An idle Sunday, and where's the bitter knitters' club when it's so urgently needed?

(Above: click to enlarge, and more First Dog here).

Nation, something, anything has to be done, but where are the commentariat commentators to do it?

As the country slides towards disaster, where have they all gone? At last report, valiant Piers "Akker Dakker" "the fat owl of the remove" "yaroop garoorh" "vile leftists and greenies" Akerman was adrift somewhere in the seas of Samoa, sounding slightly crazed and Herding Coconuts:

We tossed the nuts we collected down to the beach and between us we herded them back to Van Diemen, the lighter ones floating faster, the green ones heavier to lob on their way.
The green nuts weren’t too successful but we all broke chunks of fresh white meat from the older nuts, chewing contemplatively as we sipped sundowners of rum and fruit juice, topped with fresh limes.

The country going to the dogs, the world fast coming to an end, and the lubber's herding coconuts?

Okay let's check in on Miranda the Devine.

What's this? The last entry in the captain's log of the starship Devine is back on Wednesday, under the header Chivalry Set Adrift in Sea of Amorality. Is that the same amoral sea on which Akker Dakker herds coconuts?

There's something very amiss with the work rate of these highly paid prophets.

The last we heard from Janet Albrechtsen was on February 2nd with Radical approach hinders Aboriginal cause. Oh sure, she's turned up on Q&A since, but what happened to the Oz's promise that she'd contribute occasionally, or at least when the Labor Greenie alliance contributes to the ruination of Australia, which by any calculation happens at least three times a day?

Is it time to start a commentariat bludger watch, which we might run alongside our regular dole bludger watch?

Head off to the usually reliable Punch, and what do we get but some unknown git scribbling This puppet Prime Minister must call an election.

Oh wait, I see that's actually Senator Michael Ronaldson - who? - and he's the Shadow Minister for Vererans' Affairs, as well as Shadow Minister of State, and most grand of all, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader of the Opposition on the Centenary of ANZAC.

Ronaldson quite properly calls for an election right now because we have a mysterious Julia leading a disastrous government in name only, and by the fringes for the fringes ...

... which reminds me of that splendid piece by Joseph E. Stiglitz for Vanity Fair Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%:

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight.

That damned socialist Stiglitz. The chappie is preaching civil unrest:

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Dearie me, how did we end up here?

Well it's all because they sent out that second eleven bounder Michael Ronaldson, and the mind began to drift, and instead of contemplating the evil fringes, we found ourselves contemplating the evil elite.

Surely The Drum Unleashed at the ABC will have someone warning us about the end of the world?

Oh dear, The Drum Unleashed seems to have become The Drum Opinion, and there's Van Badham declaring Misogynistic Schmuck Week, and knocking both Paul Sheehan and Bob Ellis to the canvas ...

That only leaves Andrew Bolt, but he's still a bit ginger, on tenterhooks about the outcome of his court case, which might yet take on the qualities of a Jarndyce and Jarndyce matter before Chancery if it heads off to the High Court ...

How about The Age?

Ah, at last, salvation. There's the ever reliable Chris Berg, getting agitated about cigarette packaging in Plain packs pointless when smoke gets in our eyes.

Of course, if plain packs were actually pointless, there wouldn't be such a hue and a cry from the tobacco industry, and after sundry fits of consternation about the evils being done to the poor lovelies, Berg ends up in the libertarian position of last resort:

Should people be allowed to manage their own risks: to conduct themselves in their own way, to abuse or protect their bodies as they see fit?

Indeed. Provided that they don't then turn around and expect access to taxpayer funded medical benefits. Let them collapse and die in the street instead.

Oops, that's a tad too libertarian. Berg's answer?

The answer to that question ultimately depends on your personal values. But the first health warning on cigarette packets was imposed 38 years ago.

And of course Berg has a nicely balanced economic rationalist argument too:

Budget after budget of tobacco excise increases mean tobacco taxes now far outweigh the burden of smokers on the publicly funded health system.

See, it doesn't matter if smokers collapse and die, or suffer untold human misery, or cause their families grief and suffering because of their addiction, or become a useless burden on society, their breathing conducted with the aid of face masks as they battle the effects of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (emphysema). They've more than paid their way! Right into the pockets of the tobacco industry and anyone who's received donations from the tobacco industry! Jolly good.

Berg ends with a dire warning that soon enough plain packaging of alcohol might be next ...

And the problem is?

In a nanny state, what first sounds absurd can quickly become the law of the land.

Is it remiss of us to note that Chris Berg is a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs? Is it unfortunate to note that the Institute has in the past received tobacco industry funding?

The Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) group said the Institute of Public Affairs was a front group for the tobacco industry, which was seeking to axe the proposed plain-pack legislation, expected to go to Parliament next year in time to introduce the measures in 2012.
Anne Jones, chief executive of ASH, said the institute ''which repeatedly fails to mention its past acceptance of tobacco funding, is again presenting views very similar to those of the tobacco companies - unsupported by the evidence''.

That story - Agency queries plain-pack legality - involved one Tim Wilson blathering away about the property rights of the tobacco industry, and by a curious synchronicity, back at The Drum, there's Mark Davison giving him a right old thrashing and trashing in Plain packaging bill to extinguish some tobacco trade marks, and inter alia, declaring his interests:

As for declarations of qualifications and interests: I am a Professor in the Faculty of Law at Monash University, specialising in intellectual property. Further details are available on my website. I am a member of the Expert Advisory Group referred to in the Consultation Paper. I have spoken to employees of the Cancer Council Victoria about this issue. No financial benefit has been offered, promised or provided to me. I have been given some nice sandwiches at meetings and I have now accepted assurances that the orange juice was fresh.

Fresh orange juice! And nice sandwiches!!

The greenies of Australia are on the march, and the valiant troops of the Institute of Public Affairs look like they might be overwhelmed.

Where oh where is The Australian in all this, you ask?

Happily there's an answer, and naturally it's backing the right of the one per cent to get filthy rich, even if that involves a fair share of the ninety nine per cent coughing their way to death, and you can read all about it, with links, in Crikey's Smoking out The Australian.

Naturally, as Crikey notes, the anonymous editorialist at the lizard Oz is at one with Berg:

... in a free society, if the people's representatives deem cigarettes should be legal, producers should be allowed to package and market them. (Smokescreen or deterrent?)

Indeed. And in a free society, if the people's representatives deem motor cars are legal, producers should be allowed to produce and market them without such newfangled nonsense as seat belts, and air bags, and structural safety reinforcements and crumple zones and bumper bars, and come to think of it, indicators, and perhaps even brakes, since when a society is on the go, on the move, what the heck's the point of stopping?

Yes, the country is on the verge of a socialist communist regime persecuting a hapless, noble, long suffering tobacco industry, which is only intent on spreading a brief moment of joy amongst happy consumerist smokers, and what do they get? Lectures from drinkers of fresh orange juice ...

Waiter, bring me some of that reconstituted orange juice, with bonus preservatives, lashings of added sugar, sundry food additives and never mind the diabetes, just make sure it comes with the label 'fresh healthy good old fashioned orange drink' ...

Meanwhile, where, apart from noble libertarian Chris Berg, are the commentariat on this urgent, smoke from the barrel of a hot gun, matter?

Somewhere off the coast of Samoa herding coconuts with Akker Dakker no doubt.

It's simply not good enough. Can we shortly expect a dynamic speech from Julia Gillard at the Sydney Institute attacking commentariat bludging? The pond sincerely hopes so ...

And now before we go, one last reading, Resisting Climate Reality, by Bill McKibben, in the NYRB. Sadly it's behind the paywall, so let me extract his piquant description of Bjørn Lomborg as a man standing amid a fire murmuring "theater" ...

That's how it's done commentariat, get that shoulder back to the wheel, keep on spreading confusion and fuzzy logic, and remember when it comes to the joys of smoking, never mention the fire, and always murmur "theatre" (local spelling please) ... or perhaps freedom ...

... but remember the right to kill yourself by smoking should never be confused with the right to die if it involves euthanasia ... after all, one's ugly, and messy, and depressing, and therefore most excellent, while the other's quite tidy, and therefore to be deplored ...