In March 1997, two Washington reporters published a book entitled Mirage: Why Neither Democrats nor Republicans Can Balance the Budget, End the Deficit, and Satisfy the Public. The authors were George Hager, then a reporter for the CQ Weekly Report, and Eric Pianin of the Washington Post. A blurb on Amazon described the book as “a story of wishful thinking compounded by a chronic failure of leadership.” The clear theme: the budget would never be balanced.

Street protests over the US decision have been held worldwide, and perhaps surprisingly, political elites in many countries, including among key US allies, followed suit. This included angry condemnations at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and a resolution tabled by Egypt at the UN Security Council to nullify the US decision, which Washington vetoed in spite of support from the body's fourteen other permanent and rotating members.

may dung

So much for that lie. Now fast forward to Ukraine and Crimea. Since Theresa May is apparently ignorant of the fact, Crimea is Russia so for a start how can Russia annex itself, let alone illegally? Secondly, the democratically elected President of Ukraine was Viktor Yanokovich, before he was ousted in a putsch inspired by Fascists and terrorists in a murderous act in which Ukrainian security forces fired on their own people to create martyrs to a cause. Theresa May was and remains silent about the massacres of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by the putchist forces after the President was removed.

Retired Army officer Jim Molan has been declared a senator for New South Wales, replacing former Nationals deputy leader Fiona Nash, who was forced out of Parliament because of her dual citizenship.

Just over five years ago, nobody in WA politics had a brighter looking future than Christian Porter.

At the age of just 42, and only four years into his parliamentary career, Mr Porter was already treasurer and attorney-general in the WA Government and widely seen as the man who would ultimately take over from Colin Barnett as premier.

Johnson is scheduled to visit Moscow this Friday in what would be the first official visit by a British Foreign Secretary to Russia in more than five years.

The Turnbull government’s proposed emissions targets for the electricity sector would mean every car would need to be taken off the roads immediately, or every cow would need to be taken off farms from next year, for Australia to reach the targets it committed to as part of the Paris agreement, according to analysis conducted by the Greens.

nits

In the run-up to Christmas, President Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of some surprising good news and glad tidings.

Sunday, Vladimir Putin called to thank him and the CIA for providing Russia with critical information that helped abort an ISIS plot to massacre visitors at Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

Labor and the Greens have blasted new annual emissions projections, and the Turnbull government’s review of its climate policies, characterising the Coalition’s action on climate change as woefully inadequate.

The government’s plans to address foreign influence in Australian life provide an opportunity for the first time to define the level of Israeli activity designed to influence the making of our foreign policy. George Brandis didn’t plan this. But it is likely to be an outcome.  

mueller gets some emails...

it is now a year since President Trump took office in the White House. It is becoming possible to discern his political ambitions, despite the destructive confrontation in the US between his partisans and his adversaries, detrimental to all.

The facts are all the more difficult to establish since Donald Trump himself masks his principal realisations behind a flood of contradictory declarations and Tweets, and his opposition presents him, via their own medias, as a lunatic.