I didn't know Clarence MP Steve Cansdell had a sense of humour?

That Nationals good old boy Steve Cansdell was out there hunting local headlines last week and he decided to declare that he wouldn’t “accept a ministry as it would isolate him from his constituents in the Clarence electorate”.
The merriment in our house went on for some time because Barry O’Farrell would have to have rocks in his head to put Steve in change of anything except a chook raffle after the Keneally Government inevitably falls in March.
Anony-mice
Yamba

Ooops! Obamba's beans get spilled

 

A classic piece from Mark Hosenball at Reuters on 18 January 2011 which must have the Wikileaks legal team crowing:

Internal U.S. government reviews have determined that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite the Obama administration's public statements to the contrary.

A congressional official briefed on the reviews said the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.

"I think they just want to present the toughest front they can muster," the official said.

But State Department officials have privately told Congress they expect overall damage to U.S. foreign policy to be containable, said the official, one of two congressional aides familiar with the briefings who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging," said the official, who attended a briefing given in late 2010 by State Department officials.

WikiLeaks caused a media and diplomatic uproar late last year when it began to dribble out its cache of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables……..

Borowitz on the new era of civil political discourse 'sweeping' America

If one squints when reading this – it could almost be referring to the type of political civility displayed by Tony Abbott et al and News Ltd media.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Ushering in what it is calling “a new era of civility in American political discourse,” the Republican leadership in Congress said today that from now on it would acknowledge that President Barack Obama was born “near America.”

“It is no longer acceptable for members of our Party to say that the President of the United States was born in Kenya,” wrote Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a memo sent to all GOP House members entitled The Official Republican Niceness Pledge. “From now on, we will say that he was born nearish America, and perhaps even as close as Cuba.”

The Boehner memo said that the Party would have “zero tolerance” for Republicans who say that Mr. Obama “pals around with terrorists,” instructing members to say instead, “Obama friends terrorists on Facebook.”

The memo also instructed House members never to call Mr. Obama a “socialist,” and instead to use the less politically polarizing term, “sociopath.”

Mr. Boehner also warned GOP congressmen to stop referring to Mr. Obama’s health care reform bill as “The Job-Killing Health Care Reform Act,” advising them, “There are many perfectly good synonyms for ‘killing,’ such as ‘strangling,’ ‘terminating,’ ‘annihilating,’ and ‘eviscerating.’”

In closing, Mr. Boehner wrote, “You owe it to your families and constituents back home to conduct yourselves in a civil manner, just as President Obama owes it to his relatives and comrades back in Havana.”

Queensland floods 2010-11: little wild roos hitch a ride

I'm taking this photograph at face value - I'm told it was taken in the Theodore area during the December 2010 - January 2011 Queensland floods and shows wild kangaroos willingly being transported to dry land.

Theodore was experiencing its worst flooding on record.

The Good Samaritans remain anonymous at the time of posting.