Pollie jokes review

By the last year of the Howard Government jokes about Coalition pollies had been refined to a professional standard and we all had a good laugh.
Now that we're almost at the halfway point in this Rudd Government first term, do we have any jokes to show for it?
Are they all that funny?

Well we have Rudd, Kevin Rudd a video over at Unsourced Humor.

Jokesey gave us an old BOOM-BOOM about Rudd and the strip club:
Did you hear that Kevin Rudd saw a disappointing poll this morning? It was bereft of a gyrating naked woman...

At The Reel Deal it was a replay of an old Howard joke with Rudders substituted as the butt.

I Seek Golf came up with a Little Johnnie:
Kevin Rudd was visiting a primary school in Tasmania.
One class was in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.
The teacher asked Mr. Rudd if he would like to lead the discussion on the word 'tragedy'.
So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a 'tragedy'.
A little boy stood up and offered: 'If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a 'tragedy'.
'No,' said Rudd 'that would be an accident.'
A little girl raised her hand: 'If a school bus carrying fifty children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy'.
'I'm afraid not,' explained Mr. Rudd 'that's what we would call great loss'.
The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Rudd searched the room. 'Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?'
Finally, at the back of the room, little Johnny raised his hand.
In a quiet voice he said: 'If a plane carrying you and Mrs. Rudd was struck by a 'friendly fire'
missile & blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy.'
'Fantastic!' exclaimed Rudd . 'That's right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?'
'Well,' says little Johnny 'it has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn't be a great loss and it probably wouldn't be a f*cking accident either!'

At Love For Life teh joke was looong:

But it was at Kevin Rudd LOL that my funny bone was finally tickled:
Kevin Rudd called Julia Gillard into his office one day and said, "Julia I have a great idea! We are going to go all out to win the country voters."
"Good idea Prime Minister, how will we go about it?" said Julia.
"Well," said Rudd, "we'll get ourselves one of those Driza Bone coats, some RM Williams boots, a stick and an Akubra hat, oh and a Blue Cattle dog.
Then we'll really look the part. We'll go to a typical old outback country pub, we'll show we really enjoy the bush." " Right ,"said Julia.
Days later, all kitted out and with the requisite Blue heeler, they set off from Canberra in a westerly direction.
Eventually they arrived at just the place they were looking for and found a typical outback pub. Walked in with the dog and up to the bar.
"G,day mate," said Rudd, to the bartender, "two middies of your best beer." "Good afternoon Prime Minister," said the bartender, "two middies of our best coming up".
Gillard and Rudd stood leaning on the bar drinking their beer and chatting, nodding now and again to those who came into the bar for a drink. The dog lay quietly at their feet.
All of a sudden, the door from the adjacent bar opened and in came a grizzled old stockman, complete with stockwhip.
He walked up to the cattle dog, lifted its tail with the whip and looked underneath, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the other bar.
A few moments later, in came another old stockman with his whip. He walked up to the dog and, lifted it's tail, looked underneath, scratched his head and went back to the other bar.
Over the course of the next hour or so another four or five stockmen came in and, lifted the dogs tail and went away looking puzzled.
Eventually, Rudd and Gillard could stand it no longer and called the barman over. "Tell me," said Rudd, "why did all those old stockmen come in and look under the dog's tail like that? Is it an old outback custom?"
"Strewth no!" said the barman. "It's just that someone went 'n told 'em there was a cattle dog in this bar with two arseholes!"

Greed is still good

Fair crack of the whip!
Up to our knees in a global recession caused by excessive business and personal debt and out-of-control greed and what does the world do?
Continues accumulating massive debt through government borrowings to prop up ailing national economies and stands by while many of the architects of this crisis continue on their avaricious way.

The Australian this morning:

"FANNIE Mae and Freddie Mac, the US Government-controlled mortgage giants, will pay $US210 million ($294 million) in retention bonuses over the next 18 months.
The lenders are overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) after making $US108 billion in losses last year and being taken into Government conservatorship.
Fannie Mae's disclosure last month that it planned to pay almost $US5 million in bonuses to its top four executives riled politicians, who were already furious over $US165 million windfalls for about 400 workers at AIG's troubled financial products business.
Today's revelations of the payments to be made to ordinary workers are almost certain to cause anger in Congress, which is considering legislation to tax bonuses paid by companies that have received federal bailouts.
In a letter to Senator Charles Grassley, James Lockhart, director of the FHFA, spelt out the bonuses being paid to 7600 employees at the lenders over 18 months to early 2010.
Mr Lockhart said that about $US51 million of payments were made to workers late last year, according to The Wall Street Journal, which has seen the letter. The rest of the cash would be distributed this year and early next year.
At Freddie Mac, 4057 workers would be eligible for payouts, of which 92 would receive $US100,000 or more. One Freddie worker would be paid more than $US675,000 to retain his or her services.
The letter said that 3545 Fannie employees would be eligible for retention bonuses, of which 121 will get $US100,000 or more. The maximum payout at Fannie will be $US705,000............
Fannie and Freddie loan or guarantee half of America's $US12 trillion mortgage market but made losses on sub-prime loans. They are propped up by the Government, which has put aside $US200 billion to support the lenders."

If this isn't milking government for all it's worth, what is?

Climate change deniers still singing the same old song with Marohasy in the chorus

Header for Cato Institute advertisement

There may be a new president in Washington but lobbyists for industries opposed to climate change mitigation measures are still singing the same old song.

According to CBC News at the end of March the Cato Institute ran full-page ads in:

the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. The ads cite evidence, referenced in four scientific papers, that the climate is not changing significantly.

These very expensive ads were signed by 100 'scientists' and George Monbiot has fun with this list, while DeSmog Blog links to an interesting set of API memos.

The advertising campaign appears to be timed to disturb public perception ahead any passage of US climate change legislation and the Obama hosted April climate change summit and, a surprising number of the advertisement's listed individuals are also reported to have taken money from fossil fuel industries.

Among the list of 'scientists' endorsing the ads is one Colin Barton, CSIRO (Retired), Robert M. Carter, PhD, James Cook University and the blogosphere's favourite Australian global warming denier Jennifer Marohasy, PhD, Australian Environment Foundation.

Ms. Marohasy gives some space to the ad on her blog, Andrew Bolt's blog on 1 April also gives it a mention and thanks Professor Bob Carter for the heads up, but Tim Blair doesn't appear to have noticed these ads.

While it seems that Jennifer Marohasy originally worked as a field biologist and is affiliated with the Institute of Public Affairs (which is believed to receive funding from the oil, coal, tobacco and biotech industries) and marine biologist Professor Robert Carter is also a PIC affiliate, little is known about Colin Barton.

Perhaps Tim can make up for letting down the denialist side by finding out if Colin Barton CSIRO (Retired) is the same man who endorsed the 2008 denialist ISCS Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change as Colin Barton, PhD (Earth Science), former Principal Research Scientist, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Melbourne, Australia and/or the person formerly employed by the State Electricity Commission of Victoria as a geologist working in coal also posting on the Internet as Dr. Colin M. Barton.

It's raining on our blog!

Due to prolonged wet weather here on the NSW North Coast at least two of North Coast Voices regular authors are having problems with their phone lines and Internet connections.

We are hoping that the problem will be resolved by Wednesday.

Our apologies if posts on this blog are rather erratic over the next few days.

When "For sure" is not a wise thing to say

In 2009 Nationals protégée Richie Williamson is the 'independent' Clarence Valley Council mayor.
He is also a breakfast disc jockey on Grafton's Radio 2GF.

So when Richie decided to travel down to Coffs Harbour on 24 March and interview Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull (there to bolster the fortunes of local Nationals MP Luke Hartsuyker) he must have known that his promised ability to remain politically neutral was under scrutiny.

The Mayor/DJ did fairly well at first but fell at the third hurdle.

Turnbull replied to question number three:

Well I think that's what the Fair Pay Commission will be looking at very closely. They've got to weigh up the balance between giving people a pay rise on the one hand and its impact on jobs on the other – so that's really their task to do that.
But in many respects, I think for a lot of local businesses here, a greater threat is the modernised awards changes, which have been proposed by the Industrial Relations Commission, which the Labor Government is obviously right behind and that is going to see the cost of labour and the conditions of labour becoming a lot more expensive – particularly for people in the restaurant business and hospitality business. And you see the restaurants around Australia are becoming very concerned that they will be able to remain competitive and profitable, particularly in these difficult times with wages being increased with these new awards.

Then the mayor on a tightrope agreed with him with that fatal: For sure.

This short phrase was definitely not keeping your own political opinions tightly buttoned when out in public, Mayor.
And given the very strong anti-Howard Government WorkChoices stand the Clarence Valley took in 2005-2007, not a good move in relation to your own political health.

What you don't do after spotting a snake in the yard....

The very last option which should have come to mind - picking up your camera.

X7 art exhibition by recipients of the John & Sheilagh Kaske Memorial Fellowship, SCU nextart Gallery Lismore, 14 April - 2 May 2009

Examples of the art of Jan Oliver, Joanna Kambourian & Julie Barratt

X7 is an exhibition of Southern Cross University students who have been recipients of the John & Sheilagh Kaske Memorial Fellowship. Since 2002 there have been 7 fellowships awarded to outstanding graduating visual arts students who submitted proposals considered to have the greatest potential for launching their professional careers. This exhibition brings these 7 artists together for the first time. Exhibiting artists are Simone Tops, Laura McKewan, Tim Crawley, Natalya Garden-Thompson, Jan Oliver, Joanna Kambourian and Julie Barratt. The 2008 Kaske Fellowship will be announced at the opening. At SCU nextart Gallery, 89 Magellan St. Tel 02 6622 3490 Email nextart@scu.edu.au Website www.scu.edu.au [Regional Arst NSW e-Bulletin]