It can't be all bad if Tim Blair dislikes it

Poor Tim Blair of do-you-know-the-truth-or-do-you-read-the-Telegraph fame.

Almost everything that even hints at being slightly green or mentions the possibility of climate change seems to turn this journalist markedly dyspeptic.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he was also a green legume anorexic as a child. :)

Popped on to his 'personal' blog early last night and around a third of the posts on his home page contained a dig at Earth Hour in one form or another.

With Earth Hour likely to occur again next year and climate change just as likely to be remain a topic of discussion, perhaps Tim will have to consider breaking out the Mylanta.

Here's laughing at you, kid.

 

Look who's going to Rudd's 2020 summit

Take a gander at this piece on Kevin Rudd's Australia 2020 summit coming to a comic strip near you this April.

I'm sorry, Kev, but you don't really expect me to take your bit of fluff seriously do you?

First it was Canberra and now wannabe talkfests are springing up everywhere.

So help me - there's even one scheduled for the Clarence Valley. A real piece of busy business allowing government and council staff (along with non-government agency employees and local business operators) to justify their existence. 

The whole national box and dice has all the hallmarks of a camel in the making.

Larvatus Prodeo pointed out some of the problems weeks ago.

Whales of the NSW North Coast in pictures

A slideshow of whale photographs can be found at the North Coast's Southern Cross University Whale Research Centre website here.

This image shows a whale breaching off Byron Bay.

Whale song from ABC's Whale Dreams.

Obama team lashes out: Clinton will "do and say anything" McCain wants "100 years of war"

With the racial attitudes issue muddying waters in the US presidential nomination race, Barack Obama now refocusses attention on his opposition to the war in Iraq.

Pity that this much publicised opposition didn't include voting in the US Senate to starve George W's war machine.

 

Here is the latest email from the Obama camp, with its usual bottom line request for more money.

 

Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are reading from the same political playbook as they attack Barack on foreign policy.

They have both criticized Barack's commitment to act against top al Qaeda terrorists if others can't or won't act.

And they have both dismissed his call for renewed diplomacy as naïve while mistakenly standing behind George Bush's policy of non-engagement that just isn't working.

But most of all -- after five years of overwhelming evidence that we are less safe, less able to shape events abroad, and more divided at home -- Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are failing to address the consequences of a war they both supported that should have never been authorized and never been waged.

We need a leader who had the judgment to oppose this war before it began and who has a clear plan to end it.

But Barack is facing a two-front battle against Senator Clinton and Senator McCain. Make a donation of $25 to support this campaign today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

We knew at the beginning of this campaign that we'd be up against the full force of the conventional thinking that grips Washington.

But no one could have imagined it would go on this long, or that we'd have to fight this battle on two fronts at the same time.

Senator Clinton's campaign, with her chances of winning dwindling and our delegate lead even larger than it was before her so-called comeback on March 4th, has adopted a "kitchen-sink" strategy to throw everything they can at us. Her campaign has made it clear they will do and say anything to win this nomination.

Senator McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, is already running his general election campaign. He's so eager to justify another 100 years of war in Iraq and drum up conflict with Iran that he and his campaign have been making sloppy and woefully false assertions about links between Iran and al Qaeda in Iraq.

We've got to take on both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain at the same time.

Your support now is more important than ever -- please make a donation of $25:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

Yesterday, Barack laid out a clear plan to make America more secure and end the war in Iraq.

Today, he laid out the economic costs of the war that Senator Clinton and Senator McCain supported.

In both speeches -- and in his speech on race in America earlier this week -- Barack Obama demonstrated that he is the candidate with the courage and judgment to tackle the challenges we face.

The choice Americans have in this election is clear -- and your support right now sends a message to those who support the status quo that it is time for a new kind of leadership.

Please do what you can to help fight this two-front battle for change:

https://donate.barackobama.com/twofronts

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Libs have more hide than Jessie the Elephant

Yesterday The Daily Telegraph let the world know that Brendan Nelson, Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and friends would like more money please.

The parliamentary salary scale for Opposition MPs was fine by them when they held the more financially lucrative government benches, but now they don't they want more money for shadow ministers who currently receive the base salary of about $127,060 per annum plus $30,000 in electoral allowances.

With Nelson as Opposition Leader getting a total package of around $262,00 a year and Bishop as Deputy Leader getting an extra $73,000.

These lord high poobahs just cannot get their heads around the fact that they are now the plebs of the Australian Parliament. Their greed and arrogance appear to know no bounds.

With many on the NSW North Coast scratching to find their next meal, keep a roof over their heads and afford medical treatment, whining Libs will find little sympathy hereabouts. 

Oi, Tony - if your wants were weeds you'd have a paddock full!

Read my lips, Mr. Rudd. I will never vote Labor if you continue down this path

For over a decade the former Howard Government ignored this country's own democratic heritage, international law and UN conventions; as it sought ways to quash many of the historic human and legal rights of Australian citizens, turn the safety net welfare system into a form of alms giving dependant on a whim of the government of the day, commence the transformation of public infrastructure/services delivery into 'user pays', and convert a significant part of government pensions, benefits and allowances into a non-cash component.

 

It was easy to turn away from the Liberal Party and the Nationals when faced with this concerted effort to destroy what was left of the ideal of an egalitarian society and the notion of a fair go.

 

Now barely four months after the federal election which saw it installed, the Rudd Government continues to support most of the legislation and regulations which the Howard Government created as its preferred vehicle for the destruction of our civil liberties and the idea of a fair go.

 

We still see racist law operating, habeas corpus remains missing in action for some criminal charges, draconian sedition laws chill dissent, judgemental and punitive attitudes to the poor still flourish within government policy, and there is a continuing push to transform certain pensions, benefits and allowances into a modern version of food stamps under the guise of income 'management'. 

 

The Northern Territory intervention clearly demonstrated that this current push to replace a percentage of welfare cash payments with vouchers or cards has nothing to do with the cited reason of protecting children in dysfunctional home situations. Because income management there was immediately applied across the board in designated indigenous communities and involved people without children, family commitments or any form of addictive/anti-social behaviour.

 

This push originally started as a possible method to control and restrict the lives of welfare recipients in an effort to disguise the fact that the former government was intending to dismantle the welfare system overtime and the Rudd Government allows the push to continue for very similar reasons.

 

Like the Howard Government before it, this Federal Labor Government is first targeting groups which society has always felt comfortable about negatively labelling before it inevitably widens its 18th century net and goes after the unemployed and those with a disability. 

 

Sadly, modern Labor governments right across Australia are turning out to be nothing more than a collection of self-righteous suits eager to assume the position in front of neo-con think tanks, big business and professional god-botherers. Always happy to demonise the weak and vulnerable if doing so pleases these politically powerful sectors. Seeing nothing wrong with the diminished autonomy, discrimination, humiliation and financial loss that ensues.

 

So read my lips Mr. Rudd. If you continue down this path towards establishing debit cards for any or all 'welfare' recipients, I will not be voting for a Labor candidate at any future election.

What's more, I will treat Labor as I treat the Coalition and make sure that my ballot is likely to be exhausted long before my preferences could flow on to its candidate.

 

Therefore, although the Labor MP for Page may be a genuine and hard-working local member she will never see my vote.

No Labor candidate for the NSW Clarence electorate will ever get my vote in the future. Nor will any Clarence Valley local government candidate identified as a member of the Labor Party.

The ball is now in your court, Prime Minister.