Now if Obama really believes in change he would.....

...take a cat as well as a dog into his new White House home.

Bookies uncertain if Obama will make the White House?

It certainly says a lot about our cynical world when one of the largest corporate bookmakers Sportsbet mentioned assassination as one of the reasons it may not have to payout on an Obama win as per their contract with punters.
Aussie punters have no such worries with Centrebet as it pays out on the political party not the candidate and will be sending out winnings this week.

Stone the crows! In the US of A do they really expect that someone would place a bet then grab a rifle or do they just think that Obama is hated that much by white supremacists?

Update:
According to Gambling911, in the U.K. and Ireland Paddy Power and the punters are even sicker.
"Ireland's biggest online bookmaker, Paddy Power, has been raked through the coals for offering a bet on which it will pay out should president-elect Barack Obama be assassinated during his first term in office, write Patrick Griffin and Allison Bray of the Independent.
And people are betting it. Odds have been slashed from 16-1 yesterday to 12-1 Friday morning."

Punters who backed Obama should front up to their bookies now

Some of the punter who backed Barack Obama to win the US Presidential Election can front up to their bookie right now and collect their winnings.

In what is indeed a most magnanimous gesture (well, that's how the bookies probably describe it) punters who wagered on Obama with Australian bookmaker Centrebet can get in the queue and collect their winnings now.

Yes, that's correct! Punters do not have to wait until Inauguration Day on 20 January 2009 to collect their winnings.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Centrebet announced it would today begin paying out more than $2 million in winnings to punters who backed Senator Obama to win the US election.

This comes after Centrebet was one of two bookmakers that yesterday told media that it would not pay out until the inauguration in January as part of a long running condition.

Sadly, the news for punters who put their hard-earned on Obama with Sportsbet is not so exciting.

Sportsbet said it would not pay out until the January inauguration and this was clearly stated on its terms and conditions.

Centrebet media director Neil Evans said that it had decided to change this long-running policy and begin paying out successful punters from today because it was "the right thing to do''.

The Herald reported Sportsbet could not be reached for comment.

Rugby League's Centenary Year - a year to forget

Oh boy! Australia's National Rugby League has had, to put it mildly, a shocker of a centenary year.

We don't need to go anywhere near the many and varied indiscretions (and that's putting things very politely!) that players have committed to remind ourselves that rugby league in Australia is in the horrors.

And, what about the monumental stuff-ups that have plagued rugby league's centenary year! The farce of having a rugby league world cup that has just ten nations taking part in says it all.

But wait, there's more. This latest stuff-up takes the cake.

The Sydney Morning Herald has published a piece by Andrew Moore, who teaches Australian history at the University of Western Sydney and is a co-organiser of the Centenary Conference of Rugby League at the Powerhouse Museum, in which Moore reveals yet another stuff-up.

Moore describes the NRL's move to established an award that recognises the significant contribution of indigenous Australians to rugby league "as an admirable initiative" but says there's one big problem with it.

The award, which goes to a rising star of indigenous background playing his rookie year in the NRL or the Toyota Cup, is the George Green Medal, but it has been named after the wrong man.


Certainly the surviving photographs of Green, a highly regarded hooker-forward with the North Sydney RLFC in their premiership years of 1921-22, establish he was black, as well as extremely handsome, with immaculate hair always parted neatly in the middle.

Almost every sports historian and rugby league website, from Wikipedia to the highly respected Colin Tatz and Douglas Booth, claim that George was Aboriginal.

If, however, anyone had bothered to research George Green's background, they would have established that his pedigree is a little murky. George's birth certificate establishes he was born at Dalmorton, near Grafton, in northern NSW, (not in the strongly indigenous Emmaville, as some have claimed) on December 17, 1883, the son of Thomas Green and his wife, Hannah McMahon, of Bulli. His full name was Edward George Green.

While being born near Grafton may well add credence to the view that George was Aboriginal and a member of the large Bundjalung community, it is important to remember that in the 1880s Grafton was a major port. Thomas Green's occupation as a master mariner is not surprising.

Revealing about George's father is his place of birth. On George's birth certificate Thomas Green recorded his birthplace as St Kitts, West Indies. Though Thomas was not consistent in recording his personal details - on his marriage certificate he suggested he was born in England - it is likely, nonetheless, that George Green was of Afro-Caribbean background.

Nor did George's maternal line establish any claim to Aboriginality. Hannah McMahon arrived in Australia from Ireland in 1860 as a 13-month-old baby, part of a Donegal family emigrating in the wake of the Great Famine.

George muddied the issue further by telling various people he was a Pacific Islander or Maori. Denying Aboriginality was normal in those less enlightened times. Some see this as strengthening the claim he was Aboriginal. If George had come clean about his racial origins, so the argument goes, he would have been expected to have had no further contact with his family and former community. Therefore he prevaricated about his ancestry.

The mystery, however, can be solved. It seems there were two George Greens from northern NSW, born six months apart. The NRL named the medal after the wrong one.Another George Green was born at Emmaville, north of Glen Innes, on June 24, 1883, the son of Chas Green, a miner, and his wife, Annie Coltern, formerly of Ipswich.

This George Green was indigenous. The Green family is still well known among Bundjalung people around Emmaville.

Most certainly, however, he was not the E.G. Green who appeared in Rugby League News.

Consider this in the context of the times and the deep racism shaped by social Darwinism. Being black then would have impeded a footballer's career, and impeded a lot more too. Yet E.G. Green secured work as a mechanic with the Postmaster-General's Department in April 1911, two years after theNSW Protection Act began breaking up Aboriginal communities by forcibly removing children - the origins of the stolen generations. While the rugby league press of the time frequently commented on the "dusky" origins of players, no comment was made about George, other than that he was an extremely talented footballer and something of a gentleman.

In modern cliche, Edward George Green was a rugby league role model deserving of a place in history, an esteemed footballer with an honourable reputation. In all aspects apart from his lack of Aboriginality he deserved to have the NRL medal named after him.

Genetically modified stupidity rules, K.O.?

A group of Australian farmers are once again proving that they don't give a toss about anything except their own bottom line, as they plough ahead with GMO cropping regardless.

Farm Online's Stock and Land section reported last Thursday:

Monsanto has outlined the procedure for the sale of Roundup Ready canola hay after widespread confusion within the industry surrounding the protocols of cutting GM hay.
Roundup Ready crops have not been immune to the big dry that has hit the cropping belt in southern Australia and some farmers with Roundup Ready canola have decided there is a better return to be had by cutting the crops for hay.
Monsanto corporate affairs manager Mark Buckingham said growers who cut their GM crops for hay were required under their technology users agreement (TUA) to notify Monsanto if they planned to cut the crop.
Then, if they plan to sell the hay, and not feed it to their own livestock, they have to provide details of the buyer to Monsanto.
The buyer, obviously, must also be notified that the hay is from a GM crop.

What is not being said is that the poor buyer is going to have to expend dollars on a suitable herbicide to eliminate any GMO seed which germinates from the use of this hay and of course will have some difficulty in identifying GMO seedlings from millions of other seedlings in the paddock.
Otherwise Monsanto and Co. will be coming after the buyer for copyright or contract infringements.

Just before I finish - a big hello to Monsanto's blog monitor busily beavering away out there in hyperspace.

Saffin urges NSW North Coast business to take advantage of 'green' funding

The Far North Coaster online magazine reports:

Federal Member for Page Janelle Saffin says local commercial building owners can take advantage of the Rudd Government's new $90 million Green Building Fund which offers dollar-for-dollar support up to $500,000.

Ms Saffin said the fund will help businesses tackle climate change by reducing the energy consumed in the existing commercial office buildings.

"I know local people are serious about tackling greenhouse gas emissions," she said.

"After the Government announced its Green loans and grants for households in the Budget, I had a number of people asking about green initiatives for businesses.

"The Green Building Fund is aimed at owners of existing commercial office buildings, and will support retro-fitting projects that reduce energy consumption.

"Eligible projects can include upgrades to common area lighting, and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems and improvements to building fabric through glazing and shading."

It's good to see Ms. Saffin making use of the media to inform her electorate.

The North East Waste Forum in conjunction with local government in the Northern Rivers also offers residents and business an opportunity to reuse, recycle or rent to reduce the high turnover of goods:

Repairing goods, from shoes to computers, is no longer seen as an option when times are good and we are cajoled by advertising to believe that products are obsolete as soon as they hit the shelves.

The result of this is the increased depletion of resources, particularly metals, and the problems of disposal of electronic and electrical equipment.

There are over 45 million major appliances — 9 million computers, 5 million printers and 2 million scanners — in households and businesses across Australia, of which 2.5 million are being discarded each year.

Of these 2.5 million discarded units, 1.4 million are computers; of which more than half, equating to almost 20,000 tons, are sent to landfill.

The Reuse Directory online

Out demn spot!

This turned up in my Inbox this week. Have to admire the blinkered fevour of those Jesus freaks.

Image comes from TinyPic