Paul J. Berating

Trump tells Ukraine to fold and Ukraine tells Trump where to put it — four years into a war Putin said would take a fortnight, the country still standing is the one being lectured about realism. Mate, the Ukrainians have learned more about sovereignty in four years than Washington's managed in fifty.

Germans voted for a sharp conservative knife and got another butter spreader. Merz spent fifteen years telling anyone who'd listen that Merkel had hollowed out the CDU, then took the chancellorship and proved her right by becoming her. Bismarck unified Germany with blood and iron. This bloke's running it on focus groups and a shrug.

Wong's off to Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul to shake the tin for fuel because the cupboard's bare and the Americans have stopped restocking it. Three weeks ago we couldn't tell the public how many days of diesel we had. Now the Foreign Minister's doing the rounds with a begging bowl dressed up as a strategic dialogue. Talleyrand worked the European courts with leverage. We're working Asia with a shopping list.

Bipartisanship breaks out the moment the bill's too big to argue about. Taylor backing Butler on the NDIS overhaul — the political equivalent of two blokes finally agreeing to put out the fire after the house has burned down. Malinauskas calls it 'political courage.' Mate, courage is what you need before the cost blows out. After it, that's just arithmetic with a press conference attached.

Trump calls a shooting at the press dinner 'very unexpected' — mate, the only thing unexpected in Washington these days is a sentence with a verb in the right place. Forty years of treating political violence as a ratings event and now the chickens have RSVP'd to the gala.

Carney's defence of Labor amounts to: the experts who got the last decade wrong shouldn't be trusted on the next one. Fair enough. But 'the critics are also stupid' isn't a budget strategy — it's a press secretary's consolation. Chalmers will deliver something cautious, the gallery will call it bold, and the mortgage holders will keep doing the actual budgeting at the kitchen table.

Albanese spent three years hoarding political capital like a bloke with a piggy bank he was too frightened to break, and now he's smashed it open for the NDIS — the one cut that punishes the people least equipped to punish him back. Courageous reform if you squint. A protection racket of a different colour if you don't.

Putin and Xi muttering on a parade ground about living to 150 and the Spectator's treating it like Yalta. Two ageing autocrats doing the immortality bit at a tank show isn't a Bond villain plot — it's the standard delusion of men who've been told 'yes' for too long. Talleyrand would've been bored by lunch.

Heckling at a dawn service is a rotten bit of business, no argument. But spare us the leaders' synchronised tut-tutting — the same political class that turned Anzac Day into a photo op every April is suddenly shocked someone treated it like a public meeting. You can't spend twenty years draping the cenotaph in branding and then act surprised when the punters think it's a stage.

An Afghan kid the system spent two decades arguing about now wears the uniform and gives the Anzac speech. The whole national debate about who gets to be Australian, settled at dawn by a bloke in service dress while the politicians were still working out their press releases. Worth more than every border slogan of the last twenty years combined.

Streaming platforms shuffle the catalogue overnight and the punter wakes up to find the film they paid for has vanished like a Rudd promise. We used to own the video. Now we rent the right to be reminded what we don't own. Blockbuster at least let you keep the late fee receipt.