Paul Sheehan, and time to do a sitcom about a scrap of paper?

(Above: oh no, it's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsenk District with pooch and partner).

Amazing scenes in Texas.

Devotees of the pond will remember that Governor Rick Perry, the man who issued a proclamation for days of prayer for rain in Texas, once got the tea party crowd going with a broad hint that Texas could secede from the union (Governor Says Texas Is One State That Could Leave the Union), and amongst other things has long been an heroic critic of FEMA, right back to the days of Hurricane Katrina (in cache form at Perry offers no apologies for criticism of FEMA).

He'd also scheduled cutting the funding for volunteer fire departments in Texas from US$30 million to $7 million (here).

Now Texas is in the grip of raging wildfires, Perry is seeking federal disaster relief and FEMA is turning up to help.

Looks and sounds like another Republican ready to help run the United States into the ground by replacing practicalities and a sense of community with stupid theologies and ideologies ...

Yep, that'd be right, why not head off here to meet Perry's Controversial Money Man in all his evangelical creationist Christian nationalist glory.

But enough of American weirdness, because Australia is always highly competitive in sports and freak out weirdo weirdness.

It's in the genes, and so we turn to our very own wacko creators of At Home with Julia. What were they thinking? Poor Phil Lloyd, aka Myles Barlow, hapless Amanda Bishop (playing Julia Gillard).

At a time when Phillip Adams is denouncing the new antipodean Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk as lacking legitimacy, they do a tragically weak sitcom about her when they needed Shostakovich?

Oh okay, it's not up there with Rick Perry, but frankly Perry's better comedy and I want my five minutes back, and really it's been a wretched distraction from the perennial wacky racer comedy stylings of Paul Sheehan.

This morning's bright idea from Sheehan is that we should ditch the UN, as explained in End 'lawfare' by ditching unworkable UN policies.

Sheehan wants first of all to ditch the UN Convention relating to the status of refugees:

Australia should withdraw from the convention, citing its increasing unworkability, impossibly loose language and unlimited impositions. An entire theatre of ideological lawfare would be laid to waste, and after changes to the Migration Act to pre-empt such lawfare, Australian democracy, security and sovereignty would be strengthened.

Damn right, and we'd be able to shoot down any black helicopters coming to take over the country too.

In fact, if we thought about it right, Australia could get to favoured rogue nation status right up there with North Korea.

For a start, we could forget about all that nuclear treaty nonsense, ship uranium to whomever we liked and build our own nukes. Surely that would strengthen our security and sovereignty.

And then there's all this nonsense about land mines, when already the government is doing its level best to find loopholes so we can still work with the United States to populate the world with land mines.

What better way to revive languishing manufacturing industry in this country than to begin the manufacture of land mines?

As for all this peace treaty blather, doesn't the nation realise that we need lebensraum, and adhering to United Nations standards of decorum is ruining our chance to mount a short, incisive war against New Zealand.

That'd learn them for using the appalling World Trade Organisation as an excuse to send us fire blight in apples, the herpes of the fruit world. (thanks for that metaphor Nick Xenophon, Senator to fight 'herpes of fruit').

Come to think, we might also mount internal actions against Tasmania - way too pleasant for Tasmanians - and WA - way too much mineral wealth for a bunch of South Africans and British exiles, and bring them under the properly constituted banner of the federation of eastern states, hereafter known as Oceania in honour of 1984.

What's that you say? The pond has gone mad, gone rogue, gone feral, like a Sheehan on steroids.

No dammit, we're just tired of all this cardigan wearing do gooder nonsense about humanity and human rights.

Why on earth should Australia stay signed up to a convention that Nauru is proposing to sign? (Nauru's UN move on refugee convention adds to pressure on Labor).

Australia would be much happier in the company of Burma (okay Myanmar pedants), North Korea, Indonesia, Kuwait, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Malaysia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Singapore, Vietnam ... (you can catch a full list of signatories and non-signatories here).

Yep, it's about time we made a stand before the black helicopters come to snatch us away:

The legal quagmire in which the federal government and the courts are stuck could be escaped at a single stroke. The root cause is the United Nations, the majority of whose members are not democracies, and specifically Australia's signature on the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Not democracies, and so not able to run their jack boots over refugees seeking aid and shelter, like a decently jackbooted dinkum Aussie with fond memories of the good old White Australia days!

Now in your innocence you might associate anti-United Nations rhetoric with the most extreme right wing or libertarian loonies doing the rounds, right up there with Rep Ron Paul, another exceptional product of Texas, or perhaps Christopher Monckton, explaining to the Citizens Electoral Council how climate science is just part of a mass conspiracy:

Monckton: Let’s look at this (UN) report. It’s produced by the usual crowd of rent-seekers wanting to enhance the role of the UN as a world government. That’s what is really behind this: It’s world government that the left are after. And world government, of course, does not mean democratic government. It means autocratic government, rather like the EU writ large. (here in pdf form, under the sub-header The Goal Is World Government).

Now this might even come as a relief if you'd thought that the real danger was the British Crown, as explained in Brits reveal global green fascist "master plan":

A German front for the British Crown’s genocidal green agenda has released a “Master Plan” for a zero-carbon economy, which German political leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche has denounced as a “blunt proposal for global eco-fascism, a green world dictatorship in the tradition of Thomas Hobbes, H.G. Wells, and [Nazi jurist] Carl Schmitt.”

Yep, Paul Sheehan is in good company, and as you might expect of a gourmet bread lover dwelling in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, he's down with the will of the people:

A disconnect has grown between the will of the people and the legal activists who successfully circumvent democracy by waging ''lawfare'' - the practice of using the courts to achieve policies rejected at the ballot box.

What's that you say? Only yesterday the pond published a poll suggesting a clear majority of Australians preferred on shore processing? (Public backs onshore asylum processing).

Fools! As anyone knows, Herald/Nielsen polls are conducted by lickspittle devious lackeys beavering away on behalf of the United Nations ...

There's plenty more in Sheehan's column, most of it bashing lawyers and the courts, and veterans of ideological warfare (Sheehan of course is a mere pup, a mere novice when it comes to ideological warfare, having only been at it for three decades or so), and along the way he manages to get in a reference to another pet peeve, the notion that Australians might have mistreated indigenous folk in the past, an outrageous slur on the country's fine record. Why today aboriginal people are at the forefront of boxing, the AFL and the NRL ...

It's funny how the ancient grinding needle in the 78 rpm groove manages to sound just like Janet Albrechtsen sounding like Gerard Henderson sounding like all the other members of the commentariat, and what's even more strange, routinely denouncing the rule of law and the quest for justice, when at other times the commentariat routinely celebrates the rule of law and the right to justice as a way of distinguishing the lucky country from the barbarian hordes out there in the world ...

And it gets even funnier when - yes breach of Godwin's Law coming up - someone like Sheehan demands that the refugee convention included within the Migration Act be torn up, because it's an inconvenient piece of paper. Much like you know who, who derided the Munich agreement as a "scrap of paper" before invading Poland ...

But then you know who had a very similar attitude to the League of Nations as Sheehan does to the United Nations, taking Germany out of the organisation in 1933:

It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn appeals to the God, nor by hopes in any League of Nations, but only by the force of arms.
Adolf Hitler

Watch out New Zealand, coming at ya!

Now what has the pond learned today? Well more to the point it's what the ABC should have learned about comedy:

We start with an establisher of a nicely appointed house in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. Cut in close to pick up a rather portly man with an aged, worn, sour air, trundling a couple of wheelie bins up the front driveway.

Grumpy Man

(muttering, sotto voce).

Damned wheelie bins, damned latte lovers, damned recycling, damned black helicopters, damned United Nations, damned treaties, conventions and pacts, damned ideological activist warriors, damned legal quagmire, damned scrap of paper, damned refugees, damned pesky blacks, damned single stroke of pen, damned sovereign safe and secure ...

Voice Off:

Hurry up dear, the magic water is getting warm, and you know you need it to wash down the yeasty bread ...

Grumpy Man

(muttering)

Damned strife of life, damned ball and chain, damned she who must be obeyed

(Beat) Coming dear ...

Oh okay, it's just a first draft, but I tell you, when the black helicopters land in the eastern suburbs, the special effects will out-do Battle: Los Angeles, as the stout-hearted citizens turn back the deviant alien horde intent on establishing a new world government. And for what? For bloody magic water ...

ABC management, the few who know anything about comedy and commentariat clowns, the pond's agent's phone lines are open, and she's standing by for the call ...

(Below: Paul Sheehan with bread, and another you know who with a scrap of paper).