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It’s been a few years since any reports have done the rounds on the scandal of how tainted blood from Governor Bill Clinton’s Arkansas jails in the 1980s fatally contaminated Canadian prisoners. The conspiracy of silence by the US mainstream media during Clinton’s presidency indicated just how partisan those hacks are.
Imagine had it been Texas jails in the 1990s.
Plenty of background where this came from:

BURIED IN OUR ARCHIVES is one of the sadder of the many scandals of the Clinton machine: the bad blood that was shipped from Arkansas prisons to Canada that contributed to the loss of thousands of lives. The story was a big one in Canada but the heavily pro-Clinton media in the states steadfastly pushed it to one side with a few exceptions such as Salon.

And putting a capital L into Loony Left is the exceptionally well credentialled Prince Charles:
In a rare TV interview ahead of his official tour of the United States next week, Charles expressed concern that economic progress is “upsetting the whole balance of nature.”
“You know, if you look at the latest figures on climate change and global warming … they’re terrifying, terrifying,” Charles told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in the interview aired Sunday.

Reckon they must be squirming like a hogshead of eels in the salons of Carlton and Balmian, where they most certainly make judgement on the company that’s kept.

Derby Day and excitement mounts. (As does McEvoy, Boss, Lindop and a host of thieving Venezualan midgets.)
Charles gives sound reasons for sharing my judgement and going for Gallant Guru in the premier race for 3-Y-Os.
He also has a delightful racing-flavoured jest. Here’s Charles:

If she were mine I’d run her in the Mackinnon, the Melbourne Cup, and the C.
B. Fisher Plate on the last day, if the C. B. Fisher Plate still existed,
which it doesn’t. It was a marvelous race, my favourite race on the
Australian calendar, and terminated by a level of materialistic avarice which
would have done justice to the AFL.

POSTSCRIPT: I don’t know the answer to Bernie’s ‘Fields of Omagh’ question,
but will be very interested to find out.

Hang around with religious nuts long enough and you’ll be quoting psalms and babbling in tongues.
That appears to be the fate of Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell, who has come out claiming that “climate change” (whatever that is, seeing the climate is changing all the time) is a threat to civilization.
Campbell retains the government’s opposition to Kyoto nonsense but urges adoption of alternative energy sources. Ensuring he’s hardly about to be ordained a high priest of the green religion, these alternatives include nuclear energy.
Regardless of whether Campbell has caught green psychosis, he has effectively snookered the green left by creating a third way on climate change: if it exists, nuclear is the way to counter it.
This letter to The Australian demolishes Campbell’s position while challenging him to reveal his core motivation:

I SEE that Environment Minister Ian Campbell has been captured by the greenies in his department (“Debate over, it’s time to save planet”, 27/10). Senator Campbell should ask those who serve up his advice the following questions. One, where are the measurements for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere taken and do these reflect accurately the numbers for Australia? Two, if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.03 per cent of the total, why do increases of parts per million (ie from approximately 350 to 355 ppm) matter? Three, if the amount of CO2 is increasing, is the rate of take-up also increasing, and if so, is there a still a balance? Four, where does all the CO2 go?
When he has some satisfactory answers to the above, and since this is all about greenhouse scaremongering, he should also ask his advisers what the safe level of greenhouse gas really is. That should stump the lot of them. Finally, since the sudden conversion to supporting efforts to curb climate change (why not tame the tides while we’re at it?), is really all about frightening people into supporting the use of nuclear energy for domestic and industrial power generation, why not be honest and say so? I don’t like being taken for a mug.
James Stuart
Griffith, ACT

UPDATE: Andrew Landeryou provides a terrific summary of the above and other matters in politics this week in comments.

Georgie’s not the best. Ah well, he was always determined to be, as former world boxing champion Lionel Rose put it, “here for a good time, not a long time”.
Nevertheless, he leaves tremendous memories.
And as good a quote as that one about soccer being more important than life and death. George once said: “I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered”.

Looks like the Balinese are willing to shed their peaceful image. And who could blame them?
BALI’S police chief has called for calm amid a phone-message campaign urging Balinese Hindus to kill all Muslims on the island in retaliation for the triple suicide bombings by suspected Islamic extremists.
A mobile phone text message received by the AAP wire news service urges Balinese people to “wake up from a long sleep”.
Hat-tip to Observa.

Haven’t they been listening to the dumb Australian Left? The bombings are Australia’s fault, don’t they know?

I’ve always said there’s an art to it.
The Japanese artist Tomoko Takahashi is quite content with her work, however. After all, it’s not every one-time Turner Prize nominee who gets a £5,000 grant to down 48 bottles of lager and then try to walk across a balancing beam.

She trying to get into the Australian cricket team?
More a case of “Pissed? . . . Christ!” than Piss Christ.

A poll shows 75 per cent of Australians support the Federal Government anti-terror laws.

Reaction to the poll in today’s Sydney Morning Herald’s letters column shows that Aussie-hating playwright David Williamson is not alone with his snobbish hysteria:
Check out these excerpts from the superior classes.

This sentiment may explain why Fairfax is sacking all those journos. Their readers must be about to desert the country in droves.
I have never been a “bleeding heart” as far as law and order are concerned, but I am concerned that the new “no talk” policy will lead to a Pinochet-type order in Australia.

There’s lots of patronising “they know not what they do”:
Three-quarters of Australians support the new anti-terrorism legislation? Lambs leading themselves to the slaughter.
I give up. What’s the use in fighting against the creation of a police state when most of the country is enthusiastically running towards it?

This idiot suspects there will be a terrorist attack. But that doesn’t frighten him. It’s the refusal to bow to savagery that has him dirtying his bloomers:
When these new laws are passed, however, I will probably still get blown up but it will be in a country scared witless and believing the “greatest civil liberty is to stay alive”.

Wouldn’t be a SMH anti-Howard blitzkreig without the Hitler reference.
No sooner did Hitler’s army invade Hungary in March 1944 than my father, as part of the democratic intelligentsia, was arrested by the SS. But we were still allowed to tell one and all what happened to us.
With the planned laws, if ASIO arrests me due to my anti-Howard views my family will not be allowed to tell anyone. Goodbye free speech.
Oh nice, Hitler had greater respect for free speech than Howard. And these blowflies think they are intellectually superior.

But for sheer chutzpah, you can’t go past David Ash of Bondi Beach’s final solution:
That the vast majority like the laws is not as depressing as it seems. We can use the laws to arrest them, and detain them in a huge gated community, with a lot of McMansions and home theatres and no one who looks any different.
The rest of us can get on with life, and see, it’s true, everyone’s a winner under this Government.

So 75 per cent of Australians all look the same?

He/she’s an evil bugger, that SMH letters editor, making so many look so stupid at the same time in one little place.

Denmark is proving to be the backbone of lily-livered Europe. A Danish publication has thrown down the gauntlet to death-devoted Islamofascist lunatics:
ISLAM is no laughing matter. Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is being protected by security guards and several cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of 12 cartoons about the prophet Mohammed.
According to Islam, it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper’s offices and kill the cartoonists.
The newspaper published the cartoons when a Danish author complained that he could find no one to illustrate his book about Mohammed. Jyllands-Posten wondered whether there were more cases of self-censorship regarding Islam in Denmark and asked 12 illustrators to draw the prophet for [it]. Carsten Juste, the paper’s editor, said the cartoons were a test of whether the threat of Islamic terrorism had limited the freedom of expression in Denmark.
The publication led to outrage among Muslim immigrants living in Denmark. Five thousand of them took to the streets to protest. Muslim organisations have demanded an apology, but Juste rejects this idea: “We live in a democracy. That’s why we can use all the journalistic methods we want to. Satire is accepted in this country and you can make caricatures.” . . . An organisation [that] calls itself the Glorious Brigades in Northern Europe is circulating pictures on the internet which show bombs exploding over pictures of the newspaper and blood flowing over the national flag of Denmark. . . . Danish imam Raed Hlayhel [says]: “This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims. Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world.”

In another part of Europe, a young Muslim has no problem making a graphic comment about a religious figure:
The immigrant published a poster depicting the Virgin Mary with naked breasts. Euro Micks refrained from any threats of bombs or bloodshed, although there have been some protests from Catholics — not the bishops, mind you. Yet Euro-trash authorities are certainly not planning to censor the offensive dawber.
On the contrary, he is being subsidised by the Ministry for Culture.

Oh, just gorgeous, George.
GEORGE GALLOWAY faces possible criminal charges after a US Senate investigation tracked $150,000 (£85,000) in Iraqi oil money to his wife’s bank account in Jordan.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will refer the Respect Party MP for possible prosecution after concluding that he gave “false and misleading” testimony at his appearance before the panel in May.

This tot is destined to speak baby talk for ever.
Hat-tip to Hamish Jones.

It’s a tad late, but we couldn’t farewell the brilliant, inimitable Ronnie Barker without a reprise of his greatest work. Courtesy of my old partner on wheels, Paul van Prooyen.

This is the story of Rindercella and her sugly isters.

Rindercella and her sugly isters lived in a marge lansion.
Rindercella worked very hard frubbing sloors, emptying poss pits, and shivelling shot.
At the end of the day, she was knucking fackered.
The sugly isters were right bugly astards. One was called Mary Hinge,
and the other was called Betty Swallocks; they were really forrible
huckers; they had fetty sweet and fetty swannies. The sugly isters had
tickets to go to the ball, but the cotton runts would not let
Rindercella go.
Suddenly there was a bucking fang, and her gairy fodmother appeared.
Her name was Shairy Hithole and she was a light rucking fesbian. She
turned a pumpkin and six mite wice into a hucking cuge farriage with
six dandy ronkeys who had buge hollocks and dig bicks
The gairy fodmother told Rindercella to be back by dimnlight
otherwise, there would be a cucking falamity.
At the ball, Rindercella was dancing with the prandsome hince when
suddenly the clock struck twelve. “Mist all chucking frighty!!!” said
Rindercella, and she ran out tripping barse over ollocks, so dropping
her slass glipper.
The very next day the prandsome hince knocked on Rindercella’s door
and the sugly isters let him in. Suddenly, Betty Swallocks lifted her leg
and let off a fig bart. “Who’s fust jarted??” asked the prandsome
hince.
“Blame that fugly ucker over there!!” said Mary Hinge. When the
stinking brown cloud had lifted, he tried the slass glipper on both
the sugly isters without success and their feet stucking funk.
Betty Swallocks was ducking fisgusted and gave the prandsome hince a
knack in the kickers. This was not difficult as he had bucking fuge
halls and a hig bard on.
He tried the slass glipper on Rindercella and it fitted pucking
ferfectly.
Rindercella and the prandsome hince were married. The pransome hince
lived his life in lucking fuxury, and Rindercella lived hers with a
follen swanny.

It’s funny enough in print but with that dead-pan expression behind the big black-rimmed glasses — hucking filarious!

Waiting to hear what civil libertarians have to say about Victorian authorities’ powers to confine people in their homes and fine them $20,000 for breaching orders.
In some cases, police would be called in to arrest people who refuse to comply with orders.
Will The Age letters page be filled with indignant comparisons to the Third Reich? Will the Left take to the streets in a hostile protest?
Probably not, because the harsh measures are to be employed should an avian flu epidemic hit.
The worry is that the flu could be an indiscriminate killer. Just like islamofascist terrorists.

Some social control zealots must think deep down no one’s taking any notice of them. Why else would they allow themselves to appear so stupid and hypocritical?

Day by day, the worm turns. Acclaimed opera singer Stuart Skelton bellows some fresh air from the Oz arts camp, via the Bolta’s forum. He’s a brave bugger.

To be totally honest, I am (and have been for some time) convinced that govt support of the Arts is in fact destroying it. I would like to see ALL arts bodies, whether mainstream, or wildly experimental funded solely from private money and subscription. If the Art is worthwhile, let the consumers of that art decide that it is so.
Although my profession and educational background would at first glance place me firmly in the middle of the “elites” that David Williamson recently tried (dismally) to defend in his article in the Bulletin, I could not feel more removed from them. In fact the more I read of Williamson’s piece, the more I identified with the aspirational aussies that Williamson treats with so much contempt, to the point where my wife and I have just booked a Cruise, with the Disney Cruise Company, for Christmas. Bring on the aspiration!
Thanks for being a voice of unflappable reason in these increasingly unreasonable times. Hoping for a win in the culture wars.
Sincerely, Stuart Skelton

Woo-hoo! Spot of bitch-slapping at the NYT as the Dowdy one takes on leak sponge Judith Miller.
She never knew when to quit. That was her talent and her flaw. Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, she was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers. She more than earned her sobriquet “Miss Run Amok.”
Somehow, this story seems important only to Washington insiders. Politicans and advisers aren’t supposed to leak personally damaging info to media favourites? Whodathunkit?

UPDATE:
Make of it what you will.
WASHINGTON (AP) – In the latest fallout from the CIA leak investigation, reporter Judith Miller and The New York Times are engaging in a very public fight about her seeming lack of candor in the case.

Australia’s best galloping contest, the W. S. Cox Plate, is run today. Freak mare Makybe Diva is — as Pop used to say — as short as beer at Christmas to win the classic weight-for-age event and with normal luck in the running should bolt it in. But Moonee Valley is a tricky course and anything near the front on the turn and with a turn of speed can thrash a champion.
I’m going for quinellas with the Diva, and I’ll be including Charles’ tip which is capable of storming home like a thirsty Scotchman.
Here’s Charles:

The breakdown of Mummify in the Caulfield Cup was a heart-breaking tragedy, which brought back memories of the 1979 Melbourne Cup, when Dulcify broke down and had to be destroyed. Eyepopper’s run was unique – the horse was starting first up after a five month spell, and finished second!
This year’s Cox Plate is a very hard race betting-wise, because Makybe Diva
is unbackable and, irrsepective of the weather conditions, looks all but
unbeatable. The selection is God’s Own 2 units to place. Three year olds have
always run well in the Cox Plate, and his Guineas win was remarkable.
The answer to last week’s question was Grace Darling, who won the 1886
Caulfield Cup, and ran a close second in the Melbourne Cup after suffering
severe interference. It would be nearly twenty years before a horse would
finally complete the double, and another thirty three years before it was
achieved again.
The Collingwood Football Club was formed at the Grace Darling Hotel in Smith
Street, which is still standing. Both horse and pub were named after the
English heroine, who was a household name in Victorian times.
This week’s question: there have been a number of Caulfield-Melbourne Cup
winners, and in several years two horses have placed in both cups. But what
was the only year in which the same THREE horses filled the places in both
the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups? (not in the same order of course)

UPDATE AND ONLY PARTIALLY ON-TOPIC:
Heard another beaut comparative phrase on radio this morning: “He was as full as a meat inspector’s fridge”.

That’s no lady, that’s . . .
politically incorrect nomenclature. And zat is henceforth verboten.
What the hell’s happening in England? Has their sense of humour died with their great comedians? Imagine Ronnie Barker putting up with this crap.

Ladies and senior citizens, prepare to face the wrath of the politically correct brigade.
These forms of address, according to town hall officials, are offensive.
And if you think that’s mad, that word is banned too – along with immigrants, disabled and infirm.

The lunatics have truly taken over the asylum. (Bet those words are banned too).

UPDATE:
Malcolm Farr explains in today’s Daily Telegraph why we must keep laughing at these grim fanatics:
That’s what democracy is for – to save us from the humourless.

Normally, Bill O’Reilly’s a bit too staged for my liking. He bungles humble and he’s got a way to go to master fake sincerity.
Be that as it may, the curmudgeon’s poster-boy has produced some withering revelations on why the press is in trouble.
But the collapse of journalistic standards is another reason some have turned away from the press. Most Americans are not ideological junkies, craving their daily dose of political propaganda. Just give us the facts, and some lively opinion based on the facts. The political jihadists who have taken over some newspapers are driving people away.

This should prompt a few doubts among the meltdown fanatics:
OSLO (Reuters) – Greenland’s ice-cap has thickened slightly in recent years despite wide predictions of a thaw triggered by global warming, a team of scientists said on Thursday.
“The overall ice thickness changes are … approximately plus 5 cms (1.9 inches) a year or 54 cms (21.26 inches) over 11 years,” according to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and U.S. institutes led by Ola Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup center for Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography in Norway.

Now has this has sparked any change of heart among the global-warming boosters? No fear, although they’re not very convincing.

And the scientists said that the thickening of the ice-cap might be offset by a melting of glaciers around the fringes of Greenland. Satellite data was not good enough to measure the melt nearer sea level.
Most models of global warming indicate that the Greenland ice might melt within thousands of years if warming continues.

Yeah, and my Auntie Mabel might grow balls and become my Uncle Arthur if she stands around glaciers for thousands of years.