Slattsnews

Mmmmm, Toby. . . nice.
The brainiac who put up the Save Toby site, and who’s threatening to kill and eat a pet rabbit unless PETA types cough up $60,000, has listed some drooly tasty recipes:
He’s already raised almost $20,000.

Toby Stew

* 1 three pound Toby
* 6 small onions, chopped
* 1 bay leaf
* ½ cup chopped celery
* 2 tsp. salt
* 2 cups diced carrots
* 3 raw potatoes, cut up
* 3 tbs. flour
* 1 tbs. chopped parsley

Clean Toby and soak in salted water. This is called brining and it makes Toby nice and tender. Drain, disjoint it in pieces for serving and place in a large kettle with onions, bay leaf, celery and salt. Cover with cold water and cook slowly until tender, about two hours. Add chopped carrots and potatoes and continue cooking until these vegetables are done. Smooth flour with a little cold water and add slowly. When thickened, add chopped parsley and serve.

Is it any wonder mainstream churches are emptying like 1950s bars at 6 o’clock?
- Declining attendances: Catholic (down 13 per cent), Uniting (down 11 per cent).
- Increasing numbers: Pentecostal Christian City Churches (42 per cent), Church of the Nazarene (33 per cent).

The Uniting Church minister who had the guts to take on his ideologically zealous masters by honouring a hero to his country has been punished.

A MINISTER has been reprimanded by his church for honouring a Digger’s dying wish to have the Australian flag on his funeral casket.
The Uniting Church has also told the Rev Ian Collings he can forget about a posting to a parish where his wife would be closer to hospital for cancer treatment.

The deceased’s family is irate:

“If the Uniting Church are going to treat one of their own like this, it’s absolutely outrageous and disgusting,” said the veteran’s son, Mark Vipond.
“I don’t think they know what Christianity is all about. I think they’ve lost the plot.
“When I went to Sunday school, we were taught to help people out. But when dad died and we needed them, they turned their backs on us.
“My mother and sister are absolutely horrified.”

There was more decency in the Uniting Church leadership when they were just mick-hating, wowser Methodists.

This will create brain pain among the lefty nuff-nuffs who see a Zionist conspiracy behind the rise of Neocons like Paul Wolfowitz:
President Bush’s neoconservative hawk Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s architect of the US invasion of Iraq, is dating a Muslim!

When the law’s an ass — which is too bloody frequently in Australia — Strange Justice is there to chronicle the ineptitude. A must-add to the blogroll.

Chas the tipster has seen out all the great racing tipsters: Donkey Dave, Hard Luck Harry and most of the Truth team. That doesn’t mean Chas’ natural habitat is the public enclosure. Oh no, he’s been known to mingle with the cream in the Members, even the knobs from the H.R. Nicholls Society, not to mention the chatoyant Bunny Champers.
Chas has agreed to regularly advise on equine investment matters while testing the knowledge of those with a penchant for turf peculiarities. Here’s Chas:

PASTE IN HAT (This heading refers to one of the tips that was featured every week in the old ‘Truth’ form guide; in its day the best form guide in Victoria.)

This week’s racing question: Only once have TWO horses carried more than
10 stone (63.5kg) in the same Melbourne Cup. What was the year, and who
were the horses? And if any readers think that I must going way back to
the time of the Franco-Prussian War, I will add that this was a
Melbourne Cup that Slatts might have seen.

Well, Chas just missed out. After his prognosis, Refute firmed into favouritism but unfortunately just missed a placing. Better luck next week.

She’s gorgeous, she’s gutsy and she races cars. It’s a wonder Laleh Seddigh isn’t a Tim Blair centrefold.

What a week at the coalface! We’ve had illness, a resignation and a public holiday hack into workforce numbers so that last night we were down to almost half the usual roster. Still, the product emerged this morning with plenty on board for the punters.
Tonight’s the last shift before a much-awaited month’s long service leave. We leave for Perth on Tuesday for a week’s stay in Freo before embarking on a week’s tour of the south-west, south coast and goldfields, staying at Margaret River, Denmark, Ravensthorpe, Kalgoorlie and somewhere in the wheat belt.
Hopefully, I will blog on western experiences. Anyone know of anywhere not too expensive in Margaret River that can bed two couples and two kids for a night? And any recommendations on where to stay a night between Kalgoorlie and Perth airport?
Finally, tomorrow we hope to return a much-missed blogging feature: turf investment advice from a philosopher of form. Don’t miss the jump!

It’s incumbent on one of us ABC critics to dateline the media scandals the Mediawatch deigns to ignore — that seem to mostly put the left in a bad light — and publish them chronologically later in the year.
This is what I wrote this morning to Mediawatch. I don’t expect a reply.
Once again Mediawatch has overlooked a journalistic scandal to protect its mates on the blatant left. First it was Ramsey’s lazy defamation of a US secretary of State, followed by Mike Carlton’s ignorant attack on a Scadinavian king.
Now this supposed watch-dog won’t bring to notice that the recipient of Journalist of the Year has accused a national leader of multiple murder without a single piece of credible corroboration. No other respectable media has followed up McGeough’s claims yet a panel led by Red Kerry O’Brien votes him Journalist of the Year. Mediawatch should be changed to Mediablindfolded. Or Mediawithoutaclue. Newsrooms national-wide are sneering at you. And the blogs will ensure history will scorch you. Truth and accuracy ain’t that hard.

This piece by Doug Hagin nails the bigotry spouted by the politically correct.
Perhaps the most disturbing bigotry on display in today’s world is coming form a rather odd place. It is very strange indeed to see and hear the bigotry spewed by the political correctors of the world. These people have long cloaked themselves in the garb of social justice and equality, yet it is they who have become the bigots and the haters of today’s society. Their hatred comes not so much from gender or race, but from ideological differences. Anyone is very welcome to look different from the politically correct, but watch out if anyone dares think of having a different opinion.

Wow, the Australian people are rising in huge numbers against Bush-Hitler-Howard tyranny.
Why, in Western Australia 300 protested at the weekend.
The Australian Bolshevik Collective (ABC) claims 1000 protested in Sydney where wannabee bin Laden, Mamdouh Habib, addressed the faithful. The Australian (no link) however, reports that only 600 demonstrated in Sydney.
A massive 150 took to the streets in Canberra to express their solidarity with fascism and an estimated 1000 protested in Melbourne. A Brisbane rally attracted 200 Saddam supporters.
They held a demo in Tasmania, too. But the ABC didn’t report the size of the turnout. Must have been too many to count.

UPDATE:
Nice to know the sort of people who will be heartened by our protesters.
THE terrible screams will haunt Najat al-Alloussi every time she remembers her last telephone conversation with her kidnapped daughter. “Mama, mama,” cried Hadeel, 24. “They have just executed my husband in front of my eyes. Please help me. They just shot him in the head. Please help me, mama.”

Someone, whose name I won’t divulge, told me that John Howard had raped three single Aboriginal women, eaten their babies and placed the kids’ fathers indefinitely into detention centres. And now I’ve published it. You better believe it!
That should just about win me the Journalist of the Millenium award.
The Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year went to Paul McGeough, of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age.
But then what would you expect from a judging panel led by Red Kerry O’Brien?
The worst aspect of the sorry affair is that it drastically cheapens this richly deserved accolade:
A Lifetime Achievement award was presented to Les Carlyon, a former editor in chief of the Herald and Weekly Times and former editor of the Age, racing writer and historian.

P.P. McGuinness should be punished with a short, sharp sentence. But in the absence of a savage sub-editor at The Australian, it’s the reader who must serve hard time cogitating Paddy’s musings.
It’s worth the effort, as the stout one’s mauling of left wing sissy pratt David Marr, demonstrates:

IT is always good when one of the most biased commentators of a breed that pretends to have no bias, left-wing journalists, especially those employed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, admits frankly, albeit a little coyly, to the reality of that bias.

Concision continues to escape P.P., but he hits the mark. Brutally.

To the Left we owe eugenics, genocidal proposals, apartheid, centralist authoritarianism, labour camps, support for dictatorships (such as Castro’s and formerly Stalin’s and Mao’s; not to mention most recently Saddam Hussein’s) on grounds of the Realpolitik of the Left and so on.
When one of their leading thinkers, such as Christopher Hitchens in the US, breaks ranks and refuses to accept the latest fashion, he is ceremoniously expelled from the Left team, which enrols him willy-nilly in the Right team, thus making him an enemy – and therefore by Marr’s criteria no longer fit to be employed as a journalist.

Kinky Friedman tells Bill O’Reilly he has some heavy hitters on his side in his Texas gubernatorial challenge:

O’REILLY: OK. Are you a religious man, by the way?

FRIEDMAN: And both of them were independents, by the way.

PJ O’Rourke is a genius. He’s worked out how to make public transport profitable. Simply throw in a few big dippers and scary things that jump out at you from nowhere. Very droll!

That disease let loose by Bush and Co is proving contagious:

Eye-witnesses reported that full-size puppets of high-ranking officials, such as the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime’s president Mohammad Khatami, were set on fire by youths at numerous locations throughout the Iranian capital. Trucks belonging to Iran’s security forces were also set ablaze.
“Guns, tanks, the Bassij (Para-military security forces) no longer have an affect”, large crowds shouted in central Tehran, as they took part in the traditional celebrations where Iranians jump over fires ablaze on the streets.

Plenty of room over at the anti-democracy hotel. Half-price hate cocktails during the no thappy hour. Margo’s doing the flaw show.

After a series of cases involving teachers sexually abusing students, the Victorian Government introduced mandatory police checks of serving teachers.
Any convictions of sex with a minor and the chalky was for the road. It was a popular move, but lacking scope for discretion, it was bound to eventually lead to injustice.
And that’s what has occurred to a male teacher in the small town of Orbost in eastern Victoria.
By all reports he is an outstanding teacher, a model citizen and a local sporting hero.
The trouble is that when he was 20 and well before joining the teaching profession, he had a relationship with a girl who was a couple of months short of her 16th birthday and the age of consent.
The young couple did not have sexual intercourse but he admitted that he had fondled the girl’s breasts.
He was reported to police and under advice pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a minor. He has not attempted to hide the matter and as a teacher, now in his 30s, has always behaved in an exemplary fashion.
He was suspended from his job at Orbost Secondary College in January after criminal record checks picked up the 1992 offence. A month later he resigned, citing stress on his family.
His sister, also a teacher, has written an impassioned letter to The Age, claiming her brother has been made a scapegoat by the State Government.
She attacked suggestions that the incident had just been detected, saying it had shown up in two previous police checks.
“The Education Department has known about it for his entire teaching life, and considered him as acceptable to teach,” she wrote.
Ms Webster said she and her brother supported the thrust of the legislation, but a lack of discretionary powers meant cases could not be judged on their merits.
The Age reports that the 2003 legislation originally included an exemption allowing for convicted child-sex offenders to work in schools if there were “extenuating or subsequent circumstances”. This was dropped in response to community concern.
The school’s principal, John Brazier, has called for the reinstatement of the “outstanding” teacher. He said he supported the Government’s agenda to protect children, but that individual cases should be treated on their merits.
“The Education Minister (Lynne Kosky) for her own political reasons targeted him as a scapegoat to hoodwink the public into believing that they are improving government schools,” she wrote.
Mr Brazier ventured a little closer to the bone when interviewed on Neil Mitchell’s talkback program this morning.
Referring to the teacher’s starring role with the bat in the town’s cricket final at the weekend, Mr Brazier described what in some quarters is referred to as a “man’s man”.
If anything is going to get up the nose of Kosky and crusading femimarxists in the Education Department it is the notion of popular masculine types in the teaching profession.
Sinister results will always surface when authorities embrace sexist bigotry, political correctness and retrospective morality.
One can only hope that State Premier and former teacher Steve Bracks can for once in his miserable, illiterate existence show a little backbone and over-rule this stupid, malicious decision.
But I suspect that Bracks the bore would find such action, to use his favourite word, “inappropriate”.

A guy walks into a Texas bar and after ordering a beer, notices George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld at a table in the corner.
He wanders over and expresses amazement at these two leaders visiting his humble local bar.
“What are you doing here?” the guy asks.
“We’re planning World War III,” Rummy explains.
“We’re gonna kill 400,000 Muslims and a blonde with big tits.”
“Gawd,” says the guy. “Why would you kill a blonde with big tits.”
“See, I told you Rummy,” says Bush. “No one cares about 400,000 Muslims.”

And in our main bout of the day for the megacodgerweight championship of Australia, it’s Perspicacious P.P. McGuinness challenging Sunken-eyes (they don’t Google) Alan Ramsey.
Ramsey first of all committed his now increasingly common sin of laziness by producing an entire column that, apart from the introductory par with his customary apocalyptic comment that this “should terrify you”, consisted of quotation from a single source. This habit of his – of producing work that, far from showing evidence of his own thought, merely reproduces others’ words at length – has become increasingly a target for ridicule among the more critical consumers of journalism. Maybe he should pay royalties.
But he committed a worse sin. That, like those of Rather and Eason, was that he must not have even bothered to carry out any background checks as to whether the clearly biased views that he was borrowing were valid or had been contested.

Day-making time.
Grumpy old maniac Alan Ramsey lifted quotes — as is his wont — from a US speech by journalist Bill Moyers which alleged that James Watt, a former American secretary of the interior and supposed religious fundamentalist, told the US Congress: “After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”
As Tim Blair pointed out yesterday, Moyers admitted weeks ago his claim was wrong. His apology was widely reported.
Today, the SMH admitted Ramsey was wrong. No apology.
But what really tickles me is that I learn from Blair’s comments today that Phatty Adams repeated Ramsey’s erroneous quotes on ABC radio last night.
There is a sweet, benevolent god! Let’s pray he ensures this tawdry matter makes Media Watch.

If nothing else, the new ownership at Crikey.com appears to run with a better quality rumour. Always ready to lend a hand at mill, we pass on their first probable furphy:

Howard to run the World Bank?

By political correspondent Christian Kerr

Where better to retire to than a weekender at Hawk’s Nest? How about the job of President of the World Bank? That’s the gist of a particularly intriguing rumour surrounding John Howard’s future directions.
Incumbent James Wolfensohn (an expatriate Australian) told the Bank’s board in January he wouldn’t continue in the top job after his current term expires on 31 May. The job is effectively the gift of the United States government, as a glance at the selection process shows. Who better to give it to than a reliable ally with a global profile – and a former finance minister to boot?
So it’s just a rumour, but surely it stacks up better than claims from earlier this week that Bono has his eye on the gig. CNN reports that other candidates include former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, one time US Environmental Protection Agency head and New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz recently ruled himself out.
Howard would definitely be less controversial than the neocon Wolfowitz – particularly with Iraq still a hot issue for the Bank. What a perfect – albeit sudden – ending to his political career this would be. Wolfensohn’s term, after all, ends just three weeks after the Budget is handed down on 10 May. The story may explain the prime minister’s charitable approach to the idea of Gareth Evans becoming UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and Peter Costello’s sudden assertiveness towards the state over basic dollars and cents tax issues.
And as someone so fond of the phrase “dinkum Australian”, Howard would surely appreciate a real Aussie taking over from some cosmopolitan expat.