A job well done. Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan have done a good job in turning this week’s Canberra tax forum into a political non-event. They have skilfully created the expectation that absolutely nothing will result from the talk-fest and thus removed the danger that taxation would become even more of a political issue.

They have satisfied the demands of independent Rob Oakeshott and that’s that.

Just  reminder about predictions. As the predictions about the world’s economic future become gloomier and the Australian dollars keeps falling in comparison with the US dollar, just a reminder not to take the experts too seriously.

Come on the fat man. When you’ve got a build like mine, and went through primary school known as fatty Farmer, there’s a natural inclination to be on the side of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the current debate in the United States on whether portly gentlemen are proper candidates for the country’s presidency.

The potential Republican candidate.

The possibility of having the fattest man in the White House since William Howard Taft back in 1908 has the US health police in something of a frenzy.

America’s last corpulent President: William Howard Taft

Any Christie presidential run, comments Reuters, will inevitably raise serious concerns about whether his heft could adversely affect his health and therefore his ability to serve as president.

“In general, the higher the body mass index the more likely a person is going to have significant obesity related conditions. And the longer you have the obesity, you have the cumulative effect on the organs,” said Dr. Philip Schauer, director of the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, the nation’s top-rated cardiac care hospital.

Body mass index, or BMI, is a measure of a person’s weight related to their height. The 49-year-old Christie is about 5-foot-11.

“The human body was just not built to handle an extra 100, 150 pounds,” Schauer said.

Governor Christie is expected to make his decision this week about whether to seek the Republican nomination.

And if he doesn’t stand? I don’t know about you but I’d rather take a risk on the future health of an over weight man than see the current Republican front running Governor Rick Perry from Texas end up in the Oval office with some of his current backers in positions of political power. A recent prayer rally held by the Texas Governor was in part organised by members of the New Apostolic Reformation, a new charismatic Christian movement that National Public Radio describes as seeking “to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and Jesus’ return.”

Some extracts from a recent NPR interview with C. Peter Wagner, one of the leaders of this “apostolic and prophetic” movement gives the flavour:

On Alice Patterson, a leader in the New Apostolic Reformation and one of the leadership team members at Rick Perry’s prayer rally, saying on stage at the rally that the Democratic Party is a demon structure:

“I personally would not endorse each one of her statements and especially the statement about the Democratic Party being demonized, any more than the Republican Party is. I mean, I believe there’s a lot of demonic control over Congress in general that needs to be dispersed.”

On demons:

“As we talk, in Oklahoma City there is an annual meeting of a professional society called the Apostolic — called the International Society of Deliverance Ministers, which my wife and I founded many years ago. … This is a society of a large number, a couple hundred, of Christian ministers who are in the ministry of deliverance. Their seven-day-a-week occupation is casting demons out of people. And they have professional expertise in this and they happen to meeting — to be meeting right now. My wife is one of them. She’s written a whole book called How to Cast Out Demons. And I don’t do that much. Once in a while when I get in a corner, I might. But that’s — that’s been her ministry. And so I’ve been very, very close to that for years. We’ve been married for 60 years.”

On people in American politics being possessed by demons:

“We don’t like to use the word possessed because that means they don’t have any power of their own. We like to use the word afflicted or, technical term, demonized. But there are people who — yes, who are — who are directly affected by demons, not only in politics, but also in the arts, in the media and religion in the Christian church.”

Party time for the Tories. Crikey’s Guy Rundle reports from London: God oh God, The Tory party conference — starting today in Manchester — will have to be covered. OK here goes. George Osborne, chancellor, gave a speech in which he said it as steady as she goes on spending restraint — and then announced a freeze on council tax, and “quantitive easing” for small firms, ie direct grants to businesses, bypassing the banks and covered with the figleaf of buying bonds back. Amazing how many terms non-Keynsians find for fancifying Keynes’ last-gasp notion of burying money in old bottles, and then tendering out the right to dig them up.

David Cameron apologies for making tacky jokes about women (“I know the honourable lady is frustrated,” he said, after he had double-crossed hard-right Tory Nadine Dorries on abortion law, leaving just enough of a pause to sell the double-entendre.). Iain Duncan Smith, a sometimes decent man passionate about structural poverty, who wants to simultaneously increase benefits, simplify the process of getting them, and push the poor through umpteen hoops to get them — hoops to be provided by Therese Rein inter alia — spoke, and emphasised the pious Christian, deserving poor side of his schtick, talking about people who want “something for nothing”.

Weird ex-Trotskyist Sontaran Eric Pickles, the prime mover in replacing the 1947 Planning Act with a napkin saying “er, go for it”, spoke in the afternoon, with about a 40% backpedal from the act, emphasising his love of National Trust tea rooms blah blah lies all of it. The day ended with the story that a bunch of delegates had run out on a bar bill, leaving the waitress to cover the £70 bill from her wages. Returning Labour to power, one pissed-off worker at a time.