She’s back…

Controversial former politician Pauline Hanson will attempt to win a seat in the Queensland parliament at the March 21 state election. Ms Hanson confirmed today that she will again make a tilt at a parliamentary career, but declined to confirm where she will stand.

“I will be standing,” she said. “I’m sorry that I’m quite evasive about this at the moment, but there’s a lot happening and I just can’t say too much.”

…and she’s going to make a killing:

Registered political parties may claim reimbursement of election campaign costs, up to the level of their entitlement, in respect of those of their endorsed candidates who gained at least 4 per cent of the formal first preference vote in the electorate contested. The entitlement is calculated by multiplying the total of eligible votes received by the election funding rate indexed annually (currently $1.54737 for 2008/9).

In 2004, when she made a half-arsed run at the federal Senate, Paauuuline sucked almost $190,000 of sweet mother’s milk from the taxpayer teat. In 2007  it was almost $213,000. These most-recent funds were paid to her United Australia Party (a mum-and-dad operation, run from a one-room office at the rear of Dr TingTong’s boarding house in lower Ipswich) – however Paauuuline whipped it out of the party’s bank accounts before you could say “xenophobia”. Don’t dare question her though: she gets really cross and shows you ’rithmetic and fancy tables and stuff.

Hanson is virtually unelectable now, however there remains, especially in Queensland, a small cohort of loopy tin hat-wearing housewives, pensioners and rugby league supporters  - and probably a few blogers (sic) – who are still silly enough to vote for her. It’s potentially possible for her to run in state and federal elections for the next decade or more and clear a couple of million from the AEC’s swag. Something must be done, even if it is slightly undemocratic, to stop this idiotic bigot cashing in on her fading celebrity.

Anyone who believes Wikipedia has a liberal bias is an idiot. In 2006, one such idiot — lawyer, home-schooling enthusiast and conservative Christian Andrew Schlafly — decided the world needed an alternative to the pernicious, Leftist Wikipedia … a place where other idiots could gather to read about a variety of topics without the terrible inconvenience of truth getting in the way of their backward-arsed ideology.

And so Conservapedia was born.

Nothing — and I mean nothing — demonstrates the rank imbecility of this website more than its entry on Barack Hussein (!!1!) Obama. The whole article is worth reading, just to marvel at how desperate and deranged its authors are — but for your convenience, here are a few highlights:

Obama used his Muslim middle name when sworn in as President,^[7][8] and chose not to use the Bible for his real, private oath. Elected by claiming he’s a Christian, Obama has since avoided attending church on Christmas and Sundays.^[9]

Obama refers to America in the third person, as a foreigner would.

To announce his trip to Berlin in July 2008, Obama used posters which show a marked similarity to posters of Lenin.^[14]

Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for “Pakistan” rather than the common American one.^[36]

Obama has consistently shown himself to be an elitist who looks down on “ordinary” Americans.

Obama’s smears usually fall into two categories: race-baiting and distortions.

Seriously, go and have a look — there’s plenty more gold where the above nuggets came from. And if you have time while you’re there, do yourself a favour and check out the references for the entry’s most outlandish claims (the Lenin poster one is particularly laughable). They make Leon Bertrand QC’s spectacularly inept fumbling for evidence to support his claims seem like the work of a perfectly persuasive genius.

But the last word goes to Wikipedia itself, whose Conservapedia entry lays bare the kind of attitudes that led to its creation:

Conservapedia is an English-language wiki-based web encyclopedia project written from a young Earth creationist, Americentric, right-wing^[2] and Conservative Christian point of view.

[...]

Several articles on the site have had reputations for bias and inaccuracy.^[9][10][11] Conservapedia has also been seen as part of a trend of conservative and Christian-themed Web sites imitating the format of mainstream sites to provide a right-wing antidote or Christian alternative.^[3][12]

Fair dinkum — even if I’d been stupid enough to hitch my wagon to the ideology of the Right all those years ago, I would still be mortally embarrassed by the abortion (pun intended) that is Conservapedia. I wonder how many “conservatives” are.

One of the most popular ways of making yourself seem a decent fellow in Australian politics is to attack another man’s patriotism. And what better way to prove someone’s un-Australianess than through Vegemite.

I don’t eat it – do you? Supermarkets stock more honey and Nutella than Vegemite. Admitting you don’t eat Vegemite is like donning a burqa and running through the Bourke Street Mall shouting “DEATH TO THE UNBELIEVERS” in your best Arabic – or so the politicians seem to think. Frankly, I doubt anyone cares whether or not you like Vegemite.

I really despise this kind of populist, patronising politics in which they try to play Australians for a bunch of suckers. As if Labor would lose the next election because they dared to tax Vegemite?

But we’ll let Gillard have the final word:

“Vegemite is part of being Australian, part of our history, part of our future and I’ll be continuing to wake up in the morning and having it on my toast.”

LIES!

Andrew Bolt sez:

Sky News runs yet another apocalyptic story on global warming, this time threatening the Sami of Lappland. No figures are offered, just a couple of anecdotes, and this evidence of a warming world:

There’s a lot more snow these days.

We’re also told the ice is now too thick for reindeer, but also too thin for snow mobiles.

We really need to collate this kind of reporting in some document for future generations. They will not believe how comprehensively the media lost its reason, and the media sure won’t be in the mood to remind them.

Science, research and evidence say:

The seasonal pattern of snow cover shows that there’s been no noticeable decline during fall and winter, so we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised by the large snowfall over the U.S. this past week. We can also plainly see that snow cover exhibits extremely large fluctuations, so again last week’s snowfall is no surprise whatever, and no harbinger of any reversal of global warming. But the rapid decline of springtime snow cover over the last four decades, and the even more rapid decline of summer snow cover, show the mark of global warming unambiguously. And despite what some like to shout, the statistically strong trends are what’s important, not the statistically normal noise.

It truly is a case of populist anecdotal evidence versus science. I’ll let you make up your own mind, dear reader.

Update: Beware – “Global cooling” alarmism is now taking hold:

Global warming,what global warming,we could get snow on the Gold Coast next winter.

Anyone?

Things that shit me #6: meaningless salutations

Best what?

In the car the other day, with the radio tuned to an unfamiliar station, I happened upon a song about some miserable sap (probably a leftist) whose girlfriend had given him the arse. My ears pricked up immediately, because I’d never heard this theme expounded in popular music before.

The chorus went a little something like this:

So tell me
Why should I let you go
Give me twenty good reasons
I need to know

Twenty. Presumably this means if the ex only managed to come up with 19 bulletproof reasons for hating this fellow’s guts, he’d politely decline her request to be free of him and continue stalking her.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Surely anyone who’d write a song about not being able to accept that a relationship is over is bound to be a top bloke and a good catch. Hell, the missus just probably never truly appreciated how much he adored her and how lucky she was — the ungrateful, aloof cow!

But then, today, I googled the lyrics of the chorus and discovered the song was by the hilariously named Thirsty Merc:

Suddenly I understood that one good reason was all the justification she’d ever need:

Rai, my dear, you have a moustache that looks as though you’ve dropped your dessert spoon at the Coogee Bay Hotel and thought: “You know what? To hell with it. I’m just going to eat this complimentary gelato with my face.”

As such, I find the very thought of touching you repugnant and would sooner engage in sexual congress with a frightened echidna than spend another minute in your company.

Now please, get out of my hydrangeas. And take that fucking guitar with you.

Recently-departed New South Wales treasurer Michael Costa has been keeping himself busy. As well as being appointed Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Newcastle, he’s scored a weekly column at The Australian where he slags the ALP’s left, tries to pwn the PM, and generally conducts himself in the manner of right-wing bloggers everywhere.

Today his bit is all about how the green appointments to infrastructure Australia are going to turn Sydney into a chardy-sipping medieval village if they get their way. Pretty boring except for this:

The growth of the “sustainability industry” is closely correlated with the emergence of green politics, particularly the anthropomorphic global warming religion of which Carr is attempting to become Australia’s high priest.

Oh, really? For the benefit of Ass. Prof. Costa and the Oz’s subbies, this is an anthropomorphic cat:

This is an anthropomorphic dog:

Whereas the entirely fictional climatic process that greentards keep moaning about is merely anthropogenic. It originates in human activity, but it does not amuse us by riding a unicycle, smoking cigars, or sitting around a table with other climatic processes playing poker.

And if I don’t watch myself, soon I’ll be yelling in the street at misplaced commas.

As well as uni graduates who’ve gone on to become ABC sub-editors, one would hope.

Breaking news from the trenches in the war against illiteracy:

Monash University will teach its first-year students grammar and punctuation after discovering that most lack basic English skills.

Baden Eunson, lecturer at the university’s School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, and convenor of the new course, said about 90 per cent of his first-year students could not identify a noun. “If you ask them to identify adjectives and other parts of a sentence, only about 1 per cent can manage,” he said.

His comments come after Monash colleague Caron Dann said the majority of her 500 students in communication were strangers to English grammar.

“Marking essays, I discovered the majority had no idea how to use apostrophes, or any other punctuation for that matter; That random spelling was in and sentence construction out. About half thought plurals were formed by adding an apostrophe-s, as in apple’s and banana’s.

“Marking the final exam, it emerged that few could write neatly: From bold childlike printing to spidery scribblings in upper case, it is obvious that handwriting is a dying art,” she said.

There’s a million theories why this is but my preferred thesis is the abrogation of responsibility, which usually starts with “It’s not important…” and finishes with “Someone else can fix it”. Unfortunately I cop this all the time because I’m usually the one who’ll send your copy back with a gazillion alert flags and a  comment saying “Fix the spelling and grammar on this steaming pile of moose droppings”.

And doesn’t the indignation come fast from 21-year-olds who think they’re great writers just because they’ve got a BComm and they once scored an A+ for a reflective piece in Year 10 English. And I’ve heard them all too. “Noone worries about grammar anymore, I’m writing for the SMS generation.” “Our system should have spellcheckers…” (it purposely doesn’t).”It’s just my job to report, it’s your job to worry about the quality of writing…” (fucking WHAT?!?) and “I’m only in print media until I score a gig on radio or TV…” (not if your arse gets sacked, bucko). I’ve even heard the “English language is a wonderful dynamic creature…” argument before.

The standards have definitely fallen and they continue to fall. This morning, an e-mail from someone way up the food chain that expressed a desire that certain people should “…get there shit together”. I cried. What hope have us grammarians got in such cruel, unforgiving world?

Only just emerged from bed after 36 hours of incapacitation.

Disease: Food poisoning

Source: Asian food (isn’t it always?)

Symptoms: Headache, bloatedness, tear-inducing stomach cramps, explosive diarrhea. Oh, and that charming gas you get from food poisoning where it backs up from your intestines and ushers forth in a foul, gangrenous burp – it feels and smells like you are farting from your mouth.

Prognosis: S(h)it it out and wait.

Peg me now at your own peril…

* Is it really that funny when someone changes the HTML on a company intranet page so that when a certain sub-editor clicks it, a nauseating monstrosity called “goatse” appears?

* Am I right to be suspicious when I write something extremely confidential in an e-mail to another individual – telling nobody else whatsoever – and someone from the IT department gives me a wink about an hour later?

* Why is it that wherever I work, people steal my lunch and/or drinks from the fridge? Does every workplace have a crazed food thief devoid of any conscience? Or is there a global corporate conspiracy to steal from employees to recoup profits? Bastards.

* Is this TV show about me and, if so, why am I messing about with George Athanasi and Billy from Lachlan Connor, Independent?

* Why is The Editor stalking me to appear on Grodsthink… does he want to sleep with me? And why is he cc-ing Ant in… do they want a threesome?

Just wonderin’.

You know it’s going to be a rough day when you’re walking to the train station along a suburban street in the icy pre-dawn darkness and you’re suddenly hit by a flying rolled-up newspaper.

Damn you to the fiery bowels of hell, The Age, The Australian, the Herald Sun or whatever the fuck you were!

Oh, and paperboy — you just made The List.

On the weekend we brought you the story of Piers Frassati, the globe-trotting Shroud-Model of Turin who is paying a visit here for World Youth Day. Only trouble is that he’s not paying for it, according to Mikey in comments … the NSW and Commonwealth governments are senselessly shelling out millions for this cultist cornucopia of Catholic crap. And then there’s this:

Extraordinary new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today.

The laws, which operate until the end of July, have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music, critics say.

People who fail to comply will be subject to a $5500 fine.

Our recent history has been full of affronts to democracy and blatant attacks on freedom of speech, e.g. Bob Brown being ejected from his own parliament because he dared ask the US president a question, and the ludicrous restrictions foisted on Sydneysiders during APEC. But this nonsense, if as reported here, goes even further still, to the point of cultist neo-fascism. It’s not enough that we are paying for corpse-worshipping religious lunatics to gather, chant and dance around their shaman … we’ll also be heavily fined if we ‘offend’ or ‘annoy’ them.

A shame this palaver isn’t taking place in Melbourne because I’d be there in a heartbeat - wearing an ‘I HATE JESUS’ t-shirt and condoms on my fingers, carrying a decapitated statuette of the Virgin Mary and a Benedict XVI Fleshlight. And would they fine me $5500? Just let them fucking try it.

I am on a sub-editing mission. The phrase “…going forward” will appear in no articles, press releases or advertisements that cross my desk.

“Going forward” and its ilk are the babble of stiff-shirted analyst or consultancy types who carry around an iPhone and a laser pointer, and who cannot speak without having a Powerpoint slideshow pissing colourfully all over the wall behind them. They tack it onto the end of imperative sentences, usually containing one of their ideas or plans, as if to suggest that that progress is impossible without it. Lately it has seeped into common usage, a fact obvious in quotes recorded by journalists, e.g.

The restaurant owner whose business was destroyed by fire but will look at options, “going forward”.

The local councillor who is considering dipping into a trust fund to boost infrastructure spending so that his bailiwick is “going forward”.

The football coach whose ruckman has done his knee and will meet with medical specialists to consider a recovery plan, “going forward”.

Aaaarrrrggghhh.

I am mercilessly hacking this redundant and cliched term out of everything and anything I see, from this day on. What’s more, I expect Grods to be ruled with the same iron fist. There shall be no “going forward” here.