Ms Wong goes to New York.

God, I admire Penny Wong. I honestly do.


If you have heard her speaking before the UN General Assembly recently you know why. If you haven’t, just look at her. Listen to her.

The climate threat … Kiribati, Tuvalu and Marshall Islands are only a few metres above sea level … Many developing countries are rightly frustrated … Approaching climate tipping points … We must demand more from permanent members [of the UN’s Security Council], including constraints on the use of the veto …

Powerful words.

Her forte is the dispassionate, almost academic, speech. Articulate, something extremely uncommon among Australian politicians, her clear diction and the earnestness, calmness and self-confidence with which she speaks as she addresses her audience reminds one of a wise, experienced teacher.

Well, I suppose with enough practice and effort (in my case perhaps with a lot more practice and effort than most others), one could acquire, in some measure, some of Wong’s skills.

But there is something in Wong’s public speaking I can’t imagine ever achieving, no matter how hard I tried. It’s something that I believe one has to be born with and I wasn’t born with it. It’s a limitation in my character.

Let’s Take a Stroll Down Memory Lane.

Do you remember this?



If you do, congrats. People have short memories. But, yep, once upon a time, George W. Bush was the butt of everybody’s jokes. For very good reasons too, as you can see.

As a matter of fact, that wasn’t an exclusively American thing. Down Under Dabya was cause of much hilarity.

This clip, however, never made it to a top-10 list of Bushisms:



In part, I suppose, that was because people were not in a laughing mood less than two weeks after 9/11.

The Star-Spangled Roo, LOLZ.

(source)

The newest US Navy warship — allegedly built Down Under — was named USS Canberra and commissioned in Sydney (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!) a few days ago. To symbolize the US-Oz “alliance” nothing better than to overlay the Stars and Stripes on the kangaroo, the Australian Defence Force national marking (quite appropriately, actually).

Oz just gave another step in the road to become the 51st State of the Union. We’re neck to neck with Puerto Rico (eat your hearts out, Latinx!) and we’re gaining ground fast, because we’re buying our membership.

A high-ranking official, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed to Magpie News that Albo’s been promoted, from Prime Minister to Governor.

“Why now?” — I asked the source. “If not now, when?” — was the answer.

Un-fucking-believable!

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Sovereignty!

Explaining the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Choose one:
“Destruction of Ukranian w:BMP-3 IFV by Russian troops in Mariupol” or
“A destroyed Russian BMP-3 near Mariupol, 7 March 2022”. [A]

You know the conventional wisdom about the Ukrainian war: it’s all entirely Putin’s fault. That story is easy to understand, isn’t it? Politicians and journos and pundits for hire never cease to drive home the message.

It has its weaknesses though. One of them is that it needs Putin – who on top of having Parkinson’s disease and at least two different flavours of terminal cancer – to be both bad and kooky … never mind that madness precludes responsibility. Depending on who you hear, the bloke is a Machiavellian master manipulator … or an inept tin pot dictator. Incidentally, the same applies to the Russian military, at times described as a serious and imminent threat to the security of Europe, at times lambasted as useless, clumsy, incompetent and corrupted – sometimes by the same people, at the same time.