Paul Sheehan, Barnaby Joyce and the cawing of the crows ...

As expected, the jackals, wolves, vultures and cawing crows are out after their carrion this morning, and leading the pack is Paul Sheehan with US wings clipped by imperial overstretch.

Sheehan leads off with a personal email from a staunch Democrat, a friend who is worried about a budget cut back at work.

Perhaps the friend is in a government job - who knows, she might even have been part of the mad barney over the financing of the F.A.A. (Many Questions About Money Remain After Financing Is Restored for F.A.A.)

If so, it's a complete mystery why Sheehan didn't fire back a quick, Tea Party aligned response.

Along the lines of "what are you doing in a government job? Government is way too big, and completely useless, and must be reduced, if not obliterated at once, and certainly by 5 pm Friday, and I'm sorry if you're collateral damage, but that's the way it's got to be if we want to balance the budget, as demanded by that very attractive and photogenic housewife Michele Bachmann, according to housewife bookkeeping principles, so why not go get a job flipping burgers, or perhaps working the late shift stocking shelves with two dollar goods from China in Target at $8.50 an hour, and so contribute to an improved domestic economy."

Yep, that'll avoid any mention of complicating matters, like increasing revenue, or showing a capacity for compromise, and the hospital pass can be thrown to Obama.

Meanwhile, over at The Australian, Barnaby Joyce is invited to gloat in To those who called me fool, who's laughing now?

As Barners likes to double down when dealing with the matter of US government default, I'll cheerfully call him a fool again, because the current crisis in Washington was entirely induced by Washington lawmakers, and as a lawmaker he's been inclined routinely to play the back end of a donkey.

The role of the other donkeys - the Republican Tea Party mavericks - in the recent sordid affair will of course be down-played. These zealots, fundamentalists and ideologues, and close kissing cousins to the likes of Barners made sure a grander deal was impossible, and who cops the blame in Barner's world? The likes of the intractable Michele Bachmann?

In the political sphere the person who drives via the rear vision mirror, with a wonderful recitation about everywhere you have been and why, but not a clue where you are going, is dangerous. When, with a coterie of bureaucrats, they cannot keep the car on the black stuff but seem to be targeting the trees, you are in for the economic ride of your life.

Yep, never mind the bankers, or the rating agencies that couldn't see 2008 coming at them, or the likes of Michele Bachmann, and the Republican controlled congress, it's the coterie of bureaucrats that's to blame ...

By golly, I'll bet they live in the inner urban suburbs and form part of a cardigan wearing elite, seeing as how politicians are just gosh golly home spun verandah lovers ...

There's a reason that Barners was dropped from the shadow cabinet finance portfolio, as he ran around doing a chicken little routine that was too broad in its comedy stylings even for the master chicken little Tony Abbott (Barnaby Joyce lashes out at colleagues after being dumped from finance), and his latest routine - a mix of chicken little about the imminent collapse of the world economy via Ireland, Iceland, tulips, railroad stocks, Florida real estate, dot.com obligations, and such like - is such a seriously stupid bunch of non-sequiturs, it's hard to know where to start.

Along with the gloating, it makes for another top notch comedy routine, but please someone, anyone, keep his hands off the levers of the economy ...

Truth is, in Barners' world, the road to power always starts with the glass completely empty, and Barners just loves to see an empty glass.

That he can also mix in climate science, and cap his piece with how Australia is too busy trying to cool the planet from a room in Canberra, is a reminder of what an intemperate provocative bumpkin he can be ...

Meanwhile, back with Sheehan fiddling through the entrails, he too manages to drag in as many irrelevancies as possible, including the symbolic impact of an American helicopter being shot down in Afghanistan, with the loss of 31 lives.

It's hard to know what the commentariat make of wars these days.

What with the 24/7 news cycle and the reporting of every casualty, it's difficult to remember that not so long ago - okay, I guess World War II is now long ago - American forces landing at Omaha beach on D-Day endured 5,000 casualties out of 50,000 men, most in the first few hours (and if you want an even more horrendous set of figures, contemplate the cost of the island hopping by United States forces as they made their way to Japan).

So one line might be to suggest that the commentariat harden the fuck up.

These days the commentariat go into hand-wringing mode at the loss of a helicopter, but then only in select circumstances. Was it the same Paul Sheehan who back in 2003 scribbled this denunciation of those who denounced America's imperial ambitions?

The moral virgins in this debate who pronounce themselves "against war", and who rail against American arrogance, need to at least acknowledge the impact that inertia and appeasement have had on the continuing murders and torture in the Abu Ghraib prison, the genocide against the Kurds and the Madans, the invasions of Kuwait and Iran, the missile attacks on Israeli civilians, the use of chemical weapons, the degradation of the environment and the general malevolence of a kleptocracy run by Saddam and his Caligula-like son, Uday, and their vast apparatus of suppression.

Had this regime not been decisively and violently checked by US power 12 years ago, it would now control the vast oil resources of Kuwait as well as its own, would have used this economic power to build an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, would have sought nuclear weapons, and would probably be untouchable. All thanks to prudent, peace-loving people who are against military interventions and American imperialism.

Uh huh. Those were the days, before Abu Grahib became Abu Grahib, so to speak.

But for the sake of the argument and since the pond is in fact of the prudent peace-loving ilk, let's accept that American imperialism is at over-stretch, and America can no longer afford follies like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Who will speak for a rapid draw down?

Perhaps we can look to the anonymous editorialist at The Australian for advice?

Oh dear, the header Coalition must stay the course looks ominous.

As with Ronald Reagan in 1983 after truck bombers killed 241 US marines in Beirut, the pressure will be on Barack Obama to expedite withdrawal from Afghanistan. He and other coalition leaders must continue to resist such pressure, because to submit to it, as General Lord Dannatt, Britain's former chief of general staff, has said, would be to prejudice what chance there is of achieving success in Afghanistan.

Never mind the extraordinarily nebulous definition of what "achieving success in Afghanistan" might mean. And that it still seems to be a crap shoot, so we must speak of "what chance there is ..."

As always, "achieving success" seems to come down to securing the country against the Taliban and al-Qaida, as if securing the country for corrupt government of Hamid Karzai is turning out to be any kind of success at all (see how you go as a woman under Karzai's corrupt regime).

Never mind, I guess that cutting military spending is out - not when bombing to make sure Afghanistan remains in the stone age is high on the anonymous editorialist's list of policy imperatives - just as taxing billionaires must remain off the balance sheet in the United States. It seems imperial ambitions must continue, with the mug punters stocking the shelves at Target the ones to bear the burden and constrain the debt ...

Meanwhile, in the spirit of Barners, Paul Sheehan leaves no stone unturned in his own efforts to be a top notch chicken little, making sure that the "overseas debt bubble" is assigned a proper home - the competence of the Labor government in Canberra.

How handy there's no way to assign the "overseas debt bubble" to the squawking of the commentariat, in which we include that honoured squawker Barnaby Joyce.

Yep, the vultures, the jackals, the wolves and the cawing crows are out in force this morning, with the smell of blood and carrion in the air, and surely they'll achieve control of the saloon once more, if necessary by smashing up the joint like rioters in the streets of Tottenham ...

After all, the best policy we've come across to date, is "If you don't give me the job, I'll wreck the joint."

What's that Barry?

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can. (Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, 1960)

Yep, you can take your liberty, and while you're at it, you can take your poverty with it too ...

So caw the crows at their tea party ...