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It's been a shocking week and it's only Wednesday.
Monday night got things off to an exciting start with the 4 Corners program giving the Climate Change skeptics a full run. After all Malcolm's efforts to try and hide these characters the ABC has given them the opportunity to increase the size of the hole in the hull and they went for it boots and all.
Then something snapped in Joe Hockey who is supposed to be a future leader of the Libs. For some strange reason he has decided to play the God card, presumably because he thinks it will better his chances in Leadership ballots. Logic fail. Kevin 07 beat Howard in spite of his religious beliefs not because of them.
Aussies are always supicious of "God Bothering" from pollies. Yes, you can declare your hand if the matter is raised by others but to start the topic yourself is a very dangerous tactic. When you have another political challenger in your Party representing Cardinal Pell pushing a different God then things can get ugly mighty fast.
To add insult to injury, young Joe has also come out with the extraordinary claim that he doesn't lie. Perhaps he has already forgotten his part in promoting Work Choices but the victims of it haven't. It shouldn't be too long now before the Interviewers start reading back on his unhappy time as the Minister and start quizzing his pronouncements. Perhaps he should have added the caveat "from now on" but even that would be a struggle. His announcement that "People smuggling is in decline" though not an outright lie is certainly a dishonest presentation of the facts.
All this on top of Howard sticking his head up to remind the Voters of children being imprisoned with their asylum seeking parents.
The week can only improve from here.
How's this for an elegant put down of the current plan by the Victorian government to base our future on "Clean Coal" technology.
It has been submitted to a few papers, by Noel, to see if it gets a run.
I'll also be writing a piece myself over the cheapest option for our aging coal plants in the next day or two.
Nice work Noel. Blogging should be your next career advancement. No Editors to get past!!
_Business Opportunity_!
Following the successful promotion of the "Clean Coal" technology study to the Victorian Government, "Oxymorons Inc" is now seeking interested parties to join with us in Phase 2 of the project.
This vertically integrated Phase 2 will be titled "Dry Water".
Our basic business model is to capture and dehydrate the huge water surpluses in the nation's northern river systems, using (of course) solar energy.
We will then refine and package the product in cardboard boxes which can readily be transported by air, rail or road (at minor cost) to Victoria’s brown coal plants It is then just a simple matter of adding tap water to reconstitute and apply the resource.
As a further revenue stream, surplus ‘Dry Water” packages could be sold to the State’s . drought-affected areas.
Applicants with some technical capacities could be useful, but essential skills required will include the abilities to write successful Government grant applications, and to lobby vigorously the progress of same.
N.L.Matthews
Firstly he lost his two best recruitment officers in Bush and Cheney, then the US Treasury suggested he has cash flow problems. Now the top little earner of the opium harvest is struggling to hold it's price levels.
In the early years of this century (2001) the Taliban felt drugs were evil and almost eradicated the harvest reducing the cultivation by an impressive 91% under their regime. They must have then hired an Economic Rationalist because they have since had a rethink and these days take a cut of the harvest calculated at around 10 %. On current figures this is supposed to come in at around $200M to $400M per year. That's one heck of a lot of explosive in anyone's book.
In 2008 NATO and the Afghan government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy an estimated 3% of the opium harvest. An expensive operation which basically had no effect because the oversupply has driven the price way down. The World consumes about 5,000 tonnes a year but Afghanistan alone grows far more than this level. The upshot of the oversupply was a 33% drop in the price last year.
The Taliban have become rather attached to the previous price levels so now NATO forces are uncovering stockpiles of the crop when raiding Taliban hangouts. Like the drug users themselves, they are addicted to their biggest revenue raiser.
Hopefully the forces of light will reconsider the previous program of eradication (which cost many lives as well as dollars) and try something a bit more innovative like promoting legal crops.
This wins on so many different levels.
- The Afghan government doesn't have to irritate the farmers by destroying their income.
- The Taliban have an even bigger problem of oversupply to deal with.
- The cost in lives and dollars to the Afghan government is significantly reduced.
- NATO forces are less obvious in the negative sense in their interaction with the locals.
- The opium affect on GDP which currently stands at 3% can be replaced by other crops.
Good job too. It's high time they were put on the back foot. Let's hope this opportunity to destabilise the Taliban is embraced.
Wiremu, a New
Zealander, was in Australia to watch the upcoming Rugby World Cup and was not
feeling well, so he decided to see a doctor. "Hey doc, I dun't feel so good,
ey" said Wiremu.
The doctor gave him a thorough examination and informed
Wiremu that he had long existing and advanced prostate problems and that the
only cure was testicular removal. "No way doc" replied Wiremu
"I'm gitting a sicond opinion ey!"
The second Aussie
doctor gave Wiremu the same diagnosis and also advised him that testicular
removal was the only cure. Not surprisingly, Wiremu refused the treatment.
Wiremu was devastated, but with the Rugby World Cup just around the corner he
found an expat Kiwi doctor and decided to get one last opinion from someone he
could trust.
The Kiwi doctor examined him and said: "Wiremu Cuzzy Bro, you huv Prostate suckness ey" "What's the cure thin doc?" asked Wiremu hoping for a different answer. "Wull, Wiremu", said the Kiwi doctor "Wi're gonna huv to cut off your balls."
"Phew, thunk god for thut!" said Wiremu, "those Aussie bastards wanted to take my tist tuckets off me!"
The first stunning fact was how many aircraft are deployed over Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US operates these craft out of 2 bases in the States. Creech in Nevada and Davis-Monthan in Arizona. The amazing number of 250 pilots piloting around the clock gives a hint of the size of the enterprise but add to this figure that pilots can handle 4 drones at any one time and the numbers really start to climb.
Impressive logistics must be involved when you think of contractors launching closer to the action then control being managed from the continental USA.
Currently the high priority targets for this force is leadership figures standing against the US and they have had some success. But here's the rub. According to Aussie counter insurgency expert, David Kilcullen, who actually works for the State Department in the US, for every al-Qa'eda or Taliban leader killed, 50 civvies also die.
Is that a net gain or loss in the overall picture? You can insert your own bias here as to if you think it's worth the effort.
What is beyond doubt though, is this is an expensive operation in both dollars and human lives and not especially clear cut in its advantages when you factor in the negative effect killing civilians has on boosting Taliban recruitment.
To make matters even worse from where I'm viewing it from, the so called "good guys" feel the need to cheat in elections so they are not as confident of public support as we were led to believe. Add to that the rule changes made against their women folk and the ramping up of protection for the churches with strengthened blasphemy laws, and I start to wonder exactly why we are even involved.
Americans might call it Democracy but its a pretty generous definition under normal standards. How many lives should be sacrificed for such an imperfect result?
Firstly, I should declare that I was once an employee of the company when they were at the pointy end of developing the network and more interested in evolving than churning customers from their competitors. It was a time when aiming for the best for the country was the priority rather than offering huge wages to a select few at the top.
Those days have long since gone and the business model has been a bit of a basket case for quite some time. Currently the existing customer base are suffering through a new billing system that they appear to have brought on line before it was finished. The upshot is a flood of complaints where the customers are helping the company debug the software. Now to the Economic Rationalists it probably looks like a winning strategy but they have failed to measure the effect on their client loyalty.
In the first place it's a bad idea to abuse you client base in this cynical way but an even worse idea is not correcting the problem on the first call. Folk who have told me about their troubles invariably mention how many calls it took to solve the problem and I can't remember one who was satisfied with an easy solution.
You can imagine how hard this makes the job for the folk trying to churn the customers back to Telstra once they have had enough of them in the first place.
But I see some more pain coming courtesy of Telstra. This time it's the share holders but this time I'm less sympathetic.
Some folk seem to value trading in shares as somehow more up market than punting on the gee gees. For all its sophistication, shares is simply betting on a different commodity. Now I can't imagine anyone would be in favour of covering my bets at the local TAB so I'm not inclined to be throwing support on a different form of gambling that didn't work out. Fairs fair.
It's not as if the Telstra investment has ever been a good one. Those who accepted John Howard's invitation to invest have been drifting down the gurgler ever since and should have hit the exits long ago.
Of course if John Howard wanted to throw some of his personal wealth to help the victims this would be an honorable thing and I would applaud it but somehow I can see that happening. He certainly was party to Ziggy overstating the value of the shares something Ziggy fessed up to much later on.
The Libs seem intent on trying to hold up the demise of Telstra but once again they have failed to think about what the Voters want. Finding Telstra fans is harder than finding fans for Malcolm Turnbull.
I was watching the News last night when she featured in an interview that really tickled my fancy. When asked if she was feeling fit her response was "Any fitter and I'd be dangerous."
What a ripper response. At the stately old age of 97 (I think) it was the quip of the reports. Another nice one was the interview with the 100+ year old woman competing in the shot put.
When quizzed about celebrating her victory from the field of one she said something like "I don't smoke or drink so I won't be celebrating like you."
I see young Alexander has seen fit to criticize the awarding of the Nobel Peace prize to the current US President Barack Obama.
Obviously he feels he qualified on matters related to peace after his promotion of war and the attempted destruction of the Geneva convention during his chance to do something positive in easing tension around the world. Something he failed at dismally.
I'm not surprised Downer has failed to see the lifting of the tension caused by the shortsightedness by George W Bush. He was so locked into caveman politics he was never aware of the massive damage caused by Bush not understanding the international community.
His solution to more terror attacks? Get bigger guns and kill more people in the vain hope that you can kill more terrorists than you create. Policy FAIL.
Alexander did his bit to promote terrorist organisations too. He tried to credit the loss of an election by the Spanish Government to a train terror attack when in actual fact the Voters thought the incumbent Government were untrustworthy. Not even the Yanks fell for that one.
Another feather in Downer's hat is his support for water boarding. Yep. Alexander and his crew of moral pollies signed right up for the "water boarding is not torture" rubbish. Folk much smarter than he and especially those old enough to remember WW2 must have been horrified to see the weakening of one of the few protections available for POWs.
I was more than amused to see Lech Walesa complaining about the prize win too. When he scored the "Peace" prize I wondered what the reasoning was. If it was called the Democracy prize it would have made sense but at that time his efforts to destabilise the Polish Government were hardly promoting peace.
I'm sure the Obama detractors will moan long and hard over the awarding of the Peace prize but the World is already a safer place with the departure of Bush. The fact that Obama was lucky enough to be measured against his predecessor was his (and the worlds) good fortune. The fact that someone as shallow as Alexander Downer does not approve is just the icing on the cake.
A man asked his wife what she'd like for her birthday.
'I'd love to be eight again' she replied.
On the morning of her birthday, he arose early and made her a bowl of Coco Pops and jam toasties!
He took her to Dreamworld and put her on every ride in the park:
* The Death Slide
* The Wall of Fear
* The Screaming Monster Roller Coaster
Five hours later she staggered out of the theme park.
Her head was reeling and her stomach felt upside down. Right away they went to a McDonald's where her loving husband ordered her a Happy Meal with extra fries and a refreshing chocolate milkshake.
Then it was off to the movies: the latest Kiddies three hour epic cartoon, a hot dog, popcorn, all the Coke she could drink, her favourite lolly and M&Ms!
What a fabulous adventure!
Finally she wobbled home with her husband and collapsed onto the bed exhausted. He leaned over his precious wife with a big smile and lovingly asked 'Well dear, what was it like being eight again?'
Her eyes slowly opened and her expression changed to one of total realisation..."I meant my dress size, you f***ing idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Suddenly there strode from the surf a figure clad in a black wet suit. Putting aside the scuba tanks and mask and zipping down the top of the wet suit stood a drop-dead gorgeous blonde!
She walked up to the stunned Irishman and said to him, "Tell me, how long has it been since you've had a good cigar?"
"Ten years," replied the amazed Irishman.
With that, she reached over and unzipped a waterproof pocket on the left sleeve of her wet suit and pulled out a fresh package of cigars and a lighter.
He took a cigar, slowly lit it, and took a long drag. "Faith and begorrah," said the castaway, "that is so good! I'd almost forgotten how great a smoke can be!"
"And how long has it been since you've had a drop of good Bushmill's Irish Whiskey ?" asked the blonde ...
Trembling, the castaway replied, "Ten years."
Hearing that, the blonde reached over to her right sleeve, unzipped a pocket there and removed a flask and handed it to him.
He opened the flask and took a long drink. " 'Tis nectar of the gods!" shouted the Irish man. " 'Tis truly fantastic!!!"
At this point the gorgeous blonde started to slowly unzip the long front of her wet suit, right down the middle. She looked at the trembling man and asked, "And how long has it been since you played around?"
With tears in his eyes, the Irishman fell to his knees and sobbed, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Don't tell me that you've got golf clubs in there too!"
