The Australian Index - Politics Blogs

Barry Jay Warsch, life long Democrat, and a concerned Democrat for McCain on how to get the media to leave Bristol Palin alone:Simply announce that she was artificially inseminated, and that, afterthe election, she intends to establish residency in California in orderto marry her lesbian lover.Thiswill transform the matter into an Oprah "a-ha" moment (or an MSNBC"teaching moment"), and we will all

I think that the surge has succeeded in waysthat nobody anticipated...I've already said it s succeededbeyond our wildest dreams.
--Barack Obama, 4 September 08I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital nationalsecurity issue, maybe it s comforting to pretend that everbody else waswrong, too.
-- Sarah Palin, 5 September 08 Well, what I saw, heard, learned is a little bit w

* Click image to enlargeWord cloud graphic came from the stables of The New York Times.
It is interesting to note that during the Democratic Convention speech Obama used his opponent's name 78 times and spoke about God 22 times.While during the Republican Convention speech McCain used his opponent's name 25 times and mentioned God 43 times.
The word cloud also gives lie to a recent Obama statement

Stupid British "human rights" laws give free rein to a monster

An Australian-raised English murderer and serial rapist sent back to Britain after his release from jail faces life behind bars after a sex attack on a pensioner. Simon Wilson, 50, who was deported after his release from a Queensland jail in January, yesterday pleaded guilty in a London court to three charges, including rape, relati

With 21 candidates standing at the Clarence Valley local government election, one would think that there would be an embarrassment of talent to choose from.
Sadly this is not the case when one looks at those standing for the first time or standing again after an initial unsuccessful attempt.

However, along with Janet Purcell, Grace Clague is an exception to this dismal field of wannabes.

Grace,

Frank Sartor thinks that the current situation, which finds him without his title of planning minister and off the new NSW Rees Government front bench entirely, is all a big mistake.

He told The Age yesterday:

Mr Sartor said in nearly 17 years of elected office, he had made many contributions to the City of Sydney, of which he was former lord mayor, and the state of NSW.

He pointed to his "tran

Sarah Palin: A woman of character

Chuck Sr [her father] was the high school cross-country and athletics coach. She ran on his teams and earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her fiercely competitive nature on the basketball court. On one memorable occasion she came on with a fractured ankle to score the winning shot for the Wasilla Warriors in the state championship.

"Headstrong" is how her

Federal Leader of the Opposition Brendan Nelson was on the ABC TV The Insiders program yesterday morning.
A minute or two into the interview he left me looking like a stunned mullet accidentally beached on the living room carpet, when I heard him calmly suggest interfering in state politics to the extent of finding the means to call an early election in New South Wales three years ahead of the end

McCain leads by four:Pollster John Zogby: "Clearly,Palin is helping the McCain ticket. She has high favorability numbers,and has unified the Republican Party. The striking thing here in thispoll is that McCain has pulled ahead among Catholics by double-digits.On the other hand, Palin is not helping with likely voting women whoare not aligned with either political party. The undecided independentwo

I think I'm a bit with Ann Althouse on this one:The artistic qualities of this McCain ad completely distracted me from whatever words were spoken or shown.I'm distracted by the red White House... She asks:Was your experience like mine? I was fascinated by the photographiceffects in the beginning, the changing of the image to remove thecrowd, and the way the "camera" pulled back from the stage. The

A conference of African journalists commencing tomorrow in South Africa will look at the emerging trend of citizen journalism. Held at Grahamstown s Rhodes University in Eastern Cape Province each year, this event is the 12th Highway Africa Conference. 700 Delegates (including journalists, media educators, bloggers, publishers and students) from 40 African countries will take part in three days

The image below indicates the notional margins in metropolitan seats going into the election, and the results as of the close of count on election night. Click on the image to toggle between the two. Colour coding runs from very light for below 2 per cent to very heavy for above 15 per cent. [...]

The media is making a big hullabulloo over the hardships faced by aged pensioners, especially now that federal treasurer Wayne Swan has said that he couldn't survive on the pension, describing it as totally inadequate.

Given that the pension is $560 per fortnight, I wonder why there's not a bigger focus on the fact that students on youth allowance survive on an amount some $200 less, while being

From the BBC:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused the Anglican church of allowing its "obsession" with homosexuality to come before real action on world poverty.

"God is weeping" to see such a focus on sexuality and the Church is "quite rightly" seen by many as irrelevant on the issue of poverty, he said.

[...]

However, he said he sometimes felt ashamed of his fellow Anglicans as they focussed

See? It's not a global hoax. It really does exist. And HERE IS THE PROOF:

Me at the Eiffel Tower (actual photograph)*

If you're not convinced (reality sometimes looks a little like a strange image of a puppet next to a toy that I've just blatantly stolen from someone's Flickr), here is a computer-generated photoshopped impression of what I might have seen if I had been taking a photograph of the

From my experience in government, both as a customer and as a public servant, I've discovered that when addressing emails from citizens, government agencies often treat email as surface mail rather than as a phone call. This means that citizens who choose an electronic communications route can often expect response times measured in weeks or months, rather than in minutes or hours.Personally I fi

More here.

Watch this Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates ad for Windows Vista. Watch it from start to finish.

That cost Microsoft $300 million.

Yeah, I don't think that was money wisely spent, either.

Over at tha Bastard Son the Cosmic Jester points his finely honed blogtorch on the desperate attempts of the federal Liberal Party to make some traction on the still to be decided WA cliffhanger.

Imagine the pain and suffering for the Libs if Brendan Grylls forms government with the ALP tommorow?

I also imagine the Libs were more than thrilled when the old Trusster removed the gold tooth-pick fr

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans five decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood and boa constrictors, Cooper has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville, heavy metal, and garage rock to create a theatrical brand of rock music that would come to be known as shock

Is there any issue that the deeply immoral leaders of the Climate Movement won't try and include in their Marxist agendas?

Why the head of the IPCC should come from a country that doesn't have to do anything about CO2 reduction while at the same time benefiting from mandatory wealth transfers from signatory countries is beyond me. Shows what chumps we are to have ratified the thing in the first p

Morris Iemma had told his Right wing faction that it (the cabinet reshuffle) was his way, or no way. "No way!' said the faction, and Morris resigned.

Enter newly-elected Premier of NSW, Nathan Rees. He gets his way, and both Reba Meagher and Frank Sartor are left out of cabinet! "Cranky Frankie" issued a press statement saying that dumping him was a mistake - a political tantrum.

The irony of Re

It was just how Don Watson said it should be - an act of seduction. "A good speech is a lover's embrace," he wrote. "You want to sit on the metaphorical mountain and with an arm sneaking round their shoulder speak of things you have in common - your love of trees or cows, the sacrifice of soldiers .." or maybe even the thrill of shooting a moose and dressing it in the field. Admittedly

Hilarious. My friends at the Wikipedia Review have taken a break from trying to out Wikipedia editors to out each other.

I've known this person had a sock farm for three years. It was pretty obvious. I had an email correspondence with him back then, and it was plain that "she" was a he (very hard to hide it in your writing as various websites around the web will demonstrate to you) and equally pl

13:00 enjoying a father's day lunch with extended family at the Bavarian beer cafe. Happy father's day! #13:36 the caps handed to the dads by the manager let me know this is the Belgian beer cafe. Flemish stew FTW #15:20 visiting the apple store after father's day lunch. #21:54 Wow, what did you do this weekend? #startupcampoz - 3 teams, 3 startups, 1 weekend - launched tonight - check it out - ut

A perfect brunch - oven baked pork chops accompanied by a huge salad with feta. Mind you, as I have finished night-shift I could also call this dinner, or being that I ate it after 12 noon, even lunch lol. Ignoring the identity crisis, it was delicious :-)

Still healing but you get the idea :-)

By Con George-KotzabasisAnd at the end a reply by Steve Clemons of the Washington Note If Obama has a Muslim advisor and America has a Muslim Ambassador to the UN then the corollary to this is, if Clemons follows his logic rigorously, that America whilst is engaged in a mortal fight with Islamist extremists in a long war, could also have a moderate Muslim, like Zalmay Khalilzad, as president.

youtube=[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqjcYjFXros]niiiiice one Juliet Jeske, you rock. completely counterbalances the argument that anything which bleeds for five days without dying shouldn't be trusted. as well as douchebags like this and even bigger stupider douchebags like this. Dems4McCain actually identify with Forrest Gump, seriously... probably because brain damage is a better excuse

The US Open women's final between Serena Williams and Jelena Jankovic has now been postponed to Monday morning Melbourne time after a tropical storm meant that the match could not be played