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Great, we’re getting some real electoral action in these parts. Gavan O’Connor has represented our federal seat with integrity and distinction and deserves to stay in that role for as long as he desires. An old-fashioned Labor man, O’Connor was a farmer and teacher before entering federal parliament 14 years ago and was the opposition spokesman on agriculture. Always ready to chinwag about footy or his thwarted career as a rock guitar legend, the Member for Corio also has a serious vision of Geelong as south-east Australia’s premier transport and export hub and his dream of full integration of Avalon airport, the Port of Geelong, the Princes Freeway and the national rail network is well on the way to fulfilment.
So what does the Labor Party do with this undoubted talent amid a wasteland of hacks and sycophants? Why, they let the branchstackers and sleazeballs backstab O’Connor and replace him with a son of privilege who has never held a meaningful job. The deselected member will now stand as an independent.
O’Connor was disappointed when he appealed to his leader to come to his aid as the barbarians circled: Mr Howard has told ABC NewsRadio it proves a union-dominated Labor frontbench is dangerous. “Mr Rudd’s comment to Gavan O’Connor is very revealing: ‘Gavan, I don’t have the power to stop them dumping you’,” he said.

A formidable obstacle to Geelong’s progress over the years has been the existence of blue ribbon federal seats either side of the Barwon. With a safe Labor seat on the north side and an equally secure Liberal constituency to the south, the major parties have not troubled themselves with making more than an obligatory impact in the region. This will now change. O’Connor’s popularity should ensure a keen contest with preferences likely to determine the winner. Corio constituents can only gain. Particularly if the incumbent hangs on as an independent.

How would you like a gift of $100? Kid you not, you get it here. Visit on Friday and you can get even more.
I’m plonking my easy-earned on this fella in today’s Caulfield Cup. For value, I’m taking Maldivian in a quinella with Purple Moon. Add Master O’Reilly to the mix for your trifecta.

How embarrassing to admit you voted for this weird twerp.
Courtesy of Tim Blair

Dogs have their day. And don’t know what to do with their good fortune. Click on the top story’s video link

The greatest generation is fading. Kim Beazley senior died this weekend and reading his obituary, I can only wonder how much better this country would have been had Beazley, instead of that pompous fool Whitlam, led Labor out of the wilderness in 1972.
I didn’t know his most famous quote had a real sting in the tail:

“When I joined the Labor Party, it contained the cream of the working class. But as I look about me now all I see are the dregs of the middle class. And what I want to know is when you middle class perverts are going to stop using the Labor Party as a spiritual spitoon.”

Sorry Kim, they’re still slagging their bile.

At last – now we can get on with the real poll. And bravely, Matt Price is along for the ride. Understandably, he’s a bit cranky.

Howard has somehow concocted this strange phenomenon in which the entire country is fed up with game playing and just wants the bloody thing over.
Unfortunately for the PM, the polls have people sick of him as well. Ordinarily, Australians should greet an election campaign as they’d welcome a bout of haemorrhoids.

Whoa there, Matt, if the whole country is fed up with pre-election bovine confetti, the media must take most blame. It wasn’t Howard out there every few days for the past three months commissioning dodgy polls which served mainly to introduce Krudd to the populace and keep federal politics on the front pages and expensive ads on the schedule.
On the subject of polls, discussion the other night at Waterhole West revolved around opinion polls and how no one knew of anyone who had ever been contacted to give a view on who should steer the ship of state.
One view was that those polled did not represent a true cross-section. Busy people don’t waste time with pollsters and marketers, it was suggested.
On the other hand, I can just imagine those dingbats you see on the train yabbering into their mobiles “we’ve just left Flinders Street” spilling all their vacuity to the pollsters.

No argument here.

“Timing is everything,” Eagles singer-drummer Don Henley said yesterday.
“We didn’t know how we were going to fit in with all this rap, hip-hop, grunge, emo and what-have-you. We couldn’t see where it was going. So we waited.
“To be honest, we’ve come through a really lousy period of music. We didn’t want to be a part of that.”

Henley refers to a period when popular music became more corporatised than ever before and genuinely original and creative (and expensive) artists were discouraged.
Regrettably, market saturation doesn’t always mean quality product.

If they handed out Nobel Prizes for sport, Marion Jones would have to be a shoo-in. Arnold Schwarzenegger would romp in the Nobel for acting; and Robert Mugabe would blitz the field in a Nobel for humanitarianism.
That’s how much the Nobel has been devalued in recent times. Not content with giving the once exalted Peace Prize to a terrorist, they’ve cheapened it further by presenting it to a myth-spreader who just last week was found by a judge to have spread significant untruths about the subject which won him the award.
Like many worthy institutions, the Nobel Prize has been corrupted by ideologues who blatantly defy the criteria of its founder. Nobel decreed that the Peace Prize should go to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

UPDATE:
The canny Scots can spot bulldust at 1000 paces:

For aficionados of irony, last week was a deeply satisfying experience. To see the humbugs of the Nobel committee embracing the charlatan Gore to endorse his falsification of reality in what has become, globally, the flagship politically correct cause was as morally illuminating as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Google David Browne+New Republic to find a slick piece of pop criticism by David Browne headlined What the Beatles Backlash is Really About that will have old boomers spanning the full gamut of emotions.

As in show business, if media is to survive it has to serve up what the punters want. There in lies a dilemma, as The Wall Street Journal’s Jake Halpern illustrates.
Trash sells. And as every modern editor knows, the more trash, the more sales. It would be easier to stomach if more outlets were like The Sun in London and treated it with a bit of levity and took the piss more often. But too often, celeb crap is presented as if it has some importance in the scheme of things. And don’t get me started on the political posturing of warblers, hoofers and mummers.

Heart-felt thanks to so many readers for their kind messages of condolences over the past week. Bed-ridden and frail, Dad was ready to go, although I think he’d have preferred to hang on a bit longer to see the Cats’ magnificent premiership win.
Family from across the country came to farewell him, as well as a couple of Digger mates and we all tossed a few down for him at his favourite local.
My brother-in-law, Peter Anson, delivered a delightful eulogy on Dad’s war service, which defined his attitudes and character for the rest of his life.
He served in the Middle East, where he was shot in the foot; in New Guinea, going over that bloody track twice; and in Borneo. In all, by the time he was discharged in 1946, he’d spent a quarter of his life in the army, much of it under fire. But like many WWII veterans, he didn’t talk much about the undoubted horrors. Dad would sooner tell us about the lighter side of service: about warning his mate, George, in Cairo that getting a tattoo on his arm would only lead to trouble — it did, George was shot through the tattoo on the Kokoda Track; or of salvaging abandoned US equipment and machinery in Borneo towards the war’s end to build “the fastest speed boat in the Pacific” — it was until someone, no names . . . didn’t play out enough rope when tying it to the jetty and it sank in a king tide.