Thursday, February 28, 2008
ALAMOBAMA
The ABC’s Tracey Bowden compares Hillary Clinton’s struggle against Barack Obama to ... well, read for yourself:
It’s hard to resist references to the final stand at the Alamo in 1836, during the fight for Texan independence. It’s remembered as a heroic struggle against impossible odds.
What a very odd thing to say. Everybody knows that Obama is always the guy getting shot, not doing the shooting.
BOYD CODDINGTON
Hot rod legend Boyd Coddington has died at 63.
In happier car-guy news, will you just look at what the hell Iowahawk has been up to in California?
(Via Old Tanker)
EVIL CONSIDERED
It’s root causes time in the Victorian Supreme Court:
The jury in Australia’s largest terrorism case has been asked to consider the “evil” America has done, as a court judges 12 Melbourne men accused of plotting to commit “violent jihad”.
Opening the defence case today, lawyer Remy van de Wiel, QC, told the jury America had suffered an enormous blow to its pride as a result of the September 11 World Trade Center attack.
Mr Van de Wiel described the attacks as “evil and shocking”.
“But don’t forget, America has done many evil things too,” Mr van de Wiel told the court.
He also told the Victorian Supreme Court jury to be cautious about forming the opinion that Osama bin Laden, who it has heard was a hero to the leader of the Melbourne group, was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
“To say this was all orchestrated by Osama bin Laden is also very silly,” he said.
“He has never claimed responsibility.”
We’ll be hearing about “controlled demolitions” and Jews being warned to stay away from the WTC before this case is done. Further from van de Weasel’s address:
If you think about movies and how many of them have an Arab hero, very few portray them in a positive light, the media, commentators, documentaries. I’m not saying they are all deliberately biased but they come from a particular standpoint.
History and the concurrence of events that were happening in the background of those conversations are relevant. There was the conflict in Iraq, the conflict in Chechnya, the conflict in Afghanistan, the Sudan and Ethiopia, all involve Muslims. The media is very rarely sympathetic to them.
This guy’s a riot.
We all know 4,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq but do you ever say to yourself, how many Iraqis have died? Does the media ever tell us?
Better than that - via repetition of bogus bodycounts, the media even tells us about dead Iraqis who aren’t dead.
What we are interested in is what a person who lives in a Muslim ghetto in Melbourne says as a reaction to what’s happening to people he regards as his people.
His people, eh? The chap van de Wipe refers to has lived in Australia for nearly twenty years. Here’s a novel legal angle:
The leader of an alleged Melbourne terrorist cell could not organise a booze-up in a brewery, a defence lawyer told the Supreme Court today.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
HEIST ABANDONED
Robbers flee:
One ran through a plate glass window, leapt off a five-metre balcony and ran through a bowling green. The other escaped behind the bar.
What could cause such terrified reactions (from men armed with machetes, no less)? Read on.
SAFE TO SPEAK OUT
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding,” writes Dr. Joanne Simpson, “I can speak quite frankly.” Dr Simpson’s a warmening sceptic, and a fine time it is too for announcing climate change doubts:
According to the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the average temperature of the global land surface in January 2008 was below the 20th century mean (-0.02°F/-0.01°C) for the first time since 1982.
Someone tell Marian Wilkinson. In a planetwide manifestation of the Gore Effect, 2007 - the year Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and his film won an Academy Award - turns out to be a year of coldening:
All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
Meanwhile, so much rain has fallen in Sydney this month that February should be renamed Flannery.
(Via Marc Morano)
HE WAS THE PEOPLE’S BUNYIP
“Nobody knows who Professor Bunyip was.” So begins Entropy’s fine tribute to Australia’s vanished online titan. One day, like the Hidden Imam, he shall surely return.
UPDATE. “Bunyip was PP McGuiness, right?” emails Tom R. “Ergo, Bunyip won’t be returning ...” Paddy admired the Professor, but the Bunyip he wasn’t. And if the Hidden Imam can stage a comeback, who’s to say our Professor is gone forever?
UPDATE II. Other guesses at the Hidden Bunyip’s identity: Frank Devine and Patrick Cook. No and no, although both will be delighted.
KILL THOSE WHO INSULT COLLINGWOOD
Faced with this sort of religious provocation, is it any wonder we seethe so?
(Via Richmond supporter Bryan, who is still furious over the 1983 conversion of Geoff Raines and David Cloke. How did those apostates Wally Lovett and John Annear work out, infidel?)
UPDATE. “Forget John Annear and Wally Lovett,” emails enraged Bryan. “Let me tell you the sad tale of a lump of Collingwood skirt steak called Ross Brewer. We waved the checkbook at that broken-down hack and what did we get?? Six games and six goals in two seasons.”
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY
William F. Buckley - no longer standing athwart history, yelling Stop - has died at 82.
HOME OF NON-VIOLENCE VIOLENT
On the Obama death fantasies, Stefan Fredriksson emails:
Isn’t it weird that the left’s favourite democratic nation (obviously plenty of people on the left also love Fidel Castro II, also known as Hugo Chavez, but you would have to be retarde - sorry, ON THE LEFT to consider Hugo’s Venezuela a democracy), the home of peace, love and understanding, the home of non-violence and a nation of less than 10 million people has had two of its most popular politicians (Olof Palme and Anna Lindh) assassinated since 1985.
Both of them were on the left, so they must have been killed by right-wing lunatics, right? Well, no.
Anna Lindh, who was killed in 2003, was killed because she, get this, SUPPORTED the US (and NATO) military campaign against Serbia. And Olaf Palme, who was assassinated in 1986 - who killed him? The police are still on the case, so we should get the information any minute now. The main suspect - a hardcore drinker named Christer Pettersson - died three years ago.
I trust Phillip Adams to be consistent and that he writes a column when it’s time for the 2010 general elections here in Sweden. A conclusion that goes something like this will do: “Let us hope that maniacal alcoholics and Serbian racists in Sweden do not exact a terrible vengeance.”
With kind regards,
Stefan Fredriksson
Halmstad, Sweden
ON SECOND THOUGHTS, PANIC
BBC producer Nasreen Suleaman failed to give police information that would have helped track down bomb-happy London jihadists, a court hears:
Miss Suleaman admitted that she had spoken to [convicted terrorwad Mohammed Hamid] in the days following the July 21 attacks and found out he knew the wanted men.
She said she thought he was scared the fugitives might try to call him but did not contact the police because she felt under “no obligation” to do so.
Miss Suleaman claimed she told BBC managers of the situation but no one passed on the information to the authorities.
The documentary Suleaman produced, featuring Mohammed Hamid and screened just one month before bomb attacks in July 2005, was titled Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic.
(Via S.E.B)
UPDATE. Suggested title for Suleaman’s next documentary: It Isn’t Up to Me, I’m From the BBC.
NON-FLY WHITE GUYS
Wiggaz! Wiggaz galleries! Euro wiggaz!
(Via Florida Cracker)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
IDEAS CONTRIBUTED
Actress Cate Blanchett is among Kevin Rudd’s heroic summiteers:
The 38-year-old will chair a discussion group on the theme “Towards a Creative Australia” at the 2020 summit planned by prime minister Kevin Rudd in April ...
Mr Rudd said she was one of many “creative individuals in their own right, with ideas to contribute”.
Blanchett shouldn’t be too generous; she needs some ideas herself. For one, how to reverse a ten per cent decline in subscriptions at the debt-wracked theatre company she bought. Be creative, Cate! Maybe you could sign up the nation’s summit-fevered children to present Summit on Ice!, Summit: The Musical, or Summitdance:
In an effort to spread the pre-summit fever, the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, said on Sunday that all primary and secondary schools would be invited to host their own summits before the Canberra event.
Hey, kids! Here’s an idea that might win Prime Ministerial approval: instead of driving cars, how about we all live in them?
(Via Eliot R.)
UPDATE. Reader Steve submits a Grease-inspired summit tune:
Kevin: Summit lovin’, had me a blast
Cate: Summit lovin’, happened so fast
Kevin: I met a girl crazy for me
Cate: Met a boy cute as can be
Both: Summit days driftin’ away, to, oh, those summit nights ...
CUE THE SORRY CHORUS
So much for never, never again:
Welfare authorities in the Northern Territory are refusing to return an Aboriginal child to his mother ...
POSSIBILITY RAISED
Phillip Adams reloads his Obama revolver:
If Obama wins the nomination, he’ll be targeted, full stop. Because in the US the politics of personal destruction frequently leads to being shot. I raised the possibility - the probability - of attempts on Obama’s life in this column a month ago ...
Adams previously raised the possibility - no, the probability - that US President Wesley Clark would one day meet with Australian Prime Minister Simon Crean. The senator is safe.
The subject came up when I was preparing to interview the author of The New Rome?, a fine piece of political writing by Cullen Murphy, managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly for more than 20 years. He was concerned that I’d raise the issue of Obama being assassinated because every Australian interviewer had done so. In contrast, he said, no one in the US media has raised the possibility.
Not so. A conservative journal raised the possibility almost a year ago:
As the first African-American in history to have a real chance at winning our presidency, Obama is tempting fate as a high profile assassination target for numerous individuals ... Like Kennedy, Obama could easily be targeted by an individual who, for whatever deranged reason, might want to see him off the ticket for good ...
Back then, this sort of crazy right-wing talk was dismissed as “less a warning than a sick wet dream, the deranged fantasy of a consummate racist who quite obviously would like nothing more than to see Obama in an early grave.” But that was before leftist pundits got hot for a shot on the Democrat front-runner. Adams continues:
I copped the blame, knowing of no other Australian commentator who had raised the issue.
It’s an issue?
And I knew I would have self-censored if my column appeared in a US paper rather than The Australian.
Phil’s column is online.
To discuss even the possibility of an Obama assassination in the US would be asking for trouble.
Evidently not; besides the piece mentioned above, Joseph Palermo discussed the possibility of Obama being RFKed some days before brave Phillip discovered this “issue”. Neither author, so far as anyone can tell, has experienced “trouble”. More fatal than a bullet is Adams’ victory prediction:
[Obama] will win because he’s black, not despite it.
With Adams on Obama’s team, back McCain to win. Hell, for that matter, back Wesley Clark to serve consecutive terms.
Let us hope that maniacal racists in the US do not exact a terrible vengeance.
Leftists, including Adams, have spent the last few years wishing disaster upon a liberated Iraq. Now they’re wishing disaster upon anti-liberation Americans. These people are deranged.
UPDATE. Adams is caught again. Anyone still watching Media Watch will never learn of this.
YOUTH ROCKS
Our agriculture minister is dismayed by the young:
Young Australian farmers are not as clued up on climate change as their older counterparts, Agriculture Minister Tony Burke believes.
In fact, judging by Burke’s comments, young farmers seem extremely “clued up”:
[Burke] said he found younger farmers had more doubts about the realities of climate change than the older rural generation.
I’d love to have Tony meet some of my old farming uncles. They share this youthful attitude.
(Via Contrail)