And Away We Go

What did I say last week about polyamorists bucking for official sanction of their relationships in light of the ALP's change of policy on same sex marriage? Five years?

Try one week.

-- Nora

You Asked For It

One might be amused at a hotbed of left-leaners such as the public service copping a swipe from Kev the Slasher:

CENTRELINK will make about 2000 workers redundant to achieve budget savings demanded by the Rudd Government's razor gang. Centrelink chief executive Jeff Whalan said his budget would be cut by at least $150 million next financial year.

But that would be mean, not just to those voted for their sackers but to those public servants who didn't.

One also finds nothing funny about practises that are guaranteed to send the economy into a hard to control downward spiral by not only reducing the number of jobs available in the first instance but also creating a perception of an economy going bad.

Other reports suggest 'front line' jobs will be retained.

Of course. You need people at the counters to serve their former managers.

One person who will be pleased is the woman with whom we chatted while queuing to vote last year. She said strong employment was making it so difficult to get staff for her small business. "A bit of unemployment would be good for me!" she said quite seriously. She also announced her intent to vote Labor.

She may remain pleased with the ability to pick and choose staff in the near future until such time as her business goes bung and she's standing in a different kind of gueue. Then she'll find how good a bit of unemployment is for her.

-- Nick

Repent At Leisure

Absolutely, completely, utterly hilarious:

EVERY Australian with an internet connection could soon have their web content automatically censored.

..."Labor is committed to introducing mandatory ISP filtering." Senator Conroy said the Australian Communications and Media Authority would prepare a "blacklist" of unsuitable sites. It is unclear exactly what will be deemed inappropriate material.

As Nora noted back in August, before the overthrow of the oppressive, free-speech hating Howard regime:

No one, not even the Prime Minister, as Mr Syvret admits, is calling for filters to be mandatory, just made available at either the PC or server level for any one who feels the need to install them.

But now Labor is in, they're showing their true dictatorial colours and the reaction is, well I'll say it again, hilarious:

Online civil libertarians yesterday warned the freedom of the internet was at stake, while internet providers were concerned the new measures could slow the internet in Australia to a crawl. They said it was a measure usually associated with oppressive regimes (emphasis added)...

Should have thought of that last month, mugs.

-- Nick

Not Fair When You Do It

Just as the Australia Labor Party enjoys campaign support worth millions of dollars from unions and other groups, so does the British Labour Party.

But what happens when the other side works up some support?

The campaign work by Vote-Ok is far more sophisticated than the effort launched at the 2005 election, which will cause concern to the Labour and Liberal Democrats. The Tories already have a £2 million fund to help their candidates in marginal seats. The fund is directed by Lord Ashcroft, who is in charge of campaigning at party headquarters.

The Ashcroft operation has led to demands from many Labour MPs for a cap on campaign spending (emphasis added) in constituencies in between elections, even though the unions pump millions of pounds into Labour seats each year.

-- Nick

Bottom Of The Barrel

Left-leaning types are quick to accuse conservatives of 'dog whistling' - the use of 'seemingly innocuous words to convey sinister purposes' - and they're sure conservative voters are stupid enough to fall for this evil mind-control:

Dr Hamilton said words and phrases commonly used in dog-whistling included "Australian values", "the thought police", "the black armband view of history", "practical reconciliation", "border protection" and "be alert, but not alarmed". All are among Prime Minister John Howard's favoured language to appeal to his so-called battlers.

Well, here's an example of dog whistling from the left - from the mainstream media - that really takes the cake.

It's the use of a foreign rape victim in an attempt to influence domestic politics by whipping up anti-government sentiment just prior to the Federal election:

Politicians have refused to stand up for a gang rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes in Saudi Arabia... The US and Australian governments have effectively abandoned the woman, who was raped 14 times by seven men.

The Australian Government has... failed to make any official statement. A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed to NEWS.com.au that Minister Alexander Downer has not made a formal comment on the affair.

The politicians’ silence doesn’t stop us from speaking out for her. Today we are collecting your comments and views in a petition that we will present to the Saudi embassy in Canberra.

Please post your comments below, with your full name and address.

And, having been whistled, the dogs have come running in comments:

"Why the Government is not responding is beyond me. May be they are too busy with the elections."

"Shame on you Australia"

"What is wrong with our Government."

"This is a disgrace. I find it appalling that my own government could say nothing!"

The story is not new and the Australian media is only covering it here as a follow-up to the US media using it to bash Bush.

-- Nick

End Justifies Means

Labor's media cronies are - incredibly - still trying to sell a vicious con job as the truth. The Herald-Sun's Peter Jean and Ellen Whinnett:

PRIME Minister John Howard has been forced to come to the defence of Tony Abbott after the Health Minister appeared to publicly acknowledge that the Government's WorkChoices laws had stripped protections from workers. Excerpts from an amateur video taken at a community function early this week featured comments from Mr Abbott, a former workplace relations minister, on the effects of the controversial laws.

What Labor did to the footage has already been revealed as nothing short of a dirty little fit-up:

This video, which Labor gave to the ABC, was doctored, removing some qualifications Abbott gave and splicing two quotes together...

Here's what Abbott was seen on the ABC saying:

I accept that certain protections, in inverted commas, are not what they were. I accept that that has largely gone. I accept that.

Here's what he actually said:

I accept that certain “protections” - in inverted commas - are not what they were. That whole raft of regulation expressed in awards that sometimes ran into hundreds, even thousands of pages, I accept that that has largely gone. I accept that. I accept that the Industrial Relations Commission doesn’t have the same power to reach into the nook and cranny of every business that it used to have. I accept that.

But in the end, the best protection for the worker who feels he or she might be under pressure at his job is the chance of another job, the chance of a better job. That is the best protection. Not going off to some judge or Industrial Commission that might order your employer, who you don’t like and he doesn’t like you, to keep you in an unhappy partnership forever.

So that is the best protection that we can give people, the protection of an abundance of jobs, the protection of an economy which is crying out for more workers. That is the best protection and I think that has been delivered in spades locally and nationally.

-- Nick

Lovely Lindy

Lindy Nelson-Carr is the Queensland Labor Government's Minister for Environment and also Minister for Multiculturalism:

...continuing the work for people from different cultural backgrounds and celebrating diversity...

Except for the people of Far North Queensland:

"The last thing Queensland needs is a bunch of gun-happy hillbillies on a crocodile shoot," she said.

Nelson-Carr is a former high school teacher.

-- Nick

Vertical Integration

As Agence France-Presse reports that the next mayor of Dallas could also be:

...the first openly gay man to be elected mayor of a major US city...

...it comes as no surprise to learn that the candidate in question is:

...Democratic party-endorsed...

The Democrats like to put 'edgy' leaders into local government, such as crack cocaine smoking Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry who returned from a six month Federal prison stint to get re-elected mayor and busted again in 2005 for testing positive for cocaine and marijuana and failing to pay federal and local taxes.

Or:

Neil Goldschmidt - Democrat - Oregon governor. Admitted to having an illegal sexual relationship with a 14-year-old teenager while he was serving as Mayor of Portland

Or:

Lee Alexander - Democrat - Mayor of Syracuse, N.Y. from 1970 to 1985. Was indicted over a $1.5 million kickback scandal. Pleaded guilty to racketeering and tax evasion charges. Served six years in prison.

Or:

Bill Campbell - Democrat - Mayor of Atlanta. Indicted and charged with fraud over claims he accepted improper payments from contractors seeking city contracts.

Or:

Walter Rayford Tucker - Democrat - Mayor of Compton, California from 1991 to 1992; U.S. Representative from California from 1993 to 1995. Sentenced to 27 months in prison for extortion and tax evasion.

And that's just those heading up local government. (Source)

-- Nick

So, What's Left?

Recommended reading for today from The Australian: Reality Bites The Psychotic Left. The money paragraph is reproduced below:

While the Left is still fighting the intellectual battles of the 1970s, the rest of the world has moved on. Progressive only in their own, inflated self image, the commentariat finds itself stranded on the outer fringes of the national debate, stuck in an intellectual cul-de-sac without the courage or confidence to retrace its steps. Their voices have not been silenced, they have simply lost their relevance. While the mainstream debate is conducted elsewhere, the progressives are stuck in the corner, muttering darkly among themselves. Seventeen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they are rebels without a cause still trapped in dialectical Marxist maze.

-- Nora