Are the wheels falling off Tony's little red fear truck?

Federal Opposition Tony Abbott is a becoming a classic example of how to cast aside political momentum.
After managing to dominate the Australian news cycle for months on end, he then decides to take a short holiday overseas.
Just in time to be out of camera and microphone range when America's credit rating is downgraded, European sovereign debt becomes an even bigger global issue than before and international stock markets panic.
Big mistake.
Not only did the Australian media largely forget to play his favourite fear cards to the max; journalists also forgot to be hypercritical of the Labor Government's economic record and is some cases actually talked up the nation's balance sheet.
Then Tones arrives back in the country without anything novel to say and the news cycle all but ignores him for days.
Even usually gullible butchers began to reject his stunts.
Help seemed to be at hand when the Convoy of No Confidence drove onto the scene, but alas, this wasn't to be the Opposition Leader's life line.
Shaping up as it did to be an expensive embarrassment ACT taxpayers have to fork out for.
Not only did truck, ute, car and trailer numbers arriving in Canberra fall far short of the mooted mob supposedly calling for Gillard's blood and Tony's sainthood - some of the state convoys were nothing more than a handful of vehicles driven by people with a mistaken idea of the Australian constitution, no common complaints or coherent political agenda.
Indeed the first 'wave' of trucks due to hit Canberra early on Monday 22nd August failed to materialise due to lack of interest, the grand trek route map (above) proudly drawn by those faceless convoy organisers was shown to be just so much political mythology and the Canberra rally figures fell far, far short of the previous week's hyped 10,000 angry voters.
The turnout must have left Abbott and the rest of the 11am rally speakers, Barnaby Joyce, Warren Truss and Bazza Haase sorely disappointed - as well as totally confusing the climate change denialists contrarians, conspiracy theorists and one egotistic demagogue scheduled to share the podium.
After all, they thought they were the vanguard of a grassroots movement.
Even Tones practiced spin couldn't disguise the non-event:
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, there are hundreds of you here, there are thousands of you who would like to be here and there are millions of you who are sick of being ripped off by a bad government."
Haven't laughed so hard in years.

Britain 'terrorized by an underclass'. One of Her Majesty's subjects shows yet another ugly side of the United Kingdom

Britain is a riot - 3 Translation(s) | dotSUB

Pat Condell  in full flight, advocating the withdrawal of human rights from convicted rioters.
Is this man a distant relative of Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt?

Google Profile causing sh#t to happen?

Google Profile tells us to “Decide what the world sees when it searches for you. Create a public profile to display the information that you care about and make it easy for visitors to get to know you.”

Sounds fair, doesn’t it?
But what happens when you have the same name as someone else or someone hijacks your online identity?

Well this happens……

Snapshot taken of a page one Google Search on 18th August 2011

Snapshot of a 6th April 2011 cease and desist request on Chilling Effects

For all those contrarians out there: a word on rising sea levels in Australian waters

From the Australian Climate Commission’s May 2011 report THE CRITICAL DECADE Climate science, risks and responses:

Global average values of sea-level rise mask large regional differences.

For example, around Australia (Figure 8) recent sea level rise (from the early 1990s to 2008) has been below the global average along the east coast, near the global average along the much of the southern coast, but at least double the global average along much of the northern coastline.

Such regional differences are important in assessing the risks posed by sea-level rise at particular locations…….

The observed sea-level rise of about 20 cm from 1880 to 2000 should already have led to an increase in the incidence of extreme sea-level events. Such increases have indeed been observed at places with very long records, such as Fremantle and Fort Denison, where a 3-fold increase in inundation events has occurred (Church et al. 2006).  

Download report here.

First Dog nails the facts

Click on cartoon to enlarge
More of First Dog on the Moon here and here