having had one dose, we remain on par with that utter shithole - and so sorry to pick on them again - Mississippi.

 

Operation Ethnic Cleanse

 

Comrades,

You gotta hand it to the Ruby Princess ordering her Police Commissioner to deploy a few hundred extra cops to Sydney's South West to combat the roaming hoards of flagrant law breakers who are dropping in on family and friends - which is a time honoured tradition in the area - willy nilly and scattering the Indian mutant of the Corona here, there, and everywhere as they go. I'm not the first to say this smacks very loudly of racial profiling. The worst case of 'unconscious racism' that the NSW Tories have come up with in quite a while. Unconscious, unthinking, casual, unintentional - Gladys? Hello? - you, of all people, should know it's still racism. What are you thinking when you say to them that "it's just not allowed" and then you chastise them for not listening? What if they can't even understand you in the first place, you bonehead? Little wonder this has raised a tremendous hue and cry beyond the Outer Edge of the Inner West just for the plain and simple fact that English is very much the second language - if at all - of most of the folk there, and English is by no means the preferred spoken language in the majority of households in the south west. This is not a crime. You do not need English to be a fine upstanding member of the community in the Miracle of Democracy. You are not required by law to look like pure white Aryan bread to be Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi.

Has anyone ever spared a thought for the poor suffering translators (if any are being employed)? The General Public has very little grasp of the ever shifting sands of conflicted mixed messaging coming their way in their native tongue - English - from all kinds of people who think they know everything. What hope for the professional linguists who are struggling to make any sense of it at all and then trying to communicate the arrant nonsense into another language (never mind the cultural differences)? The Ethnics of South Western Sydney would like to know what the fuck is going on just as much as the next person, for crying out loud. But no, go for the easy kneww jerk reaction and send in the cops. That'll fix everything. Stove a few multicultural heads in, but no racial profiling allowed, OK. So, what happens? After one day of Operation Ethnic Cleanse, hundreds of cops - including some on horseback - have fanned out across the south west looking for Covid offenders without making a single arrest. Not one. This was after there was never any talk of turning out extra squads of heavily armed officers to deal with the Limmo Driver "outbreak" (remember when they used to be called a "cluster") in the pure white-as-the-driven-snow native English speaking Eastern Suburbs was there? Nah. Of course not. It's different over there when you have to do yr cocaine with intimate partners only after being caught getting yr hair done down at the salon. It stinks, Ruby, but you couldn't care less because they are all filthy Labor voters in the south west and there's nothing in it for you, is there?

And just when you think you've heard it all, you get this classic opening line in a story in the Melbourne paper telling us that ScoMo has scrapped the beer ban with the stroke of a pen: "Prime Minister Scott Morrison will scrap a ban on businesses offering alcohol as a reward for getting the COVID-19 jab after a Port Melbourne pub was ordered to stop giving free beers to vaccinated customers." Really? Who can even pretend to know what kind of mixed messaging that is. Now, if it was yr local Bong Shop is offering a toke or two of the latest juicy shit to those vaxxed-up hipsters who'd had the jab it'd be an entirely different story, wouldn't it?

Never mind free beers for jabs or the fact that some of the best ideas coming up over a few beers, if the new Covid Commando Lt. Gen. J.J.Frewen has any idea, this is the sort of thing that should be happening right now on a 24/7/365 basis down at the currently non-existent South Western Sydney Vaccination Hub:

https://64.media.tumblr.com/dc7eef0f893f73638b7461bf0e6bd0c8/86143dc8cc46c34a-53/s400x600/3eade22f06b36275306d87b5fef17c3df1e1a7f9.gifv

But that won't happen. Whenever a military man (and it's always a man) is dragged kicking and screaming into civilian affairs I'm reminded of the Harry Truman reply when he was asked how he thought Gen. Dwight D.Eisenhower would go succeeding him in the US Presidency:

"He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.”

Good luck son. The race was lost well before you started. Oh, that's right, ScoMo did say of the vaccine strollout "it's not a race". That was back in March: “It’s not a race. It’s not a competition for the sake of people’s health – you get it right. And that’s exactly what we’re doing and, where we are, our October deadline is the one we’re absolutely working to – there’s no change to that.”

far lower than some utter shithole

 

Comrades,

Of course a two week lock-down means nothing to an old bastard with a busted leg who can't even get down the back steps, but really?

If ScoMo had not been so fucking vocally intransigent ("nah, don't need 'em"), NSW VIC and QLD would be well on their way to building/completing thousand bed quarantine stations. Christ! It's not as if there's not a gargantuan amount of lazy cash sloshing around in the economy. The problem of importing the virus? Solved.

And why isn't every second TV advertisement telling us to rush down to our local chemist shop to "get the jab"? Just as you can with 'flu shots. Why? Because it's unavailable - at least in the Emerald City it is - a minimum nine week wait for any kind of vaccine that may or may not be applicable to you. Nine weeks!!?? That is simply outrageous. And buried in recent Govt. pronouncements is the fact that the Astra-Zeneca vaccine will be phased out entirely by October, leaving Australia out of pocket for 50 million doses we don't want because of the risk of a side-effect that is so infinitesimally small that it's less than statistically insignificant. And never mind us old folks - we can die in a ditch - the top priority target group now should be anyone aged between 20 and 40 as they are the most highly mobile segment of the population by the length of the street. But no, they are ineligible to get any kind of shot at all. Just what kind of completely insane fuckery is this? And guess who's responsible?

As it stands, 4% of the Australian population is fully vaccinated (entire world average? 10%+), and in the half-useful "at least one jab" category it's 24% -- but even that's far lower than some utter shithole, like say, Mississippi. Speaking of which, in the States, Uncle Joe has got his people going door-to-door in poor districts armed with syringes, getting folks to roll up the sleeve giving them the jab and a Govt. certificate saying "we'll be back later with the second shot". And this, in a country of 333 million? We have been failed. Miserably.

Nobody here is publishing data likes this, are they? Shame on you Scott Morrison. Shame on you Ruby Princess:

 

the triumphant return of the fully roasted tomato

Comrades.

Is it really three years since Barnaby Joyce's wife of 25 years threw all his suits onto the front lawn of the family property in Tamworth and drove over them not once, but several times, with a ride-on mower/slasher? That's class. If memory serves, he does have an allegedly alcoholic daughter who will take any inappropriate moment to bad mouth the cad and bounder, and bag the shit out of the no-good low-down brown dog of a philandering father. They are good conservative people up there New England way, you know.

You can read all the salacious deets about him rooting the office secretary in the gossip mags, if you must, and having more babies with her is right there in the New Idea history books, if you care to dust them off. But despite (or perhaps because of) that look and that unique bulbous face of his and the way it connects to his neck, there is no getting away from the fact that Barnaby Thomas Gerard Joyce skulks around in the velvet curtains and does unspeakable things in the shadows and cannot ever be trusted on/with anything, whatsoever. Never. Full Stop. He'd be up to his own arse in horse shit and swear black and blue that everything was above board. J.Depp - despite his faults - pretty much read the room and got him one on that bloated conker with the "inbred with a tomato" wisecrack. And, oh, how we all laughed. Except it's not funny. Joyce is a rat, he knows it, and he enjoys many similarities with the despised rodent without so much as even a hint of shame.

Poor ol' McCormack was never more than a hard-right Country Party apparatchik, happy enough to live in ScoMo's shadow, but he ended up speaking gibberish in the Parliament which had Hansard puzzled when the galley proofs got back to the office. Fair enough, it was a bit much to ask of Mangler Mike to keep the seat warm for Scotty from the Tourism Board while the main man was enjoying a touch of northern hemisphere spring weather, not to mention a jolly good dinner and piss-up at No.10 where our Great & Glorious Leader and the Lord High Chief Bozo came up with the truly bizarre Penguins for Tim Tams project. Sending coals to Newcastle has got nothing on the free trade deal to end all free trade deals. Marmite anyone? Anyone? Three years of loyal service to a lost cause is cast aside just like that  - in a game McCormack described as "brutal arithmetic". No loss of face for him. Just give the baton back to the bumbling buffoon, and move on.

If that's what the political outhouse that's been forever propping up the Tories does for leaders, then God help them all. It took the late great Tim Fischer to tell them that the days of the squattocracy were over, he was the last of the last, but the Country Party has never really been the same since Doug "Hayseed" Anthony, who could get very bolshie about rural landholder's rights despite being further to the right than Genghis Khan. He was all for agrarian socialism - but only if it went as far as farm bail outs and Govt. drought assistance for marginal lands. The Tomato's peculiar approach to everything, including women, is best seen on the Campaign Trail, where you'd expect him to get a good work out in the coming 12 months or so. He's a big believer in retail politics, and couldn't care less that the first image of him kissing a recoiling baby is likely to provoke responses like "eeeewwww". All publicity is good publicity. Tomato Tommy is a bit like Tony Windsor in that regard - promise everything to everyone on the hustings until you get their vote - then do what every pollie does: back the horse called Self Interest. Just sooth the backward electorate with the fabulous news that animal dung and 'farming activities' will not be included in the non-existent net-zero carbonoosquies by 2050 'target', so there is absolutely nothing to worry about there; no more to pay. And as well all know, everything else is small beer...

Labor's best chance in the bush is to follow the Country Party lead - few policies and plenty of well targeted scare campaigns. The ALP will never win west of the Divide, it's QLD they have to fret over - it's the key to winning as any psephologist will tell you, as Queenslanders always want to poke their noses in the Miracle of Democracy and make a nuisance of themselves. Never mind that Albo is unelectable (that face, that voice), they'll take him to the next poll, where he could surprise everyone by doing an Uncle Bill Shorten in exact reverse. But first, they have to put the Rural Rump back in the sugar bag.

 

Our Man in Cornwall

 

Mount Recyclemore greets G7 leaders in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, UK.

Missing Australian flag not hanging from the Cornish Arms hotel, Carbis Bay, Cornwall, UK.

 Comrades,

I note that our Great and Glorious Leader, Scott Morrison, is winging his way to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a guest at the annual G7 meeting in the gorgeous seaside resort of Carbis Bay in beautiful Cornwall, in order to keep the world safe for democracy.

It begs the obvious what is the G7, and what does it have to do with the "Five Eyes" or "The Quad" and all that spook stuff, anyway? And how did ScoMo score an invite to what that repository of all wisdom, Wikipedia, describes as "an informal club of wealthy democracies" aka Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States? No idea. In any case, it's always a fabulous idea to skip the country in a crisis, abrogating all responsibility and leaving that bothersome clusterfuck of a botched vaccine roll-out to somebody else. Anyone? Any volunteers? And it goes without saying Scotty from the Tourism Board has form in this area - Hawai'i anyone? They say it's nice at this time of year.

ScoMo will tell anyone who'll listen that he's on an acronym crusade, and wants the WTO and the WHO beefed up ASAP, but all he really wants is an elbow bump with the Leader of the Free World. He might get that opportunity with Uncle Joe, but there's fat chance of having an actual meeting with Mr President, formal or informal. ScoMo will be snubbed and brushed by that Pinko Biden as an out-and-out Trumpist. After all, DJ Trump! did host Mr Morrison to a rare State Dinner at the White House (what was he thinking?), and in the dying days of the Trump Presidency, Loyal Scott was awarded the Legion of Merit - a low ranking military administrative award - good Lord, the now retired to obscurity and ill health Mr Shinzo of Japan and that ghastly Hindu ultra-nationalist Mr Modi of India were also gonged with the LoM at the same time, courtesy of the Great Orange Being. So he's in top company there, and the current POTUS has the memory of an elephant. He'll know. Be that as it may, I'm sure Scotty will have no hesitation whatsoever in signing up for the "New Cold War" now being promulgated by the Pentagon. Nothing like a bit of "red baiting" and invoking the clear and present danger of the "yellow peril" to shore up the Tory vote. Our Man in Cornwall will be much more comfortable in the company of that madcap clown Big Bad Bonking Bozo Boris than anyone else, as What Would Justin Do? and The Kid President of France would give ScoMo's French a test. The others are outliers who are best not to fall in with. You always run the risk of being spoken to in Plain German Sentences and having to hide in the velvet curtains.

Of course the PM will mouth a few platitudes about the wobbly environment fresh off the press release cheat sheet. He's tipped to make some grandiose announcement that Straya will be eminently sensible and strive for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 like the rest of the developed world, just never mind that he has two chances - none and Buckley's - given his policy of a "gas-led recovery" and spurious technologies such as 'clean coal', 'carbon capture' and other such ecological nonsense. Nothing to do with the over-reliance on fossil fuels in the Wide Brown Land just for a start off, oh, no siree, don't you worry about that. Did someone in the Country Party echo chamber say "Farm Diesel Rebate Scheme"? Carbon tax be buggered will be his message to the rapidly heating globe.

Apart from sipping cocktails from martini glasses with tiny umbrellas in them while wearing a lei around his neck, I keep having this vision of ScoMo during the 'leaders retreat', with a Cornish pasty in one hand and a stubbie of the fine mid-strength Cornish ale Doom Bar in the other, wandering down to the beach as he casually stuffs his cake-hole, then strips down to his smugglers and Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks footy cap to take a quick dip - unaware of the unusual rip tides and devilish currents of the Cornish coast - whereupon he is promptly sucked beneath the waves à la another scion of the Liberal Party, Harold Holt, never to be seen again (or picked up and whisked away by a Chinese submarine). 

While the last thing one is left with is hope, re-naming the joint Cheviot Beach would be going too far.

 

 

Uncle Purple

 

Comrades,

Everyone knows that Uncle Joe is a fond of an ice cream cone or two...but dressed like James Brown in a Ralph Lauren purple suit & tie, with aviator glasses? The POTUS?

Never once did anyone see a photograph DJ Trump! eating in public, because he well knew that would disgust people and frighten small children.

and now the Indy 500 has been run and won, and while it took a while to catch up with this one, the Great Orange Being still struggles for relevance, not that he's ever had any...

 

 

Little wonder DJ Trump's internet-thingy apparatchiks closed the above bloggy-blog-blog - for good. Never to be seen again.

in the Great State of Delaware

 

Comrade Cartographers,

All reports on the Miracle of Democracy suggest the Pinko's are working overtime to carve out the 51st United State from the District of Colombia and snare a priceless pair of Senators. As it stands, as far as gerrymanders go, it's outrageous that Washington DC's only presence in Washington is a single, non-voting, member of the US House of Representatives. That puts the overwhelmingly black and Democratic city and surrounds of 700,000 folks on a par with American Samoa. And it's that House that historically admits new States, with the approval of the Senate. Good luck with that one.

There's also been renewed interest in the otherwise forgettable Great State of Delaware since Uncle Joe was elected to the Presidency, among the common queries being "why the fuck is Delaware a state anyway?", given that it is a second smallest state in the union after Rhode Island by land area. Never mind the very poor standard of surveying or the "12 Mile Circle" or "The Wedge"...

 ...who knew there has been a long-standing movement to seize the entire Delaware peninsular, known as Delmarva (marked in black outline), which was so rudely stolen by Maryland and Virginia....but it looks like the Muskrats would have their hands full driving the Craw Trumpeters and Tar Heels off their lands...

 

"what do those who govern think?"

 

Comrades

It seems the prospect of an early election this year is now off the political menu with ScoMo battling to contain the multi-level minutely-layered myriad of Clusterfucks, known as the Covid19 vaccine "roll out" (which is neither out, nor rolling). You can't see him trusting the voters to return him to office quick smart, given he has next no majority in the House and has burning - nay blazing - issues left, right, and centre. Lucky Ol' Albo needs to do nothing at all while it all implodes around the party of Andrew Peacock. The problem with voters is they remember very well your hopeless debacles, and quickly forget any successes you may have had. They will remember Hawaii and the bushfires, Scotty from Marketing, they will remember your "women problem", they will remember very well not being able to easily get a vaccine when it suits them - but they will forget all about how brilliantly you managed the pandemic itself, which led to the effective end of community transmission and the eradication of the disease (for the time being). The whole purpose of the exercise was not a public health issue anyway, but rather to return society (read: the economy) to "normal", and once that "normal" has been achieved, folks forget all about how they actually got there. People hate change. They're too busy enjoying the "good life", unless of course you are unemployed, old, poor, crippled etc.

In my personal experience, ScoMo in his wisdom has put a label on me; I've been classified by the bureaucracy in Group 1B when it comes to Covid vaccinations (over 60, chronic disease, compromised immune system) so I should be fairly near the front of the queue, you'd think? In fact the Govt's own website says I can get a vaccine right away at a "vaccination centre" or a "Pfizer hub". Really? As far as I know, neither of these things exist. WTF?  But now, as he clutches at straws, our Great and Glorious Leader, is exhorting everyone aged over 50 (is is that everyone under 50??) to rush out and get themselves a shot in the arm ASAP. Totally confused, I consulted my beloved GP on the issue, and he's the most humane and pragmatic medico I've come across. "No, wait. There's no hurry" was his advice, rolling his eyes. Paraphrasing him here - "there is effectively no community transmission and you won't be going overseas this year, right? There's zero chance you will get Covid if you wash your hands. In any case, all this stuff is experimental by definition given its astonishingly short development time. It really is a miracle we have them at all, given there has never been a vaccine for a coronavirus before. Some of the stuff they're doing with DNA editing is incredible. And while the risk of being killed by an Astra-Zeneca blood clot is infinitesimally remote, it's still there. It would be enough to red flag any other drug, and it wouldn't be listed on the PBS under normal circumstances. And don't bother to get a seasonal 'flu shot until May/June either, or July even. No one is bringing it into the country from the northern hemisphere, and it could be like last year where there was no real 'flu season at all, just a small spike in September. In any case, you need the Pfizer. I've got the facility to keep it here at -70°C, but I haven't got any, don't know if I'll get any, and don't know when that might happen. In fact, apart from the usual ones for children, I haven't got any vaccines of any kind in stock at the moment, so I can't help you even if I thought you needed it." (This from a Doc who says he vaccinated 50+ people a week against 'flu in the car park during last year's lockdown).

So there. Can't argue with that. Still, it is comforting to know that National Cabinet will now suddenly go from meeting once a month to twice a week to thrash out what to do about this political migrane, never mind the utter shambles. But with the States hurling insults and general abuse at Canberra and fighting amongst each other in the complete & utter absence of any national leadership from a bozo who again had an empathy problem by actually smiling throughout while announcing the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, it only begs the question seen here in Spanish on a stencil photographed last week on a shuttered shop in Madrid: "What do those who govern think?"

 

never mind the pheasants...

It's rather amusing, isn't it chaps, how all the Royal obits say Phil the Greek had a deep lifelong concern for environmental issues and was a massive supporter of the Greenies, when there's yarns on the other side of the page on when he was shootin' up crocs in the NT ("right between the eyes" "no match for a Royal") and popping off Tigers on the sub-continent. No doubt someone, somewhere, has tallied up just how much game he bagged on tour... never mind the pheasants..."one group estimated he shot 30,000 pheasants in his lifetime".

Here's Matt McGinn’s (Scottish Communist folk singer) account of meeting HRH, shortly after the Duke had received negative attention in the press for shooting a tiger while on a Royal tour of India.

 

world leader by any measure at the blame game

 

Outstanding effort ScoMo! World leader by any measure! Doing much better than Africa! Just look how badly Indo-China is going! Afghanistan is nowheresville on this!

Blame those bastards in Brussels! Blame those pesky self-promoting Premier's - they do five-eighths of bugger all, remember!? Blame the honest hardworking GP's for being kept in the dark! Pick another scapegoat to blame; any old scapegoat will do! Just blame everybody and everyone - except yourself, you miserable little useless fucking loathsome lump of shit.

Phew! Glad that's off me chest...absolutely furious...

 

Straya's Magnificent Covid19 Vaccine Rollout

 

Marfa, Tx...

 

Art Critics,

Like this stuff seen in the high-desert art town of Marfa, Texas?

Before Xmas, Scotty, that bozo from Marketing, was imploring and begging folks to travel to "the regions" in the summer holidays to plug a catastrophic hole in the tourism market so cashed-up people everywhere did the right thing and took him up on the offer in their droves - why not go see yr own country? - then that all went to shit in the constant Colonial 'border wars', didn't it, and now no-one will travel, anywhere, afraid of being locked out of home.

Zero Federal co-ordination, let alone even any simple guidelines buried in the mixed messaging from Canberra. ScoMo abrogates all responsibility - "a State issue". Nice one, dickhead.

You, yes you, should be the last one at the end of a very long queue to get a Commonwealth Dept. of Health Vaccination Certificate, not jabbed first live on national television in some limp, cheap publicity stunt. When it's your turn, it'll come in the post in an official little brown booklet, don't you worry about that.

But it got me to thinking how the Australian countryside has always been such a welcoming place for any kind of outsider, especially west of The Divide...I lived in the bush, once...

 

the smell of a ripe Impeachment in the morning

 

Comrades,

Don't y'all love the smell of a ripe Impeachment in the morning?  Well, that snake in the grass is right on this one...

“The Democrats have a very emotional and compelling case,” said former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. “They’re going to try to convict him in the eyes of the American people and smear him forever.”

History tends to repeat, but nothing is ever learned, because no-one ever listens. The Trumpist wing of the Republican Party is facing the prospect of going down in the annals with the "Know Nothings", with which they have more than a few things in common...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/30/heres-what-happens-to-a-conspiracy-driven-party-463944 

the game's up

US Electoral College Ballot Box (1968, mahogany, Senate Sergeant at Arms Cabinet Shop), containing the Certificates confirming the Electoral College votes of the States in the election of the President and Vice President.

Comrades,

As soon as I saw those boxes containing the votes of the Electoral College in the time-honoured procession on The Hill, I knew the game was up. Everyone knew. There were no secrets after all. It was well known from sea to shining sea that the Electoral College had returned the votes for Uncle Joe and for DJ Trump! and their running mates, and that was that. Then came the ceremonial opening, after the votes were carried in by porters lugging brown boxes and leather briefcases with old fashioned large-key locks to a joint sitting of Congress, where they are emptied and the votes are counted out, state-by-state, by the President of the Senate, (who just so happened to be Mighty Mike Pence! this time around, oh the sweet irony) so the clerk & scribe can emboss the digits on the appropriate scroll and then stamp it with the Great Seal of Anything That Matters, before popping them in the built-for-purpose Mahogany Ballot Box. The magic numbers 306 to 232, so it turns out, were an inescapable fact They might as well - and there's no doubt somebody, somewhere, who does - etch the fookin' numbers into granite. In the final paralysis, the Miracle of Democracy is all about the numbers - that's where it begins and ends - and it's fundamentally based on the concept of political winners & losers duelling over policy in a co-operative society. So when an unruly, rudderless, confused, mystified, clueless rabble turned up and somehow made their way into the Capitol and things got pretty heavy; shots were fired, people got killed and folks were frightened for their lives - it was, as it had been all along - a sideshow. As soon as law enforcement had been prodded into action from their lunchtime slumber and started turning up in numbers, the mob fled - just melted away like all good reactionaries do. They thought they'd gotten away with it and were shocked to find the FBI knocking on their doors later in the week with arrest warrants. If the Trumpists were for real and had any idea what 'insurrection' might mean, they would have gone straight for those Electoral College votes and tried to steal them or ransom them or 'burn after reading' them or something; not just carry away the Speaker's Podium as if it was some kind of lucky find at a garage sale, as you are being beamed live across the wonderful wide world on the lawless webznet Facecrook thingo for gazillions to see. Dumb and dumber, the blind leading the blind, how many more clichés are there? There were so many splinter groups no-one had any idea at all about what to do. The real business at the seat of American Democracy carried on regardless of the provocations of the 45th POTUS and the utterly shameless Ted "The Most Hated Senator in Washington" Cruz & Co. leading the way on the appalling vote objection technical fiasco ----- as the 46th POTUS remarked in his inaugural address "Democracy has prevailed". And so it has.

"The Mob" (good term, given that DJ Trump! always liked to pretend and behave like he was some kind of mafia Boss) never turned up for The Inauguration did they? - anywhere. If they were still a "movement" they would have taken to the streets en masse, and started shootin' in the air while a hollerin' the rebel's yell and picking fights with fucking Liberals. But no. The DJ Trump! demagoguery act was always pretty ordinary, for mine. Four long years of a piss weak impression of a little tin-pot despot that had run out of puffery. No wonder The Donald tried to lick-spittle the boots of real ones like Fatboy Kim, Vlad the Impaler, and Mr Ping of China, hoping some of the shine might rub off on him, much to their amusement.

Never mind that Uncle Joe now undoubtedly has the hardest road to hoe since FDR back in '32, it's a humongous job that will most likely drive him to his grave. In times of plague and depression, the US Presidency is very definitely not for the faint-hearted. 

The Miracle of Democracy is what got The Donald to the White House and it's what's got him ejected from the Oval Office. It doesn't get much simpler than that, but you'd be suprised how many simpletons there are out there. You just have to hope that in time DJ!'s legacy will have about as much clout as the Tea Party does today. Can't ask for much more without moving mountains between the polarisations.

You'd have to suppose the events in DC are a good argument for keeping the Electoral College, regardless of it being 'unrepresentative swill' (the numbers will be re-jigged after the 2020 Census, but only with a vote here, a vote there being re-distributed). No, the College will remain as a sop to the Slave States as it's always been. To conduct a simple popular vote winner election, you'd need a nation-wide Electoral Commission to conduct it, and that's anathema to most Americans, who consider the act of voting a very local private affair - conducted by long-standing local rules; everyone can and does do it differently state-by-state, and all the many hundreds of counties in the US of A are but one brick in the democratic wall. All the rules and regulations might be different - but the goal posts stay right where they are. That's the way they see it - 'we'll keep our myriad methods of disenfranchisement, our voter suppression and our voter intimidation all in-house, thank you very much' - and let's face it, that's all part and parcel of the Miracle of Democracy as much as anything else. Even if the Electoral College remains as the godawful gerrymander that it is, any American being told by an Australian how to rig their democracy can only point to the Hare-Clark system of voting, which has done more than anything else to bring the lunatic fringe into that institution so rightly despised by PJK - the Australian Senate. The US Senate currently has but one Independent member, and he's from Vermont. Still, there is some movement at the station, with eleven states now committed to giving their Electoral College votes to the national popular vote winner. That'd give the bloc of anti-gerrymander states i.e. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state, along with the District of Colombia 172 Electoral College votes between them - no where near the required 270 to win. Good luck to 'em, but they all know it's symbolic, and nothing will ever happen.

The real worry is that DJ Trump! mustered about ten million more votes than he did in 2016, and rustled up more votes than any other sitting US President - ever. Fear and Loathing works - that's been clear for yonks. But as the Masters of the Dark arts in conservative politics will tell you, hardly any of those ten million voted "down ballot". They were there for Trump and Trump only, They were of no help to the Republican Party at all. Those millions certainly did not turn out at the two special Senate elections in Georgia, and ipso facto could not give a blue root that the Democrats for all intents and purposes flipped the Senate. Still, to put that ten mill in perspective, about 158M ballots were cast in the denouement  (about 100M in the mail), at an exceptional turn-out of 66.20%, not seen since 1960. And now, Hillary's Deplorables find themselves hopelessly fractured with a trumpet-less muzzled leader - the momentum is lost, Donny, face up to it - along with the "movement" - if there ever was one in the first place. Never mind whatever else might happen to the toad-like turd at his 2nd Impeachment trial or in the criminal courts or what he might do about the $US450M in personal loans being called-in this year, or even a foray into the bleeding heart of Fake Meejah, The DJ! would never establish his own political party unless it had the Trump! name in it somewhere - his narcissism would allow for nothing less - but that would be an absolute dream scenario. He could certainly threaten to form a breakaway party - and will - to keep the running dogs scampering. But, if he did pull the pin and took his "base" with him, the Conservative vote would irrevocably split. In that highly unlikely turn of events, The Democratic Party - if it can maintain the rage and the massive turn-out at the ballot box -  would never be beaten, ever.

Bravo!

 Senate aides carry boxes containing state Electoral College votes during a joint session of Congress at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.  Photo: Olivier Douilery/Getty.

 

   Gerrymander on Gerrymander. Electoral College votes if all states distributed their votes proportionally by number of winners of each Congressional District, as currently done by Maine and Nebraska, 2020 US Presidential Election.  Biden 274. Trump 264. Source: 270ToWin.