This week's political blog giggle

Yes we can (hold babies) has just turned up on my radar.

This is a light-hearted piece of photo campaigning from a college student called Eliza:

Many political scholars have referred to the "baby kiss effect" as the penultimate test of the capabilities of a nominee. If a politician doesn't kill the baby with his partisan lips, the country knows he's capable of taking that 3am call.

Barack Obama, in his majestic campaigning, has kissed many tots, held many youngsters, and charmed many mummies. Photographers snap pictures of these moments, because the images have the power to charm more than just mummies. They have the power to bring joy to the most cold-hearted of politicians, the most unfertile of citizens, and the most cynical of young voters.

Here, on this webspace, I bring you those uterus-rousing portraits, those testis-rejuvenating daguerreotypes, those happiness-inducing tableaus.

Surfin' the Coldstream Festival, Yamba 24-27 October 2008

Surfin' the Coldstream is on in Yamba NSW between Wednesday 24 to Saturday 27 October.
It features a mix of free street performance and music.
Strong lady, sword swallower, human pinwheel firecracker, acrobats, jugglers, comedian, flamenco dancers, singer and muliple bands.

Tickets to the 7pm Saturday Tent of Marvels Show in the Kitchen to Table BigTop can be purchased from ArtHouse Australia or bookings can be made by phoning (02) 6646.1999.

Clarence Valley Council: Williamson's World

A letter to the editor in The Daily Examiner this week:

Williamson's world

When the Clarence Valley local government election results were published, it was obvious that residents and ratepayers would have a predominately inexperienced set of shire councillors.

Now under Mayor Richie Williamson it is also obvious that this council intends to throw what is left of local government access and equity out the window, in favour of a closed shop for the convenience of the mayor and certain councillors' private working hours.

By changing the time of day at which ordinary monthly meetings start from 9am to 4pm [Clarence Valley Council,telephone advice,03.10.08], Mayor Williamson has locked out electors - who have to rely on bus transport to travel to Maclean or Grafton and return - from staying for the full length of those monthly meetings.

Bus timetables for the Grafton-Maclean-Iluka-Yamba run do not allow for any weekday travel after 5.26pm and 5.32pm to 6.07 pm from Grafton and Maclean respectively. [Busways timetable].

Allowing time to walk to the nearest bus stop, Lower Clarence residents and ratepayers without private transport will only be able to stay at a Grafton monthly meeting for an hour and at a Maclean monthly meeting for and hour and fifteen minutes to an hour and three-quarters if they are lucky.
Grafton residents and ratepayers without private transport will have to leave the 4p.m. Maclean meetings before the bus back to Grafton at 5.32pm.
Iluka people relying on bus travel just won't have any access to any ordinary monthly meetings, as in practice there will be no timely Maclean transfers available.

With an aging population in many areas of the Clarence Valley and a dwindling pool of friends and neighbours capable of driving long distances as the light is changing or in the dark, many people will not be able to attend monthly meetings when issues that concern them come before council for consideration and vote.

It is my understanding that there was no real debate of this issue, that councillors "just voted".

If this is Mayor Williamson's brave new world, it is a tawdry comparison to that which went before.

JUDITH M. MELVILLE
Yamba

International award for Ballina woman

According to ABC North Coast NSW last Wednesday:

Australian Seabird Rescue's (ASR) Marny Bonner will today be honoured with an international award.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare Action Award is also dedicated to Ms Bonner's partner, the late Lance Ferris, known as 'the pelican man'.
The presentation will be made to Ms Bonner at the group's headquarters in Ballina.
Erica Martin from the fund says the group has made remarkable inroads into animal protection and raising awareness of environmental issues.
"ASR efforts have been going in Ballina since the early '90s," she said.
"The extraordinary work that they've managed to do in rescuing over 1,500 pelicans, 60 different species of seabirds and hundreds of marine turtles is an extraordinary accumulation of work.
We really felt that it was time that these remarkable people get recognised."

Congratulations to Marny and all at Australian Seabird Rescue.

Their work is greatly appreciated by the Northern Rivers community.

Photograph from The Far North Coaster online magazine

Well, someone had to do it!

Another month has gone by and it is past time to have another look at Rudd's Grocery Choices website to see if it offers the consumer anything worthwhile yet.

Quite frankly, I drew the short straw.
Clarrie's away, Roo's up to the armpits, WaterDragon crossed the street, and Clarencegirl off-loaded the task and ran.

I really didn't want to click onto Kevin's baby and realise that it was just as spud-faced as before.
And, yup, there it was - the same old broad comparison across regions composed of thousands of square kilometres with little or no public transport and laughable competition levels.

Here's the bottom line poor man's basket results for the North East NSW:

Basket of Staples

Coles/BI-LOW $77.31

Woolworths $75.55

SafewayFranklins $78.66

Independents $79.99

ALDI $61.34

How much is this website costing us all again? Weren't we sorta promised that this site would get better over time? The cove who sold this idea to Rudders must have more front than Woolworths.

We turn one today!

A years ago today North Coast Voices was created (though it took another full day to figure out the nuts and bolts so that we were displayed out there in the blogosphere and a few more days after that before we were indexed).

Thankyou to everyone who has popped in to peek at this baby blog or stayed on to have a good read.

Petering Time, clarencegirl, Clarrie Rivers, K. Roo, WaterDragon, and Boy the Wonder Cat

Graphic from Google Images

He who slings mud loses ground (or a case of the battling slurs)

As the countdown to the 2008 US presidential election hots up, everyone has stopped pretending that they are higher forms of life and expose themselves as the usual mixed bag of political ambitions.

The Weekly Standard gives this take on the 6 degrees of William Ayres:

"So Obama's campaign is saying, on the one hand, that it's unfair to link their candidate to Ayers, although he served as chairman of a group Ayers founded and attended fundraisers at Ayers home. And at the same time the campaign is sending out emails attempting to link Mark Sanford to Ayers because they have honorary titles at the same 40,000-student university? That's funny.
Obama's complaints about the unfair linkage would be more convincing if they weren't citing sources attempting to do the same thing. And those complaints would be more convincing if Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who is close to Obama, hadn't offered his take on Obama and Ayers:
"They're friends. So what?"

Oliver Burkeman critiques the latest ads in The Guardian:

"Well, here's one industry sector that can't be doing too badly at the moment, despite the economic nightmare: the composers of sinister backing music for political campaign ads. Above: the McCain campaign's new TV spot, entitled Dangerous, which -- can you guess? -- quotes Barack Obama completely out of context on Afghanistan. And below, the Obama campaign's web documentary on the Keating Five scandal (in which five US senators, including McCain, were accused of improperly seeking to get special treatment for a campaign contributor whose fraud was at the heart of the savings-and-loan crisis; McCain, eventually, was officially found to have shown only 'poor judgment'). The video is a borderline hilarious compendium of thriller-movie cliches, including the well-worn "sinister vibraphone music" gambit, and the "camera shutter" sound-effect used to imply that somebody's up to something. But it's also a powerful, albeit entirely partisan, condemnation of McCain's role in the affair. As a matter of campaign tactics, though, one can't help observing that the McCain ad is 35 seconds long, whereas the Obama documentary is 13 minutes, and that one of these might be better suited to today's cable-news-driven, ultra-low-attention-span political culture than the other..."

Of course, in keeping with a better grasp of the blogosphere's desire for information, Obama at Keating Economics has a research page which is packed with 'ain't John awful' research.

His campaigners are also salting the media with items such as: Yesterday, Mr Obama's aides pointed out the past connections Mr McCain had with a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the left-wing government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair during the 1980s.

Although neither man is covering themselves with glory, it is mainly John McCain who receives negative press for his efforts.

However, the final word may yet go to the Republicans, as they wake up to the fact that Obama's email fund-raising blitz probably saw some foreigners illegally donating to campaign funds.

Fact Check.org has sent out an email which calls a plague on both their houses:

We won't attempt to assess which side is more deceitful, a task that would require subjective judgments about the degree of untruthfulness and the relative importance of each misleading statement. But, sadly, each side is correct to say the other has used false attacks.

Old Fred Daly of Currabubulla was right - he who slings mud loses ground. Both candidates are on shaky turf when they hunt for dirt.

For the latest from the candidates go to the transcript of the Second Presidential Campaign Debate held yesterday.