When your country has arseholed you at the polls, your party has emphatically told you it's past time you were gone and when your approval rating is sub-30% and heading south with a bullet, there would seem to be little else you can do but form a  pud-pullers collective as the only way to remember better times. There's always your friends to call on. All two of them.

Ideological wars never really end, do they?

Together with fast food, climate change, cigarette smoking and alcohol it's now been revealed that a faithful remedy for the common cold - Vicks Vaporub - is bad for us. Maybe that's what's made me such an irascible bloke? I blame my old man. He was always shoving Vicks up his conk if he had a cold, and like any impressionable young fella, we boys all did likewise. On the chest and under the nostrils as well. Sure, the fumes would get in your eyes, but not for long. Vicks evaporates pretty quickly on warm skin.

Personally, I'm with the manufacturers on this one. At 51 years of age, and having used Vicks all my life, intra-nostrily and all, I always found it cleared congestion. Not created it. I don't think Dr Bruce Rubin is a reliable sort of medico either if he believes chicken soup to be efficacious.

Here's an interesting proposition.

It's in today's news that actor, Ricardo Montalban has died, aged 88.

That fawning acolyte of John Winston Howard, Tony Abbott, has again suborned the pages of the ABC Online to ooze lyrical about what a great guy his messiah is and how said messiah having his ego massaged by a failed US president is a compliment to Australia.

"If Barack Obama were one day to give Kevin Rudd the Medal of Freedom, I'd be pleased for him and for Australia. Somehow, I think he's more likely to offer the US President his advice than our help."

As it ought to be too!

Maybe my warped sense of humour is driving this one.

The estranged wife of Bob Jane allegedly waved a knife at the tyre magnate and told him she was going to shoot him.....

Maybe the bullet is very small but very sharp. Maybe she wasn't wearing her correct specs? Maybe she just wasn't looking at all? I think it's pretty funny, anyway.

...in the same manner as Andrew Roberts, then yes....history will judge George W. Bush kindly. Much less critically than he and his administration deserves.

Indeed it must be, if Timmy Blair has nothing to offer outside of a blow-by-blow report of Obama trivia from in front of his idiot box. Piers Akerman makes the now seemingly standard claim that Barack Obama has to deliver ASAP now that he's President. Janet Albrechtsen does the same. I guess it's to be expected from the so-called 'right' as slag du jour, irrational demand and self-sanctification appear to be the only approach some in that sphere are capable of, on a day when the rest of the world hails a change sorely needed and long awaited.

Time will reveal whether Barack Obama is the man the United States needs right now. Just as time is supposed to be the cure-all salve, awarding a kinder historical view of George W. Bush than he deserves.

I'm not going to dignify serial hater Piers Akerman's scribblings today, other than to say he is perfectly correct in his opening sentence. He is uncharitable. He is also grossly disingenuous in what he writes, which springs from pure and simple right-wing ideology.

"An ungracious winner is even less palatable than a sore loser", so says Janet Albrechtsen, and she should know all about sore losers because she's always behaved like one.

Was Mick Dodson ungracious in consulting his family before accepting the 'Australian of the Year' award? As a prominent indigenous activist, I'd say most definitely not. Just what import does the award hold anyway? More often than not, it's politically oriented. Howard awarded Tim Flannery hoping to shut him up. Rudd doubtless awarded Dodson hoping for the same. People of principle don't operate in that vein, and I regard Dodson as a principled man. I don't regard politicians or journalists in the same vein.

Who really gives a fundamental about 'Australian of the Year' awards anyway? Nationalistic jingoism, just as the Order of Australia is so-called recognition of societies doers and triers. Awards are like grease. Applied where needed most to ensure quiet compliance and continued function. I don't hold with them.

Traffic was horrendous this morning, taking me 70 minutes to complete a journey which I normally do in 40. There was a bright spot in the depressing crawl of the peak hour commute. I was able to catch 'Life Matters' on ABC Radio National.

I get really bored at work, somedays. So bored I'll even cruise through the Daily Telegraph, perve at the celeb galleries, wonder at the attraction of the raunchy slant on most of the local yarns, have a gawk & guffaw at Blair, Akerman et al.

Today is such a day. I've abandoned the cruise at the Blair point. Seriously....can this fool write anything of real substance, or is he restricted by chronic writers block to scribbling witless one-liners aimed only at his cheer squad? Someone should be pointing Rupert to the DT. There's money to be saved in the Opinion columns.

"The death penalty is overwhelmingly supported by the public in Japan, which has one of the world's lowest crime rates."

There's no mystery surrounding the demise of Strathfield. It's just another case of Tony Hakim covering his tracks. He's been up this road with ASIC and ACCC before. Surrounding oneself with a web of corporate sleaze seems to be his modus operandi. Curious journos know Mr Hakim by reputation as well, which was his ultimate downfall in his 2002 fracas with Fairfax Press.

How utterly poetic that a defamation claim by Hakim against Fairfax for supposed losses incurred in 2002 because of bad press, should be heard so close to the lodging of 'exclusive dealing' claims by the corporate regulator. Seems that Fin Review journo was right all along. I hope ASIC root this bastard out and send him under. He's shadier than the underside of the rock he lives beneath.