A new hybrid animal sighted roaming the political neighbourhood

Mal (B)rough has taken his bat and ball onto a plane for home, now that the Queensland Liberals and Nats have created that strangest of political hybrids, the Liberal National Party (LNP).

At it's new website the LNP promises:
"Government that is open and honest;
Government that has plans for the future, not just for the next five years but for the next 50 years;
Government that is caring and empathetic;
Government that is in touch and understands what life is like for Queensland families;
Government that builds for the future today, not just talks about it...
And that is what your new LNP will deliver."

A two-man executive currently musters this mob.
X marks the spot of the Draft Constitution and the lengthy amendments are here.

I think that Bleak's daily cartoon in The Australian has it about right.

Slate's interactive guide: Who in the Bush administration broke the law, and who could be prosecuted?

A little 'light' Sunday reading from Slate online magazine last Thursday.

What kind of lawbreaking has happened on President Bush's watch, among his top and mid-level advisers? What hasn't? Who is implicated and who is not? Despite the lack of or*l s*x with an intern, the past seven years have yielded an embarrassment of riches when it comes to potentially prosecutable crimes. We have tried to sketch out a map of who did what and when, with links to the evidence that is public and notes about what we may learn from investigations that are still pending....

Click here for the diagram, and here for a text-only version.

They're at it again! Pollies editing Wikipedia

No wonder Aussie politicians have reputations lower than a snake's belly.
Certain pollies, their staff and advisers have again been sprung editing Wikipedia, to change or remove parts of entries with which they disagree.
Being ably assisted in this by staff at the Australian Parliamentary Library, who should have known better than to advise such a risky course of action censorship.

What was left of Wikipedia's rep has, along with the previously considerable reputation of the Parliamentary Library, flown out the window with this latest news.

Clocking up hours at taxpayer expense to edit a charitable organisation's website will not win any points with voters either.

It seems that a change of government did not in fact alter the habits of those scurrying about Roaches Castle on Capital Hill, Canberra.

If you didn't keep a record last time, here is the Wikiscanner website which will allow you to back track suspicious entries and edits to their source.

We all need to get out more...

It seems that we all might need to get out more (and that includes advertising whiz kids).

At http://www.howdoyoulikeyourvegemite.com.au/ we are logging on to tell the world just how we like to spread our Vegemite.

There must be something about this humble yeast spread that taps into our lyrical selves.

Here is an Ode to Vegemite, A Tribute to Keats [1] courtesy of Sydney Poetry Blog and Becca Callaway.

O! Vegemite.

That molten onyx,

Oozing over the rough

Crumbling toast.

As my stainèd teeth

Rip into your skin,

As my blackened tongue

Pierces your sticky centre.O! Vegemite.

Oh, oh Vegemite.

As peristalsis

Takes its tangy toll.

As you slither down my oesophagus,

Whole.

O! Vegemite.

O! Sweet choking Vegemite.

Soothe the acids of my gut.

Writhe inside my big fat pot.

O! Vegemite

O! Vegemite.

Ode to Vegemite [2] here

Natural artists of the Clarence Valley

Clarence Valley sisters

Doris and Gladys O'Grady
who lived between
1894 and 1994.

Images from Grafton Regional Gallery

Aunty ABC presents iView with teething problems for consumers

So Aunty is giving Australia free internet streaming on six channels with iView.

Five of the channels are showing 'catch up' programmes, which is the spin for repeat programmes and the sixth appears to be an 'ad' channel for the ABC Shop.

iTWire tells us that
"iView uses a Flash-based player which may not be everyone's ideal, but at least it's available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The main menu page is a fairly hefty 2.3M (the bulk of that being the various XML files), and the episodes burn around 5M per minute. Clearly, this is not for people on 400M/month Internet plans. Oh, and the ABC recommends available bandwidth of at least 1.1Mbps for smooth playback. "

However, there is little to celebrate yet as so far only iiNet has reportedly agreed to place these ABC channels on the 'unmetered' download list.
Can anyone really see the Telstra board and CEO coming to the party?
Telstra has to be close to the biggest ISP based on broadband market share, so pigs might fly sooner.

As PC Authority puts it
"Telstra would rather you buy content from Bigpond Movies than watch iView for free, which is why it gives its customers such measly download limits but doesn't count data used downloading content from Bigpond. It's a de facto walled garden - you don't need walls when you cut people off at the knees so they don't have a high enough data allowance to go anywhere else. "

Wall Street Journal McCain v Obama July poll

The Wall Street Journal yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- Midway through the election year, the presidential campaign looks less like a race between two candidates than a referendum on one of them -- Sen. Barack Obama.
With the nominations of both parties effectively settled for more than a month, the key question in the contest isn't over any single issue being debated between the Democrats' Sen. Obama or the Republicans' Sen. John McCain. The focus has turned to the Democratic candidate himself: Can Americans get comfortable with the background and experience level of Sen. Obama? It's still looking like a toss of the coin in the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign.

We are halfway through Echidna breeding season - drive carefully

Photo from the ABC

Echidna breeding season still has around six more weeks to run. Please take care when driving on rural roads or near bushland in your area. An amorous Echidna doesn't look both ways before crossing the road!

Grab your flack jacket - Australia's under attack!

When out surfing the Net last night I came across the Global Terrorism Database.
Opening the tab GD2 I received something of a shock. It seems that Australia has had 63 terrorist attacks up to 1997, many involving fatalities.

Does anyone remember an attack on 19 August 1996 which targeted government and saw 60 people injured?
Or four days earlier the indigenous community of Halls Creek conducting a terrorist attack on multiple fronts?
A terrorist assault on business on 28 February 1997 which saw 19 hurt?

Here are the website's details:
Copyright © 2007 National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism START: A Center of Excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA 301.405.6600

mailto:infostart@start.umd.edu?subject=GTD

http://www.start.umd.edu/

Last Updated: May 14, 2007

The methodology is here.

Call 000 if your laughter threatens to become terminal.

Updated GD2 webpage for Australia showing 9 more terrorist attacks between 1998 and 2003.

Prime Minister Rudd is being cute as he again approaches the subject of a republic

Oh dear, Kevin Rudd is at it again.
On the surface it seems that yesterday he had "agreed to start a consultation process about Aboriginal recognition in the Constitution."
Does anyone really think that Rudders and cronies would stop at limiting constitutional change to this recognition?
The daft idiot obviously thinks that under the cover of what is essentially a moral as well as a legal issue, the Labor Right can attach a republic.
Sorry, mate. In this house a republic is not on - I wouldn't trust any modern pollie with pen and ink around the Australian Constitution.
With Australia 2020 showing what an elitist idea you have of the consultative process, I specifically wouldn't trust you, Kev.