Another Spring Thread

[Matthew Of Canberra]

This just makes no sense at all

www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/attorney-general-nicola-roxon-admits-government-solictors-knew-of-former-speaker-peter-slippers-vulgat-texts-in-may/story-fndo20i0-1226493765591

Ms Bishop demanded to know why the government's legal practices directions were ignored in order for the commonwealth to offer Mr Slipper's ex-staffer Ashby a $50,000 settlement in his sexual harassment case.

Ms Bishop earlier has suggested the government settled the case "in order to suppress the public release of the offensive SMS messages from the member for Fisher''.

But ... but ... the guv didn't actually end the court proceedings. It just bowed out on its own component of that. Slipper's case continued, and the messages were handed over as evidence regardless. And if they knew about the messages in may, why wouldn't they have just settled in the first place?

That whole line is just silly.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

I'm confused. I went and took a look at the Oct 10 house of reps hansard, and I can't find the transcript of the various statements made in relation to the slipper confidence vote.

Doesn't the hansard contain stuff like that?

[angra]

Shit - cycling.

SBS and Fairfax (Mcguiness) have been at the forefront of revealing this scandal to Australia.

So Green-edge are the 'clean team'.

It can't get any worse.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Re: cycling and doping ...

I blame the carbon tax.

[angra]

A little slip reveals how subbing works.

The Brisbane Times is carrying an AAP piece about how Craig Thomson expects the Far Work action against him to be thrown out of court. Not particularly earth-shattering. But their webby people left a metatag for the story on display. It is -

"Eds: Changing keyword from Legal: HSU"

So their legal eagles have decided that a keyword for a story may be risky. Presumably it was previously something like 'Thomson Affair', do the Eds have changed it to be on the safe side.

Whoever thought that keywords could be such a sensitive matter?

[angra]

Silly thought for the day.

Just heard "Sitting on the dock of the bay" on the radio.

Well you've heard of the elevator company Otis. Their main HQ in the UK was in the town of Reading.

So you often walked into a lift in a shop or hotel and see the sign 'Otis Reading' in front of you. Once I even stepped into one and heard 'Dock of the bay' playing on the musak.

(Well I thought it was funny, even if the other occupants of the lift didn't quite appreciate me bursting out laughing.)

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Just listening to a couple of the "science debate" guys on Point Of Inquiry. They've been trying to get presidential candidates to discuss science questions - even went so far as trying to get the moderators to drop them into their moderating.

They have a list of question that have been voted on by some members worldwide.

This year they were able to get the two candidates to respond to 14 questions in writing. Romney sent his answers the day after the RNC closed :-)

They got SCIAM to grade the answers, apparently (I haven't read them yet - just listening to the podcast now)

Answers here:

www.sciencedebate.org/debate12/

Enjoy.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Wow. Breathtaking idiocy, and no doubt about it.

Former aide sorry for dissing Obama

www.politico.com/politico44/2012/10/former-aide-sorry-for-dissing-obama-138636.html?hp=r2

I don't think the relevant question here is "why is obama in politics", but ... how the $%@# did Neera Tanden get as far as she did?

She's walking back those comments, but to claim things like that in the lead-up to an election and then claim she's sorry for phrasing it badly ... no, you don't get to use that excuse, not when you've worked as a political aid to a president.

Judging from the video I've seen of obama interacting with people, there is no chance at all that he "doesn't like people". That's clearly a load of rubbish. He might not be as wildly effusive as clinton was, but few people are. But nobody wins a senate seat and then a presidential election without being sociable and liking people. Even nixon liked people (he just didn't think they liked HIM).

Somebody needs to commission a statue to this lass. It needs to go up in washington somewhere as a monument to thinking before speaking.

[angra]

The mejaa is having fun with Romney's gaffe "binder full of women".

But no-one has yet mentioned Obama's gaffe in the same debate where he said "we don't want to give assault rifles to criminals, the mentally ill or gangbangers".

Maybe "gangbangers" means something different in the US?

[Matthew Of Canberra]

I like ACMA's intent, in insisting that jones receive an education.

But it won't work. I don't think the problem is that he doesn't realise that he's peddling crap. I suspect that, if he turns up at all, he'll do what all "self made" people do and come out claiming that he knows better than all those "ivory tower elites"

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Today, tony abbott gets away with this:

www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-18/abbott-reax-to-rudd/4320702

"I can fully understand why Kevin Rudd has called an end to personal attacks because, let's face it, the most savage personal attacks of all are those that the Prime Minister and her ministers mounted on Kevin Rudd," Mr Abbott told reporters in Melbourne.

"One of the reasons why I can say with absolute confidence that the next election campaign will be the filthiest and the most personal in living memory is because you just have to look at how Labor treats its own to see how they're going to treat their political opponents in a very hard fought election contest."

Well, now. Let's look at that. How was malcolm turnbull treated? How was mal colston treated? How has peter slipper been treated?

And I think the stuff thrown at rudd has been nothing, compared with the ongoing smear against the PM regarding the AWU and Slater and Gordon. Abbott can keep his hands clean of that, too, because it's being run by his mates in the press.

Yep, I do think this is going to be a filthy election. Part of me wants the ALP to win just so we can see how far NEWS is willing to go to bring down this government.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

I haven't read bolta crowing lately about how much gina's wisdom could improve the performance of fairfax ...

Can't imagine why.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Yesterday I heard triple-j introduce this as "seven minutes of pretty"

It is that ...



For some reason this reminds me of



Since we're doing covers ...



(I see by the "related videos" bar that kim wilde's put aside the gardening books and released a new album!)

And if you're not awake by now ...

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Some cats just aren't cut out to be predators.

I have an undisclosed number of cats. They're all strays which had the good sense to get in my way, and ended up in one of my traps to come home with me. I "do" trapping - the last one I nabbed, I practically stalked the thing, worked out its probable nightly movements and laid out a number of traps around a small city block. I caught several other cats along the way - one or two a night - but they weren't the ones I was after (the one I was after was injured), so they were let go.

One of them is a little ball of happy fluff who is currently sitting in the window on a strategically-located scratching post and watching the birds in the yard (my yard is very good for this sort of thing)

There's currently a kurrawong looking for bugs and spiders under the overhang, and little fluffball is doing the "chattering" thing that cats do. Except that she's not sitting perfectly still, like any sensible cat. No, she's swishing that enormous boofy tail around fast enough to affect local weather patters. And squeaking.

There's no way this cat would ever be able to sneak up on anything.

Better get on with the day. I'm supposed to go vote for somebody ...

[Matthew Of Canberra]

Awesome ...

style.time.com/2012/10/19/trampoline-bridge-proposed-across-the-seine/