Queensland Labor MP Duncan Pegg (Image: AAP/Glenn Hunt)

Poll bludging Earlier this year, we noted the tragedy of Victorian Liberal Tim Smith rigging a Facebook poll and still losing. Yet somehow Queensland Labor MP Duncan Pegg managed something worse.

Say what you want about Smith’s gambit, the post got some serious engagement. Pegg’s attempt at a Twitter poll didn’t even manage that. He asked who would get the most mentions in Greens MP Amy MacMahon’s budget speech — Extinction Rebellion, former holder of MacMahon’s seat Jackie Trad, or disendorsed Greens MP John Meyer. The searing satire attracted an almost impressive zero votes.

That a few of his colleagues tried to join the joke (but knew how it would look if they turned out to be the only person to actually vote) doesn’t exactly help.

Trump watch Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn completed the classic journey from decorated lieutenant general to intelligence consultant to Trump administration veteran (he lasted three whole weeks) to snitch to… whatever is happening now.

Flynn, having been pardoned by Trump on November 27, called into a QAnon conspiracy theory podcast last Friday, but had to cut the call short after a few minutes. He had to get moving, he explained, because he was avoiding assassins.

“I gotta make sure I’m a moving target, because these sons-of-a-guns, they’re after me, in a literal and a figurative sense,” Flynn said.

Of course, this isn’t surprising once you remember his lawyer — Dr Gonzo to Flynn’s Raoul Duke — is Crikey favourite, QAnon enthusiast and person too eccentric for the Trump campaign Sidney Powell.

Virus watch God, what a lot of time and pain this might have saved us. Can you imagine the blokey leadership in the US, UK, Brazil and elsewhere being so insouciant about COVID-19 had the potential connection between the virus and erectile dysfunction been identified earlier?

As Bernard Keane observed a while back, if only we could establish a similar connection between diminished ardour and climate change.

Up for Review Jamie McIntyre, the shall we say controversial property spruiker, is attempting to revive his publication the Australian National Review. In a post that makes liberal use of words and phrases like “globalist” “Trojan Horse” and “totalitarian world government”, McIntyre is attempting to raise “millions to compete against our foreign billion dollar mainstream media competitors”.

Crikey agrees that we need more media diversity in Australia, and we’re glad that this time the people giving money already know they won’t get it back.