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Censorship

All through the ages, the first thing the great dictators did when they got into power was to burn the books. There hasn’t been a time throughout history when a dictator hasn’t burned or banned books. Whether it be Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Napoleon, Brezhnev, George Bush or Sarah Palin. Even now countries such as China, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Cuba just to name a few have strong censorship laws.

I came up through the sixties and seventies working for Collins Book Sellers who were battling the Henry Bolte/Aurthur Rylar government’s arcane censorship laws. Books like The Little Red School Book, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Outcasts of Foolgarah, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, were books that we were able to use to challenge the law; along with various editions of Playboy. Gough Whitlam came along and there was a new dawn with books. Most of the old rules were overturned and in Victoria there was very little trouble any more because Bolte was gone. Although in Queensland they still had Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

Labor governments in Australia through the ages have been on the progressive side of censorship. The Howard Government was doing it’s best to bring in strong censorship laws. Once even getting a law that would have had anyone arrest and charged for loading any sort of porn onto the Internet inside or outside the country, that is, if you were uploading porn to the USA you would be charged. It was stopped on the way to getting governors’ approval. Whose definition of porn was it?

I was most relieved when Kevin Rudd was elected. No more trouble with censorship laws. The ALP had more sense. The ALP would have much smarter people working in that department. No more trouble. Imagine my horror when I received an email from my son about the Great Firewall of Australia. You cannot imagine the anger and swear words that came from my mouth. The thing that really disappoints me the most is the amount of talent in the ALP that has not stood up against this law. One person in particular who is my hero, Maxine McKew, for beating John Howard in Bennelong. I have my own personal desktop background of the Bennelong result, she has not been stood up on this issue. Maxine is not the highest person in the ALP but she comes from a very strong media background. I expected that she would have taken a stand on this issue. But Maxine is not alone. There are many others in the ALP who remain silent.

Why won’t the firewall work? First of all, you could never make it a word based program. There are two many words that cross over, for instance the first and most obvious word is sex. If you ban the word sex, you also ban communicating with Middlesex and Sussex, you could never mention the word sextant. You would stop any email with a job application asking the persons sex or any document asking for your sex. That would just about grind the Internet to a halt in Australia. What about Virgin? Well there goes Virgin Airlines, Virginia and West Virginia for a start, then the online bible. Most of the words to do with women’s sexual health would be out. To show how effective a word based censorship firewall is to try blocking the word Viagra in your email. Ads by using the word Viagra will still get through. It cannot be done, because I still get V!agra Vi*gra and Viagr* coming through.

Senator Conroy says he only wants to ban child porn sites. Well I can tell why it won’t stop the child porn sites. Even if he blocked every site it would still get into Australia very, very easily. How? Every laptop coming into the country. Every portable USB hard drive on a key ring. Has anyone mentioned to Senator Conroy that the new portable hard drives can hold over 1Terabyte of information? Then there is Peer to Peer networks. His system won’t be able to block those at all. The record companies have been unsuccessful in stopping them, how is he going to stop them? Anybody with a little bit of computer knowledge can do that. Just ask your kids to show you how. Ask them about Limewire. Peer to Peer networks are a giant whole in Senator Conroy’s firewall, so big you could drive a truck through it.

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Senator Conroy’s intention is to block illegal websites. He has a budget allocated for that. It will be very difficult to do that for the present standard of the Internet without blocking a lot of innocent sites. But what Senator Conroy has not taken into account the huge explosion of the Internet in the USA that’s about to happen under Barrack Obama. Free up restrictions on the Internet, introducing broadband to large amounts of untouched area’s in the USA. Senator Conroy’s system will slow the Australian Internet down under today’s system. It will be worse when Obama’s Internet kicks in.

Let’s say Senator Conroy is 100% successful in the sites he blocks. All are correct none that shouldn’t be are blocked. The ALP is tossed out at the next election. The Liberals win in a landslide and Tony Abbott is the new Minister for communications. Not a nice thought is it? That would be senator Conroy’s fault.

Senator Conroy’s 40 million dollars would be much better spent and far more effective on extra police to crack down on child pornography. Oh I forgot, he can’t give that to another department can he?

Obama’s Internet Revolution Begins.

http://www.toptechnews.com/news/Obama-Brings-Cyber-Sensibility/story.xhtml?story_id=0320013Q3J4W&full_skip=1

1,645 replies on “Censorship”

You’ve got to hand it to the average Brazilian’s sense of common human decency.
In America, the shooter would have taken half the bloody bourse with him.

Trader shoots himself on stock exchange floor
November 18, 2008 – 7:44AM

SAO PAULO, Brazil – A stock exchange trader has shot himself on the trading floor in Brazil.

Sao Paulo’s Bovespa stock exchange says the 36-year-old man shot himself in the chest a couple of hours before markets closed in South America’s biggest city.

The Bovespa statement says Paulo Sergio Silva was taken to a hospital, but his condition was not immediately available.

It was not clear if he shot himself due to the recent sharp losses in Brazilian stocks or for other reasons.

Trading was halted for a few minutes (to mop the blood off the floor before worship of Mammon continued, one supposes) after the shot was fired on Monday.

Obviously wasn’t getting enough bang for his buck.
Poor bastard.

199
Shit Ferny, you bloody restore my faith in the natural goodness of my fellow human beings.

Hope your neighbors can get their lives back together soon.

NY Times: Premier of Iraq Is Quietly Firing Fraud Monitors

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here.

The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and waste by Iraqi government officials.

205
GWV
I just had a glorious vision of a certain tracksuited rodent,
power-walking one of these devices around Sydney. 🙂

Ecky, when they say there’s blood on the trading floor it isn’t usually literal, but in Brazil they let their passions get expressed in dramatic fashion.

There might not be literal blood on the world’s bourses, but they’re awash in the metaphoric stuff! And the carnage has no end in sight either.

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Eric Holder to be the attorney general, Newsweek reported Tuesday. Holder, who was No. 2 in the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton, is a partner at Covington & Burling in Washington, and was co-director of Obama’s vice presidential selection team. Holder, 57, would be the first African-American to head the Justice Department. Holder has been a prosecutor, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and a D.C. Superior Court judge. Newsweek reported the selection awaits further investigation into Holder’s past. Quoting two sources, the report said Obama had offered him the job, and Holder had accepted.

Kennedy taps Clinton for big health reform job.

Fourteen years after failing to deliver health reform for her husband’s White House, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) will play a key role in advancing the issue in 2009 — if she remains in the Senate.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) designated Clinton to head a task force to develop a Senate Democratic proposal to expand health insurance coverage as part of his larger push to move a major overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system next year.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/kennedy-taps-clinton-for-big-health-reform-job-2008-11-18.html

Netroots fuming over Lieberman vote.

The progressive netroots is expressing outrage Tuesday over the 42-12 Democratic Senate caucus vote allowing Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to remain chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

“I think we’ve now learned that Joe Lieberman is the smartest politician in D.C. He knew Democrats were spineless capitulators who would cave at the merest threat,” Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas wrote in a post on the site. “He’s probably having a great laugh about it just about now.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15739.html

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut, was allowed to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday despite his support for Senator John McCain in the presidential campaign.

Democratic senators voted instead to oust Mr. Lieberman from the Environment and Public Works Committee, where he had been chairman of a subcommittee. That penalty was a slap on the wrist compared with the prospect of losing the homeland security leadership post.

NYTimes

…just another couple of Senate seats and they could have thrown this turd overboard, but I guess they think they may need him.

Oh politics, what an unseemly world of compromises.

Ferny!!
didn’t realise that The Grove was involved – only know the location of the Jubilee Hotel in Brisbane.
Must have been terrifying, so glad you and Lovely Ms Grover are OK. And even more glad to hear Sorrenberg Chardy is safe and well . (You still owe me by the way, but I’ll wait till the roof is fixed. )
Hope all other Brisbane 101ers are OK – DogB sounds like you have been put saving the world. Good for you.

Catching Up With Another Big Group of House Freshmen — the Class of ‘94.

With two big groups of House freshmen on the Hill this week — the ones just finishing their first term and the ones just elected — it’s a good time to look back to a time when a really big group of freshmen arrived in town.

Before Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., had her class of 2006 “majority makers,” former Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. (1979-99) had a big group of newcomers who fueled a Republican revolution: the 73- member Class of 1994, elected under the promises that were marketed as a “Contract with America.”

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002987159

Yeah, Kirri, it ain’t over yet, orright. The next scene will be like the one from Stanley’s,”The Shining”, when the elevator doors open and well, everybody remembers what surged forth. It was not so much a water shed as a blood shed moment in cinema, when the reality of “splatter” yielded to the concept of “inundation”, althought it has been adequately broached by Billy The Bard some four centuries earlier in MacBeth.

““I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” ACT 111, Scene Three.
————————————————————
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62919

Mon Nov 17:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/patoliphant;_ylt=A0WTUcllHyNJAhcB4QEDwLAF

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62920

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62900

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62888

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62918

Tues Nov 19:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/jeffdanziger;_ylt=A0WTUcllHyNJAhcB2wEDwLAF

Sat Nov 15:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/edstein;_ylt=A0WTUcllHyNJAhcB6AEDwLAF

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62899

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62858

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62868

Mon Nov 17:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/tedrall;_ylt=A0WTUcllHyNJAhcB4wEDwLAF

Joey “The Rat” Lieberman wasn’t in bed with the GOPpers during the presidential campaign. He was just lying naked alongside them measuring heights, that’s all.

“Say, check this out America, GOP nominee John McCain is definitely taller than I am.
Shoot!
Whoever would have known it till we measured heights properly?”

The love and respect of Democrats means more to Joey than anything else in the whole wide world. Ya gotta believe him. Joey is an honourable man, he was simply reaching out “across the aisle”. Never once did Joey shoot his load. Never once. Even when Joey was acting as Republican Presidential Nominee (Johnny Bomb-Bomb’s) backstop in front of the cameras, coaching JMc “live-to-air” about the difference between Shia and Sunni, when JMc & the “Independent Democrat” toured the Middle East together recently.
http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62872

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/62877

The Democrats need to win Georgia to prevent the filibuster. They need an ad to win the election. How about this.

81% of Americans think the country is going the wrong way. Saxby Chambliss has been taking the country the wrong way for eight years. Jim Martin is for change. Vote for for more years of the wrong direction or change.

219 Enemy Combatant We need Joe at the moment to get things done fast. There is a senate election in 2010 which with a bit of good management will allow the Democrats to punish him then. Patience my dear boy patience. 😈

With Joe’s help the Democrats can get an awful lot done. High court judges, fix the economy, health system schools and broadband. They are far more important than punishing Joe. But elephants do have a long memory. 😈

Good morning all!
News from Alaska: more counting today. Democrat Mark Begich’s lead has increased to about 3,000 votes over Republican incumbent Ted Stevens.
Also, a lot of democrats pissed off that the senators voted to keep Lieberman as chair of committees.
And, Hillary apparently is said to be undecided about the SOS job offer, speculation she might stay in the senate and work on providing universal health care to Americans

223 escobar Excellent contribution escobar. Thanks for that. Funny, all that area used to be in the Confederacy. It would be really nice if Obama did such a good job over the next four years that many of those states turned blue.

Sheesh Democrats have no spine.

The superdelegates wouldn’t flood to Obama when it was clear he was going to win in May.

They won’t impeach Bush.

Now they won’t even do any more then wave an admonishing finger at Lieberman.

I had no idea until yesterday that there was a suburb in Brisbane called Ferny Grove. I just thought Ferny Grover was a cleverly thought of nick.

Good work protecting the cellar Ferny.

How disappointing about Lieberman, but it seems to come down to the fact that there are much more important things to worry about.

Howard Dean has had a meeting with a number of bloggers – including someone from Daily Kos, also Nate Silver, to explain what happened (see link below). Forget Lieberman – I just ponder the significance of the Democratic Party communicating with the blogging community on the same level as they would the mainstream media. Things have changed.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/18/163850/55/62/663040

Ooh, lookey here! Dick Chewney’s been indicted. Not for all the obvious stuff we all know about, however.

A South Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County’s federal detention centers.

The indictment criticizes Cheney’s investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and “at least misdemeanor assaults” on detainees by working through the prison companies.

Gonzales is accused of using his position while in office to stop an investigation into abuses at the federal detention centers.

Another indictment charges state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. with profiting from his public office by accepting honoraria from prison management companies.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6119394.html

A remarkably clear and concise article by Alan Kohler in today’s Business spectator about the mysteries of CDO’s & CDS’s and what
fun they might cause in the coming months.
It’s a fairly long article, but well worth a read.
Sheesh, even a complete financial klutz like me can understand it.

A tsunami of hope or terror?

As the world slips into recession, it is also on the brink of a synthetic CDO cataclysm that could actually save the global banking system.

It is a truly great irony that the world’s banks could end up being saved not by governments, but by the synthetic CDO time bomb that they set ticking with their own questionable practices during the credit boom.

Alternatively, the triggering of default on the trillions of dollars worth of synthetic CDOs that were sold before 2007 could be a disaster that tips the world from recession into depression. Nobody knows, but it won’t be a small event. ……………more

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/A-tsunami-of-hope-or-terror-LHRJP?OpenDocument&src=spb

230
Katielou, it’s going to be great fun, watching the putrid remnants of the Bush dynasty, ducking and weaving over the next few mths and years.
LOL the law of unexpected consequences will no doubt take its toll.

They’ve managed to make *so* many enemies in the last 8 years, it’s hard to imagine there’ll be much left of the carcass, once the jackals are through feasting on it. 🙂

whilst leiberman is a snake for supporting McCain (and deserved to be booted) he IS an independent, and was allowed to chair the committee as an independent, so i’m not sure the dems should have booted him as they potentially need his votes for the magic 60. So, the right call even if it disappoints

229 Katielou’s article.
David this is why the 50 state campaign was important.

There are a lot of vignettes from every campaign, one of the most interesting vignettes that happened to me that left a real marker on me, going to someplace like Idaho and having a big crowd–not nearly of course as big as Barack’s but a big crowd for Idaho much to the surprise of everybody, and having a woman come up and say “You know, I thought I was all alone. I didn’t realize there were other people that felt the way I did.” And what you all have done through this extraordinary institution that you’ve created, if I may call the netroots an institution, which I think it really is, is to spread that around. To make sure that everybody has a vehicle to express their own personal power. And it has transformed the country. We now have a president who is all about empowerment and bringing people together instead of a president who wants to be president of the half of the America that agrees with him. And it’s just a huge transformation. I give an enormous part of the credit to the netroots for spreading the word that yeah, we do in fact have power and we intend to exercise it.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/18/163850/55/62/663040

Paddy @ 233

I think there’s going to be some caution exercised so that the Democrats are not appearing vindictive towards the former Bush administration. Particularly they need to demonstrate they’re not being diverted from fixing the country. The idealist in me wants to see some justice done. Plus we’re talking about actual criminal behaviour, and not just a blow job. If Obama is to restore America’s moral authority, then surely the law should take it’s due course, and if that means taking action against the former administration, then that’s what should happen, imo.

Associated Press has just proclaimed Democrat Mark Begich as the winner of the Alaska Senate Race. He’s nearly 4,000 votes ahead, and can’t be overtaken!
That’s seat #58 for the Democrats!
Now on to Minnesotta and Georgia.

Detroit may play a big part in winning Georgia. Should the Republicans reject a package to rebuild the car industry, Saxby Chambliss will become the target of the car industry. 😈

Should Al Franken take Minnesota, everyone is going to descend on Georgia. The Media, the big companies and the whole kit and caboodle. This campaign will turn NASTY.

43-12 in favour of Joe.

Just when we need a reminder of why the Dem Party was held with contempt, they deliver again. Spineless, gutless toadies.

No excuse.

There is zero…a big fat ZERO…reason why this guy should be Chairman of Homeland Security. He should have been stripped. No questions asked.

If stripped he still would have had to vote his “conscience” with the Dem caucus on everything except Israel….just like he will do now.

Spineless gutless patriarchal toadies. I knew, as Joe did, that they would capitulate to him.

216 Dear sweet Jen

Indeed I owe you one – and was remiss in not shouting you a round at the Jube. My apologies. I can only plead distraction by the events unfolding in Uncle Sam.

Lady Grover is also well. She was caught in her car at one point. We were trying to get her car under cover just as the power failed so my garage door wouldn’t open and she was caught in the tempest being buffeted by winds as trees were crashing all around and tiles ripped from roofs. She tells me it felt like the wind was going to topple her car over – which would have pushed it off a retaining wall that my driveway sits atop. Scarey stuff. I gave her a good soggy cuddle when she managed to escape (we were both drenched by this point).

It’s those moments when you realise most acutely the preciousness of those you love.

Never having been in a storm like that, or it’s hard to contemplate how threatening it must have been.

Sadly it seems we’ll more and more have to cope with extreme weather situations in this country.

232 Paddy

Kohler assumes that the ‘investors’ in the SPV will be liquid enough to cough up in the case of the last shoe dropping (ie the 9th defaulter), but he does not get into explaining just how that will work. It’s one thing to have an obligation to pay, and quite another to be both able AND willing to do so.

But it is a very nice and simple outline of how the synthetic CDO’s were put together, and just how bloody duplicitous the banks were who wrote them.

I’d not be holding my breath expecting ‘trillions’ getting transferred when these little bombs go off.

A good perspective from the WP’s Ignatius on Clinton for SOS:

“…the idea of subcontracting foreign policy to Clinton — a big, hungry, needy ego surrounded by a team that’s hungrier and needier still — strikes me as a mistake of potentially enormous proportions. It would, at a stroke, undercut much of the advantage Obama brings to foreign policy. And because Clinton is such a high-visibility figure, it would make almost impossible (at least through the State Department) the kind of quiet diplomacy that will be needed to explore options.”

243 HarryH We need Joe to be able to change America, in the overall scheme of things that is far more important. Joe can wait till 2010 when we have an absolute majority.

HarryH A good health system is more important than Joe, a good economy is far more important than Joe. A lighting fast internet is far more important than Joe. I can go on. We cannot allow Joe to get in the way of far more important things. Would you trust him not to block things in the senate, as revenge on the Democrats?

Ok – this is so totally wrong for this place. But in a way it’s ok cos there’s a “humanity” feel to what we’re about
Haven’t been around for a few days for various reasons (nothing to do with whats happened yesturday)
Tragedy = http://bega.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/father-sons-die-in-wharf-tragedy/1364053.aspx

very, very close to me (srry… cring)… oh shit… I’m crying as I tpe this,,, devestatid…srry… shit shit shuit/./. shit..

sorry………. this is so very very bad im making a fool of myself but I just cant get of god its awful

Chris

With respect….Bullshit.

Joe is needed for jackshit. He will vote like he always votes.

I could write a longwinded post here with a million points or reasons but i couldn’t be bothered.

Lieberman is scum and there is ZERO upside in him being Chairman of Homeland Security. That is the exact position where his stance is totally neocon Republican FFS.

Just because people have faith in Barack Obama doesn’t mean they have faith in the Democratic Party yet.

I hope the 13 Senators who voted against Lieberman name themselves so every voter who voted on Nov 4 knows who the 42 who voted FOR Lie-Berman are.

You wanna know why only 12% of voters have faith in Washington?…hold a photo up of people like Joe f*ckin Lieberman.

Now ….for anyone wanting a laugh, have a read of Nate Silver’s latest post and comments lol

246
You’re right (as usual) Kirri. 🙂
Bloody hell man. *You* should be writing for Business Spectator. *And* getting paid for it. :mrgreen:
However, I suspect Alan Kohler was actually just being a bit droller than his normal “jocular” self.
(He really should learn from Peter Garrett’s experience, as to what can happen when you’re in jocular mode.) 👿

Spam Box @ 251

I’m so sorry for your loss. Such a terrible tragedy. My thoughts are with you.

251
Really sorry Spammy.
Life can be a real bastard sometimes. 🙁
Our thoughts are with you mate.

Oh god, embassing. sorry… things are falling apart here right nowincluding me… just needed to actually say what I ws feeling “out load” but fell apart doing it… very sorry. It’s terrible here in my house right now… so much sadness and no answers(what?… what???… can you say) so many terribley devestated peaple lives ruined I dont see how anybody can come back from this and my GOD… how cna anybvody!!!!…. sorry sorry sorry… willl rant here when I need to 2nght…. its simply devesting here…

sorry… it’s devistation here… I run to the comp when I get a chance… it’s all so horrible, I cant stop ccrying… I’m sorry… you guys dont want to here about this. Im sorry… I need to hide here for a few mins…

Spammy- I cried when I read it and I don’t even know these people or the community. It is one of the saddest things I have ever heard . I am so sorry that this has happened to you and those around you.
This place is absolutely fine to tell us how you are.
Jen.

Spammy, sorry to hear your tragic tidings.
Don’t bottle anything up, soldier, you ain’t heavy, you’re never alone when you blog here. You’re a decorated Ticster Vet. We’ve fought a campaign together, fer chrissakes!
Whenever you wanna, there’s always somebody here to listen.

We’re standing with you Spammy. We’re comrades in here – which is what makes this blog so different. As Ecky said – we’ve been through a campaign together!

Sorry to hear of your loss, mate. If there’s anything you and yours need, just let us know.

Spam Box
I am so sorry for you and everyone involved in this tragedy.
I don’t believe you need be concerned about sharing your grief on this site as I have found the contributors to be both witty and compassionate.
Stay strong

Sorry to hear the bad news mate. Keep your chin up and as others have said don’t be afraid to let it all out.
We are here to help.

252 HarryH
Agree with you 100%

Ferny Grover and Spam Box.
Sorry to hear about all the bad news 🙁

Kirri
There are a few good video clips here of Kucinich grilling Kashkari.

I am sure that you will understand what tehy are on about.
Mr Kashkari appears a bit unsure or squirmy so to speak.

November 14, Oversight Subcommittee on Domestic Policy:
Kashkari: Paulson helping with foreclosures.
Kucinich: He is? What country?

http://www.infowars.com/?p=6001&cp=all#comments

Spammy,
I am crying now too – I read the report earlier and was upset enough then, Tathra being one of my old haunts when I worked in Canberra, including the pier. What can I say, I can hear how upset you are and it is breaking my heart….

Spammy, tragedy must be shared because it’s what bonds us all together; we can all feel the pain of your unutterable loss.

There are no words for it Spammy, but please accept these condolences to you and your loved ones.

257 Spam Box Sorry to here about it Spammy. It’s not easy to talk about something like that. We’ll listen. Good luck.

266

Gaff, there’s some zingers from Kucinich, and basically he’s pissed off that the TARP funds have gone to buying bank (and AIG) stock and none is being directed to struggling mortgage holders. It’s bail out the big boys, because hey, the system would collapse without them, and stuff the little guys ‘coz they ain’t worth nuthin’ anyways.

‘Twas ever thus…sigh.

Just wait until Detroit implodes when Washington figures that no amount of money could save it. OK, some of the suppliers will switch to Toyota and the like, but there’ll be massive layoffs and collapses all along the line. (Imagine how much the big three spend on advertising for example).

The US is on the brink of a colossal disaster as Paul Volcker said the other day, and right now they’re just re-arranging the deck chairs, but the outcome will be much the same.

Spammy- words fail.
Try and get some sleep at least.
Night ticksters- what a decent lot of people collect here.
Politics is one thing, but it is the humanity behind it that determines our future.
It is a privelege to know you, my friends.

What was it the imbecile said?
Fool me once……..

George Bush has a heart attack and dies. Obviously he goes to Hell, where the Devil is waiting for him.
‘I’m not sure what to do,’ says the Devil. ‘You’re on my list, but I have no room for you. But since you definitely have to stay here, I am going to have to let someone else go. I’ve got three folks here who weren’t quite as bad as you. I’ll let one of them go, but you’ll have to take their place. I’ll even let you decide who leaves.’
George thought that sounded pretty good, so he agreed.
The Devil opened the first room. In it was Richard Nixon in a large pool of water. He kept diving in and climbing out, over and over. Such was his fate in Hell.
‘No!’ George shouted. ‘I don’t think so. I am not a good swimmer, and don’t think I could do that all day long’.
The Devil led him to the next room. In it was Tony Blair with a sledge hammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing the hammer, over and over, time after time.
‘No! I’ve got this problem with my shoulder, I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day’, commented George.
The Devil opened the third door. In it, George saw Bill Clinton lying on the floor with his arms staked over his head, and his legs staked in a spread-eagle pose. Bent over him was Monica Lewinsky doing what she does best.
George Bush looked at this in disbelief for a while and finally said, ‘Yeah, I can handle this.’

The Devil smiled and said ‘Ok, Monica, you’re free to go!’

274
Kirri

I read or heard somewhere today that chinese interests were looking at two large ones in Detroit.
One was chrysler and i can not recall what the other one was.

McCain Could Irritate Republicans, Help Obama

John McCain has been endlessly criticized by Republicans for running an incompetent campaign, and especially for not basing his entire campaign on attacking Rev. Jermiah Wright. But McCain could have the last laugh. With Mark Begich the next senator from Alaska, and Al Franken having a decent chance at winning in Minnesota, the Republicans might be down to 41 senators. That would be just enough to prevent cloture–provide that all 41 Republican senators stuck together. But suppose that McCain, stung by all the criticism from Republicans, decided to revert back to his former maverick self and work with the Democrats as he has done in the past (think: McCain-Feingold on campaign finance reform and McCain-Kennedy on immigration).

http://www.electoral-vote.com

Gaffy, what an irony that would be, China owning GM! LOL

I was just thinking, speaking of irony, how ironic it is that the heads of the Big Three were up on Capitol Hill, begging bowls in hand, lamenting their dire straights, when for decades they’ve been wooing the congress to keep them free from regulations that would have made them design more fuel efficient cars.

So after years of losing market share, and then witnessing a massive hike in fuel costs, they come screaming that they need some taxpayers money to help them out.

Irony? Bloody hysterically funny, especially seeing as the congress ain’t buyin’ it by the looks of it.

Be careful what you ask for, as they say.

Stevens ousted; Dems eye power of 60.

The Democratic pursuit of 60 Senate seats received new life Tuesday night after Alaska Democrat Mark Begich was declared the winner against Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate.

Begich defeated the Senate giant by a 3,724-vote margin after absentee and early votes were counted, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens’ conviction on corruption charges a week before the election.

Begich’s victory gives Democrats their 58th Senate seat, with the party still awaiting a pending recount in the too-close-to-call Minnesota Senate race and the Georgia Senate runoff next month. If Democrats win those two seats, they will reach a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

more….
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15769.html

So says the lady with a head like a boardin house pudding and potato sacks for dresses.
She should stick to doing what she has done best, that is getting better and equal rights for women.

Feminist Germaine Greer says the dress Michelle Obama wore to her husband’s US election declaration was a “butcher’s apron” and looked like a “geometrical haemorrhage”.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/greer-lets-loose-on-michelle-obamas-fashion-sense/2008/11/19/1226770536568.html

Developments on the ground suggest Democrats have a fighting chance of picking up both seats.

In Minnesota, Coleman’s razor-thin, 215-vote lead could easily dissipate as election officials hand count all 2.9 million ballots over the next several weeks. His campaign has already sounded alarms about Franken’s small gains during the post-election recanvassing process, and has criticized Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie as an unabashed Democratic partisan.

From the same article as 285.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15769.html

There is rather a strong whisper up here in the north that MIM, xstrata etc are about to lay off quite a few staff/workers.

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Gaffhook Says:

So says the lady with a head like a boardin house pudding

Hrumph!! You sir…..Are a cretinous old seadog, who wouldn’t know true beauty if it bit you on the arse!!
Slap…slap….throws down gauntlet.
Our Germs is a woman of stunning beauty and a wicked sense of fun. Long may she stir the possum.
Even if, on this occasion, she’s dead wrong on the matter of Michelle Obama’s dress. 🙂

I’m confident Franken will beat Coleman in Minnesota. And that confidence is for one reason only. The Minn Sec State is a lefty Democrat…..case closed……bye bye Coleman…..wave to Katherine Harris.

Very doubtful imo that the Dems will win the Georgia run-off. I can’t envision a similar black turnout without Barack on the ballot.

I agree with the logic that McCain is gonna be a hell of a headache to Mitch McConnell.

It looks like the Senate is going to be very good for progressive domestic US policy but still a rubber stamp for the MIC and the hawks.

COMMUNITY NOTICE
In my inbox I have 360 moderation emails.
I know it’s not a popular move – but all the same – I’m thinking about waking up the monster.

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Catrina my dear, you are a gentle soul who clearly has a soft spot for pirates. 🙂
Whereas Gaffy’s eyesight, when it comes to older women, has obviously been damaged by all that salt water and corrupted by a misspent youth in the fleshpots of Asia.
It’s not really his fault…….He just needs a spot of…re-education. 😆

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Paddy
Never dis a womans judgement. You should know by now that a womans judgement on a mans character is always correct.

Thank you Ms Catrina. &#9829

Ferny,
Have just watched some Channel 9 footage of your Brissie storm and it must have been truly frightening! Not just gales and rain, but hail as well? Feel sorry for those who won’t be able to spend Christmas in their homes.
Gaffy,
that is such sad, sad news ….am truly sorry.
To the rest of you, thanks for keeping the place so nice to come back to…a sheer pleasure!!
Ah, and the toons,Ecky….what gems today 😆

All this talk about GM and Chrysler!
what’s the old saying..”What’s good for General Motors is good for Asia”?.. something like that!
But it’s scarcely news in Oz. Mitsubishi took over Chrysler’s operations here, long ago.
When are manufacturers (and consumers) here going to wake up to reality and make/buy hybrids and diesels?

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