Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Second rate reporter says what?

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

An almost top 10,000 blog!

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

This blog will pay for itself.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

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War for Ukraine Day 1,394: Ukraine, Which Does Not Have a Navy, Is Destroying Russia Through Naval Warfare

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Russian invasion of Ukraine is the logical consequence of the unpunished invasion of Georgia.

Russian ​invasion of Europe will be the inevitable result of Impunity in Ukraine, if allowed.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 1:20 PM

Ukraine’s Navy is nascent and minimalist at best. Despite that reality, the Ukrainians have been kicking Russian dupa on and below the water.

Of GREAT INTEREST

Unconfirmed reports from Russian social media, a Russian vessel attacked in Mediterrean and a high-ranking official of a security service was killed.

Don’t want to spewculate publicly at this stage

Awaiting more information

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— H I Sutton (@covertshores.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 2:28 AM

Per Russian reporting shared via @bunkerhunter.bsky.social, it is a tanker, and the high-ranking official General Andrei Averyanov of the GRU.

Why would a GRU boss be on a shadow fleet tanker? ;)

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— H I Sutton (@covertshores.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 2:35 AM

In the Med
A GRU General made his bed
So now he has to lay in it

— H I Sutton (@covertshores.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 2:52 AM

Ukrainian drones have, for the first time, struck a russian tanker in the Mediterranean Sea, 2,000 km from Ukrainian territory.

The targeted vessel, QENDIL, had delivered oil to India’s Sikka port earlier this month and was returning to Ust-Luga.

It was likely his last run 👀

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 7:37 AM

/2. The tanker sustained critical damage and is now unfit for its intended use. This effectively removes another asset from Russia’s shadow logistics network, which has been used to bypass sanctions and sustain the war effort.

— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 6:19 AM

/3. Russian vessel was not carrying any cargo and was fully empty. As a result, the operation posed no threat to the environmental safety of the region, avoiding any risk of pollution or ecological damage.

And Russia’s fleet is no longer beyond reach even in waters of the Mediterranean

— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 6:20 AM

These successful attacks on Russian naval and commercial vessels is having an effect:

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet crews face ultimatum to sign contract and stay on ships or get automatically transferred to 810th Marine Brigade’s meat assaults, HUR intercept reveals.

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 11:25 AM

President Zelenskyy was in Poland today for meetings. He did not make a daily address, but he did do a joint press conference with Polish President Karol Nawrocki. Here’s the video:

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As Settled as a Fat Wombat in Its Burrow

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In case the title didn’t give away the subject of this post, I’m sure this image (which makes me so very happy) did!

Australia Day

Australia Election Follow-up

by Viva BrisVegas and Pete Downunder

It’s not over until the plus-size lady sings, but the 2025 Australian Federal Election is as settled as a fat wombat in its burrow. As of writing, Labor has of a certainty 92 seats (electorates) in the House, the Liberal Party 40, Independents 10, and the Greens 0. This leaves 8 seats as yet undecided. In those undecided seats, Labor is ahead in 2, the Liberals in 4, Independents in 1 and Greens in 1. Counting in the undecided seats is complicated by our preferential voting system, but should be completed in most of the undecided seats this week.

The term “Liberals” used here is a catch all to include all the conservative parties acting in coalition, such as The Liberal Party, The National Party, The Liberal National Party, and The Country Liberal Party. All these parties have essentially the same policies and are only differentiated in marketing terms. They are all right wing bastards, whose only purpose when in power is to funnel cash into the pockets of the richest people in the country and to punch down as hard as possible at refugees, the unemployed, LGBTQI communities, Aboriginals or anybody else they deem unworthy. The Liberal Party was created in 1944 out of the wreckage of previous conservative parties who were thrown out of government because of their incompetence in the early stages of WW2. Since then the Liberals have proven themselves fiscally incompetent, militarily reckless and socially regressive, yet they have been in power for 50 of the past 80 years. They last lost government to the Labor Party in 2022 having been in power since 2013. This is Labor’s first election as a government since 2010.

Labor is a party created in the 1890s as the political arm of the Union Movement. The first Labor government was elected in 1904. It still retains strong Union ties, even though successive Liberal governments have weakened union bargaining power by making almost all strike activity illegal and union organisers personally subject to claims for financial losses by employers, such that Unions now represent only a fraction of the workers that they once did. Like the Liberal Party it consists of several factions who compete for ministerial posts. Unlike the Liberal Party, where the factions range from Centre Right to the dominant Far Right, the Labor factions range from Far Left to Centre Right.

The Greens are a party that arose out the environmental movement of the 1970s, although the party didn’t form until 1992. In its earliest iterations it can lay claim to being among the first Green political movements in the world. They are a left wing party whose factions seem to be based more on personalities than on policies. They compete with Labor for the left wing vote. This has led to a great deal of bad feeling between the parties at the organisational level. Voters couldn’t care less. It does however make Senate negotiations more fraught than would normally be expected.

This election continues the trend away from the two party (Labor/Liberal) system that prevailed throughout the 20th Century. Once 90%+ of first preference votes (number 1 on the ballot) could be expected to go to one of the two main parties, which made it almost impossible for anyone else to win a House seat. In this election the Liberals got 32%, Labor got 34% and Others got 33% of first preferences. The result of this is a trend towards more independents and Greens being elected at each future election. This election was a landslide, with a dominant Labor result, but if these trends continue future governments of either Liberal or Labor will likely be elected with a minority and only be able to form government with the consent of independents or Greens. If you are wondering how Labor achieved a landslide with only 34% of first preferences, it is because it receives the bulk of Greens second preferences. The two party preferred vote is the result once all preferences have been distributed.

As an example of preferential voting, the undecided Green seat is Ryan, Pete Downunder’s home electorate, where so far the Liberal candidate got 35%, Greens 29% and Labor 28% (at this writing, the vote count is at 86%) with minor parties taking up the rest. Since they are both left leaning voters, Labor voters will mostly preference the Greens over the right wing Liberals and Green voters will mostly preference Labor over the Liberals. Thus, if as seems likely the Green party is second and Labor third, then Greens will win the seat. This would leave the Greens with one House seat out of the four they held before the election. Should Labor come in second, then they would win the seat.

The Australian Senate functions slightly differently than in the US. It is a body of legislative review and has veto power over any legislation that is passed by the House of Representatives. It runs on majority rule, there is no nonsense about supermajorities or nuclear options. It consists of 76 seats filled by 12 senators from each of the six states and 2 senators from each of the two territories, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (think District of Columbia). The territories were not represented in the Senate until 1975. State senators go to election every 6 years (two House terms), territory senators go to election very 3 years (one House term). 39 seats out of 76 are required for a majority. The voting system for the Senate is tedious and complex, but in essence it’s a quota based proportional representation system which favours the smaller parties. When presented with it, quantum physicists have been known to run screaming from the room tearing their hair out.

Prior to this election there were 30 Liberal, 25 Labor, 11 Green, 2 One Nation, and 8 independent senators. This meant that the Labor government required Greens and independents support to pass any legislation through the Senate that was opposed by the Liberals. Support which was not forthcoming on a number of occasions.

To date the Senate count is only 76% complete, but a probable result for the new Senate looks like being 27 Liberal, 30 Labor and 11 Greens, with Others yet to be determined. The Labor and Greens numbers could form a left leaning Senate majority should they choose to co-operate. Fewer different parties involved in Senate negotiations generally results in fewer compromises in the legislation.

In Australian terms this election is a landslide victory. What is more remarkable is that it is the best result for Labor since 1943 (the middle of WWII). In Australia, it is usual for governments to come into office with thumping majorities and then have that lead whittled away in subsequent elections. In this election Labor has gone against that trend and substantially increased its representation in the House from an already excellent result in the 2022 election.

The pundits are already busy announcing that they knew the result all along. This is despite repeatedly announcing before the election that it was tight, that Labor was in trouble of losing its majority, yadda yadda. The pollsters also have egg on their collective faces as they too grossly underestimated the Labor vote.

Everybody has a theory to explain the result. The main one in the media seems to be that Dutton, the Opposition Leader, was inherently unelectable. This didn’t seem to be problem all last year when they favoured him and his party to win convincingly. So what changed between the end of last year and the election? What made Dutton unelectable? Did something happen in January this year to alter the political environment in Australia?

The obvious answer to all three questions is Trump. Trump happened. Threats to Canada happened. Threats to a fellow Commonwealth country do not go unnoticed here. Tariffs happened. People notice when their country gets slapped with tariffs by the US despite running a trade balance substantially in the US’s favour. They don’t like it when somebody disses our penguins. They don’t like Trump and they don’t like conservative politicians like Dutton who play footsie with Trump. Is the Trump Factor real? There are efforts in the Murdoch media to press the argument that it is not. Which makes it all the more convincing that is as real as day.

Although it didn’t help that Dutton was trying to sell an absurd nuclear power policy and that his culture war stances went down like a lead balloon. Agreeing with Nazis that Aboriginal “Welcome to Country” ceremonies were a woke imposition on our culture, didn’t find purchase outside of right wing media. The Liberals entrenched misogyny has also resulted in a widening gender gap. Women voters in normally safe Liberal seats have been voting in droves for female independents who are generally fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

Since Dutton lost his own seat in the election, on Tuesday the Liberals meet to elects a new leader. It is a contest between Angus Taylor, a Liberal Party stalwart of the old school, and Sussan Ley, one of the very few prominent women MPs in the Liberal Party. Given the gender gap in voting, if they are not suicidal they will pick Ley.

Big thanks once again to two of our Australia peeps, Viva BrisVegas and Pete Downunder, for their great work in keeping us informed!

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Australia Day (Open Thread)

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I am declaring today Australia Day.  My day started at 4 am to get the Australia election post going, and it was so interesting that I stayed up to read it  – if you missed it, check it out.   This photo is the other Australia bookend, totally making my day.

I have been assured by our two Aussie BJ peeps who did the live blogging election thread that this is indeed a real photo of people voting.  I’ll share it again later this week, with the article that’s the source of the photo, when we get an update on how things are playing out after the election.

It’s not enough that you guys get Democracy Sausages.  Nope, you even vote in your swimsuits, and every one of you is more fit than I am and has more shapely legs and a better rear end than I have.  I am making a note to remind myself to speak to the manager about that! :-)

Anyway, big thanks to Pete Downunder and Viva CrisVegas for all their time and effort in keeping us informed!

I am almost tempted to change my laptop wallpaper to this image because it makes me smile every time I look at it.  I can’t explain why I love it so much; I just do.  I will try to restrain myself from making this the sidebar image at some point this week.

Totally open thread.

Australia Day (Open Thread)Post + Comments (63)

Australia Election Results (LIVE)

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Pete Downunder and Viva BrisVegas have offered to kind of live blog results in the comments, until or unless the counting goes really late into the night.

Up Next, Australia Elections!

All of our other Australia peeps are invited to chime in, as well, so please share what you know or you think you know!

It would be irresponsible not to speculate, right?.

Here’s an encouraging graphic:

Up Next, Australia Elections! 1

Further information and source of the graphic:  Surveys and Public Opinion Polls

Pete Downunder starts us off with a great introduction that I promise will not make your eyes glaze over!

Good morning US jackals. It is 7 pm here on the east coast of Australia and the polls closed an hour ago. Viva BrisVegas and I will try to keep you up to date on the results. WaterGirl posted my summary yesterday, but here’s a brief recap. Australia has a parliamentary system with a House of Representatives (considered the senior house) and a Senate (considered the junior one). The holder of a majority (either outright or with a coalition) in the House selects the Prime Minister. All of the government officials are called Ministers (like US department heads) and are chosen from sitting members of either chamber. Voting is compulsory and we expect about a 90% turnout.

Today we will focus on the House because that’s where the government will be chosen.   The Senate election is *too complicated for mortals to understand and won’t really matter too much, although if the House majority also gets a Senate majority they can do pretty much whatever they like.

There are 150 seats in the House, so 76 are needed to win. The seats, called electorates,  are given names, most for historical reasons, and each is meant to represent about 114,000 voters (for a total of 17,100,000, though there are about 18 million voters). The total population is about 25 million but that includes non-citizens and people under 18. While the urban electorates are relatively compact, the rural ones can be huge. The seat of Maranoa, which stretches across south-western Queensland, is larger than France. Not a lot of folks out there.

There are two major parties: Labor (spelled the US way) and the Liberals. Labor is a center left party, think democrats, and the misnamed Liberals are center right, think pre-MAGA republicans. There is also a further right rural party called the National party which for many years has joined with the Liberals so the joint party is called the LNP or Coalition. There is a minor left leaning party, the Greens, which is a sensible left, and there is a minor right wing party called One Nation which is basically racist. There is also a group of independents who are fiscally conservative but socially liberal backed by environmental groups who are called the Teals because of the color used on their yard signs and bill boards. The Labor color is red, LNP is blue, the Greens are green and One Nation is kind of a pumpkin orange.

The current governing party is Labor, and the PM is Anthony Albanese (known universally as Albo). The leader of the opposition LNP is former policeman Peter Dutton who would become PM if LNP were to get a majority. Albo’s seat is called Grayndler in New South Wales and is considered a safe Labor seat. Dutton’s seat is Dickson in Queensland and is very marginal and there is a chance Dutton could lose his own seat.

Going into the election Labor holds a thin majority of 78 seats, LNP 56 and the Greens and independents (collectively called the crossbench) have 16. To win government the LNP has to flip 20 seats. As recently as January polling suggested that was possible as Albo has been uninspiring. However, as in Canada, Trump’s madness has turned things around and the polling now suggests Labor will get at least a plurality (and could form government if joining with the crossbench) or an outright majority. Obviously, polls are not always accurate and polling has become harder as no one answers their phones any more.

According to the ABC (our PBS) The key areas to watch as counting begins are the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. The Coalition will want to see large swings going its way in seats such as Werriwa and Gilmore in NSW, and McEwen and Aston in Victoria. If they don’t get swings in those seats, Mr Dutton’s hopes of knocking over Mr Albanese after just one term will start to look very shaky.

Three seats in Queensland, all around Brisbane, will also be interesting as they are current Green but are hotly sought after by both LNP and Labor, they are Brisbane, Griffith and Ryan. I live in Ryan and Viva BrisVegas in Brisbane so those are of particular interest to us.

And color commentary from Viva BrisVegas

It is traditional that schools or service organizations sell BBQ’d sausages on slices of bread with grilled onions (called snags here) at polling booths.  They are referred to as democracy sausages.

Democracy sausage is the susage sizzle that most polling stations put on to raise money while hosting the polling station. Polling stations are usually churches or schools and can be public or private.

There are also democracy cakes!

Democracy cakes shows some ladies selling (overpriced) home made cakes. Hope they make a profit.

Polling Station

The one named polling station is at St Johns Anglican Church Hall in the Brisbane suburb of Hendra, about 2 kms from me. Shows the corflutes and volunteers handing out How To Vote (HTV) cards. You can follow these HTVs or not, as your whim allows.

How to Vote cards

A the polls volunteers from the parties in their colored shirts hand out how to vote cards to approaching voters. They must remain at least 12 meters (about 40 feet) from the entrance and absolutely no electioneering is allowed inside the booth. The How to Vote cards contain their party’s suggestions of how preferences should be allocated with their party #1 of course. Preference flows can determine the winner. In my seat of Ryan (suburban Brisbane) in 2022 the LNP candidate got the most first preferences – about 38% from memory but the Green candidate with only 30% first preferences won because all the Labor preferences went to her.

*The Senate voting paper in my state of Queensland was huge (again), about 3 feet long.

Okay, here we go!  Fingers crossed for a good election result for Australia, which will be good for all of us.

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Up Next, Australia Elections!

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In the wee hours after the elections in Canada on Tuesday, Pete Downunder was kind enough to share kind of a primer on the upcoming Australia elections.  I found it super helpful, so with his permission I’ve copied it here.

So study up!   If you want to know what’s up before this Saturday morning when results start coming in. :-)

I will have an Australia election results  post up at 5am on Saturday morning (blog time) where Pete Downunder has offered to kind of live blog the results in real time as they start coming in.  All of our other Australia peeps are invited to chime in, as well, and share what you know or you think you know!

AUSTRALIA PRIMER

Now that Canada has shown the way, we’re up next on 3 May (our time: GMT +10). At the risk of repeating what many of you (and all Aussie Jackals) know, we have a house and a senate. Unless the party with a house majority also has a senate majority the senate acts as a restraint on the majority.

The leader of the majority party in the house is the Prime Minister. To confuse Americans further, the left-ish (or more accurately slightly less right-ish) party is Labor (spelled the US way not the UK way for historical reasons too boring to go into here.) Its colour is Red. The center to far right-ish party is misleadingly named the Liberal Party (again for boring historical reasons). Because the Liberals have an alliance with a right-leaning country based party called the National Party they are usually referred to as the Coalition or the LNP. Their colour is Blue.

They are the major parties. The main minority party is the left leaning Green party whose colour, surprise, is Green. There is also a group of independents whose backgrounds vary but tend to be center to center left but who have in common support from an environmental funder. Their colour is Teal and collectively they are called the Teals but they are not a party and each is an independent individual. Some, but not all, are defectors from the LNP. There are also a scattering of minor parties on the right but they are increasingly irrelevant.

We have mandatory preferential voting. Not only must you vote but you must number all the boxes in order of preference. In my electorate the ballot has 8 boxes, one each for Labor, LNP and Greens and 5 more for some minor parties and independents. My electorate is one of few with a Green incumbent but the LNP is desperate to get the seat back.

After all the votes are cast, if no one has 50% + 1, the election officials then go through those with the lowest votes as #1 and allocate their preferences as shown on the ballots. This is repeated until one candidate exceeds 50%. For example in my electorate Labor wants its voters to vote Labor #1 and Greens #2 and LNP #8 and the rest are more or less random. The Greens ask their voters to do basically the same but with Greens #1 and Labor # 2 and LNP last. Thus a major party candidate who can’t win on their own can get over the line with other party preferences. There will be quiz on this next week.

At the moment Labor holds a majority with Anthony Albonese (known universally as Albo) as PM. The Guardian newspaper recently ran a fun contest to chose the invertebrate of the year. I nominated Albo as he is totally spineless. Good hearted but useless. The Opposition is a former cop named Peter Dutton who is far right but not insane like Trump. He is really unlikable. Up until a few months ago, Australian polling was putting LNP in front, but the Trump madness has, like in Canada, turned things around and Labor now barely leads in the polls. As in Canada it could be a minority Labor government with the Greens and Teals holding the balance of power.

That is more than you wanted to know about Australian elections. I’ll will take questions but I don’t want to always see the same hands. I also welcome additions and corrections from other Aussies.

I believe Australia is 10 hours different from us, but Pete is up right now (it’s the wee hours of Friday morning in Australia and he will be on this thread in case anyone has any questions or wants to talk about the election.

I have family in Australia, so this is even more personal for me, but in the current environment, we all have to follow a lot of things that we might have paid less attention to in the past.

Update:

Surveys and Public Opinion Polls

Up Next, Australia Elections!Post + Comments (127)