Paul Sheehan, and the cacophony of cicadas are as nothing against the sounds of a solitary scribbler ...

(Above: Bare island fort doing a Paul Sheehan impression. Eek, instead of the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, it's Rob Oakeshott is here, Rob Oakeshott is here).

It wouldn't be the holiday season if the cicadas didn't come out for a relentless throbbing and pulsating crescendo of lust, or perhaps despair, and sure enough, while sensible and sane minds are away on a break, that leaves the land free for the din of Paul Sheehan in A blunder to top all the others.

In what might well be a classic of "we'll all be rooned before the year is out" Sheehan actually starts by celebrating black cicadas, not thinking that perhaps he's only emulating one.

Method? Take one Liberal party press release, stir vigorously, purport it's an equal opportunity memo by addressing it to both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, and then blame all Australia's woes on Canberra and the federal government.

While passing go, make sure to collect every form of abuse possible, starting with Canberra's "shockingly lacklustre public architecture, which itself represents a poverty of imagination."

What this might have to do with any current predicament should immediately be passed over in silence. It's merely mood and scene setting, an excuse to go on and talk about an "imperial power within Australia, constantly expanding its reach into the rest of the nation", and bemoaning the government's "dreadful combination of basic mediocrity and soaring ambition."

Then along with the usual favourites - pink batts, this time in South Australia for example -comes a reference to the Christmas island tragedy and detention camps, and at that point it's clear that in his usual rhetorical fashion, Sheehan has decided to jump the shark and nuke the fridge all in one go:

The Labor-Greens alliance seems impervious to the reality that Canberra's track record of delivering services is not intrinsically better than that of the states, which have done the hard work of delivering health, transport, energy and education for more than 100 years.

Yep, when you read that sentence, following on immediately as it does after Christmas Island, and detention camps, you get the impression that Sheehan is fervently in favour of putting the NSW Labor government in charge of border protection and the defence of the country, as it was so valiantly when it prepared for the imminent arrival of the Russians back in the old days (and wouldn't you know it, the building of Bare island fort to save Botany Bay sounds eerily familiar, in the 'same as it ever was' mould, when it came to NSW government supervision of spending and control of costs, as its wiki celebrates here).

Yep, it's monstrously stupid to suggest the federal government should just bugger off and instead we should expect the Northern Territory government to shoulder the burden of border defence, along with the WA and Queensland governments, but that's what Sheehan seems to be saying.

And if that doesn't boggle the mind, Sheehan suddenly goes all sandgroper:

This is Labor's handling of the once-in-a-century resource boom, its suctioning away of revenue to pay for political debts in south-eastern Australia. Western Australia is crying out for revenue to invest in the infrastructure needed to expand and sustain its boom.

Yep, never mind the years where WA and Queensland got more than fair share to help them out, and what a tragedy they've never been allowed to abandon the union.

So who's to blame for all this? Surely it's the kind of process - the entrenching of imperial power in Canberra - that would take well over a decade to design and implement? The kind of thing you might expect arising from the long reign of the Howard government?

Don't be silly, as usual it's all the fault of one man, who has incredibly immense and broad and hugely responsible shoulders:

Rudd was the architect of this period of imperial overstretch by Canberra. He thought he could transform the federal bureaucracy, within months, into a major service provider. It was not and is not.

Within months! Yep, the country fell apart within months.

Well it's easy to understand the process. No, not the country falling apart, the silly column getting written.

Grab yourself a favourite brew - whether it be a strong black coffee or a single malt whiskey - sit down at the keyboard and lather yourself into an hysterical foaming frothing frenzy of righteous indignation.

And then, since there's bugger all else to do, and it seems Australian men who identify their masculinity with the fate of Australian cricket are shortly to be completely emasculated, blame it all on the independents and poor old Rob Oakeshott:

Rudd failed spectacularly and was sacked by his colleagues. His successor government was sacked by the public. The only reason it remains in power, as dysfunctional now as it was before the election, is that Labor was bailed out by the poseur from Port Macquarie, Rob Oakeshott, even as his electorate, in both the House and Senate votes, provided the second-largest anti-Labor vote in the nation. Oakeshott can take credit for every stuff-up by this government because he, more than any other, manufactured its now non-existent mandate for Canberra's expanding imperialism.

That's right, it's all Rob Oakeshott's fault.

The reductio ad absurdum quality of Sheehan's piece reminds us once again of the sheer stupidity and banality of his scribblings, and the way he can become easily distracted by something like magic water.

The man might be a professional grump of the finest water, but his words are just the sort of noises you expect from a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal, or perhaps a cicada.

If you followed his thought process, and ended up re-balancing the federal state relationship, you might end up with the NSW Labor government even more empowered.

Next week? Why naturally there'll be a column from Paul Sheehan about the dangers of the NSW Labor government and the way it's ruined the state. No doubt Rob Oakeshott can carry the can for that one too ...

Men always allege that women are too prone to emotion and irrationality in their writing, the sort of stereotype that's easily disproved by taking a look at Sheehan's emotive scribbling. So he does serve a usual purpose - the destruction of masculine stereotypes regarding women - but for the life of me, I can't see much use beyond that.

Never mind, having once suffered through several years of economic history, it's possible to enjoy good writing about the economies in general when you find it - and no we don't mean Sir Lewis Namier - but you can find a sample in John Cassidy's review of several books, Enter the Dragon, which sadly is behind The New Yorker's paywall.

Still, perhaps from now on, when confronted with an epic bout of twaddle of the Sheehan kind, the pond should reference some counterbalancing bit of sensible writing.

Cassidy's thesis involves the role that national - which is to say federal - which is to say Canberra - governments play in western economies, and Why 'state capitalism' is China's biggest knockoff.

Cassidy starts with the outrageous Opium Wards conducted by the British - which too few know about these days - then tracks the role of imperial and industrial policy in western economies over the past few centuries, and the key role that government plays in the process, and so ends up giving the lie to quaint notions of free trade and free markets.

Unfortunately, in policy circles - and among much of the general public - the old mantras about the free market and private enterprise continue to dominate. In seeking to broaden access to private health insurance, the Obama administration was accused of plotting a takeover of the entire health-care industry. In cutting taxes and boosting federal spending to avoid a depression, it was accused of embracing socialism. Even supposedly serious economists lend support to these views, arguing that the dysfunctional health-care industry is best left to its own devices, or that the eight-hundred-billion-dollar stimulus program has had virtually no impact on jobs and on G.D.P. This is what comes of forgetting the critical role that states have played in nurturing, protecting, and financing their industries, as well as taxing and taming them. The greatest danger that Western prosperity now faces isn't posed by any Beijing consensus; it's posed by the myth of the free market.

Actually Sheehan's just added a new one. The greatest danger that Australian prosperity now faces is the myth of Rob Oakeshott.

What a mug punter scribbler Sheehan is, even if it's just free holiday reading designed to provoke cackles of disbelief ... and a feeling of relief knowing he'll never get his paws on the levers of government, and will always remain on the sidelines like a grumpy old man abusing the umpire ...

(Below: stunning visual evidence that Rob Oakeshott is the man responsible for everything wrong in Canberra, including Canberra itself, found here. And worse, he seems somehow triumphant, posing like a poseur).