Horse 3452 - Is Boofhead Racing Fun For Someone?

Before I begin this rant, I have to top this with the caveat that I am Australian. I live in the nation where down under is on top and where touring car racing has been the premier category for more than 60 years. Nevertheless, even in this weird part of the world, we have been able to watch NASCAR racing at least in some capacity since about 1980. Admittedly the first NASCAR races that I saw in full were in 1985; so I have only have had about 40 years to watch. If someone from NASCAR stumbles across this and wants to send me to Darlington for the Southern 500 (which is actually the apex Crown Jewel race), then that would be lovely.

What we saw on Saturday in the Xfinity Series (aka NASCAR 2) has been described as disgraceful or something similar among the commentariat. The incident in question happened at the end of the race; so if you would like to watch the highlight reel, the link is provided here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdVA9F-WFkg

For those who simply want to read this post, the description in broad terms is thus.

Sam Smith driving the No.8 car on the last lap of the race and after the White Flag had been showed, decided to one-shot Tanner Gray in No.54 and bash him out of the way. 

This did not result in him winning the race as he wasted so much momentum and speed that he basically became a voluntary sitting duck and at least 10 cars became unwilling participants in the pinball melee. For his effort, instead of finishing second, Sam Smith finished 10th. Tanner Gray was credited with 29th after being an innocent victim in this and the winner of the race... is irrelevant.

The current NASCAR playoff system which is in place across the three series, created such an incentive to win that the difference between 2nd place and 1st place is literally worth junking the entire field for. Say what you like about the apparent skill or lack thereof of these drivers, the unbelievable truth is that it is NASCAR itself which created the format and NASCAR as a management organisation which must be held responsible for what happened here.

The playoff system created conditions where these drivers are not in the bit worried about destroying equipment because there are no consequences for doing so. Maybe if there were actual penalties enforced such as a drive-through penalty, or a stop-go penalty, or a lap deleted penalty then his might have the effect of changing the behaviour. However, as NASCAR fails to enforce anything with any consistency at all, then not only is the incentive there to deliberately junk opponents and throw any and all racecraft to the four winds, but the incentive to do so is live and kicking and encouraged.

NASCAR did start clamping down on this kind of idiotic behaviour in the Truck Series and the number of DNFs due to wrecking fell markedly for 2025. However, a good portion of the wrecks currently being caused in the Xfinity Series  are now being caused by rookies who graduated from the Truck Series. Yet again we have landed back in that old adage of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" and as the rules are stupid and the prizes are stupid, then we should expect and have actually got stupid racing resulting in stupid crashing.

I want to know though, is this fun for someone? 

Presumably all of this has been done for no other reason than to chase advertising dollars and to be fair, if your drawcard is having a lot of cars getting wrecked because the spectacle is the product, then I guess that NASCAR from the outset has as already ceded the notion that motor sport itself is a secondary function. Provided that they can front load the various teams with enough cash in prize money to keep on funding automotive pugilism, then everything is fine. 

As it is, the existence of stage racing means that what might have been a natural flow of a motor race which involved strategy and planning tyre and fuel stops, is now non-existent. Stage racing ensures guaranteed fixed points in time; which also means that those decisions are now forced. The green-white-chequer rule with unlimited overtimes, also means that the organisers are practically guaranteed wrecks near the end of the race, plus with the added bonus that they can claim that the end of the race is 'really close', when they've reracked the field to give an effective actual race of only 2 or 3 miles. Sorry, but a finishing gap of 0.003 is not really all that impressive when the real race was only 2 laps.

But as for the playoff system itself which rewards wins at all costs, even that is amazingly broken. Joey Logano as the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series champion, finished the 'regular season' in 17th. 17th in a Formula One race means that a driver has done so shockingly bad that they do not even escape Q1. How this person is then even considered as being remotely in the picture to win a championship is seventeen kinds of nonsense.

As an aside here, I think that the existence of Final Series in all sports is interminably stupid and that the best format is either a League where everyone plays everyone else both home and away, or a Cup where the winner takes all and the loser not only falls but is eliminated. In the FA Cup, a team does not get multiple bites at the cherry - if they lose once, they go home. The only sensible format for a racing series is either a championship made up of various races where the points tally at the end determines the championship or a racing series of just one race. 

What happened at Martinsville was mostly a snoozefest, with a highlight reel attached at the end. NASCAR got what it wanted, I guess?

Horse 3451 - The All New Lamborghini Tristezza

There is a photograph on my camera which makes less than zero sense to me. So incredibly mind-boggling is it, that I simply have to ask the question...

Who is Caleee?

Moreover... what the jinkies is Caleee thinking?

This is genuinely baffling to me because I am simply unable to comprehend what has gone through Caleee's mind. Has anything at all gone through Caleee's mind? Maybe a 7.92mm shot from a standard issue European police pistol? 

I did some basic research and found that this Lamborghini... has X numbers of horsepowers and... okay. I did not do any  basic research at all, because this automotive cipher is so utterly pointless, that I can't even muster the care to do any.

When I saw this limp its way through traffic like an impatient seagull waiting to poop on an unsuspecting person, I genuinely though that this was a new Chevrolet Blazer and that this was an unmasked car on Trade Plates, trying to gauge interest. No. It is not. The fact that this grey blob may as well be a Chevrolet Blazer, means that it has failed the only thing which a Lamborghini should be for. Being cool.

America had the Cadillac and Corvette. These two were symbols of hideous gaudiness that aggressively did not care what you think. Cadillacs should have fins and plush seats as an overt display of deliberate tackiness. Cadillacs are for those people who want to display that they have the cash money cash money, but still want to go to a Burger King and drip grease all over their shirt front. A Corvette is a symbol which also aggressively did not care what you think, by coupling a somewhat cool looking car with an agricultural set of suspension geometry. Corvette is about power without glory or panache.

Italy has Maserati and Ferrari. Maseratis are for people whose star is fading. These are the kinds of people who wrap a SAX Musical inside an MS Bionde, white they alternate between espresso and cinzano. Ferraris on the other hand are for people who have decided that they are not buying a car for sensible reasons but because they want to join the tiofsi. Forza Scarletti. Grazie Reggazie. Forza Ferrari. This is a religion.

Lamborghini? This is a car company with no sporting prowess; and who used to make tractors. To shuffle off the image of the tractor factory, Lamborghini tried to build beautiful cars like the Urraco and Muira, before they realised that beauty was not for them and instead decided to build cars that were bonkers hat-stand mental. Countach. Diablo. Hurracan. In the 1980s, these were the cars which appeared in mechanics' shops and featured ladies of varying states of undress, draped over them. Lamborghini built cars to go extremely fast, with no regards for safety, build quality, or panel fit, but all of those things didn't matter because Lamborghinis weren't cool, they were cooler than ice-cold and dipped into the sub-zero. That's how cool they were.

Now I understand that car companies are businesses and will slap their name on anything if they want to spin a profit; so it does not surprise me that Lamborghini would also stick their name on something as uncool as this, but what I truly don't understand is the mentality of the kind of person who wants to buy this. Yes, it has the name Lamborghini on it but it isn't cool. It makes no attempt to be cool. I don't understand. This car has no telos. It has no point other than to exist. That is why I don't understand the mental leaps of logic of someone who has thrown probably a lot of coin at this. Why? 

Car companies have been raiding parts bins since the emergence of different models from the same company in the 1930s. My guess is that this grey blob is probably borrowing bits from its Volkswagen Audi Group's cousins; probably the Audi A8. I understand the point of buying an Audi A8. An Audi A8 is for someone who wants to look understated to the point where the don't want a BMW 7er or Mercedes-Benz S-Klasse because they have too much personality. A black Audi A8 is for someone who hires other people to go contract killing for them; as opposed to a black Chrysler 300 which is for people who actually do the contract killing. They Audi A8 I get. It makes sense. This does not.

If Caleee wanted a kiddy carrier in which she could carry Tarquin and Jacinta to St Hubris School For The Interminably Profligate, then she should have bought a Range Rover. Jacinta and Tarquin can politely have a vom in a Range Rover, as they sick up the indigestible right-wing formula being served to them in the school's grand dining hall. I don't actually know what kind of upholstery is in the Lamborghini Grey Blob but it is probably made from the hide of 550 Lithuanian Chinchillas, raised on a free-range farm in San Marino. They would not be allowed to vom in Lamborghini Grey Blob.

Because other than carrying hideously expensive kiddiwinks, where Calee knows practically nothing about what a Lamborghini is supposed to be, then I neither understand why this exists beyong spinning a profit for Volkswagen Audi Group. Evidently at least one person has bought this thing but I fail to see why. Can you imagine what kind of looks that Jacinta or Tarquin would get if their mum rocked up in a Hurracan? That would be all kinds of cool.

Horse 3450 - Australia Needs To AUKexit

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the United States under its current kleptministration, is seriously intent on not only burning every single relationship that it has with the entire world, but also the entire apparatus of its own government so that Russian billionaires can swoop in and but everything for a song. A client of mine who grew up in East Germany and lived through reunification, thinks that the process currently going on in America looks similar to what happened in many places which were formerly on the dismal side of the Iron Curtain. 

We have to assume that as the White House has refused to see the Australian Ambassador on a number of occasions, which deliberately withheld basic intelligence from Ukraine as a bargaining chip to make it surrender and hand itself to Russia, and which on the only occasion that Australia actually asked for military assistance refused, would drop Australia like a plate of cold vomit at the earliest opportunity. We must assume that AUKUS is an extortion program and that any request for US assistance in the future will be met with abject disdain.

The fact that the United States wants to invade Greenland, and Panama, and Canada and has shut Canada out of the Five Eyes intelligence network, should give us immediate pause. Quite frankly, I think that the United States should be shut out of Pine Gap, and the interference which followed after Mr Whitlam suggested such a proposal in 1975, merely serves to proves that the United States has never really seen Australia either as an equal or even as a friend. Remember, it was the decisions of the United States which led to Australians being sent to die in Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again. 80 years of Australian blood being spent on the coin on the battlefield, is worthless to the United States.

Already NATO countries were fearful that the F-35 Lightning II as delivered by Lockheed-Martin may have contained so-called "kill switches"; which although is unfounded, is not entirely removed from the truth. The F-35 does rely on target acquisition software, which does require updates; this means that the United States if it wanted to (which we must assume that it does), would also refuse to update the active target acquisition software. Unlike most NATO countries which have a combination of Panavia Tornado, Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon, and SAAB JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets, the frontline combat squadrons of the RAAF include the F-35 Lightning II, F/A-18F Super Hornet and the EA-18G Growler; which are all US delivered.

If Mr Trump has given anything to the world in seven weeks, it is that any sense of complacency is misplaced. Maybe various nations will increase their defence spending to 2% or 3% of GDP. Even we as we speak, Europe is already preparing for the defence of Ukraine, by actively shutting out the United States from the discussions. 

So where does that leave us? In practical terms it leaves us as a sunburnt prison island hidden in the summer for a million years. 

Even if we assume that we are going to get the first of our Emotional Support Nuclear Submarines at the first available date of 2034 (which is utter insanity anyway), the world will have quietly changed. The United States which has voluntarily been backing away from being the premier Superpower since 1991 once it realised that there was no Soviet Union as its acceptable designated enemy, has been on the slide ever since and will have declined to being World Superpower #4 behind China, India and Indonesia in economic terms. 

China has no need to invade because it already exerts soft power everywhere. India has no need to invade because it will exert soft power everywhere. Indonesia is therefore the only likely candidate to invade and to be fair, I doubt it the political system is such that they're going to be organised to be able to do so for some time yet. If we assume that those three are the three great powers of the twenty-first century and are like giant soap bubbles which sit upon the Earth, then the logical position for Australia is to align itself somewhere sensible so that we can live in peace with those powers, rather than perpetually trying to give them the irrits which is current American policy.

As I write this, this American people are mostly unaware that more than 600 tons of its ordinance has been dropped onto refugees who up until yesterday were living in Gaza. While that might be fine for the American people who are blissfully sung to sleep like pathetic babies constantly being fed indigestible right-wing formula, the rest of the world looks ony justifiably horrified. If we continue to align ourselves with this barbarous and murderous pack of bastards, the rest of the world and especially our immediate neighbours in Asia, would be quite rightly justified in painting us with the same brush, as untrustworthy and unworthy adversaries. Do we really need adversaries?

At any rate, the whole issue of Australian spending more than a third of a trillion dollars on nuclear submarines, never once adequately answers that the basic teleological question - Why? What's the point? What do we expect the defence force to actually do? Moreover, do we actually expect eight singular points (if they ever exist) to be able to defend a nation this big? If we do, is the political class in this country so incredibly delusional that they believe in fairy stories? In some respects, this looks exactly the same as the hoo-haa about the Great Powers acquiring battleships in the decade before the First World War. Even a whole fleet of Dreadnoughts was utterly useless and pointless, when it came to fighting trench warfare in places like Pozier, Ypres, and The Somme. Unless your submarine has wheels or wings, it's pretty difficult to fight on land or in the air.

If I am correct, and that AUKUS will functionally prove to be nothing more than an extortion program, then we needed to be out of it before we ever signed up, we needed to be out of it yesterday, and we need to be out of it today if not sooner. The message hidden in plain sight in the slogan of "America First" is that they ultimately do not care about us, nor what happens to us unless there is tangible benefit in it for them. The world of 2045 and 2075 will look vastly different to the way it does now, and the decisions taken today, will affect the lives of Australians not yet born, to be able to live peaceably and quietly, in our corner of the world.

Horse 3449 - &

 Accident & Accident

Accident & Breakfast

Accident & Dragons

Accident & Emergency

Accident & Gin

Accident & Marks

Accident & Recreation

Accident & Spencer

Accident & Tonic

Bed & Accident

Bed & Breakfast

Bed & Dragons

Bed & Emergency

Bed & Gin

Bed & Marks

Bed & Recreation

Bed & Spencer

Bed & Tonic

Dungeons & Accident

Dungeons & Breakfast

Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Emergency

Dungeons & Gin

Dungeons & Marks

Dungeons & Recreation

Dungeons & Spencer

Dungeons & Tonic

Emergency & Accident

Emergency & Breakfast

Emergency & Dragons

Emergency & Emergency

Emergency & Gin

Emergency & Marks

Emergency & Recreation

Emergency & Spencer

Emergency & Tonic

Gin & Accident

Gin & Breakfast

Gin & Dragons

Gin & Emergency

Gin & Gin

Gin & Marks

Gin & Recreation

Gin & Spencer

Gin & Tonic

Marks & Accident

Marks & Breakfast

Marks & Dragons

Marks & Emergency

Marks & Gin

Marks & Marks

Marks & Recreation

Marks & Spencer

Marks & Tonic

Rest & Accident

Rest & Breakfast

Rest & Dragons

Rest & Emergency

Rest & Gin

Rest & Marks

Rest & Recreation

Rest & Spencer

Rest & Tonic

Spencer & Accident

Spencer & Breakfast

Spencer & Dragons

Spencer & Emergency

Spencer & Gin

Spencer & Marks

Spencer & Recreation

Spencer & Spencer

Spencer & Tonic

Tonic & Accident

Tonic & Breakfast

Tonic & Dragons

Tonic & Emergency

Tonic & Gin

Tonic & Marks

Tonic & Recreation

Tonic & Spencer

Tonic & Tonic

Do with that what you will...

Horse 3448 - What The WA Election Should Tell Us

As at time of posting on Wednesday 12th March, the results of the WA Election have still not been concluded, even though the McGowan Government will undoubtedly be returned to power; still with a thumping majority. The seats which have been declared are:

Labor - 41

Liberal - 5

National - 4

Undecided - 9

Even with an 18.3% swing against the Labor Party, the Liberal Party has more than doubled its representation in the lower house, which sounds excellent until you realise they only hold five seats in total. That 18% swing against Labor did not correlate into an 18% swing to the Liberal Party; with more than half of those primary votes going to minor parties, and a chunk going to One Nation. Herein lies a problem for the Liberal Party, its hopes of being any kind of credible opposition remain in shreds, and even its hopes are the 2029 election look dim; which might very well extend the current run of Labor Governments in Western Australia to four or five terms.

The problem with the Liberal Party in Western Australia is... the Liberal Party. On election night; when being questioned by Sky News Australia, an absolutely deluded WA Liberal President Caroline Di Russo, still insisted that the result could still change and that they needed to wait for pre-polls and postal votes in order to get a better picture. In either a case of optimism through ignorance or delusion through entitlement, she outright refused to say how many seats she would be happy with for the WA Liberal Party at this election. Perhaps trying to being collegial, she repeated the line that it was "too difficult to say"; when in actual fact what I think that she meant to say is that it was "too embarrassing". However that is dependent on whether or not people in the Liberal Party can actually be embarrassed. Current indications point to 'no'.

Under every normal circumstance, an 18% swing away from Labor, should be ecstatic news for the Liberal Party. Even in defeat this should indicate that the results of the COVID election of 2021 were something of a statistical anomaly. Ms Di Russo could have played the line that Mark McGowan’s cult following has been hosed down and washed away, however even in defeat, there was still no kind of indication that she understood what had happened.

- This is the face of someone who didn't understand what happened, or why.

Admittedly I do not follow Western Australian Politics as closely as I follow it in my own state of New South Wales, but the manifestos on offer from the Liberal Party seemed to offer literally nothing that would have convinced most people that they would make a good government. Most voters when they go to the polls at least on some level, ask and should ask the question "what's in it for me?" or "what are you going to do for me?". Politics is the game upon which the contestation of ideas is fought, but Governance is the domain of the enactment of policy. In order to be able to enact policy, a political party needs at very least to have some kind of idea of policy.

The Liberal Party in its current form, simply refuses to offer much by way of policy at all. I do not know if the minders of the party realise this but the general public doesn't really watch Sky News Australia at all, and I no longer see any newspapers on the train which means that they are not getting opinion from print media. Increasingly what we are getting play out in politics, is the Liberal Party trying to weaponize American talking points as culture war ammunution, treating politics like a game, and offering nothing but obstruction. It isn't even that the general public are tired of this, it is more that the genuinely don't care.

The Liberal Party lost this election because they made no indication that they intended to serve the state of WA. They offered literally zero promises, or statements, or policies, or vision, on how they would improve anything. Unless people's grievances are so acute that they are forced into action, then no indication that a party is going to serve or improve anything means that they don’t deserve to win. I suspect that Ms Di Russo genuinely didn't understand the result at all and had no idea why the Liberal Party lost because she and the party generally, stand for absolutely nothing but their own entitlement.

And here's the rub. The Labor Party has been flirting with culture war issues of its own, and even lost its case at a referendum on the Voice because it couldn't successfully make the case of why it deserved the votes either. This WA Election is instructive as this is the first election in more than a century, across the Australian political landscape where independents scored more than 30% of the primary vote (and yes, I include One Nation in that because they are not functionally a political party). The 2025 Federal Election will probably fall roughly the same as in 2022 but how successful both sides are at responding to this problem, it might decide the long-term futures of both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. The National Party is fine because they don't need to assume very much beyond a policy mix for big farmers and landholders, but at least they have policy.

Horse 3447 - Measles Does Not Care If You Are A Vaccine Denier - It Can Still Kill Your Children

One of the fun things about an age of anti-intellectualism is that no matter how much the fools and idiots who like leading them refuse to admit it, the truth invariably wins because it can not be outwitted by deliberate stupidity.

So it goes with the truth and its current bout with paranoid middle-aged predominantly white suburban women, and proudly ignorant freedom loving mostly gun-toting white men. The truth is that vaccines work and it's more pleasant to be a bit nauseous for a few days because of a preparatory reaction than to actually have a disease and die from it. Being dead is sub-optimal unless you have an eternal insurance plan and even then, you won't be here to tell us how it went.

There is currently a Measles outbreak in Texas. In any other first world country this would be seen as a massive failure of public health policy but in the United States, it is apparently acceptable and excusable. As Measles is a preventable disease, this would be far far far more unlikely in Australia as the Department of Health at both Federal and State level, will have taken adequate measures prevent it.

As at the time of writing this, there are 124 reported cases, though given that the CDC in the United States is currently being white anted by DOGE, that figure can not be trusted. There have also been 4 deaths due to measles, which again due to the fact that the CDC is currently being white anted, that figure will almost certainly have gone up.

The Health And Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr. has called this outbreak as "common", even though the last mass outbreak in the United States happened more than a decade ago. He is a well known vaccine denier, and in this case should absolutely not be listened to. If measles does become common in the United States, it will be directly because people like him are deliberately stupid fools and those responsibility for future deaths should be placed firmly on his shoulders.

The truth is that measles is highly contagious. I won't claim to know anything about the mechanism of transmission but the maths for it works pretty much the same as most time-generation series calculations; so I can at least work through the numbers. Any Reproduction Index (R0) value of less than 1, and an outbreak will naturally fizzle out. Anything R0 between 1 and 2, and an outbreak will be maintained. Anything above 2 and you have something similar to an exponential type curve of reproduction and infection. Most measles outbreaks have an R0 of between 12 and 18.

Assuming that you are a sensible parent, then your child will usually get two vaccine shots which are different from each other for maximum efficacy. Children between the ages of 4 and 6 who have had both shots, have a protection rate of +99.9999%.

Adults who were born before 1957 in Australia, are assumed to have existing immunity; because they will more than likely have had measles and survived. The children who were born before 1957 and didn't survive, are not around to complain like a stupid fool.

If you were born between about 1957 and 1970, then getting a booster shot is probably a good idea, as the vaccine used in Australia back then utilised an inactive form of the Morbillivirus hominis virus; and may not be as effective as second generation vaccines.

Everyone born after 1970 in Australia is good to go. Due to public health measures in Australia being excellent, the Measles/Mumps/Rubella (MMR) vaccine has been part of the standard program.

If you were born outside of Australia and especially in the United States, where public health measures are not as good, then getting a booster shot is not the worst idea in the world.

If you are unsure, then you can get what is known as a 'measles titer test'; which is a blood test that checks for antibodies in the blood to determine if someone is immune to measles. It is also known as a Rubeola titer test.

The difference between the United States in this respect is that because the United States is staunchly stupid and actively foolish when it comes to the health its own citizens, it is generally cheaper for Americans to just get an MMR booster vaccine that it is to get bloods drawn and to get their titers tested.

One thing that is undeniable fact is that if you are afraid to either get your children vaccinated or refuse to because you choose to believe idiocy, that the Morbillivirus hominis virus absolutely doesn't care about what you believe and is capable of killing people. The death rate from measles in unvaccinated people is about 3 in 1,000 people; so if you're willing to roll that particular dice knowing full well that the death rate from measles is about 3 in 10,000,000,000 people, then that's fine. You are allowed to be a stupid dead fool with stupid dead children.

Horse 3446 - We Must Assume That AUKUS Is Worthless

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-27/scott-bessent-kevin-rudd-jim-chalmers-washington-defence-spend/104983632

Speaking to an embassy-hosted summit of heavy hitters from Australia's cashed-up superannuation sector, along with Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Ambassador Kevin Rudd, Secretary Bessent said plenty of nice things about Australia. He was suitably impressed by the investment power of Australia's enormous pool of retirement savings.

But Bessent also made three things clear. Donald Trump is determined to impose tariffs, there's no guarantee of an exemption for Australia, and linked to the trade threat is a requirement for allies to lift their defence spending.

"US security assurances and market access need to meet with stronger commitments from our allies to spend more on their collective security and to structure their economies in ways that reduce imbalances over time," Bessent said. Bluntly put, this is a warning to spend more on defence or risk losing the US security blanket and access to the US market.

- ABC News, 27th Feb 2025

The fact that the United States Secretary of Defence is speaking to anyone at all from the financial sector in Australia at all, is alarming. The fact that the United States Secretary of Defence is speaking to people from Australia's superannuation industry, is cause for a five-bell fire alarm. We have to assume that our so-called 'ally' is deeply untrustworthy and that the reason why he wants to speak to anyone in the superannuation industry at all, is because he wants to confiscate the money.,

The fact that the United States Secretary of Defence has made any threat at all, to any of its allies to lift their defence spending, is the sort of thing that the mafia does. If someone can actually tell me the difference between this and a protection racket being run by gangsters, then I'd like to know what it is.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers was sent to the United States, to make negotiations with presumably the United States' Department of Trade, on the subject of tariffs. The response from the Department of Trade was one of abject incompetence from an administration which may as well be functionally fascist at this point, but being sent to the United States' Department of Treasury and being told that if that if Australia wants to trade with the US, we have to spend a lot more on Defence, sounds like the sort of treatment that you'd give an enemy.

I mean, I thought that paying $368 billion for submarines which will never exist and that we will never ever see, in the downright disgraceful AUKUS fealty treaty would be enough but no. Just like the fat kid who beats up kids for their lunch money, the United States has made it obvious that their loyalty and protection to Australia is actually non-existent. 

I actually understand why that feckless and gormless idiot, Scotty From Marketing, signed over our sovereignty to America. As someone who knew that his time would be coming to an end and who would be given a cushy job for life as a consultant for News Corp or the IPA (like Mr Abbott was), then he knew that he would never face the consequences of his actions. It was very easy for that two-bit Pierrot to sell-out because it's really easy to sell the stuff that you don't actually own.

My hope is that Treasurer Chalmers and Ambassador Rudd make it clear that as a sovereign nation, what we spend on our defence must be a decision for our parliament which has been democratically elected, not an undemocratically appointed dogsbody from an entire ocean away. If Treasurer Chalmers and Ambassador Rudd didn't tell Secretary Bessent to "get stuffed", then they both need to resign immediately in favour of someone actually committed to the defence of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Because as the current US administration is in no uncertain terms trying to prove, is that the United States is both untrustworthy and unreliable as any kind of ally. Given that the United States wants to kick Canada out of the Five Eyes intelligence group for literally no other reason than having the audacity to refuse to fall at the feet of Donald Trump and kiss them, we must also assume that AUKUS is also functionally worthless. 

As demonstrated by the fact that the only time that Australia called for help from the United States in the East Timorese scuffle in 2006 which involved civil unrest and an attempted coup, the United States which had an aircraft carrier situated in the Timor Sea did squat-all, while the International Stabilisation Force was made up of troops from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Portugal. We must assume that given the current administration's abject belligerence to its neighbours and its open imperial ambitions to conquer Greenland, Panama, Canada and Gaza, that if anything happened in Australia, that we would be dropped as quickly as a plate of cold vomit.

Horse 3445 - Left And Right - Yes, Words Mean Things

"Are right-wing and left-wing meaningless terms"

- Edward Jameson, via BlueSky, 17th Feb 2025

"The political terms 'left' and 'right' are vaguely defined and almost meaningless. We'd all be better off not using them."

- Damon Dirtape, via X, 19th Feb 2025

"A lot of you don't have coherent defintions of 'right' and 'left' and it's leading to sheer insanity."

- Punkstawny Piglet, via X, 19th Feb 2025

"Is there a term for people who's both 'left' and 'right'? Do those things even mean anything?"

- PraiseDale, via BlueSky, 20th Feb 2025

Probably because I started writing this piece some time ago, I have been experiencing both the frequency illusion and the recency illusion. They are both cognitive biases which explain why both a thing which you have been primed to notice for some reason, or a thing that you have recently learned, now starts appearing everywhere. This is why for instance, when driving on the road, you are more likely to notice cars that are similar to yours, rather than there being a sudden increase in those kinds of cars.

After having a chat with a friend of mine, my thoughts were yet again turned to the left/right spectrum in politics, and the apparent rejection by a lot of people in wanting to use the terms 'left' and 'right'. This rejection is likely caused by the fact that people love to use terms in the pejorative since with no reference to any kind of technical definition whatsoever.

I have found many times over the years, especially in online discourse, that if you probe someone with even basic questions about what they mean, over practically any topic at all, they will get really defensive and/or abusive as if they expect you to already know what they mean; and the fact that you don't already know what they mean must mean that you are a fool (insert other abusive term if appropriate) including when they genuinely don't know what they mean. So when it comes to the terms 'right' and 'left' in the political realm, not only are these terms broad but often people who use them know them only in relation to whom they hate. Any actual logic behind the terms is either lost or was never used, and even what they happen to be right or left of is either unknown or not even cared about.

Historically speaking, the broad beginnings of the terms 'left' and 'right' originates from the French National Assembly of 1789, where the supporters of the revolution sat on the left hand side of the chamber, whereas supporters of the monarchy sat on the left hand side of the chamber. The orientation of left and right in this case, is from the point of view of the Speaker/President/King/Judge et cetera as they look outwards into the chamber. To wit, in Westminster Parliaments, the Government sits on the right of the chamber and the Loyal Opposition sits on the left of the chamber relative to the Speaker's/President's point of view.

Now while that might be instructive about direction and the physical location of people, it helps neither an iota or a jot when it comes to actually defining the terms 'right' and 'left' in political discourse. Here's where it gets really interesting...

...there has never really been a hard and fast set of rules to define 'right' and 'left' in politics.

Oh dear.

Even when you consider the two most obvious outer points of a spectrum through which to filter political discourse, it is as if you have split a beam of light into parts and there are many different colours through which to view this. When we speak of collectivism and individualism, that can either be taken as a statement on the economic ownership and distribution of stuff, or a statement on the cultural overlay about what degree of control that law should have over people's decisions and rights to do stuff. There are probably (definitely maybe) other colours through which to filter political discourse but I like those two as they can be laid as axes upon a political compass.

The collectivist west and individualist east (and by individualist we also include private corporations as they are explicitly set up as private individual persons even though by definition they are collective purchasing arrangements) and the authoritarian north and libertarian south, make up a good compass rose upon which to view a lot of politics.

Conservatism is broadly north and east.

Libertarian is broadly south and east.

Communitarianism is broadly south and west.

Communism is broadly north and west.

There are myriad of positions within both sets of axis; and if we start to apply other axes through which to evaluate political questions, then of course we are going to end up with a confused muddle. It turns out that when you view any political issue through multiple filters of colour, you do not end up with many shades of grey but many myriad shades of brown.

Curiously, both of these axes relate to the three basic economic questions:

What should be produced?

How should it be produced?

For who should it be produced?

The 'what' refers to all manner of goods and services. The 'how' not only refers to the methods by which those goods and services should be produced, which includes the land and labour and capital and management employed to do so. 'For who' can include all kinds of sub-questions such as exclusivity, whether or not people should have access, how large the optimal sharing group is, whether or not someone's use of a good or service prevents someone else from using it, the network effect which is when the addition of a new quanta expands and/or improves the network as a whole, et cetera, et cetera. et cetera.

Usually those questions are mapped through the east/west axis in relation to the collectivism and/or individualism needed to produce goods and services but weirdly, those same three basic economic questions can also be mapped to the north/south axis in relation to the amount of control or freedom should be exerted or allowed to people, to the use, or ownership, or access, of those goods and services.

This whole things gets even more complex when you consider that not only could there be (and probably is) a number of axes upon which to filter those questions through, but those questions might be answered differently across a range of different kinds of goods and services. 

Consider a range of policy issues like:

- Taxation

- Immigration

- Foreign Policy

- Defence

- Environment

- Trade

- Health Care

- Veterans Affairs

- Welfare

- Aged Care

- Education

- Criminal Justice

- Civil Justice

- Family Law

- Industrial Relations

- Gun Rights

- Personal Rights

- Food Safety Laws

- Labour Laws and Conditions

- Infrastructure

- Privacy Law

- Antitrust and Monopolies Law

- Et Cetera

- Et Cetera

- Et Cetera

Now only are there broad questions over who should own and control these things, such as government or private enterprise, but there are questions over the kind of access that people should have to these things, and the minimum standards that we think that people ought to have with regards to these things.

I personally think that most questions reduce to government/private enterprise economic questions and authoritarian/libertarian questions; with the two caveats that there are both societal expectations that we generally think that people should have access to, as well as the optimal sharing group of the good or service in question. What's even crazier is that you will find even among people who think broadly similar about a range of these things, will have wildly different views about other things.

Then there are moral questions about what kind of liberty or control that government or private enterprise should have over these things, about what kind of liberty or control that government or private enterprise should have over other people with regard to these things.

Consider a range of policy issues like:

- Sexual rights

- Marriage rights

- Religion in government institutions

- Drug policy

- Gun control

- Et Cetera

- Et Cetera

- Et Cetera

These things in the classical sense are NOT left/right issues. This is reasonably easy to prove as well, because issues like Sexual rights and Marriage rights, literally have nothing to do with the ownership of things in the economy whatsoever. By the same token, tighter gun control is by definition an authoritarian policy and lax gun control is by definition an libertarian; which is exactly counter to the way that this is used in American discourse. 

What's insane about all of this is that because government itself has only two end-game conditions (either you have won government or have lost government), then we are sort of half-expected to see everything as a set of binary choices when very clearly if  I have just given you 27 things which government policy can be framed around (there are many more) and four quadrants where someone's opinion might lie (and inside which is absolutely an infinite amount of variation) then at absolute bare minimum, I have just described 108 different policy positions. How the jinkies are you or I or anyone supposed to resolve those to just two?

The other side of all of this is while there is a great deal of truth in the idea that political terms 'left' and 'right' are vaguely defined and almost meaningless, there is also the underlying constant that human beings are always selfish. Yet again we come down to the core central problem of humanity and that the centre of the universe is 19mm behind people's corneas. It is literally impossible to view the universe from anyone else's point of view and that naturally creates a feedback loop; wherein people are convinced that they are the heroes of their own story and therefore correct. 

Politics and voting for government, then demands that we take our selfish point of view while convinced that we are the heroes of our own story and therefore correct, and then impose that selfishness and what we think is correctness upon other people in commonwealth. The very nature of any nation/state is that the rule of law is ultimately based on who can control the most swords/guns and democracy is based on the conceit/deception that selfish people will act in civic fidus when the history of the world thus far, repeatedly demonstrates that this is a lie.

The rule of law itself is an authoritarian north concept and the fact that the nation/state is itself the  nation/state, then that is a collectivist west concept, because what bigger collection of people in a nation is bigger than the nation?

Horse 3444 - Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV: I blame our leadership for allowing it to happen.

“Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.”

Way back in July 2020 while running for reelection, the then 45th President Donald Trump explained the Fox News that he had to remember those words as part of a test that he said demonstrated his mental acuity; he further boasted that listing the words in order was worth "extra points", and that he found the task "challenging".

During the 2024 campaign, we were then treated increasingly to the theory the President Joe Biden was suffering from dementia, and that he man didn't know where he is or what he was doing. So successful was this campaign, that Donald Trump was heralded and triumphed back into the White House despite the fact that he has never released any doctors' records of either his own physical or mental health.

It became really obvious to the world when French President Emmanuel Macron, repeatedly had to correct Mr Trump about things that were very obviously either lies or simply not true, that Mr Trump's behaviour is also starting to look well.. odd. 

In the discussion with Mr Macron, Trump stumbled with the chronology of recent events, and I don't know if him blaming Ukraine for starting the war with Russia is either a case of him trying to tell a lie so massive that he is trying to get ahead of the game, or if he genuinely has forgotten events which happened during his last time in the White House.

His increasingly bizarre memory was was highlighted with the following series of rants; of which the best copy of the transcript that I could find was in the Korea Herald (this didn't appear at all in News Corp or Nine Ent Co. newspapers):

https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10427816

"We are on time with the tariffs, and it seems like that's moving along very rapidly," he said during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House.

"We've been mistreated very badly by many countries, not just Canada and Mexico. We've been taken advantage of," he added.

Trump criticized trade agreements, which he said enabled trading partners to "take advantage of" Americans.

"Anybody that would agree to allow this to happen to our country should be ashamed of themselves. Now, the tariffs are going forward on time, on schedule," he said.

"- This is an abuse that took place for many years, and I'm not even blaming the other countries that did this. I blame our leadership for allowing it to happen."

- The Korea Herald, 25th Feb 2025

"I blame our leadership for allowing it to happen."

Really?

I mean fair do. That's either a brilliant self-own, or a case of strange and weird memory loss.

"Anybody that would agree to allow this to happen to our country should be ashamed of themselves."

The thing is though, the person who did 'allow this to happen' to the country, I don't think is actually capable of being 'ashamed of themselves'. Narcissists frequently struggle to acknowledge guilt or shame due to their exaggerated sense of self-importance and lack of empathy.

Of course by now you would have realised that this is a classic set-up to a joke, which has been based in anecdote and now spins on dramatic irony; so:

- We've been mistreated very badly by many countries, not just Canada and Mexico. (also America)

- Anybody that would agree to allow this to happen to our country should be ashamed of themselves. (yes they should)

- This is an abuse that took place for many years, and I'm not even blaming the other countries that did this. I blame our leadership for allowing it to happen. (excellent call)

Let's blame the leadership who allowed it to happen:

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-united-states-mexico-canada-agreement-delivers-historic-win-american-workers/

DELIVERING ON HIS PROMISE: President Donald J. Trump is replacing the outdated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

The USMCA is the largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history. All of our countries will benefit greatly.

- President Donald J. Trump, 29th Jan 2020

Oh dear.

"It’ll be very good for our country, our country will be extremely liquid and rich again."

Yeah about that... your pen is leaking.

Horse 3443 - Can Someone Please Explain Urobe To Me?

What happens when you take a series of children's books by a Swedish author, which is set in the Viking Age, and inspired by the Icelandic sagas, and have a German production company and a Japanese animation house, adapt them? What happens is that you get a 1974 German/Japanese anime called "Vicki The Viking", or "Wickie und die starken Männer" (Wickie and the Strong Men), or "Chīsana Baikingu Bikke" (Small Viking Bikke). What happens is that it all gets very confusing very quickly. 

Halvar, Helge, and Vicki, Tjure and Snore, Faxe, Gorm, and Gilbey all make sense. They are all Vikings and either from the village of Flake or originally from the next village over¹.

Ulme the Italian, who is the the village bard and whose songs and poems are mostly wasted on his Viking audience, makes some amount of sense as he is portrayed as a travelling minstrel who fell in love with his wife who lived in Flake and they just stayed. 

But Urobe does not make any kind of logical sense at all. Urobe has the most confusing back story of anyone. I do not understand Urobe at all.

- Gorm¹ and Urobe.

Urobe is described the village druid. Of itself that would make him a high-ranking priest or sorcerer of some kind, though the village of Flake appears to have no organised religion of any kind at all and Urobe is never seen doing any magic at all. Urobe is also described as having originally come from England, which by itself isn't particularly strange as the Vikings had (and have in the series) travelled all over the Atlantic and throughout Europe but what follows though and what we learn about him, is where even the internal logic of the show breaks down.

Urobe has the surname of Hilfenhaus. That surname is perhaps already familiar to an Australian audience as Ben Hilfenhaus played cricket for both Tasmania and Australia. Given that Ben Hilfenhaus was born in 1983 and Runer Jonsson's original book was written in 1963 and the anime was released from 1974-1976, that's a coincidence but it does suggest that the surname was already in existence. The logic problem here is that "Hilfenhaus" in German means "Help House", which is fine if the family trade was already being doctors and/or physicians but it's not very English at all.

Once you ignore the fact that everyone in the world can instantly speak to each other, and that apparently that everyone in the world can also read Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Runic scripts, what makes Urobe all the more bizarre is that he appears to know literally everything and everything literal. This is fine in principle if he is supposed to be a scholar of some kind but there is a snag. Unlike Vicki who is the embodiment of the "Smart Guy" trope, Urobe is the "Book Smart" trope guy; but doesn't appear to actually own any books. We have seen the inside of his house. He has a collection of pikes and axes.

Urobe knows all of the Viking sagas and Viking legends and other lore; despite the fact that as an English person, he probably should not know any of those things. In one episode when the Village of Flake puts on a play about the gods, Urobe plays the goddess Hel (and indicates that he met her). On a related note, Urobe knows about medicines and herbs, despite the fact that as an English person, he would probably not know about the vegetation more than a thousand kilometers from where he was born.

This is all the more strange once you consider that there doesn't appear to be a library, or any books in anyone's house. The explanation for this is either because that Urobe is old, he has seen a lot of stuff, or more likely that because the episodes are 22 minutes long, he exists purely as plot device as Mr. Encyclopaedia to break down, plot, lore, or what ever is needed for the story to work.

This is why Urobe as character device doesn't quite work. If there was a library, or if he had lots of books, then he would be the weird old guy whose job it is to keep the lore. If he had the stereotypical laboratory, or mortars and pestles, then he would fit into the trope of the wise medicine man. If he was the wise old mentor whose job in the story it is to help the protagonist prepare for the heroes journey, then that would also make sense. He is none of these things.

All of the other named adults in "Vicki The Viking" with the exception of Tjure who is a blacksmith, are all multi-purpose farmers. Even though Urobe is old, his occupation is still that of a farmer. Vikings it appears, do not have a retirement plan for their elderly. In fact Urobe's only consistent quality appears to be that he is old and experienced. There are a few episodes in which his being old is useful and there is even one episode where the initial part of the plot involves everyone else trying to convince him to retire, before he ends up saving the village because he has seen the trick that Sven the Terrible is trying to pull, while Halvar's father was the chief². This implies that Urobe has been in Flake a long time but again, we do not know how long. Of course the plot drives him to prove how useful he is because this is a children's cartoon that must always reset to zero at the end of every episode.

Urobe is an enigma. I have no idea how he got to be there, or why he seemingly knows so much about the world. Maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe we are not supposed to think too deeply about the world that they have built in a 1974 children's cartoon. Maybe character as all-purpose Swiss Army knife character/plot device is good enough.

¹Gorm simply got lost while going for a walk one day and wandered into the next village; which is supposed to be ironic considering that he is the ship's navigator. That is easy to explain though, as Gorm is an easily excitable fool, who gets easily distracted. Is that a moth?

²you would assume that Halvar would have also remembered the trick that Sven the Terrible was trying to pull but that is simply never addressed³.

³neither is how Halvar lost his eye. That appears to be a 'noodle incident'.

Horse 3442 - On The US Government's Lack Of Controls And Poor Financial Processes

"Out of control! This most enlightening press conference showed the US government's lack of controls and poor financial processes. President Trump and Elon are on it."

- Name Withheld, via Facebook, 14th Feb 2025

I would like to add just one word to this; namely "President Trump and Elon are in on it." For as far administrations go, this doesn't look broadly different to most others. What we have is an administration, that thinks that it is going to change everything and amidst the hype thinks that they're going to sweep away everything with a new broom, but when they actually get into the weedy weedy wonko weeds, they're going to very quickly find that the Doorman Paradox exists, and that the very mechanics of government itself going right back to the constitution, means that the whole dang-nabbity thing is awash with lack of controls and poor financial processes. Those two, are in fact functionally part of the problem.

In principle when it comes to organisational behaviour, the amount of control that anyone can actually exact, extends as far as either orders from a manager to their direct staff exist, or as far as orders from one staff member to another within the same level of hierarchy exist. As soon as you introduce any intermediate level of management within in an organisation, the amount of control that anyone can actually exact becomes more diffuse and beyond two levels where you then likely have area managers, the amount of exact control is nil and is immediately replaced by virtual control.

The most obvious example of this which is visible to people on a daily basis is that of the supermarket. Cashiers, Butchers, Nightfillers, Bakers, report either directly to the Store Manager or to their Department Head. The Store Manager then reports to an Area Manager or if the supermarket chain is small enough, directly to the Chief Executive Officer. Likely the floor staff have never met the Area Manager, let alone a State Manager, and they are probably unaware of who the CEO even is. How is it actually possible to exact control, over someone whom you have never met, and/or do not even know exists?

Suffice to say, the United States Government, is massive. It has many Departments, who have State Managers, who have Area Managers, who have ground staff. If we imagine the United States Government as a simple 1:10 hierarchy, then the theoretical minimum looks like this:

CEO - 1

Departments - 10

State Managers - 100

Area Managers - 1,000

Ground Staff - 10,000

TOTAL: 11,111

The truth is that there are 15 Departments, at least 13 states, and probably more than 11,111 staff. This means that the actual level of exact control in this hierarchy is going to be quite diffuse and often virtual. Therefore, when it comes to purported lack of control, the people who are removed from the actual business of executing policy, and will merely be looking at compiled data. 

There is also a massive difference between the kinds of organisations which Mr Trump and Mr Musk have run in the past. The Trump Organisation employs about 25,000 people but only has a very limited product line (mostly real estate); likewise Tesla Motors employs 120,000 people and also only has a very limited product line (selling motor cars). The core business of the United States, which involves the management of public goods and services, which are themselves massive, has to live within the confines of far more frameworks of legislation than companies which only produce limited products. We should therefore expect, that if the United States Government Administration is bigger than 11,111 people, then managing such a thing is going to require more imagination than merely looking at a set of numbers and reacting with: number go up = good; number go down = bad. I do not think that either Mr Trump or Mr Musk exhibit such imagination.

As for the question about the poor financial processes, again this is related to the diffuse processes by which:

a) various government departments are managed in the first place

b) the fact that the whole budgetary process itself is fundamentally flawed and has been since inception

Part a)

Government Departments generally have management which is incapable of actually deciding policy. Government Departments generally have their policy given to them by diktat as far as they are concerned. It is then their job to carry out the functions assigned to them, within the legislation provided; which they also do not decide. 

When it comes to the provision of public goods and services such as education, welfare, security and defence, the judiciary, roads, national parks, agriculture standards, et cetera, then quite literally all of these things are either provided because in the long run the people at large have decided that these are things that they aught to have, and/or are bound by legislation which is almost always reactive because somebody has died. On that latter point if that sounds extreme, then it is worth remembering that Labour Laws, Motor Standards, Agriculture Standards, Building and Water and Electrical Standards, Food and Additive Standards, and of course most situations involving equity against the person, are all littered with histories of dead bodies. This is because human nature at its core is selfish and/or lazy and will refuse to do anything unless there is personal benefit in doing so.

As Government Policy and Law is for the most part reactive, then Government Departments then have to work out how to carry out what has been given to them and as far as a Government Department relates to the Executive of the United States itself, then this mostly involves trying to procure budgets and staff to be able to do what they have been told to do. Of course someone like Mr Trump and Mr Musk, who only really get to see Secretaries of Government Departments cower and beg for money and staff, are going to be resentful of those Secretaries' and by inference those Government Departments' existence. It should be surprising to nobody that Mr Musk, as head of the Department Of Government Efficiency and who has apparently been given untold access to budgets and staff numbers, is going to have utter disdain for literally everyone whom he can not immediately control. Mr Trump who demands personal loyalty and fealty, is not a lot different. 

Part b)

This is related to but not quite informed by Part a). The United States Government is a monumentally idiotically constituted pile of rubbish. Bad Constitutions result in bad processes; and the United States Constitution is so bad that it has been copied by exactly zero other nations.

With regards how idiotic the United States Constitution is with respect to finance, it is best to look at how our own government deals with this same issue. Section 54 of the Australian Constitution states that:

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Practice_and_Procedure/Constitution/chapter1/Part_V_-_Powers_of_the_Parliament#chapter-01_part-05_54

The proposed law which appropriates revenue or moneys for the ordinary annual services of the Government shall deal only with such appropriation.

- Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1900)

The phrase "shall deal only with such appropriation" has been very tightly interpreted to the point where ONLY Appropriation Bills can appropriate monies from the Australian Treasury. That's it. I can not stress how vital this is.

Appropriation Bill No.1 which is the government's first duty and really only piece of legislation that a government is actually compelled to pass, deals with the appropriation of monies from Treasury from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, for the ordinary annual services of the government. That's it. If the government of the day wants to enact new policy or start some new program, then they need to raise another Appropriation Bill (usually No.2 or No.3 et cetera), and there is an whole other bunfight about that particular bill.

The United States Constitution has NO such measure.

Firstly, there are 12 sub-committees which compromise the United States Committees on Appropriations, which all submit separate bills. Already we run into the diffusion of control problem.

Secondly, as the entire executive of the United States Government lives outside of Congress, then there is a second layer of diffusion of control. They are not directly part of any of the 12 sub-committees on Appropriations.

Thirdly, except for the President as the entire executive of the United States Government lives outside of Congress and is unelected, then there is literally zero control about how the executive actually carries out the policy directions of the Congress.

Fourthly, and most importantly, as United States Constitution has NO measure similar to Section 54 of the Australian Constitution, then literally ANY and EVERY bill presented to the House and/or Senate becomes subject to having Appropriations tacked onto it as a result of the bargaining which is done to get the bill passed. A Bill which deals with the standardisation of Voltages as presented by a committee which has reported from the National Bureau of Standards, might have monies appropriated for the building of a dual-carriageway in Montana. Even Blind Freddy can see that these things are not even remotely related.

The United States Constitution is so vaguely worded that it only states:

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

- Article I, Section 8, Clause 1, United States Constitution (1789)

That's it?

No limits? No checks or balances? No restraint? And yet this is supposed to be the shining beacon of laws? 

It is this quadripartite idiocy which means that not only are diffuse controls and poor financial processes baked into the process, but they must exist by design. I already think that Hamilton had zero imagination to think of anyone outside of George Washington as President and so never considered any consequences at all; but the fact that there is literally ZERO restraint on Congress from appropriating monies whenever and wherever they feel like, in any bill whatsoever, must be the result of lead poisoning or something (Hamilton would eventually die of fast moving lead poisoning. 

"President Trump and Elon are on it."

Considering that it takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress, and then three-fourths of the states, to pass and ratify an amendment to the United States Constitution; and Congress already has trouble passing bills require anything more than a simple majority, then no. 

They are not.

They will never be.

The US government's lack of controls and poor financial processes remain; seemingly by design, and forever.

Horse 3441 - Trump's "Peace" Plan

Some time this week, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are expected to hold talks concerning the future of Ukraine. Conspicuous by his absence is President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine; which seems to be at the behest of Putin, who I am sure only has designs to eliminate the country. Putin has for a long time, hinted that he wants to restore Russia to something akin to its former glory in both the Empire and the Soviet Union which was kind of a de facto Russian Empire anyway.

Although United States' Secretary of State Pete Hegseth has explicitly confirmed at NATO in the last few days that he believes that the United States under Donald Trump is committed to a sovereign Ukraine, given that Donald Trump very much appears to be persuaded by whomever was last in the room with him, and given his own rhetoric on Panama, and Canada, and Greenland, I think that we must assume that Pete Hegseth believes a fantasy. What is happening in Saudi Arabia between Putin and Trump, is likely to be horse trading over the future of hegemonies which are backed by nuclear weapons. 

Ukraine is a sovereign nation. It has been a sovereign nation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. When it comes to international policy, a sovereign country cannot be constrained in choosing which organisations it wishes to join. As a sovereign nation, Ukraine has a very real and present threat in Russia, which is demonstrating that it is a very real and present threat by dropping rocket bombs on Ukraine. Let's be absolutely certain about this, this is a Russian war of aggression because Putin is a bastard. Any other interpretation of this, indicates that the person suggesting it, is also a bastard.

In that light, as a security issue, Ukraine is entirely sensible in wanting to join NATO. As the set of military treaties, which were explicitly designed to counter the threat of Soviet aggression should it eventuate, NATO was created in an era when war with the Soviet Union (perhaps with the use of nuclear weapons) was a very real and present threat. As the inheritor of Soviet power, Russia actively chooses to continue making that very real and present threat and its war of aggression against Ukraine is the outworking of that threat made good. If Ukraine wants to join NATO, then that process of how it should enter and the obligations that NATO and Ukraine have for each other, is a process Ukraine and NATO. It is unequivocally nothing to do with Putin or Russia.

This is where Donald Trump is making a stupid mistake. Any and all attempts to negotiate on this point with Vladimir Putin are completely wrong in principle. Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Furthermore, most of the rest of the world recognises Ukraine as a sovereign nation. At this point, I have no idea whether or not Donald Trump recognises if reality exists. If Ukraine has chosen to be a free country independent of Moscow, and the world recognises that fact, then by all accounts that should stand.

Trying negotiate with Vladimir Putin on this central fact, is pointless. It is also doomed to fail. If the United States thinks that Ukraine is a sovereign nation but Putin wants a vassal state, then what we have is an irreconcilable binary set of opinions which are impossible to satisfy. A sovereign Ukraine can not exist if it is a vassal state.

If we then take into account that Donald Trump who only sees the world as a series of transactions, and has repeatedly called for either the United States to leave NATO or force the member nations of NATO to pay for their own defence (which we must assume by inference means that they should buy US made hardware), then we have to come to the conclusion that unless NATO actually goes to the defence of NATO and believe Donald Trump that under his management the United States is an untrustworthy ally (to the point of non existence), unless NATO actually gets serious and backs its sentiments with corporeal military support for Ukraine which may include actual boots on the ground, then come the next Presidential Election in 2028 the question will be academic as there will be no Ukraine.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has already indicated that British forces could be sent to Ukraine as part of a peace-keeping/self-defence force and while President Emmanuel Macron has given no such sentiment, the fact that NATO itself has been shut out of the negotiations might very well be enough of an indication that NATO needs to act quickly. As it currently stands, NATO actually has no obligation to offer support to Ukraine and given that the United States as a member nation loves to bang its fists on the table, then this might force NATO's hand.

Of course as an outsider I have very little idea of what actually happens behind closed doors and all I can do is watch on in horror, but it is worth remembering that history never automatically tends towards justice. History is written by the winner because they're the one who are left. What I fear is that Trump will demand a lot of concessions from Ukraine; yet at the same time cave in to Putin. There will literally be zero security guarantees to stop Putin from simply re-grouping and invading again. If Trump thinks he has invented terms for peace, then he is delusional. What he is gifting to Putin, will be nothing less than surrender.

Horse 3440 - Happy Valentines Day: Here's A Clock.

Once upon a time in the long ago, I used to work in both the Commonwealth Bank Trading Bank building and the Commonwealth Bank Savings Bank building; both of which faced Martin Place. One of those is perhaps most famous as the "money box bank", and 48 Martin Place lingers on as a corporate whisper as the ABN of the Commonwealth Bank in general is 48 123 123 124 and not by coincidence.

The Trading Bank building now houses a stupid dress shop on the ground floor, but one of the things that will forever remain with me because I spent so many hours starting off into the distance at it, was the memento mori reminder of the inevitability of death and our mortality.

Everyone who was working at the bank when it opened in August 1916, is dead. Every Australian who was alive when the bank when opened in August 1916 except for 11 people, is dead. Even the Commonwealth Bank Trading Bank branch, by virtue of having closed, is dead. The old function of this particular bank as the central reserve bank, having been transferred to the Reserve Bank of Australia up the street, is dead. The building remains. The business is dead. The noiseless foot of time steals swiftly by.

The noiseless foot of Tune steals swiftly by

And ere we dream of manhood, age is nigh.

- Juvenal, Satires c.127

In case I haven't laboured the point, in comparison to the march of time, a person's existence is a mere blink. Generations come and generations go but but the earth has been here long before us and will remain after we have gone. It will remain after everyone who remembers us has also gone.

Not only does nobody actually remember people from long ago but because humans literally can not remember anything at all if they were not here, then it is physically impossible to remember people from long ago. This also goes for all of the all the people yet to come, for they too will also soon be forgotten by those who come after them.

On a large cosmic scale, you and I, and here and now, and everyone you have ever known, are just mere blinks. Stars are born and then they die and form planets with orbit new stars, and then and those planets will change over time and be eventually burnt up as the elements themselves melt in the heat. Be warned. Every human is going to die; including you. And that's deeply disturbing.

What's also deeply disturbing is that not only are we all going to die but we all face the same fate as animals. Grimaldi Mietitore moves at about one mile an hour and will inevitably always collect. He honestly doesn't give a rip about what he's collecting either.

The good, the bad, the saints, the sinners, the pius, the wicked, charity workers, genocidal maniacs: they all share the same destiny. Grimaldi Mietitore, or to give him his unkinder name "The Grim Reaper", is a disinterested ghoul with a work list and a clipboard, who does not care for all of our activity and madness, as he gets paid either way. When he arrives to collect, then we all join the dead.

Not only that but there's a third deeply disturbing about this thing we call 'life'. It's random. Muah, Ha ha ha ha! Although we like to assume that there there is a clear cause-and-effect relationship between doing the right thing and being rewarded, that simply isn't true. Utter bastard knaves frequently win, while people who are excellent and lovely and good, very often lose.

Grimaldi Mietitore doesn't plays dice because dice are reasonably predicatable. Nope. He plays cards: Whist, Rook, Uno, Skip-Bo, Tarot, Pokemon, Magic - he's got loads. They're all in the same deck. Draw Four. The Fool. Blue Eyes White Dragon. 5 of Diamonds. He makes up all the rules too. 

Races aren't always won by the quick. Battles are lost by the strong. Food doesn't necessarily come to the hungry. The wise are idiots. Wealth doesn't necessarily go to people who actually do the work. Favour and patronage don't go to the brilliant. Meritocracy is a lie. Time and Chance happens to them all. Grimaldi Mietitore chucks cards around like a mad thing. You might as well try to give up trying to control very much in life. Life is just way too unpredictable. If you think that you have somehow got it figured out, then you are a fool. You are setting yourself up for a fall. Life is smoke.

The funny thing about smoke is that although you can capture it in a jar you can not hold it in your hands. Life is smoke. It is weird, it is mysterious, it is sometimes awful and it is sometimes beautiful. But try and grab it, and it will slip right through your fingers. Sometimes it is like a fog, and if you have ever been in a properly thick fog you will know that it is impossible to see clearly sometimes. It is confusing. It is disorienting. It can not be controlled.

Now what?

Give up.

No, really.

Give up.

Hold things with an open hand because you really only have control over one thing and that's your attitude towards the present moment, and what you have might blow away in a moment.

Stop worrying.

Go and have a good conversation with a friend.

Stand in the morning with your arms outstretched and feel the Sun on your face.

Go and have good meal with people that you care about.

Life is smoke. It is sometimes dark. It sometimes has horrid gas in it and will sting and hurt. It will occasionally lead you into very very dark places.

Give up.

BUT.

Do not lose hope.

The last and final word is this: either this actually all is pointless and once the light turns out, that's it. Or, eventually everything that we do will be brought out into the open and judged according to its hidden intent, whether it’s good or evil. And that's deeply disturbing.

Horse 3439 - Magna Carta Is Not A Magic Spell

While sitting in court recently and waiting for things like directions hearings and instructions, in listening to cases that appear before the matters that I happen to be involved in, I have heard all kinds of tortured claims and conspiracies from utter wingnuts, loons, crazy bananas, and right steaming pillocks of people, try to invoke everything from being a 'Sovereign Citizen' or a 'Living Person', to claiming that Australia is a Corporation which is registered in the United States, to trying to invoke everyone's favourite magic piece of legislation - Magna Carta.

Granted that owing to various doctrines of reception, and pieces of acceptance legislation, the corpus of English and then British Law was adopted in Australia until about 1933 if we are pushing the absolute absurd limits of edge cases. However, people who think and from what I can tell who genuinely believe that by invoking Magna Carta, they are calling down the powers of Castle Greyskull or similar, are a whole new kind of deluded. I have no idea under what circumstances that these people think that a court of law, populated by judges and lawyers whose profession it is to have read law, are somehow going to bend like a twig in the wind to something that some other wingnut, loons, or crazy banana, who went to Magical Unicorn University has invented. As someone who works in an industry where being correct is important, and being correct at law is more important, then while I have not read law professionally, I still know that the first place to make a legal case is to  read what the relevant law says. Magna Carta is rarely (actually never in Australia) the relevant law.

Manga Carta (the Big Charter) was not and is not some magical document upon which all of law hangs; and to assert such is ridiculous. What it was, was a list of demands made by about 25 Barons, to the King, made in a field in Runnymede; probably under the threat of death. Granted that these demands were eventually kind of sort accepted into law, but as far as any bearing on how legislation is passed today, or even what law is based upon, that is seven kinds of nonsense. In fact, only 4 clauses of Magna Carta remain in operation in the UK and the fact that any of them do, is remarkable but not relevant. The number of relevant operative clauses as far as it applies to Australia is nil.

Law in Westminster Parliaments is made either according to a rule set which tells parliaments how to make laws which is called a Constitution, or an unwritten rule set which tells parliaments how to make laws which is also called a Constitution. Where I live in New South Wales, the two relevant Constitutions which tells the State and Federal parliaments how to make laws, are the Constitution Act (1902) and the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1901) [UK]. Regular readers of Horse will be reasonably familiar with me referring to various pieces of law including the Constitutions, a surprisingly large amount of the time for a blog.

Magna Carta is not even relevant when it comes to the British Constitution either. Although His Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland does not have a single written constitution, the rule set which determines how the House of Commons and House of Lords make laws, how the various Courts assay and judge the facts according to those laws, and the positions of the King and the Army and the Cabinet relate to all of it, is still subject to various pieces of legislation which together form a series of planks which kind of act as the floorboards upon which the furniture of government stands. 

Magna Carta is not useful for trying to make any kind of argument as to why you are driving in a car without paying motor registration fees or why you are driving in a car without being in possession of a valid driver's licence. Magna Carta is not useful for trying to make any kind of argument as to why after having being arrested while in the act of committing petty larceny, or fraud, or some kind of domestic violence against a person, you think that you are exempt from the law. Magna Carta is not useful for trying to make any kind of argument as to why you think that you have some right to possess illegal drugs, or firearms, or detain people illegally and against their will, or hold people in servitude or modern slavery. Magna Carta is not useful for trying to make any kind of argument as to why you think that you are exempt from paying workers properly. Magna Carta is not your magic 'get out of everything free' card. No case in Australia has ever been won on Sovereign Citizen grounds. 

One of the common refrains that I have heard this year has been "I do not consent"; as if when being confronted with any kind of authority and/or enforcement of the law, these individuals have radicalised themselves into genuinely believing that they are somehow exempt from the law. What I find logically insane is that one on hand they claim to be exempt from the law, while at the same time relying upon the law (despite how irrelevant it is). This is as paradoxically idiotic as having a square circle or the very notion of a Sovereign Citizen itself. 

I do not think that these people understand either what 'consent' is, or how this applies to the law. There is no right not to follow the law. There is no right not to be subject to the law. Having said that, while the idea that law is opt-out is nonsense, the idea that law is opt-in is also equally nonsense. I live in the State of New South Wales. I own a motor car. While there might be a notion of an implied right to freedom of movement, for me to drive a motor car still means that I am subject to the laws. I must purchase Compulsory Third Party injury insurance. Equally, if someone does not have a motor car, they do not need to purchase Compulsory Third Party injury insurance. Whether or not someone consents to the law is irrelevant. Simply the act of being in Australia and/or New South Wales, means that someone is subject to the law. That's it.

This is why I am consistently stunned that people actually think that they can make claims in court that they are not subject to the law. Do they honestly think that a judge, whose job it is to administer the law and make judgement, is going to be persuaded? Exactly how far outside of the realms of reality are these people playing at? 

Specifically, the case on Tuesday this week, revolved around a chap who while driving disqualified, crashed into a parked car and the owner of the parked car quite rightly was suing him for damages. Even if you throw all legislation aside, common law would suggest that if you damage someone else's stuff, you should either repair, replace, or make good and get them new stuff. Our crazy banana tried to argue that he had a right to travel because Magna Carta gave him the right to travel 'freely' (which he defined as without payment) and that he did not consent to the laws which require him to have a valid driver's licence, and that as a 'living man' he did not consent to the court which he was now standing inside. He also refuse to pay for the damage he caused and didn't really offer any sensible reason why even at common law, he shouldn't be personally liable for his own actions. 

Oh yeah. He lost.

Drongo.

Horse 3438 - KILL THE PENNY!

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113977224933701762

For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time.

- Donald Trump, via Truth Social, 10th Feb 2025

Good!

About a month ago I wrote a piece about the Australian quarter and how I think that it should replace all of the silver coloured coinage in Australia. I would replace the 5c, 10, 20c, and 50c, with just one 25c coin and be done with it. The reason why I want this to happen, is identical in principle to getting rid of the United States One Cent coin. Getting rid of it is sensible.

The last time that I wrote about the United States One Cent coin was more than ten years ago and even back then, it still should have killed off. The reasons back then have only accelerated with the passage of time and as inflation has rendered the penny an even more of an economic dead weight on the economy. 

The only purpose of a coin, is to allow the exchange of goods and services, via a universal token system. This universal token system, which is denoted in Dollars and Cents (and Mils) in the United States, is represented with banknotes and coins. If it costs more than the value of the token to make the token, and it costs more to process the transaction than the value of the transaction, then the token has failed in its only purpose for existence. Keeping it around is stupid. 

The actual break even point, when the United States One Cent coin passed into negative seigniorage was circa 2002; which means that this discussion is now about twenty years too late. It's not like this is a new problem either because the United States has already been here before, when it killed off the Half Cent in 1857. Back then, the Half Cent had about the same amount of buying power as 18 cents does now; so actually there is a good enough argument for the United States to also kill off the nickel and the dime as well as the penny.

Killing of the penny is so unbelievably obvious, that you would either have to be criminally stupid or hideously self-interested, or both, such as the company which makes the blanks for the penny, as to want to keep this wee little brown piece of annoyance in existence.

Oh, wait...

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/10/business/costs-of-pennies-and-nickels/index.html

President Donald Trump says he has ordered the US Mint to stop making pennies, which he correctly says cost more than one cent to produce.

- CNN, 10th Feb 2015

This continues...

But there’s a problem with his plan: Phasing out the penny could result in needing to make more nickels, and the US Treasury Department loses far more money on every nickel than it does on every penny.

- CNN, 10th Feb 2015

NO IT DOES NOT.

WHO SAID THIS?

Demonstrably, in every case where previous coins have been demonetised, it does not result in needing more of the next denomination upwards to cover the spread. The reason for this is that the number of transactions does not go up. If I go to the shop and I buy a can of Pepsi, a Snickers bar, a pencil, a banana, a slice of ham, and a hammer, then unless I am feeling particularly nasty and want to annoy the jinkies out of the shopkeeper, as I am not going to rejoin the queue five times and go around and around and around, then there is only ONE transaction. The coins used in that transaction are the residual end part of the maths going on. If the amount at the end is $8.94, then I do not magically need more nickels to make the transaction work. To say so, is the result of a self-interested lie.

“Without the penny, the volume of nickels in circulation would have to rise to fill the gap in small-value transactions. Far from saving money, eliminating the penny shifts and amplifies the financial burden,” said American for Common Cents, a pro-penny group funded primarily by Artazn, the company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies.

- CNN, 10th Feb 2015

Oh great. A pro-penny group which is back by company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies? Yeah, nah. Tell me that they aren't self-interested with straight face.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2025/02/10/trump-pinches-pennies-00203439

“It’s a horrible idea. Eliminating the penny wouldn’t save money. It would actually increase government losses and cost more,” MARK WELLER, executive director of Americans for Common Cents, said in an interview. Americans for Common Cents is a pro-penny advocacy group primarily backed by Artazn, the company supplying the Mint with zinc penny blanks.

Weller argues that the nickel costs even more to make than the penny — nearly 14 cents per coin. Without pennies in circulation, the demand for nickels would increase, he said, potentially doubling the Mint’s financial losses.

- Politico, 10th Feb 2015

Oh great. A pro-penny group which is back by company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies? Yeah, nah. Tell me that they aren't self-interested with straight face.

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/10/nx-s1-5292082/trump-penny-mint-treasury

Mark Weller, the executive director of Americans for Common Cents, told NPR in 2009 that the alternative to the penny is "is rounding to the nickel, and that's something that will negatively impact working families every time they buy a gallon of gas or a gallon of milk."

- All Things Considered, NPR, 10th Feb 2025

Oh great. A pro-penny group which is back by company that has the contract to provide the blanks used to make pennies? Yeah, nah. Tell me that they aren't self-interested with straight face... HANG ON, IT'S THE SAME DANG NABBITY GUY!

What sort of eejitacious journalism is going on here? I absolutely reject the concept in journalism that you need two sides to tell a balanced story because if one side is deliberately stupid because of self-interest, then they should be ridiculed. In this case, when the only objection that anyone has found, has been made by the same exact guy whose job it is to shill for the company that makes the blanks, you do not need to see the other side of the coin. 

In Australia where we have not used either the 1c or 2c since 1992, or in New Zealand where they don't even have 5c anymore, literally nobody bemoans the loss of 1 or 2 cents in transactions. And if you are using EFTPOS, then because you have tapped or swiped your card to effect the transaction, there are no coins at all used. I wonder how Mark Weller, the executive director of Americans for Common Cents feels about the runaway fact that the alternative to the penny is to eliminate all coins altogether. 

Quite frankly about the only practical use of the penny at this point, is to collect a bunch of them and either use them for fun gambling games such as poker, or to fill a football sock with a bunch of them and then use that as a cosh to bludgeon someone for deliberately being so stupid in saying that anyone needs pennies.

And while we're at it America, get rid of the Dollar note and replace that with the coin. It's cheaper in the long run.