The Chaser Report - No Burnouts Til Donut Day

Episode Date: July 4, 2021

Dom looks at the latest bizarre crop of lockdown outlaws, Dan farewells Donald Rumsfeld, Bec brings the thunder or, more precisely, the news headlines, Charles is forced to spend time with his kids, and Craig laughs at Charles. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, welcome to the Chaser Report for Monday the 5th of July. This is still the Delta variant of the podcast, meaning that my co-host for much of this week. He's the wonderful Dan Illich, host of the A Rational Fear podcast. Hello, Dan. In many respects, you are Delta and I am Scud. I feel like that's kind of a joke from 2004. Wow, it took me a second, and I'm not sure you've understood.

understood our relationship the same way that I do. Dan, but that's all right. I'm just a big admirer, but I want you to know I'm going to burn brightly, but not for very long. It's good to be here. Thank you very much. You know, it's very, dare I say, chilly on the east coast of Australia. In fact, some news broke this week that made me want to move from Australia to someplace further

south. That place is Antarctica. The United Nations put out a new report saying that they recorded the highest ever temperature in Antarctica, 18.3 degrees. That is, that's shorts weather. Get the shorts on. We're going down south, play with some penguins. I mean, you're allowed to exercise outdoors.

I'm just thinking, what a great place to scoot. I'd take my daughter down there on the scooter. There'd be nothing in the way except some penguins. Barmy weather. Where are we moving down there? Talk about social distancing. Hardly anyone lives down there. There would be plenty of space.

House prices would be cheap. Mind you, you'd have to bring your own house. But at the same time, it's great. It would be a fantastic place to bring up kids. Well, I'd just think if you felt like a drink, If you're a bit thirsty, just go and carve some ice off the iceberg out of the front and just put it in your glass. You'd have water views.

The water would be frozen, but it'd still be water views. That's it. There are no roads down there. So when you are driving around, you can pop yourself a nice gin and tonic. And it wouldn't be drink driving. You technically would be drink sailing. That would be the great thing. Just riding across those icebergs.

It'd be fantastic. I mean, Dan, I do have, I guess, a slight concern that this is climate change related. It's only going to melt the, uh, melt Antarctica. And so that water will actually come to us in the form of massively higher sea. levels. I wouldn't be so concerned about that. If you built your house on an iceberg, you could float it all the way from Antarctica back to Sydney. And hey, you'd become a Sydney resident with a home with waterfront views. Wouldn't that be amazing? That reminds me of the old Dick Smith trick he did. He said he was going to float a iceberg from Antarctica

into Sydney to save the drought. Do you remember this from the 80s? And he had this gigantic polystyrene iceberg on a bard that he floated through the heads and he caused a huge amount of media traffic. This is before social media. So this is when media were just like hoping any kind of story would come through the door to do. A giant foam iceberg. Gosh, it was such easier to do stunts when you could use polystyrene without worrying

about recycling. About the environment. All right, Dan, on the show today, some extraordinary fines have been issued during the pandemic in the last of the while. We're going to take a look at that in COVID watch. Also, speaking of American conservatives, Dan, I'm just so touching the tribute package you've prepared to Donald Rumsfeld for late Defense Secretary slash warmonger. Oh, thank you very much.

You know, I was inspired by a tweet I saw this weekend. I don't know if you saw this tweet, there was a bunch of gas on fire in the Gulf of Mexico, and it looked like this hellmouth had opened up, and it said, it looks like Donald Rumsfeld arrived safely. It's not going to be the most respectful tribute. And Charles and Craig joined me to catch up with some of the antics Charles has been getting up to during the school holidays.

But first, as always, Dan, let's head to Rebecca Dana Muno in the Chaser Newsroom. Following media coverage of Donald Rumsfeld's death, fellow statesman George Bush, Bashar al-Assad, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman have lashed out against perceived double standards. The group has said celebrating Rumsfeld as a hero after death is unfair and that the media should praise war criminals who are still alive, not just the dead ones. Residents of Sydney have been reminded to remain within their homes today unless partaking in a search party for Scott Morrison. Sources close to the Prime Minister, who has been missing for over a week,

confirmed that he has not fled to Hawaii as his favourite resort is already booked out by Justin Trudeau, who is escaping Canada's wildfires. Bill Gates' plot to control the world using the COVID vaccine has been foiled today after an aged care worker refused to take the vaccine. Following his defeat, the tech billionaire has decided to step away from world domination and focus on the much more evil pursuit of building painfully slow internet browsers. I've been Rebecca Dana-Muno for The Chaser Report, I'm off to Bondi Junction to buy myself a sofa.

Today's Chaser Rappat is brought to you by the 4th of July. Even though it's the fifth for you Australians, we know how much you love celebrating taking a country from its native people. USA! Dan, of course, Sydney, where we leave is still in lockdown. That means people are still doing stupid things, warranting another one of these. segments.

Doven Watch. So, Dan, look, the 11 a.m. press conference in New South Wales, every press conference has been a television event. We talked about this last week. But the highlight for mine of the Gladys Perugally and Press Conference in New South Wales is the bit where the cops get up and tell us about some of the more absurd fines that they've issued. I don't think it's intended to be comic relief as opposed to a cautionary tale, but I just

love them. And so, Assistant Commissioner Gary Warboys gave two rundowns over the weekend of the things people have gotten up to. Have a listen to this one from Saturday. Another incident of note was three people who decided to travel from Sydney to Genolyn Caves because they were feeling a little bored. You're bored. So you go to Genoan Caves, Dan. As someone who's been to Genoan Caves on many at school adventure, can I just say, that isn't going to cure your boredom. It isn't going to cure.

Genoan Caves is really boring. It's a cave. Get over it. I mean, I love Genolan Caves, but of all the places to chill out and have fun during a pandemic, an incredibly tight enclosed space is probably not the way to go.

You don't want to go a cave, that's for sure. And also, Dom, it's full of bats. This is where you get viruses from. Do not go to Genolyn Caves if you want to avoid the virus. That is where the zootropic viruses are going to come from. We don't need COVID-21, you idiots. No.

Here's the next one. The other one of interest was at Tugra Lakes, where a group of people around 11pm last night decided that they would leave their home, go to the industrial area, and prepare their vehicles and the space around them for some sort of burnout activity.

Some sort of burnout activity. Now, hang on, aren't you allowed to leave the house if it's for work? If these people made YouTube videos of burnouts for their work, I reckon that's a big tick. You can't do that at home. That's it.

And also it might be self-care as well. them. I think that's totally legitimate reason. Plus, burnouts, you're in a car, you're separated from other people. That's true. If they didn't leave the car, where's the, where's the harm? I don't know. Maybe it's in the burning out part of this whole thing. Maybe it was an extremely long detour to get essential medicines. $1,000 seems like a pretty lenient charge for doing burnouts in an industrial area. I reckon that's almost worth, you know, saving up to go and do. You're like, Oh, yeah, I'll put a week's worth of wages in to go and do some burnouts in Tugra Lakes. That sounds fun to me.

I mean, you pay $1,000, but then you sell it to the producers of the next Fast and Furious movie for a couple of mill. You're miles ahead. Dan, you're miles ahead. Look, a lot of people have actually been leaving Greater Sydney. Have a listen to this one. Two people travelled to Dunedoo, which is a small town in central west. Police were alerted to that. They drove along.

They found the car. Police have technology to make instantaneous results. in terms of looking at the registration of that vehicle. It happened to be unregistered. It was parked incorrectly. So, Dan, a bit of a pro tip here from the Assistant Commissioner. If you're going to leave Sydney, maybe don't do it in an unregistered car. Yeah, yeah.

And don't park illegally. Like, of all the dumb mistakes, park sensibly in a recently registered car, you might be fine. You might be fine, yeah, yeah. And I just like, there's this ominous threat here from the Assistant Commissioner here where he said the phrase, police have the technology. I think any time you hear that phrase, it's ominous, isn't it? But it wasn't anything amazing. Like, to police have technology to look through your car and x-ray your car?

No, it's like police have technology to work out where your car was registered. It's like, yeah, mate, we've all got service New South Wales. We know where our cars are registered. It's okay. Look, Dan, I haven't been to Dunny, do. I have. Can you tell me, is it worth the things? $1,000. Can I say they've got three good pubs in Duned-Duney-Doo, and they've got one of those silos that are painted with a horse on the side. So it's spectacular. It's a lovely country town. I actually traveled there post-last lockdown. It's great. You know what they like in Dundee-Doo? Legal parking, Dan.

And can I say, there's plenty of parking. I don't know. Who is parking illegally in an empty country town? Idiots. And finally, this is not the commissioner. This is the health minister. from New South Wales, Brad Hazard, with some advice about how to stay safe during the rest of the lockdown. It would be very wise for you to avoid kissing, cuddling, closeness, any proximity at all. No booty calls, Dan, in the state of New South Wales. That's the latest advice from the health minister. Interestingly, the health minister has the same advice my mum gave to me when I was

studying year 12 going over to girls' houses to do some homework. Just remember that Jesus is in the room. That's what they used to say at some churches. Just remember that Minister Brad Hazard is in the room. Dom, have you met my mother? Don't get up to any funny business. That's it. Well, look, I am the Scud Deo Delta.

I don't know what's going to happen. But, you know, there is a loophole that the minister went on to say this, and I think for amorous couples, this really is the way forward. I want to stress that being outside is the safest place. So there you go. Exercise in groups are up to 10 outdoors, New South Wales. Yeah, yeah. Physical exercise.

in the backyard with tall trees around you for privacy. That's what I would say. Today's chaser-a-prod is brought to you by America and Australia. Best Friends Forever. We partnered against Japan, Vietnam, and now you'll help us against China, won't you? USA! Well, Dom, we have a new known-known. Yes, Donald Rumsfeld, the USA's most prolific war criminal, is dead.

Now, for the young people listening to this, Rumsfeld was like a pioneer when it came to modern warfare. Here's the reason while your uncle twitches when the bonbons are pulled apart at Christmas time. He's also famous for a particular line he gave during a Pentagon briefing when he was laying out strategy to chase down the Taliban in 2001. Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because as we know,

there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. we also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns. The ones we don't know, we don't know. Yeah, yeah. Well, Dom.

Do you remember that? Do you remember that particular crap from 2002? People wrote that up, formatted like poetry. There's something in it. It's both profound and completely ridiculous at the same time. It is his defining intellectual achievement, that and all the deaths. Absolutely. So Donald Rumsfeld passed away.

he's 88 years old, I thought it would only be appropriate to look at his life and legacy through this prison. So first of all, here are the known-nones, things we know about Donald Rumsfeld. We know Donald Rumsfeld launched a couple of wars in the early 2000s. Despite lacklaster ratings, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was renewed year-on-year for 20 years. Yeah. It's just a shame that Rumsfeld died before the season finale coming to Netflix in September. Riding high off the back of Afghanistan, Rumsfeld invaded Iraq in 2003. But it was very much suffered from Second War syndrome.

Iraq War II, as it was called, was widely panned by critics as being derivative of George Bush's highly popular but short-lived Iraq War I. And finally, the other thing we know we know about Donald Rumsfeld is that he was one of the pioneers of the standing deaths because when you're about to topple a Middle Eastern autocrat, you don't want carpal tunnel syndrome slowing you down. Now, they're also known unknowns. So that is to say some things we do not know.

Like how many innocent people died in the Iraq War. Some figures say 185,000, others have it as high as 208,000. We also don't know how rich many of Donald Rumsfeld's friends got off the back of military contacts during these war years. Probably enough to buy lots of good standing desks, I'm assume. Now, there are also some unknown unknowns. These are the things we don't know, we don't know. Like, what is the height of Donald Rumsfeld's standing desk?

Did he ever use a sitting desk? Will he have a standing coffin? We don't know these things. And did standing eight hours a day at his desk make him unsympathetic to enhanced interrogation techniques, which were forcing Guantanamo Bay detainees to stand for a maximum of four hours? We don't know these things, Dom.

But Dom, there are also unknown knowns. Stuff we know, but we just don't know by how much. For instance, you know, the sound of pouring hot water and pouring cold water should sound different. But if you're blindfolded and gagged and a Marine is pouring that water directly onto your face, are you likely to make up stories about fictional terrorists you don't know back in your home country? We will never know this. We will never know this, but we know it happened. Now, Donald Rumsford leaves a strong legacy and is an inspiration to any little boy or little girl

who wants to grow up to use the full punitive force of the world's greatest superpower to find a man with a beard hiding in a cave. Yes, indeed, Dan, a man who had a standing desk and yet was never upstanding. This episode of The Chaser Report is sponsored by America, because you can't spell Australia without the USA. We own you. USA! Okay, so as you know, Dan is filling in on this.

Del's a very end of the podcast because Charles, He's on holidays with his kids. Let's check in on how he's going, shall we? This is something that I recorded a little while ago with Charles. And also Craig, who's always keen to join in a discussion of Charles' parenting inadequacies. So, guys, I need a bit of parenting advice. Again? So my 10-year-old, he's all jealous of my 12-year-old for having a phone.

And we're going into lockdown. So we finally submitted and gave him a phone. Okay. He's so pleased with it, right? And our thought was, well, that'll make life easy because the whole reason you give a kid a phone is to get rid of them, right? We'll never see him again. Just download the TikTok and he'll just go upstairs and we'll never see him. But no, this fuck weird slash son of mine.

I feel like there could have been another piece of advice about parenting there, but I couldn't quite remember what it was. I'm making a lot of notes here, Charles, to send to docs, but anyway. He's downloaded this app called iMovie. Have your kids got into iMovie, Craig? IMovie, as in the app that you can edit movies on the phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. I've only now recently figured out how to use it.

Yeah, that's how he's making Win the Week on IMovie. So he downloaded this app, right? And it's got all these templates to make movie trailers with, right? And I sort of think, oh, this is cute, right? So the other night we got together. And what it does is it sort of, you choose what genre of movie trailer you want to make. Ah. And you have to fill in the blanks, right?

So you have to fill in all the words. And then you have to shoot about 15 or 20 scenes. And it creates this movie trailer based on whatever genre of movie you've made. It's very clever, right? And that sort of, it was like, okay, that's like an hour of parenting work. Good. He'll go away and play something else for a while. Instead, what he's done is.

he's downloaded a template to make an entire 90-minute movie in I-movie. So you have to be there? Yeah, yeah, no. So the whole point is, he's going, oh, we've got the whole school holidays. We'll make a movie in the school holidays. So I'm going to have to parent him the entire time. It's like literally, you're talking about about 165 different setups. You're talking about 800 different clips.

Oh, poor Charles has to spend 90 minutes with his son in the course of two weeks. Look, I'm no longer concerned about this from a parenting perspective. I'm concerned about this from a casting perspective. I think he hasn't really looked broad enough in terms of the talent that he could get out there. Like, we could send him lots of your former Chaser stuff just to make him recast. You know what he cast me as in his trailer? He cast me as the old pilot who has a heart attack and dies. No, that's good car thing.

I'm back on board with this kid. He's smart. And my part was literally about two and a half seconds long. And then I had to just have a heart attack and die because I was so old. How has he, has he managed to find a role for you for the 90-minute version where your extreme age and ill health will actually be relevant and useful? Yeah, my role is to hold the camera and shoot him in lots of different poses.

Can I confess something to you, Charles? Yes. I don't think you know this. Your wife yesterday posted on Facebook. What? that our holidays been postponed, I'm keen on ideas to make this lockdown school holidays more interesting. I'm quoting. I wrote underneath, I'm so sorry about this, your trip's that amazing and I was so looking forward to a break from Charles. But then I wrote under that,

we made a movie one school holidays. It was incredibly fun. So this comes from you. You're responsible. This is my way to make you want to do the podcast instead of spending time with your kids. Oh, you are dead to me, Dom. You are dead. Well, Not as dead as you are in the movie. New from the BBC comes a documentary series exploring the life cycle of one of Australia's rarest and most hard-to-find creatures, the elusive Scott Morrison.

Emerging from under his hill only on the rare occasion to hunt for a genie to blame. The scomone can most often be found scrounging for food in a local bunning, car park. With a native habitat that stretches all the way from Cronulla to Engadine, the Schomo has also been introduced to other non-native environments, like the football stadiums of Melbourne, where it's considered a pest. Facing the ever-growing threat of extinction from competitors within his own pack, there have been recent attempts to bolster the number

of Australian Prime Ministers by holding yearly leadership spills and placing a prayer room in his habitat to encourage mating. Unfortunately this proved too successful with the deputy prime ministers that shared the enclosure and had to be discontinued. Easily recognized by his bright blue shark is plumage and a brown street running down his legs, the native scoma has not yet evolved an opposable thumb and is not even able to complete task as simple as holding a hose. A skittish, An easily scared creature, the scomo will become aggressive if approached by journalists, and will often run away immediately if he feels threatened by their line of questioning.

In times of crisis, the scomo has been known to flee for hundreds of miles, sometimes reaching as far away as Hawaii after running away from a threat. Catch all this and more in the new documentary series, Australia's most endangered politicians. now airing on the even more endangered ABC. Dan, just before we go, let's check in with the Courier Mail for the latest news from Brisbane, as we always love to do. A man by the name of Jason Anthony Mitchell will spend a month behind bars after fleeing from police on a motorised scooter. So this guy, he was riding a scooter without a helmet through the middle of the Fortitude Valley Mall. And the cops measured him at 30k an hour, which is pretty fast in a pedestrian district.

Wow. Oh, on a scooter. Yeah, yeah. And so police motorbike chased him, put on the lights and sirens. He turns around and gives the officer the finger. Yeah. And then zooms through a poorly lit car park and pedestrians jumping out of the way. This sounds like a scene from the Blues Brothers.

This is great. It's dark. I'm wearing sunglasses. I've got half a pack of cigarettes and a full tank of gas. We've got to get to a Gold Coast by nightfall. I'm on a scooter. Let's hit it. Yeah.

And his lawyer said, his client's top speed of 36 kilometers per hour. It's not the usual speed seen in dangerous driving matters. So it was an incredibly slow and yet quite dangerous police chase. Yeah, yeah. I could see this happening in a nursing home perhaps with other scooters, with mobility scooters. Yeah, world's wildest mobility scooter videos. Oh, look, good luck to this guy. You know, I've been in Fortitude Valley and really needed to piss.

And sometimes, you know, I always wanted a scooter nearby to get to the nearest pub. So, yeah, good luck. There's more news around the clock at chaser.com. dot a you don't forget to subscribe to dance podcast irrational fear as well you can follow us on all the socials we always say this and um we would love a five-star review if you'd be so kind at apple podcast the code word for today is mobility skater and uh thanks to everyone who i caught up with at the dragons um party last night we had a great time we'll hopefully see you in court our gear is and road microphones and we're part of the a cast crater network another mention at the

Melbourne Podcast Festival. It looks like it's just possible we'll be allowed to get to Melbourne for the 1st of August Sunday night. Big show down there. Can't wait for that. And Dan, you've got a show in Melbourne as well. Yeah, we're playing the replay festival

for Comedy Republic. A rational fear is going to be on stage. We've got Lewis Hobber from Triple J, Sammy Shah. Also, Patricia Carvelis is joining us on stage as well. So that's going to be the 14th of August at the Comedy Republic Comedy Club in Melbourne. And our show, which is on the 1st of August,

We haven't figured out the lineup yet for it. So we better figure out that line up pretty soon. It's two weeks away, Dom. It was going to be cancelled. Thanks for joining us. Catch you tomorrow morning.