Luke Hartsuyker, the Member for Interjections

I know it's not easy being an MP (specially if you sit on the Opposition benches these days) but the North Coast Nationals Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker seems to be making light work of it all.
Luke is becoming known for his fatuous one-liners.
Although many of these are lost in general catcalling across the Chamber, some do make it into Hansard.
"Kev wants to be the Pope" was one of the latest interjections in the second reading of those Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills.
Along with "A fine member, too!" on another day and the earlier somewhat obscure "Sydney!"
Riveting stuff Luke!
Still I suppose it had to be all downhill from there once you'd waltzed a cardboard cut-out figure around the floor of the House of Reps.

Monsanto is another word for elitist ethnocentrism

This is Monsanto & Co. on Twitter last week:

MonsantoCo
Even after supplying those who need it this year, the US be able to save 10% of this year's corn harvest for the future. #ThankaFarmer about 5 hours ago from Twuffer

This is what the media reported in the five days before Monsanto made that boast:

• It's estimated one-sixth of the global population, about one billion people, are malnourished and going hungry every day. And there are real fears that number will be much bigger by 2050, when the world's population is projected to pass nine billion.
• In Guatemala, over 400,000 families are in desperate need of food due to a disastrous drought and crop failure. Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom has declared a national state of calamity due to extreme food shortages. Hardest hit are young children and pregnant women, who are vulnerable to malnutrition and need sufficient nourishment to grow and fight off disease.
• The United Nations children's fund (UNICEF) has urged for more action to be taken in southern Sudan to stop severe food shortage in parts of that region. UNICEF's Deputy Executive Director Hilde F. Johnson who visited in the vast region said now is the time to act. "Now is the time to act. Everybody needs to do their best to stop this humanitarian emergency, which is already affecting 1.5 million people across southern Sudan," said Johnson in a statement received here Friday.
• The number of U.S. households unable to put adequate food on the table increased sharply during the latest recession, reaching the highest level recorded since USDA began monitoring household food security in 1995. Proportionally, increases in food insecurity were greatest in groups that were historically less vulnerable to food insecurity.

I don't know what is more confronting - Monsanto's corporate elitism when it comes to American society, its insular ethnocentricity (based as it is within a global super power which is also one of the leading cereal-growing nations) or its determination to treat its audience like dumb idiots. No wonder this multinational appears to be losing market share.

More on Monsanto:
Monsanto Pulls GM Corn Amid Food Safety Concerns,Scoop, 17 November 2009
Monsanto faces 'distrust' in seed battle, Delaware Online, 15 November 2009

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Michelle O - stop being such a princess and get a life!

On the 26th November 2009 ABC News online ran with this piece:
"Executives at internet search giant Google have apologised over an offensive picture of US first lady Michelle Obama that appeared high on its list of search results.
The picture was a photograph of Ms Obama that had been manipulated to give her the facial features of a monkey."
Now manipulated images of famous persons have been around for ages and North Coast Voices linked to the site Celebrity Apes in July last year when John McCain and Barack Obama were morphed during the US presidential election campaign.
I asked Clarencegirl and she tells me that from memory movie or pop stars such as Katie Holmes, Justin Timberlake, Madonna and Mariah Carey as well as politicians and nationally prominent personalities such as Rush Limbaugh were being given the ape treatment on this website.
The list also included Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton.
Memory is all anyone can rely on now as the site has been pulled completely by Google.
It seems that Michelle O. has turned into such a princess that she only wants the most flattering images out there in cyberspace and Team Obama is willing to cry wolf to gain her ends.
However censorship has not been as successful as they hoped and Google Images popped up with the Celebrity Ape first lady pic contained in a September 2008 post on FlyLifeStyle.............

Sometimes Internet censorship is so mind boggling dumb.

Animalia......(4)

SMS published in The Daily Examiner on 27 November 2009:

Snake Warning

Beware of red-belly black snakes. Had a heart start while getting washing out of the machine! Found one clean well-spun snake. Snake did find cool space with water.

MB
Swan Creek

Colourful Byron - from the paddocks to the sea

Main Beach,
Byron Bay
Simon Harriott
Byron Creek I

Well what did you expect? Turnbull's leadership style grates

Lyrics by Turnbull quoted in Annabel Crabb's essay Stop at Nothing: the life and times of Malcolm Turnbull

To all intents and purposes Malcolm Turnbull's leadership style is decimating the Liberal Party of Australia. Well, what did you expect?

He took a wrecking ball to the Australian Republican Movement in 1998 and 1999 and it is still trying to recover almost ten years on.

After a disastrous national referendum result in 1999, Turnbull waited nine months and then resigned as chair of that organisation, with the rather amusing line in hindsight: Well I doubt whether I'll be remembered in the history books at all.

Oh, I think you will be remembered Mr. Turnbull - your name will probably be written in blood on the pages of future party histories.
Because the reputedly distant to vicious, alternatively overbearing or dictatorial "Bad Malcolm" always seems to win out over the "Good Malcolm".

You know you're a politcal tragic when.....

A fishing mate of mine wryly reckons you know you're a political tragic when you rush home (as he did), break out the gourmet crackers and antipasto, pour yourself a monster claret and switch on the radio for the last House of Reps Question Time this year (while keeping one eye cocked on the Senate strutting across the tube at 2pm yesterday).

Just goes to show that today's pollies are showmen not statesmen and we're beginning to treat them as entertainment.

Pic from Google Images