It's like every week is the worst week of Aso Taro's life. All news reported yesterday has been, without exception, utterly horrific. As Gwen Stefani would say, "This shit is bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!" So let's look as some of the stories!
One story (that even the BBC was covering) is the shrinking of Japan's GDP - it's contracted by 3.3%, annualized at 12.7%, in the fourth quarter. Now, if you're like me then you won't have any idea what that means. Luckily, I've done the research for you and the upshot is: the economy really sucks. Apparently this is the largest GDP contraction since the "1974 Oil Shock", and that has the word 'shock' in it so it must have been pretty bad. And this is almost as bad as that. Which actually still doesn't tell you how bad this is... Hmmm. Well it doesn't even matter! Because as long as they've got a diligent and incisive Finance Minister they've got nothing to worry ab- oh wait.
"Finance Minister Nakagawa Found Drunk At G7 Conference". Well. That's certainly a more visceral way of showing people how fucked they are. His excuse was that he was jet-lagged and had been taking cold medicine. But there's no smoke without fire, and these are some pretty thick clouds:
You can kind of understand why he might be drunk - not only is he faced with these huge, glaring negative figures, he also has to understand what they mean and then pretend to the public that he has some idea of how to fix things. And also he's an alcoholic. Still, he'd have done far less damage to his and the cabinet's reputation if he'd called in sick or something rather than going ahead with the press conference.
Finally, an NTV survey has shown that Aso's approval rating has fallen yet again! It's a veritable approval-rating-limbo he's dancing over there - he's now bending backwards to the vertebrae-crunching tune of 9.7%. Presumably to piss-off the remaining fraction of the country who isn't sick to the teeth of him already he'd have to literally take a shit on the national flag. But don't think he won't do it. I have total faith. Dream the impossible dream, Aso.
Aso's "riding-high-on-a-tenth-of-the-electorate" face
3 comments:
This just in, Nakagawa is resigning over his public display of drunkenness.
Yeh, and even in resigning he's fucked up. He wants to resign after the fiscal '09 budget, and everyone else has jumped on him for not resigning immediately. And he's also sticking to his 'cold-medicine-jet-lag' excuse.
Good stuff. Man, you're hilarious. Let me know when you're next stand up in Tokyo is. I'll even let you have my joke about how Malaysia Airlines is better than the country itself. I just wanted to stay on the plane.
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