Two serves of Mein Gott and a Groaning? Mein Gott, oh the suffering, oh the humanity, it never ends ...

 

Everybody's doing it, cue J.D. Vance noted in The Atlantic, in J. D. Vance Finally Found a Use for the Vice Presidency, The VP has made social media into a vehicle for his ascent... (archive)...and yet the pond is stuck is stuck in quaint ye olde world blogger amidst a stew of fossilised, ancient reptiles.

Is it time for a meme-led recovery?

... or should the pond devote time to the fallen, a list growing longer by the day? Top Washington Post Columnist Quits After Piece Critical of Bezos Is Nixed (soft paywall)  Or if you prefer Parker Molloy, Another Dark Day at the Bezos Post: Ruth Marcus Resigns After Censorship

The nub of it ... (dodgy link, but here's the gist, which might need clicking on to enlarge) ...

The mourning ...

Dammit, the pond has already tossed both their subs onto the scapheap. What else to do? And besides, the memes are so tempting ...

That hidden word's first letter produces "Bellend"...

The pond had discovered a word up there with "knob" and "boofhead", and yet a few days ago the pond could have been insulted with it and not had the first clue what it meant ... roll out the dictionary ...

British Slang: Vulgar.

the glans penis.

a stupid, ridiculous, or annoying person, especially a man:

What kind of bellend pretends to crash a party when in fact he bought a ticket?

First recorded in 1820–30, for an earlier sense; in 1960–65 for the glans sense; and in 1990–95 for the annoying person sense

Example Sentences

From The Guardian

Americans are finally waking up and seeing just how much of a bellend James Corden is, and no, we're not taking him back.

From The Guardian

Would you help a Beefeater re-grout his grandmother's bathroom – even if she called Rick Edwards a bellend?

Splendid. Bellends everywhere ...

Then came another quaint saying, with agitated moose-herders all in for "elbows up". 

'Elbows up' rallying cry evokes memories of Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe's signature move inspires defiant slogan amid U.S. threats.

When Canadian actor and comedian Mike Myers, clad in a "Canada is not for sale" T-shirt, twice mouthed the words "elbows up" and tapped his own left elbow on Saturday Night Live last weekend, he was sending a not-so-subtle signal to his compatriots north of the border: Get ready for a fight.

Facing punishing tariffs on Canadian exports and repeated jibes from U.S. President Donald Trump about their country becoming the 51st state, Canadians were understandably riled. "Elbows up" became the rallying cry they'd been looking for.

Weeks earlier, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew had warned Canada "can't be a punching bag, and we have to get our elbows up" in the face of threatened tariffs.

At protests across the country this week, including one on Tuesday outside the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canadians chanted the slogan and scrawled it across their placards. #ElbowsUp appeared all over social media, as both a call to arms and a warning to our increasingly bellicose neighbours that Canadians may be polite, but we're no pushovers.

In hockey-loving Canada, the phrase automatically evokes memories of one of the game's greatest players, Saskatchewan-born Gordie Howe, who before becoming Mr. Hockey had earned another nickname: Mr. Elbows.

Unfailingly humble, generous and gentlemanly off the ice, Howe would wield his elbows like weapons when battling for the puck.

"If a guy slashed me, I'd grab his stick, pull him up alongside me and elbow him in the head," Howe once said, describing his favourite method of retribution.

Could the pond slip in a mention of Tamworth? Of course it could ...Alan Jones allegedly indecently assaulted latest victim in northern NSW (archive link)

The eleventh alleged victim of Alan Jones has told police that the former broadcaster indecently assaulted him by grabbing and squeezing him on “his left bottom”.

According to court documents, the alleged assault of Complainant “K” occurred on Saturday, June 1, 2013, in Tamworth in northern NSW.

Huzzah and sheesh, it's way past time for the pond to go full Hanson brothers and go "elbows up" on the reptiles at the lizard Oz ... but what a dismal disappointment they are this day ...

Say what? The quivering cowardly custard jellybeans are wetting their knickers over Malware having a few words about narcissistic sociopath King Donald? 

And over on the extreme far right they were still soiling their tariff-stained jocks ...

Talk about mixed messaging ... Cameron bleating about daring to do a scolding on tariffs, with simpleton Simon channeling King Donald and bleating about a handout mentality ...

Even worse, with the bromancer still MIA, Mein Gott was the chief course on the reptile menu this day...

For some reason - do they allow ketamine in the lizard Oz? - Mein Gott was on a defence forces roll. 

It started yesterday with ANZUS pact frays under PM’s watch as Australia underspends, In the very week that heavily armed Chinese warships circumnavigated Australia, the PM is skirting defence spending obligations that risk angering the ally we need most.

This was sacred bromancer turf, the war on China ... and it was the bromancer's sacred duty to come up with bizarre images like this one to get things going, Anthony Albanese jeopardised ANZUS in the very week that heavily armed Chinese warships circumnavigated Australia. Picture: Irene Dowdy

Inspirational. The pond immediately felt a US meme coming on ...

Steady pond, steady, grit the teeth, do the hard yards, take the ball up the middle ...

For the first time since the ANZUS agreement was signed in 1951, an Australian prime minister has made statements that potentially put the agreement at risk.

Anthony Albanese jeopardised ANZUS in the very week that heavily armed Chinese warships circumnavigated Australia, revealing just how weak our defence system has become, and how much we need the US.

The ANZUS danger started when President Donald Trump’s choice to be Undersecretary of Defence for Policy at the Pentagon, Elbridge Colby, told a congressional committee he expected Australia to spend at least 3 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence to combat the rise of China.

Colby at the time may not have been aware that ANZUS commits Australia, the US and New Zealand to “maintain and develop their individual capacity to resist armed attack”.

But Colby would not have made such a statement without the backing of President Trump and/or Vice-President JD Vance.

On a simple reading of the ANZUS treaty, a defence commitment is required of Australia before the US is obligated to defend us. For the first time, at least publicly, the US has put a figure on what it requires of Australia to “resist armed attack” and, as I describe, it is a very reasonable figure that could easily have been pitched a lot higher.

Strange how Mein Gott managed to cherry pick Colby, blame it all on Albo, and ignore that yarn Trump pick for Pentagon says selling submarines to Australia would be ‘crazy’ if Taiwan tensions flare, Nominee for undersecretary for defense policy says Aukus deal to deliver Virginia class submarines could leave US sailors ‘vulnerable’

The reptiles flung in a Lambie to the slaughter, Jacqui Lambie Network Senator Jacqui Lambie has criticised the use of the Australian Defence Force during natural disasters as a “first port of call”. She has called for a civilian force called a ‘Climate Army’ to take some of the load off the ADF.

Wretched, silly woman. Fancy thinking there's something wrong with the climate that might need tackling with a "Climate Army" of all things... 

Why that's reptile heresy 101 ... she needs to get in the boat of deliverance ...

On Mein Gott ranted...

Indeed, the extra money required, which is in the vicinity of $26bn, is roughly equal to what Albanese has promised to spend on his whistle stop tour to gain votes plus the extra public servants being hired. The opposition matched most of those promises.

Albanese should have been aware that in practical terms Colby was defining the Australian ANZUS defence spending obligation.

Instead Albanese made the staggering statement “Australia determines our national interest” and the government has already boosted spending on the military to resist armed attack.

“My government is allocating significant additional resources for defence,” he said. “What is being rolled out including missiles ... is a range of assets that improve both our capability but also, importantly, our delivery.”

Defence spending

Australia currently spends a pitiful 2 per cent of GDP on defence and the Albanese plan is to lift that to just 2.34 per cent by 2034.

The US spends 3.4 per cent and is asking Europe to spend 5 per cent.

Once our Prime Minister rejected the US expectation, Colby and those close to the President and Vice President would have checked the ANZUS wording.

And already both Trump and Vance will not have been pleased by the Australian stance in the Middle East.

We face an election where, in the public’s mind, the main issues are around the cost of living, the housing crisis, migration and the huge rises in power bills.

But in reality those issues fade into total insignificance when compared to the fact that our Prime Minister has put the nation’s defence at risk at a time when a very volatile US President is in charge who will not take kindly to being told to jump in the proverbial lake. When Ukraine’s President publicly challenged Trump and his people, Ukraine lost all military support and Volodymyr Zelensky had to come back apologising.

Yep, gotta bend the knee, kiss the ring, fawn and roll over, or roll out Zoe, Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie says Labor’s record on defence expenditure has been “woeful”. Ms McKenzie told Sky News Australia that the ADF is all going “in the wrong direction”. “Again, it will fall to a Dutton government to make this country strong again.”

For some weird, godforsaken reason, Mein Gott then decided to ramble back to ancient times, attempting to match Henry, hole in bucket fixer ...

When the 1950 external affairs minister, the late Percy Spender, was negotiating the wording of the ANZUS treaty he knew that Australia was a nation that would need to spend a lot of money on defence because of our land mass and coastline.

Australia has the eighth-largest coastline in the world and the 10th highest land area per capita – a huge defence burden. In addition we have long supply lines.

In the past, we were attractive to Japan and in the long term, we could conceivably be attractive to China, India and Indonesia, all of whom have much greater military capacity.

Australia’s current military expenditure of 2 per cent of GDP is 0.5 per cent below the OECD average. Australia is 0.8 per cent below the high-income country average, but Australia has a much harder defence task and is in a more perilous position than most other countries.

Defence disasters

We have wasted vast amounts of our past expenditure on equipment disasters and we have allowed our Australian Defence Force land forces to run down.

Given the rundown of our current defence capacity and the enormity of our defence task, if anything, the US requirement is too low. And the position is set to get worse because our future expenditure level on non-nuclear submarine areas does not keep up – that 2.34 per cent by 2034 forward expenditure is increasingly devoted to the nuclear submarine program.

If there is to be a crisis it will likely happen well before our frigates and submarines are in operation. Accordingly, the US require-ment is very much in line with the intent of the ANZUS treaty.

There have been 14 prime ministers since Robert Menzies approved the ANZUS treaty. Almost all of them realised that we obtained the treaty through a stroke of brilliant negotiating by Spender so they reinforced it by sending troops overseas whenever asked by the US including to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Accordingly, it is important to remind the current government how we achieved ANZUS. In the first half-decade after 1945, Australia made many approaches to the Pentagon seeking an ANZUS-type treaty. It was firmly rejected by the US defence top brass.

Then in 1950, somehow, Spender landed a 15 to 20-minute appointment with president Harry Truman. Legend has it he walked into Truman’s office and found the president distraught. His daughter, Margaret Truman, had been out singing the night before and was absolutely decimated by the press. Whatever Spender had planned to say to president Truman he put aside and spent almost all his time bemoaning the evils of the press.

Eventually, Truman pointed out to Spender that they had spent almost all the allocated time taking about his daughter. He asked whether there was anything specific that Spender wanted; Spender answered something like this: “Yes Mr President – I would like a defence pact between my country, NZ and the United States of America.”

Truman agreed it was a good idea and Spender left the room. Spender signed ANZUS in 1951.

What that has to do with a narcissistic sociopath escaped the pond, but another meme did come to mind...

Yes, he did actually say that, though the meme tarts it up a little ... and he also called Uncle Leon "very unique", which long-suffering, incredibly patient correspondents know, always sends the pond into a frenzy ...

But back to immediate woes. With the bromancer having deserted the field, like aforesaid cowardly custards, Mein Gott lined up for a second dose today, with Mayday, mayday: Australia will have to lift defence spending, Regardless, of who wins the upcoming federal election, Australia will have to accept the US demand that we lift defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP.

More supine kissing of the ring, beginning with a snap of a sub that Colby would deny the country, US Navy officers stand guard aboard Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Minnesota (SSN-783) after the vessel docked at HMAS Stirling in Rockingham. Picture: Colin Murty/Getty Images

How many ways can you mash up a lettuce to produce pretty much the same word salad? Let Mein Gott show you how ...

It's time to face the reality of our ANZUS commitment, so which ever political parties win government will be forced to accept the US demand that we lift our defence sending from 2 to 3 per cent of GDP.

The debating point will be the time frame, but it will be somewhere between three and five years.

Inevitably, as is happening in Europe, this will trigger a much-needed substantial rise in defence expenditure. If the looming federal budget’s forward estimates don’t account for this defence expenditure rise, they will be total fiction.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap featuring hands on hips, Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers during a visit to the Gallipoli Barracks. Picture: Tertius Pickard/NewsWire

That set Mein Gott off again ...

Australia will need to choose between cutting benefits/infrastructure spending or making the business of government more efficient and reducing the public service.

A really smart government would reduce the cost-cutting by growing our GDP via a substantial boost to our defence related industrial base.

But money is just the start of our challenge because at the same time the nature of warfare is changing dramatically.

The last time we had a major emergency which showed the weakness in our industrial base was in 1940 when Prime Minister Robert Menzies appointed the then chief executive of BHP, Essington Lewis, as “director of munitions” with incredible powers. When John Curtin became PM in 1941 he further expanded the Essington Lewis powers. Although we are not fighting a war, the current Australian challenges have many similarities to those that faced Essington Lewis.

The defence revolution/industrial base boosting task ahead is completely beyond the current five fiefdom defence management structure – three services, the Department of Defence and the politicians. Currently, most areas of defence prefer to source equipment overseas

Australia desperately needs an “Essington Lewis” outside the five fiefdoms with deep business strategic ability to co-ordinate the increased spending and expand and adapt our industrial base to the new warfare environment.

There will be many to consider, but I believe the best person to do that job is the retiring BHP chairman and former Amcor CEO Ken MacKenzie.

Why did Mein Gott pick him? 

Well Essington Lewis, BHP, dinkum Oz steel, Broken Hill, the horsies, and so inevitably BHP chairman Ken Mackenzie at the Melbourne Cup. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

QED ... with another inspired, inspirational burst to come ...

Australia’s first task is to be able to defend ourselves against any attack in the next two or three years. We must embrace the lessons of the Ukraine war, where low cost drones and missiles proved incredibly effective.

As I explained last week, we have world-class drone technology which needs to be mobilised and developed and converted into a major manufacturing operation. We need a similar approach in missiles.

In both drones and missiles, we need to look carefully at what others are doing. An integral part of that mobilisation is the harnessing of enhanced computer power led by artificial intelligence, plus sharing information with US.

President Trump will respect a top business person like MacKenzie.

Then comes the longer term investment in ships, submarines and aircraft. Again we need to look at what China is doing, particularly with its molten salt cooled thorium ships and submarines plus its new aircraft.

I know it’s heresy, but I am fearful that today’s nuclear submarine technology that we are buying for delivery in the 2040s will be outdated by the time we actually put it into operation.

A “MacKenzie” appointment will need to attract both local and overseas talent with the necessary skills and knowledge to make and implement decisions.

I have not approached MacKenzie, so the first he knows he might be a candidate for a job that currently does not exist comes from these columns. The industrial base created will need to have long term government contracts plus world-class efficiency to attract private investment.

The person appointed defence minister after the election will obviously be crucial to the nation’s future

The current Defence Minister Richard Marles should have been a great defence minister, particularly as he understood the need for space communication. But he wasn’t strong enough in cabinet and his excellent pre-election announced space communication plans were trashed. Maybe it’s not possible to be deputy PM and defence minister at the same time because defence should be the biggest job in the Cabinet outside the PM.

He knows it's heresy?

It all sounded like rampant, desperate stupidity to the pond, but never mind, cue a snap of Defence Minister Richard Marles during a visit to the Gallipoli Barracks. Picture: Tertius Pickard/NewsWire

Then it was time for the pastie Hastie to do a tour of duty ...

On the Coalition side, Andrew Hastie understands better than most that what’s happening in Ukraine and requires Australia to change dramatically. But there is danger because I don't know what part he played in Coalition’s announced plan to invest further in the JSF-F35 which “runs out of petrol” not long after it leaves our shores which means it must be refuelled midair, making it very vulnerable. Perhaps it can be adapted using Israel’s technology to support drones and missiles operating on our shores.

The Coalition needs to put before voters a clear defence policy that meets US requirements and protects ANZUS. Then Hastie needs to tour the country — including defence bases – explaining it.

The Coalition and ALP will also need to build up our regular army defence capacity which is falling away, possibly by some form of national service. Compulsory national military service is not popular, but national service on a voluntary basis with considerable incentives might work. Non-military actives can be involved. We have run out of control is crime problem in most states. Communities are demanding restricted bail access and long jail sentences for violent youth gangsters.

Oh dear, the pond could see where this was heading, but first a final snap, Vice Admiral Jonathan Dallas Mead, Peter Malinauskas, Richard Marles and Andrew Hastie. Picture: Brett Hartwig

Nasho!

An alternative might be some form of national service, which would separate young gangsters from the Middle Eastern crime bosses who infiltrate the jails.

Sixty-six countries have some form of national service (not all military) including Austria, Sweden, Singapore, South Korea, and Israel.

National service is a complex issue, but it will need to be put on the table to boost the ADF.

We can be thankful that the US is forcing us to address these issues, just as it is doing Europe. The game has changed.

A complex issue? Not when you have the mind of an eggbeater... and once that thought of broken Humpty Dumpty eggs was out in the open, the pond felt another meme coming on ...

  

Shut up, no you shut up, no Dame Groan's gotta groan, let her groan in peace ...

Sure that egg meme was eggceptionally* long (* licensed from Otto Preminger in Batman), but the pond's got to do something to make life less miserable, eggspecially* as all that is left is this day's eggscruciating* groaning ... Politician’s spendathon takes voters for mugs, Very little attention is now paid to the trade-offs inherent in government spending. If it looks like a political winner, this is generally considered to provide a green light to proceed.

It was allegedly a five minute read, and it began with one of those banal snaps featuring politicians the pond would rather forget, Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese.

Exhausted already, the pond simply served up the Groaning, with correspondents equally unlikely to find anything worth noting ...

While the federal election campaign has not officially commenced, our letterbox tells a different story. It’s been full of ­political campaign material for some time. Sadly, the deliverers take no notice of the No Junk Mail instruction.

Generally, I don’t bother reading the pamphlets; it’s straight to the bin – recycling, of course. But one larger insert did grab my attention, not least because of the clear cost of its production. It was a 12-page, high-quality leaflet headed Community News from the local Labor member. (She’s new to me; we’ve been switched into a different electorate.)

It’s fair to assume that taxpayers footed the bill for this publication and its delivery given the Australian coat of arms on the front page. It was modestly subtitled, Achievements Edition 2022-25, with a very large photo of the sitting member taking up most of the first page.

Now perhaps it’s fair enough that local members can access taxpayer funds to put out information newsletters. But check out this member’s message on page two. “If Australia chooses the Liberal Party and Peter Dutton, there is a real threat to the progress we have made. They have a record of gutting Medicare, pushing wages down and making life harder for everyday Australians. A government led by Peter Dutton would take us backwards, and I’m not willing to let that happen.”

Oh FFS, newsletters containing political messages? Is that the best she can find to groan about this day, and is this the most stimulating snap the reptiles could find?Treasurer Jim Chalmers talks at a press conference at Ampol Oil refinery at Lytton. Picture: Lachie Millard

Dame Groan was on the newsletter case in a big way ...

I’m not sure how this sitting member thinks these sentences could be construed as community news. Should taxpayers really be funding this obvious political campaigning? My guess is these words are not original to the member but have been provided to her by Labor’s campaign headquarters.

Page three is clearly not original but it’s again sourced from the Labor Party. It’s entitled What we’ve done since we were elected. A great deal of the material is of no obvious interest to the member’s electorate but what the heck. The themes covered include cost of living, housing, environment, women, health, education and climate action.

But the most astonishing feature of the glossy is the eight pages telling us what the local member has been delivering for various parts of the electorate, full of multiple colour photos of the local member attending various events.

It’s as if she is channelling a combination of Santa Claus and the Easter bunny as she outlines the 199 projects she has “delivered”. Nowhere in the 12 pages does she thank taxpayers for providing the funds for this largesse.

There are sporting schools grants, the National Student Wellbeing program, the Strengthening Medicare grants, energy efficiency grants, volunteer grants, Australia Day event grants 2025 (if that went ahead), Commonwealth Home Support Program, National Shed Development Program, Community Language School Grants, Regional and Local Publishers Program, Early Childhood Educator grants, and the list goes on.

One can only presume the bureaucrats in Canberra are instructed to provide this program expenditure information for each electorate. Apart from the questionable ethics of using taxpayers to fund clearly political campaign material – and let’s face it, both sides do it – one of the concerning issues raised by this copious list of the member “delivering” is what the hell the federal government is doing funding sporting grants to local schools and the like.

Yes, it's a conspiracy by the deep state, cardigan wearers on the march, which is why the reptiles rolled out the dog botherer as an AV distraction, Sky News host Chris Kenny discusses Labor and the Coalition’s pledge to spend over $8 billion on Medicare for the upcoming federal election. “When they want real consultation and longer visits they will go to their own GPs,” Mr Kenny said. “Who are then stuck with the longer and less profitable medicine and you only exacerbate the problem in the end because they have to charge for that.”

Is it worth noting that the mutton Dutton rolled out a matching offer, and raised it? (warning, News Corp link)

Probably not, no need to get the hive mind in a flap, Dame Groan is already imitating a startled Melbourne sparrow ...

But it reflects the extremely confused nature of federal financial relations as well as the widespread incidence of clear pork barrelling at the micro level. (To be frank, it’s unclear why any level of government should be funding many of the activities listed.)

The thing is that a government “delivering” really begins to add up – just look at the state of the federal government’s fiscal position. When Labor first came to power, federal government budget spending was $627bn, or 24.4 per cent of GDP. This financial year, it is expected to come in at $731bn, or 26.5 per cent of GDP.

Next financial year, according to MYEFO – we will know more at the end of this month when another budget is handed down – spending will increase further, to 27.2 per cent of GDP. Leaving aside Covid, these sorts of percentages are what you might expect during a war!

Note here the Albanese government has used the trick of parking a great deal of expenditure off-budget – think Future Made in Australia, Housing Australia Future Fund, Rewiring the Nation. This is then picked up in much larger negative headline cash balances rather than the underlying cash balances of which the latter measure the government prefers.

According to the latest MYEFO, the headline deficit next financial year is expected to be $70bn compared with the underlying deficit of $47bn – a very substantial gap. There is a great deal of spending now being hidden off-budget.

The real tragedy in these figures is that neither the Treasurer nor the Prime Minister regards the dramatic ramp-up in spending or the forecast of years of budget deficits as problems.

We need to go back to the 2019 campaign to recall a time when both parties attempted to attract voters based on their respective ability to manage the budget, when debt and deficits mattered.

At this point, with a $9 billion offer on the table from the mutton Dutton, the reptiles flung in another AV distraction:

Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume has called out the Albanese government’s “wasteful spending” of which there is “nearly $100 billion”. The Labor Party has announced a major $8.5 billion investment in Medicare, promising nine out of 10 Australians will have their GP visits fully covered. The Coalition not only matched the promise but also pledged another $500 million as both major parties go head-to-head on healthcare ahead of the federal election. “For the last three years, we’ve been pointing to so much wasteful spending by this government,” Ms Hume told Sky News Australia. “We’ve opposed billions, dozens of billions, nearly $100 billion worth of Labor spending that we would not have gone ahead with.”

All that meant that Dame Groan could go into a final gobbet, all Ancient Mariner and doom-laden prophetess, announcing a "day of reckoning" in best biblical, apocalyptic style ...

To be sure, then opposition leader Bill Shorten aimed to repair the budget by introducing a raft of new taxes, but at least fiscal responsibility was a consideration. These days committing a cool $9bn over four years to increase the incidence of bulk-billing in GP practices is almost seen as immaterial. The fact is that providing bulk-billing to those who can clearly afford to pay a co-payment makes no sense. But the really important point is there is a massive deadweight loss in this type of spending.

Because a high proportion of patients are already bulk-billed, the real cost of that extra bulk-billed appointment may be as high as $300, even though the actual cost is tad over $40. In other words, because the subsidies apply to already bulk-billed patients, the real cost to the taxpayer for achieving higher rates of bulk-billing is extremely high.

Sadly, the opposition has thrown its support behind this policy, while committing to spend some additional millions targeted at mental health.

A similar point can be made about the government’s decision to spend another billion dollars to establish more Urgent Care Clinics, even though the effectiveness of these clinics has yet to be evaluated. In addition to distorting local markets for primary care, the early indications are that the actual cost per consultation at these clinics may be as high as $200.

These are just two examples of many, many more that could be cited of the government “delivering”, which is just code for using other people’s money to win votes.

Far too little is done to consider the case for spending programs and how they should be designed to provide maximum effectiveness. Very little attention is now paid to the trade-offs inherent in government spending. If it looks like a political winner, this is generally considered to provide a green light to proceed.

There will be a day of reckoning; it’s just that most of the political leaders will be enjoying their retirements at this point.

Oh there's always a day of reckoning ... even the Swedes are going elbows up ...

And so to celebrate and finish off this day's groaning with an immortal Rowe ...

It's always in the sandbagging details ...

Finally, this is two hours long (2 hours!) and is best watched on YouTube ... consider this a teaser trailer.

You could download it to avoid the commercials, but poor old PBS probably needs the revenue doled out by the Google giant in a miserly, outrageous revenue split ...

It helps explain a lot ... and not just because Roy Cohn was the Cantaloupe Caligula's mentor. 

There are many eerie parallels between McCarthy and current events, current times, current players, including the hysteria, the bullying and the obeisance of the GOP, and the endless wait for an Ed Murrow ready to call "enough already", and someone willing to ask "have you no sense of decency?" ... and make it stick ...

Sure, the show is delivered PBS softball style, with the rampant homosexuality downplayed (not that there's anything wrong with that, unless it involves rampant hypocrisy), and it ends weirdly with a tribute to the man. 

That could be construed as meta-ironic, the incredible strength and depth of the cult surrounding a power-crazed alcoholic intent on mass destruction, but on the surface, it just sounds like more NY Times pandering ...