Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Even though they're also wearing speedos in a non-beach setting, this is not gay or even remotely homosexual, nor predatory. At all.
The "predatory gays" at least bothered to put on some footwear.
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Monday, March 08, 2010
By Darryl Mason
Tony Abbott on paid maternity leave, July 2002 :
"I'm dead against paid maternity leave as a compulsory thing. I think that making businesses pay what seems to them two wages to get one worker are, almost nothing could be more calculated to make businesses feel that the odds are stacked against them."Tony Abbott, last night on Lateline, stacks the odds :
"If we are gonna have a comprehensive paid parental leave scheme any time soon, the fairest way to do it is for it to be a cost on business, and the fairest way to make it a cost on business is to ask larger businesses, the businesses that have the greatest capacity to pay, the businesses that have suffered least through the global financial crisis, they're the people who can best bear it."Tony Abbott wants big business to share the wealth around, in particular to single-income families?
Who does he think he is? Obama?
"(Compulsory paid maternity leave) is pro-family, it's pro-child, it's pro-mother, and in the end, it's gonna produce a much stronger economy, because if we look after mothers in the workforce, we'll have more kids, and there is no greater contribution to the future economic strength of Australia than the kids we have now."Well, kids, and coal.
Tony Abbott wasn't too keen to be reminded of the statements he made back in 2002 by Lateline host Leigh Sales :
TONY ABBOTT: ....I'm fully aware of that quote, Leigh. I have changed my mind.
LEIGH SALES: I'm sure you are. Our viewers ...
TONY ABBOTT: And isn't it a good thing to change your mind as your understanding grows?
LEIGH SALES: That is quite a change of heart.
TONY ABBOTT: Yeah, no, look, I accept that.He wants big business to pick up the tab for his daughters' maternity leave.
LEIGH SALES: So what's brought it about?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, what's brought it about is deeper understanding of the practical difficulties of women who are trying to juggle families and careers. We should not ...
LEIGH SALES: And how have you come to that deeper understanding?
TONY ABBOTT: By, I suppose, being more conscious of the burdens that friends and family members are carrying and of thinking more deeply about the sorts of choices that I would like to be available for my own daughters.
So what's good for Abbott's children is good for Australia. I wonder if he had elderly relatives who smoked cannabis to relieve arthritis pain and reduce inflammation he would suddenly be backing medicinal marijuana?
Last night, Abbott also attempted to unleash on prime minister Kevin Rudd :
"It is pretty clear he is a guy who is all announcement and no follow through. He is, t coin a phrase, 'All Hat And No Cowboy'."Abbott didn't coin the phrase. It's been in common usage in Texas for decades :
"It is not a compliment in West Texas to be referred to as 'All hat and no cowboy'. It is a term of derision used to indicate the person has little real character beneath the very thin veneer of appearance."It's a good line, but it doesn't sound very Australian.
There is argument that the correct West Texas historical phrase is actually "All Hat, No Cattle", which certainly sounds more local.
Or perhaps Abbott knows this phrase, too, and decided not to use it to attack Rudd, because it has been popularly attached to George W. Bush since the late 1990s.
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Saturday, March 06, 2010
Photo from The Voxel Agents
A roundup of the freak Melbourne storm, from ABC News Melbourne HQ, with the great shot of a journalist reporting on the storms, holding an umbrella, inside a building, due to the amount of water pouring in through the roof.
Holy Fuck!
Chinaapek details on the above incredible vid of flash flooding in Melbourne earlier today :
I was there having coffee, the sky turned grey within seconds. Withinsecond, hail storm. Within 3 minutes, the street has gone chaos. It was a wave pool and flying branches and bins.Melbourne's Flinders Street, a few minutes after storm clouds appeared :
Ballistic Freak Hail Storm Slams Melbourne
Now this is 3D :
And it isn't over yet.The storm become curiouser and curiouser for Clemence Harvey, of South Yarra, who was watching the new Alice in Wonderland film with her 13-year-old in a packed theatre at the Jam Factory when water started pouring in front of the screen.
"Water started pouring through the ceiling and a torrent of water was pouring right in front of the screen, then they put a very large bucket down."
Seriously, how much testing do the weather machines need? They work, okay?
Now they're just showing off.
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The Full Ex-ell-ent Image Is Here
Of course Australians have known for years what Mr Burns would look like, detooned :
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By Darryl Mason
Liberal Party activists Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt get started on their campaign to seed division in the federal Labor Party vote, by pushing deputy prime minister Julia Gillard as the person who should leading Labor into the next election.
After all, Kevin Rudd is a one term prime minister, or so goes the new chant, even though polls show nothing like the anger and outrage against Rudd that professional Liberal Party activist-columnists, including Miranda Devine, claim is running wild across the land.
You know what's coming next, don't you? A full-blown campaign from the Friends Of The Liberal Party in the opinion pages of, mostly, the Murdoch media claiming that Gillard "has almost got the numbers" and "is set to challenge for the leadership of the Labor Party."
It's early March now, the election is likely to arrive before late November, so they'll need at least four months to really get those Gillard Vs Rudd rumours flaming up, after they light the first fires of course.
So expect rumours along the lines of "Senior Labor Party officials believe Rudd is dooming the government to one term" and "Gillard knows she can win where Rudd cannot" to start flooding the gruesomely predictable opinion pages of the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian in a month or so. Paul Sheehan from the Sydney Morning Herald can be relied on to join in the chanting, too.
Murdoch-funded Liberal Party activists like Andrew Bolt want to get started now, he's champing at the bit, but he knows it's still a bit too soon.
First, Glenn Milne has to fill a Sunday Telegraph page with "leaks" from "senior government figures", and then it's on.
Not the federal Labor government leadership challenge, just the column filler that will breed more columns and heated talkback debate. Anything, anything, to avoid devoting all but the most hostile attention to The Greens, who are shaping up to gain control of the Senate.
The 20th century newspapers have to at least try and give the impression that they can still influence the outcome of elections, even if they no longer really believe it themselves.
And it surely must be only a matter of weeks now before some Liberal Party politician embarrasses himself by claiming Kevin Rudd is an "Epic Fail."
Or maybe they're saving that for some of their 'hip' new campaign ads?
March 10 update : And so it begins, earlier than I predicted :
"Jones and I aren't alone among conservatives for falling for a politician whose choice of books now suggests she's readying to take over from the increasingly friendless Kevin Rudd."She's already challenging Kevin Rudd for leadership of the Labor Party? Scoop!
"Watch your back Kevin."
"So while we love challenger Gillard now...."
And this note of warning :
"I fear this love for La Gillard may well end in tears, like Act 5 of Romeo and Juliet itself."Julia Gillard will appear one day to be dead, and Australian conservative journalists will commit suicide and then Gillard will wake up from her sleep to find them all dead and then kill herself out of intolerable grief and loss?
And, man, and I thought I had some weird fantasies :
Has (Julia Gillard) bent global warmist Tim Flannery over the dispatch box in the middle of Question Time and administered a richly deserved spanking with a dead penguin....?Weirdo.
So what have they got?
His personal website reveals a man with bower-bird interests. These ranged from an obsession with suicide rates in the United States, Japan, Britain and Australia, the writings of Japanese Kamikaze pilots, Quebec's suicide ''hot spot'', ''suicide clubs'', The Complete Manual on Suicide to holocaust scenarios of nuclear attack, chemical poisoning, terrorist attacks and extensive works on the morality of war.That's a bit thin to label someone having a Dark Side, isn't it? Bit weird, perhaps, but what if most of it is related to his research?
The story of the missing nuclear scientist is strange indeed.
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Friday, March 05, 2010
As you may have already heard, British prime minister Gordon Brown has a temper of Ruddian proportions. But new reports keep hitting the British media about just how fiery and abusive Brown's temper can be. Even innocent fruit does not escape the Brown wraith.
An excerpt from an article in The Sun :
A factory worker claims that during an official visit to his plant the PM hurled a tangerine into a laminating machine after flying into a rage while on a phone call. He said: "The fruit got stuck in the machine and clogged it.
"It was very embarrassing, we had to stop the tour and he got even more angry. He called the person that gave him the tangerine an idiot."
You think The Sun just makes up stories like this?
No. A real newspaper with real journalists sources and fact-checks claims that the prime minister is a fruit thrower.
And the tale of the furiously hurled tangerine came from a clearly reputable source :
The UK Telegraph also reported this 'incident' as fact....
....and the tangerine tale even became part of a Hong Kong news agency's animated round-up of Brown abuse atrocities :
Robert Popper is responsible for 'TangerineGate'
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Wednesday, March 03, 2010
@Tara_Moss asks is this the 'Headline Typo Of The Year?' It may be Typo Of The Decade :
However, the story is good news. The Royal Institute For Deaf and Blind Children celebrated its 150th anniversary today. Author Tara Moss joined Therese Rein at the celebrations, which included the unveiling of a video conferencing room at the new library. Video conferencing that will eventually allow hearing impaired kids to talk to the world, and hear all those voices talking back.
Sometimes I want to give the miracle of digital technology a big hug.
The Institute's website is here, where you can also donate.
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Tuesday, March 02, 2010
THR notices Fox News is still struggling with its geographic disability :
It's not the first time Fox News has made such a mistake.
(Via @sreejd and @chaslicc)
Monday, March 01, 2010
Local : "Thank God It Didn't Rain Crocodiles!"
grab from photo by Christine Balmer.
Last Thursday and Friday afternoon, residents of a Northern Territory town saw hundreds of fish fall from the sky. Locals claim the fish were still alive when they hit the ground.
On both days, the rain of fish began around 6pm.
'Newsbreaker' Christine Balmer told the Northern Territory News :
"Locals were picking them up off the footy oval and on the ground everywhere.
"I haven't lost my marbles. Thank god it didn't rain crocodiles."
I would go see that movie. As long as the rain of crocodiles fell over a city.
Lajamanu is the town where the fish fell from the sky. It sits on the edge of a desert, hundreds of kilometres from lakes, or the coast.
Even more bizarrely, rains of fish fell on Lajamanu in 2004, and in 1974.
A weather forecaster told The Northern Territory News that a tornado could have been responsible, but there were none in the area on the days the rain of fish occurred.
This story is now being picked up by the Drudge Report, Reddit, Digg, thousands of bloggers and the news wires. The Northern Territory News has found its clickbait tale of the year.And it's a good, more accurate choice by the NTN to use the term 'Newsbreaker' for what other media call a 'Citizen Journalist'.
In other Northern Territory News news, a monkey disguised as a normal everyday cat is running across roads. Points for the headline, though : 'Chimp My Ride.'
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
This says more about the shitty, petty state of Australian politics and some ranks of the political media than it does about Peter Garrett :
Mr Garrett has always struggled with the impossible task of melding mainstream political reality with the strong conservation and human rights views he espoused as lead singer of the Oils.Glenn Milne is now doing fashion reviews :
A barefoot and dejected Peter Garrett yesterday insisted he would stay on in politics, despite being demoted for his role in the $2.5 billion home insulation fiasco.Unlike Mr Milne, who presumably, Frank Drebin-like, changes into a more comfortable business suit on a Saturday morning before taking the dog outside to drop a load.The Environment Protection Minister was photographed outside his Randwick home in Sydney, looking miserable and dressed down in tracksuit pants and a grey T-shirt.
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Saturday, February 27, 2010
By Darryl Mason
UPDATES OF TSUNAMI REACHING ACROSS ENTIRE PACIFIC BASIN BELOW
(10pm) A massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake has struck off the coast of Central Chile. It's the 7th highest magnitude earthquake ever recorded. A tsunami alert has been issued for Queensland by the Bureau of Meteorology.
Threatened areas extend from Point Danger to Double Island Point :
History's largest recorded earthquake, magnitude 9.5, struck Chile in 1960. More than 6000 people died.Possibility of dangerous waves, strong ocean currents and foreshore floodingAnd probably the most important piece of advice :
for several hours from 08:15 am [EST] Sunday.
Sea level observations HAVE confirmed a tsunami has been generated.
Tsunami waves are more powerful than the same size beach waves, with the first
wave not always the largest. First tsunami effects are expected as follows:
Coolangatta after 08:15 am [EST] Sunday
Maroochydore after 09:00 am [EST] Sunday
Brisbane after 09:15 am [EST] Sunday
And the most important piece of advice :Do not go to the coast to watch the tsunami. Check that your
neighbours have received this advice.
The death toll, so far, from today's earthquake off Chile is below 100. That toll is expected to climb, significantly.
UPDATE : Photos, phone videos, news links, eyewitness accounts of the Chile earthquake, and a fast rising panic about the Pacific tsunami are pouring onto Twitter at the rate of a few thousand a minute (at 10.40pm, Sydney time).
Click #Chile and Tsunami to see the Twitter news streams.
The Pacific Tsunami is expected to hit the coasts of the North and South New Zealand islands in about six hours.
UPDATE : Tsunami alerts are scrolling on some Australian TV channels, some appearing during an airing of The Day After Tomorrow, which must be jarring to those who aren't already aware of what's happening.
Tsunami alerts issued for Japan, Alaska, Russia, the east coast of the United States, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, New Guinea....
(10.40) I'll drop the 'update' thing and just keep posting the bits and pieces of news rolling in :
* The entire Pacific Ocean base is now under a tsunami alert.
* The highest tsunami wave (at sea) recorded so far (10:52pm) is 2.2 metres. They tend to get bigger when they reach shallower waters, and coastlines. The waves are expected to roll in for a few hours, but time between each wave can vary from 5 minutes to 60 minutes.
* New Zealand tsunami warnings are dramatic :
"SEA LEVEL READINGS CONFIRM THAT A TSUNAMI HAS BEEN GENERATED WHICH COULD CAUSE WIDESPREAD DAMAGE. AUTHORITIES SHOULD TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION IN RESPONSE TO THIS THREAT."* (11.04pm Syd) Evacuations under way on Easter Island, tsunami to hit within an hour.
* Tsunami alerts issued for dozens of countries, even Russia and Antarctica.
(11.20pm Syd) How To Know When The Tsunami Threat Has Passed :
WHEN NO MAJOR WAVES ARE OBSERVED FOR TWO HOURS AFTER THE ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL OR DAMAGING WAVES HAVE NOT OCCURRED FOR AT LEAST TWO HOURS THEN LOCAL AUTHORITIES CAN ASSUME THE THREAT IS PASSED. DANGER TO BOATS AND COASTAL STRUCTURES CAN CONTINUE FOR SEVERAL HOURS DUE TO RAPID CURRENTS. AS LOCAL CONDITIONS CAN CAUSE A WIDE VARIATION IN TSUNAMI WAVE ACTION THE ALL CLEAR DETERMINATION MUST BE MADE BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES.
* (11.46pm) CNN reports the Chile earthquake was the biggest to strike anywhere in the world in 100 years. The 8.8 magnitude earthquake has been claimed to have been 1000 times bigger than the quake that struck Haiti.
* (11.50pm) A marine tsunami alert has been issued for New South Wales. :
Threatened areas extend from Broken Bay to Point Danger.
Possibility of dangerous waves, strong ocean currents and foreshore flooding
for several hours from 08:45 am [EDT] Sunday.
Further south from about 8am Sunday for coastal areas from Broken Bay to Gabo
Island, there are likely to be unusual currents and tides during Sunday.
At this stage, those areas, including the coast and bays around Sydney Harbour,
are not considered to be under threat of significant tsunami effects.
* (12.08am) Reuters reports tsunami sirens will be sounded in Hawaii near dawn, "all shores at risk no matter which direction they face." Five metre waves are expected to hit.
* (12.23am) The tsunami wave heading for the east coast of Australia is estimated to be travelling at 800kmh.
* 21 aftershocks have struck Chile, most above magnitude 5, at least seven above magnitude 6.
* Tsunami waves due to hit New Zealand in a few hours are expected to below 1 metre high. Some reports claim evacuations have already begun, others say the perceived threat has been downgraded.
The emergency announcement for the Pacific Tsunami from New Zealand Civil Defence :
1. Stay off beaches* (12.44am) If you're an Australian with relatives in Chile, you can get updates from the Department of Foreign Affairs on hotline : 1800 002 2142. Stay out of the water (sea, rivers and estuaries, including boating activities)3. Do not go sightseeing4. Share this information with family, neighbours and friends5. Listen to the radio and/or TV for updates6. Follow instructions of your local Civil Defence authorities.
* (12.50) CNN via Twitter reports locals claim a 40 metre high (131 foot) wave hit San Fernandez island a few minutes ago. Surely they mean a 4 metre wave?
* (1am) The Pacific Tsunami has begun striking island coastlines near Easter Island. San Fernandez island smashed by huge waves, death toll climbing. Island's capital San Juan Bautista, reports local radio, half destroyed. Partial evacuations now underway on Easter Island.
* (1.10am) Who will the first religious idiot to blame Sydney's Mardi Gras for Australian tsunami damage later today? Hopefully, no-one.
* (1.15am) News from San Fernandez slow to get out. Report that first waves hitting Easter Island are less than a metre high. Some Pacific Tsunami warnings are being downgraded.
* MSNBC airing Chile earthquake twitter reports from an American Idol contestant.
* (1.30am) CNN now running interview with American Idol contestant, Eliot Yamin, showing twoots he wrote during the Chile earthquake. He gives decent eyewitness account of being tossed around his office and then "running for my life" when the massive quake struck.
CNN journalists are now leaving Haiti earthquake destruction to report from Chile earthquake destruction.
* The Pacific Rim Of Fire has been been humming with earthquakes over magnitude 4.5 through the past week (click image to enlarge) :
* (1.30am) California issues alerts, warns coastal cities to prepare for tsunami waves.
* (1.46am) The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre repeating "marine" tsunami expected for New South Wales and Queensland starting at 8am. No major coastal town or city damage expected.
* (2am) A mass nude photo shoot planned for a beach near Weillington this morning has been cancelled due to tsunami alerts. Let's hope that's the worst thing that happens to New Zealand in the next few hours.
* (2.24am) First Pacific Tsunami wave to hit Hawaii in about 45 minutes. Hotels in Maui are being advised to move all guests above the fourth floor. The latest warnings say waves are expected "to wrap around the islands", and the height of tsunamis waves "cannot be predicted."
Honolulu County is issuing urgent warnings for residents to evacuate as roads are about to be closed. Waves as high as four metres are now expected.
* (2.29am) Tsunami alerts issued in Fiji and Tonga warn of incoming waves at least two to three metres high. Police in Samoa have reportedly issued a nationwide evacuation. Terrible.
* (2.33am) Only a few years ago, most tsunamis struck with little or no warning. Tsunami warning centres and monitoring across the Pacific means this time at least many have warnings of what is heading their way, at the speed of a jet. It is likely thousands, if not more, have been saved from the Pacific Tsunami by this warning system. It's been a remarkable and unnerving experience to follow the path of the Pacific Tsunami through Twitter updates and links, Tsunami warning centre alerts and Google Maps these past five hours.
Accurate to almost the minute advance warnings of tsunami wave heights and arrivals were issued 1 - 16 hours before waves hit many Pacific islands, though most in the tsunami's path would have already been in bed when the reports and warnings were issued.
And the earthquakes and aftershocks continue, as the Rim Of Fire grinds, crashes and explodes.
TBC
So this is an interview I did with Carol Duncan of ABC Radio Newcastle a couple of Wednesdays ago, about blogging and writing. The interview runs about 20 minutes.
You can listen to it here.
Now you know what my voice sounds like, I suppose I should dive in and record some yelly rants and obnoxiously in-your-face videos.
More later.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Over the past few weeks, Andrew Bolt on Twitter has been undergoing what can only be described as a rapid descent into utter paranoia. Signs of trouble began a month ago, and have culminated in the past few days with an obsessive focus on the allegedly Pagan Lefty-Infiltrated national broadcaster he is forced to pay for :
"I am weeping tears of patriotism."I tried to explain to him the claims that tinfoil can protect against remote mind surveillance are actually part of the mind control conspiracy, and that tin foil instead helps to focus and increase the power of mind-invading psychotronic weapons.
"Racism only exists towards oppressed white men like me."
"The ABC took my chair. What next? Are they going to take my pants?"
"There's a black van over the road from my house. The ABC are spying on me! This tinfoil headgear will protect my thoughts."
"Bet you don't know what I'm thinking now, Tony Jones. Kerry O'Brien, go and invade someone else's mind."
"Pulled down office blinds so ABC helicopters can't spy. Turned off lights. Kerry O'Brien has X-ray vision...."
"Protection from thought control is doubled if I wrap my body in tinfoil..."
But he didn't listen.
So naturally, seeing as he's now clad from head to toe in tinfoil, totally beset by conspiracies about Pagan Lefty Warminista Globalist World Government and ranting paranoidly about the ABC, Andrew Bolt On Twitter wins himself an invitation to speak at the Young Liberal Nationals of Queensland convention.
Invitation Accepted
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Barnaby Joyce conducts a radio interview on the phone while also, fluuuuusssssh, on the toilet. And why not?
Or does he?
Crikey investigates and Barnaby's people reveal it wasn't a toilet flushing, it was instead an early morning garbage truck.
Or was it?
More Here
I sense a Walkley is already being engraved.
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By Darryl Mason
From smh.com.au :
Were those Australian passports issued recently, or, more likely, between 1997 and 2002?Police have 15 more suspects in the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai, including three who were allegedly travelling on Australian passports, CNN reported last night.
The network reported police as saying that among the new suspects are six more people who are accused of using British passports in the commission of the crime, four others using Irish passports, two other French passport holders and three people, including a woman, travelling on Australian passports.
The Department of Foreign Affairs was unavailable for comment last night.
From Lateline, April 28, 2005, when Alexander Downer was foreign minister :
HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Labor says more than 2000 Australian passports went missing between 1997 and 2002 when the Government dropped requirements for them to be sent out by certified mail. The trade in counterfeit identification is big business and in high demand. In the last year police broke up two major fake identity scams in NSW alone. A national identity card to bring uniformity to the identification process which currently differs from state to state has been proposed as an additional way of fighting ID fraud.The incredible fact that thousands of Australian passports went missing back then was quickly hosed down by the Howard government.
Alexander Downer, April 28, 2005 :
"The fact they've gone missing doesn't mean they've ended up in the hands of crooks who've been using those passports," he said.
"I think you'll find that if there is any passport that has gone missing and the person you send it to hasn't received the passport, the probability is around 100 per cent that they would report that and then you can obviously cancel that passport.
"I mean, it's not a major problem."Will the Rudd government make as big a deal of all those missing passports now, as they did back in 2005?
UPDATE : News.com.au is running this image on its story about the Australian passports used by Mossad assassins in Dubai :
And names two other Australian passport holders - Adam Marcus Korman and Bruce Joshua Daniel - as suspects listed by Dubai as part of a "logistical support team" in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a military leader of the Hamas government.
Kevin Rudd on radio earlier today :
"...any state which has been complicit in the abuse of the Australian passport system is treating Australia with contempt."For now at least, Dubai is claiming the passports are not forgeries.
UPDATE : Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt appears to be still paying off his free trip to Israel last year. Here's how he sums up international reaction to this episode of identity theft and "state sponsored terrorism" (in the words of UK prime minister Gordon Brown) :
"the absurdly confected outrage"I thought that was the title of his new easy listening radio show.
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It's hard to believe that Matt Drudge was once regarded as some sort of take-no-prisoners mainstream media troublemaker.
An example follows of Matt Drudge's reaction, and censorship, when confronted with one of the most explosive media scandal stories in years.
A headline on both the Drudge Report website, and the @Drudge_Report Twitter feed :
The actual headline of the Reuters story :
Hmm, a certain name seems to have gone missing...
reposted from Your New Reality
Matt Drudge And Frank Gaffney Share The Bong Of Rampant Paranoia
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