Joyce the prophet

REMEMBER back in 2009 when Barnaby Joyce pondered aloud the possibility of the US defaulting on its debt?

REMEMBER back in 2009 when Barnaby Joyce pondered aloud the possibility of the US defaulting on its debt?

Just to recap in the concisest way, things went badly for Joyce. We found ourselves pondering this yesterday as we listened to the dulcet tones of the ABC's Eleanor Hall on The World Today: ". . . the [US] Treasury has warned that Congress has only until August 2 to come up with a compromise to lift the $US14 trillion debt ceiling or risk a default and a default would have drastic consequences, not just for the US but for the global economy". Is the time approaching where Joyce must be acknowledged as a clear-eyed prophet? Strewth found him in a reflective mood. "Maybe they will retract their pillaging of me and hand back the shadow finance portfolio as the sun is blotted out with the return of the migrating pigs," Joyce mused. "Alas, Cassandras are rarely enjoyable company in any party. It was hardly the greatest feat of the prefrontal cortex amygdala [utilised for intuition, he explains] to foresee that one, but politically it had to wait for the economic karaoke to bravely sing all together prompted by the big bouncing cheque." Amen.

Open to abuse

QUOTE of the day, courtesy of broadcaster Ray Hadley as he explained to Tony Abbott why he wanted to get Steve Fielding on air for a chat: "I've asked him to come on the program basically so I can tell him that he's a grub." As we far as we know, Fielding has yet to take Hadley up on his offer, but we imagine it's an invitation without an expiry date.

On the road

THERE must be some days when the PM wakes with the thought: "What would Bob Carr do?". Most days, this line of thought must peter out in a cul-de-sac of guesswork, but on other days, the former NSW premier -- who, like nature, abhors a vacuum -- will fill the gap. Such as yesterday, when he offered the PM this on his blog: "Take the advice Paul Keating once gave to me: 'Stand in the middle of the expressway and dare them to run you down'." Julia Gillard may prefer to be at the wheel, though, going by this exchange with Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller on WSFM, when she was asked if it was true she rather fancied car chases in movies. Quoth Gillard: "I don't mind a car chase, but sometimes they go on too long. There's a right length for a car chase." What about the gold standard, the chase in The Blues Brothers, she was asked. "Blues Brothers I'm a fan of."

What are the odds?

THE Gillard government, meanwhile, still has a few days left to make good on its promise to appoint an age discrimination commissioner within the Human Rights Commission. It has to be said the word from the HRC isn't exactly cause for unbridled optimism, a spokesman telling this august organ: "We don't know what's happening with that. The latest we've heard is that they'll be appointed by July 1." And here's the word from Attorney-General Robert McClelland's spokesman: "Legislation to establish the position of age discrimination commissioner within the Australian Human Rights Commission passed the parliament in May. The appointment process is under way and the new commissioner is expected to be appointed shortly. Additional funding to the Australian Human Rights Commission to ensure that the new age discrimination commissioner has the resources to fulfil their role effectively commences from July 1." So, three sleeps left to go. We'd open a book and offer odds, were it not for the possibility of the law opening a cell and offering us a sentence.

Venomous bite

ONCE upon a time, legend has it, then Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen was bitten by a dog, an act of canine dental input that led to an outpouring of sympathy for the dog. Well, the world's like that sometimes. Anyway, this sprang to mind yesterday as we read The Washington Post's obituary for Florida snakeman Bill Haast, a bloke who, having been bitten by roughly a grillion snakes but lived to the age of 100, may have been a poster boy for the benefits of having "venom-enriched blood". We were struck by this bit in particular: "In 1954, he was bitten by a blue krait, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. I had never heard of a krait bite victim ever surviving," Haast told the Associated Press in 1996. "I felt like the skin had been stripped from my body, like every nerve in my teeth was exposed, like my hair was being ripped out of my head." But Haast recovered and soon went back to work. The snake died 10 days later. So the dog's sympathisers may have had a point.

A vowel too far

CORRESPONDENCE from Strewth reader Captain Peter Miller, who has alerted us to the fact we had something of an excessive Wheel of Fortune moment on the weekend and bought one vowel too many: "The appellation 'Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy', is incorrect. The correct moniker is 'Australians for Constitutional Monarchy'. Now you think about it, an extra 'a' does make a difference." We sit corrected.