The cad. Oh well, I hope he took it out for dinner, used lots of foreplay and was gentle.

I’m happy to admit that I don’t fully understand climatic science or the technical arguments behind global warming. I’ve got a rudimentary understanding of science but I’m not qualified in such areas. I’m happy to admit that my scientific knowledge is open to scrutiny. I haven’t brainwashed myself, to the point of intellectual orgasm, that I’m some kind of home-baked expert on the topic. I freely admit that an education in the liberal arts is about as relevant to climatic science as, say, doing Year 12 in Werribee or a drama degree in Queensland.

An engineering degree might have more relevance – or at least it would if you’d actually done any engineering work since graduating in the early-80s, like our unrepresentative in the Senate, Steve Fielding. Lately Steve has risen from his near-sickbed after receiving Tamiflu for a case of almost-swine flu, to take up the cudgels of global warming scepticism. He’s probably just after a dinner date with Bolta, we’ll never know, but whatever the reason the Herald Sun is playing along. Today it bellows “This is why Al Gore’s wrong“ on Steve’s behalf and links to the pseudo-Senator’s own website. The reason? Steve has done found himself a graph – and it’s a purdy one – showing the correlation, or lack thereof, between rising CO2 levels and ’steadying’ global surface temperatures:

Ain’t that sweet? But is it true? According to the Herald Sun “the graph was used by the UN in its reports on the effects of climate change” but I had a quick search and couldn’t find it. OK, no sweat, it cites temperature data from two sources: the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia. Was Fielding’s graph – or at least the temperature component of it – on their websites? Nope. Hmm.

So what do these places have to say about global surface temperatures? Here is the Hadley Centre’s summation of global average, land surface and sea surface temperatures. And here is the University of East Anglia’s. Each spans a longer timeframe than Steve’s 15-year snapshot, but nevertheless looks different to his Al-you’re-wrong graph.

In any event, doesn’t “air temperature anomaly” describe variations from the norm? All of the anomalies on Fielding’s graph are in the positive range, so if we accept this data as valid then all Steve has ‘proven’ is that global temperatures have risen less in some of the last 15 years. In 2008 it almost dipped down to average, but otherwise there’s been a steady increase of +0.3 or higher since 2001. The increase in global temperatures may have flattened out but global temperatures themselves have not returned to normal, in fact they more than a half-degree higher than when Steve Fielding was going through puberty.

I’m hoping Steve can pop around for a cup of rooibos tea and a Marie biscuit to explain to me where in his God’s name he got this graph, whether he thinks its title is deceiptful and if he genuinely believes it disproves a link between CO2 emissions and global warming. Just don’t bother dressing up as an inanimate object, and leave your Bible at home.

Four reasons why the Navy ’sex scandal’ is a malodourous beat-up:

1. There is nothing particularly unusual about young men discussing their philistinic dreams of sexual conquests, both likely and improbable. There’s no real scandal in writing these things down, unless they involve degrading personal commentary that subsequently harms someone. If we’re going to start sacking or indicting males aged 17-28 for playing silly games and thinking with the wrong head, a quarter of society will be out of work or in the slammer.

2. It’s the military, fer Chrissakes. It has a blokey, boozy, misogynistic culture, fuelled by large amounts of testosterone, perpetuated by playing with big guns and propagated by living in a hothouse environment, at close quarters with each other for eleven months of the year. When not fighting, which is 99 percent of the time, they spend their hours either training, being yelled at, oiling their guns, swabbing poop decks, whatever. It’s hardly surprising that they’d engage in dubious horseplay to relieve the boredom.

3. Why the hell do we expect our military to be a paragon of gender equality and political correctness anyway? Their job is to kill people and blow things up – do we really believe this attracts libertarians, feminists and Greens voters?  Or that it doesn’t attract risk-takers, loose cannons or people of dubious psychological integrity? The problem lies not with the people concerned but the glorification of military service that’s been ongoing in this country since Howard came to power.  The ADF has always done and continues to do a fine job – but it is not a patrician class, upholding civilised mores or furthering higher social values. The military’s job is to protect the values of liberal democracy, not to practise them.

4. Horniness in the military is now entirely understandable, given that the ADF is now headed by John Faulkner – the world’s sexiest politician (if you’re a practising female actuary). $250 for John and $300 if he keeps his glasses on. Yum yum.

The Americans have had Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, Clinton-Lewinksy, Mark Foley, Larry Craig and Eliot Spitzer. In Britain there’s been the Profumo business, Torys-in-stockings, Edwina Currie, cash-for-peerages and the recent expenses furore. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi generates all manner of scandals, from bribery to tax evasion, from media manipulation to mistresses. And what do we get in Australia? 

“Utegate”

A summary of this earth-shattering scandal: an ill-conceived prop-up scheme for car financiers, a shonky Ipswich trader, a nerdy Treasury official, an e-mail that may or may not have existed… and a ute. How quintessentially Australian. And how utterly bloody boring. It sounds like the type of scandal you’d expect to envelop the Bourke Shire Council, not the Parliament of Australia.

The people of Australia demand better quality political scandals. Not Iguanagate, travel rorts, Keating’s pig farm or Howard’s big brother Stan. I don’t want to hear any more about ”Utegate” unless someone discovers that it involves Kevin Rudd rogering Kate Ellis in the back of a Holden Sandman after a pint of JD and six lines of coke. Now go away and try harder.

Liberal dragon-queen Sophie Mirabella might not procreate demons but it appears she employs them:

Anthony Scrinis, an electorate officer working for … Mirabella, who is the opposition spokeswoman for women, handed in his resignation late today.

Six women claim Mr Scrinis sexually harassed them – two say he grabbed their breasts on the dance floor while at the Midwinter Ball at Parliament House on Wednesday night.

A spokeswoman in Ms Mirabella’s office told AAP on Thursday evening that Mr Scrinis had been on a three-month probation period as an electorate officer and adviser to Ms Mirabella.

Other sources suggest he had been working for Sophie Mirabella, Ray Dixon (Bright)’s favourite pollie, for just a few days. And just who is this Anthony Scrinis anyway? He’s a failed candidate for the City of Port Phillip, where he recorded a total 231 votes out of a possible 9810. He’s a good sport who took his defeat in Port Phillip with remarkable grace. He’s a climate change denialist who reckons sea levels and global temperatures are falling and everything’s hunky-dory. He’s got his own meedja company and did a bit of filming for the Greek version of So You Think You Can Dance? But when on the dancefloor himself, it appears Tone has gone those wandering hands.

Good choice, Soph. “Next!”

On the back of this story, I’d like to confess to heinous war crimes:

• I have committed genocide using weapons of mass destruction
• I have bombed entire populations resident on my land with chemical weapons, out of pure racism
• I have launched military action against a colony on the false premise that they posed a danger to me
• I have employed torture devices that have maimed and killed countless innocent creatures, just ’cause

I submit myself to PETA and humbly ask for leniency.

Thus spake right-wing rag the Daily Tele when reporting on ’Muslim-friendly’ loans being offered by the National Australia Bank. To date it’s been difficult for devout Muslims to buy a home unless they have the full sum, since Islam considers riba (money-lending) to be haraam (forbidden). The NAB is getting around this by trialling new homebuying schemes where the customer makes alternative payment arrangements, different to the usual structure of principle and compounding interest.

Most reasonable people would think this a fair compromise: the customer still pays for their borrowing, the bank still makes their money and everyone is happy. Not the Tele, which reports it under a headline that screams of preferential treatment and reverse-racism. Its reporter also sees fit to avoiding mentioning a pivotal fact until the tail of the article:

The loans would also be available to non-Muslims.

Cue the hysteria in comments,where the great unwashed, ordinarily riled by the thought of mortgage interest, seemed to claim it as some kind of patriotic badge of honour:

You’ve got be bloody kidding me, right? Can’t people just adopt the Aussie way. After all you do live in our country. If you don’t want to work by our rules, then piss off.
Posted by: christine of sydney 8:17am today

You tell ‘em, babe. 

If it hasn’t started already, this is the beginning of the end for this once great country.
Posted by: Ralph Malph of Avalon 10:55am today

It’s all downhill from here, Ralph. Much like after your mate Fonzie ‘jumped the shark’.

Can the bank provide Christian and Buddist loans too? Shows the illusion.
Posted by: piggybank 4:41pm today

A Buddhist loan, gee that’d be good – I could buy a house now and defer payments until my second reincarnation.

You have to chuckle at the ludicrous three-way ping-pong being played between Channel Nine, News Limited and Gordon Ramsay. No greater triumvarite of self-promoters ever crossed swords, yet since the weekend they seemed to have captured the attention of the gullible masses. We’ve had parental complaints about Ramsay’s bad language in front of their children at his live Melbourne show (a bit like going to Perisher and complaining about the snow). We’ve heard to-and-fro-ing between Ramsay and Tracy Grimshaw, the mournful talking-head who is the ‘victim’ of Ramsay’s ‘attacks’. We’ve seen the ubiquitous Youtube footage and tut-tutting from just about every rent-a-quote in Melbourne.

It’s my contention that this whole thing is an American wrestling-style beat-up, dreamed up on-the-wire by Ramsay’s agents, PR suits and Channel Nine. It is all geared at whipping up publicity for Ramsay and his programmes, once hot property for Nine but since flagging in the ratings. Others with a working knowledge of the media concur. Ramsay’s public persona is that of a crass, boorish and foul-mouth yobbo, but he is nobody’s fool. Grimshaw, once a real journalist, is now little more than a network puppet. If she was truly aggrieved by Ramsay’s ‘attack’ then she should raise the question of why her employer ran two hours of his TV shows last night – after, of course, yet another ACA re-hash of Tracy vs. Gordon – when Nine might instead support her by suspending them Chaser-style.

Today the Herald Sun went even further with a gutter-delving implication that Ramsay might well be gay. The ‘evidence’ of this, says the Spun, is a 15-year-old caution stemming from drunken nakedness and tomfoolery in a Tube station toilet – because as we all know, every canned-up young bloke who gets his kit off or flops out his shrivelled manhood must “bat for the other team”.  For additional confirmation of Ramsay’s dubious sexuality they went to his embittered, press-savvy former lover – who is, wait for it, female. Further comment was also sought from two of Ramsay’s arch-rivals, who had nothing of note to add other than that noting that Ramsay “looks like a cross between Patrick Swayze and a ventriloquist’s dummy”. A very shaky house-of-cards indeed and one that would, on any other day, never get past Murdoch’s in-house lawyers.

None of this concerns me too much: commercial TV and its stars will always play contrived games of cross-promotion and draw in the celebrity-obsessed masses when they do. What bothers me is the completely inappropriate involvement of our political leaders. Kevin Rudd, now so populist that he comments on just about every non-political matter raised at pressers, referred to Ramsay as “low life”. Julia Gillard more pithily advised him to ”stay in the kitchen” and make “nice things for people to eat” - good advice that Jules and Kev might want to follow themselves by confining themselves to matters of government. Their attempt to extract votes by tapping into a public ‘issue’ that is, at best, wildly exaggerated and, at worst, fabricated cheapens politics and insults those whose concerns run deeper than a foul-mouthed chef and a nondescript TV host.

Laydeez and gentz, meet Liberal Party ‘tool of the week’, Mr Jamie Briggs:

(In case you’re confused, that’s him on the right. I think the other guy is MK.)

Briggs is the MP for Mayo – yes, he’s heir incumbent to the nasal throne of Alex ‘Things-that-batter’ Downer. He was born and raised in country Victoria, then (according to his maiden speech) ”moved to Adelaide following year 12 to pursue dreams of playing cricket for Australia… [however] my ability was no match for my enthusiasm”. The same might well be said for Briggsy’s fledging parliamentary career. This was his effort yesterday during the motion of condolence for just-deceased World War I veteran, John “Jack” Ross:

MR Rudd: “During World War Two, Jack served his country again, as a member of the Volunteer Defence Corps. In civilian life, Jack Ross worked at the Victorian Railways for more than 45 years, retiring in 1964. Jack was a life member of the Australian Labor Party.”

MR Briggs: (interjecting) Only the good die young.

Jamie Briggs, thou art a tool. And while on the subject of tools from South Australia, note the effort of Christopher ‘He’s-such-a-good-boy’ Pyne earlier in the week:

(MR Pyne interjecting)

The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business, on behalf of several people, will withdraw that remark.

MR Pyne: Which one? There were many.

The SPEAKER: If there were many, you will withdraw all of them.

MR Pyne: On behalf of my team, I withdraw “nasty’, ‘nerd’ and ”bitch”.

The SPEAKER: The Manager of Opposition Business will withdraw without qualification, as he is required.

MR Pyne: I withdraw without qualification, Mr Speaker.

Pyne pwned.

Newspaper of choice for the average British fascist, the Daily Mail, has been having conniptions in the wake of Gordon Brown’s visit to the US. Apparently the PM gave Barack Obama some snazzy gifts, among them a penholder carved from the timber of some old-timey anti-slave ship and a multi-volume biography of that old soak Winston Churchill. And what did Obama give Gordon in return? A set of 25 classic Hollywood moofies on DVD, including The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain.

Pretty frickin’ cheap coming from the chief executive of the world’s largest economy. Not that Dubya was much better: when Brown visited him in 2007, Bush’s gift was a bomber jacket. And Brown seems about as likely to don a bomber jacket as he is to slip on a full-body condom.

What would you give the British PM if you were picking the White House’s diplomatic sweeteners? The pretzel that almost choked George W. Bush? The DNA scrapings from Monica’s frock? One of Abraham Lincoln’s old Fleshlights?

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.

Seems like our PM is a gross pervert:

Kinglake resident Gayle Rider didn’t want to shake Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s hand yesterday. “I’m so dirty,” she said apologetically. Bushfire towns do kick up a lot of dust. “I don’t give a bugger,” Mr Rudd said, and kissed her on the cheek.

At the CFA station, he autographed a newspaper for firefighter Steve Bell. The man bent double so Mr Rudd could use him as a flat surface… The Prime Minister grinned and used the paper to thwack him on the bum. Did he want this done or not? The crew exploded with laughter. One yelled: “Please, sir, can I have some more?”

Discussing buggery with dirty women, bending over our brave firefighters and paddling their posterior. Disgusting.

Back in the mid-1980s I was a teenager and our family lived in a small town south of Bendigo. Our home, a modest weatherboard three-bedroom affair, was tucked away in a small bush clearing, just off the main highway to Melbourne. Had a fire come, there would have been no saving our house: surrounded and dwarfed by eucalypts, it would have been swallowed and vapourised. No fire plan, no fuel clearing, no water pumps could have saved it – something we knew but generally took for granted.

In January 1985 a series of small fires started outside Maryborough, west of our house, then merged into one and headed our way. It was a Monday, the weekend before had been hot and glaring, strong winds had whipped up from the north-west. My memories of that day are of us being pulled out of school and packed into the family car, along with anything of sentimental value. Of my mother and father, first arguing, then discussing calmly, then crying. And my mother driving us to our grandparents’ house in Melbourne, my father heading off to join the CFA and other volunteers. He abandoned our little house to its fate, knowing that it was probably doomed and that his efforts would be better spent helping others save theirs.

Luckily, through a change of wind, the fire never made it as far as our house - but it raged for days, claimed the houses of people we knew and razed places where I grew up and considered part of home. I can remember returning days later and seeing a smoky, blackened moonscape. And the charred bodies of sheep and horses, left to die helplessly in their paddocks. And the people, good country people who had lost everything they owned – and in a few cases, members of their family – either vacant and staring or hysterical and sobbing. The fire had cost us nothing yet life would never be the same again – God only knows what it meant for them.

There is nothing like a bushfire: it destroys everything, forgives noone and is stopped by nothing. Follow Scott’s advice and donate, big or small, as much as you can.

Bolt on Sunday:

At least 36 Victorians die in bushfires, and Bob Brown sees on (sic) opportunity to preach politics.

Bolt last Friday:

More than 30 Victorians died in last week’s heat in one of the great scandals of green politics.

Is this spittle-spraying tannoy with a heart of lead and a brain of saltpetre not able to comprehend the extent of his own hypocrisy?

Ant’s interesting post on American rightard Andrew Schlafly led me to investigate his hOmEsKooLing empire - an educational behemoth where conservative kidz can get, like, good learning without evil liberal bias. There’s stuff on this fiasco all over the web and it’s interesting reading, and the best bits are condensed into this article at RationalWiki. Amongst Schlafly’s brilliance we can include:

• ‘teaching’ hundreds of kids, despite not having any credentials as an educator
• inferring that his courses are accredited, when they are not – and that they would allow students to claim college credit, when they would not
• proclaiming larger classes to be better (liberal teachers want smaller classes to make their sinister mind-control agenda easier to achieve) and claiming to teach the largest US History class in the ENTIRE WORLD, which is teh bollocks
• setting stoopid questions like “What do you find inspiring about Christopher Columbus?” and “Describe what you like most about the Monroe administration” and “Abraham Lincoln was homeschooled. Do you see any characteristics in him that might have reflected [this]…?”
• giving full marks for stoopid answers to his stoopid questions, e.g. to the Monroe question above, “The prosperity” (!?!) and to the Lincoln question, “That he was open to ideas such as growing a beard.” (!?!?1!!)
• putting each kid’s questions, answers, grades and teacher’s comments on the Intertubes for all the Conservapedia world to see
• telling students that sentences are not compulsory in essays
• telling students other clear and meaningful stuff like “You will spend a certain amount of time preparing for the midterm exam. Call that amount of time “x”. How you allocate that time to different areas of 1500-1877 will make a difference on how well you do on the exam. If you spend 90% of x on the period between 1500 and 1700, then you will do poorly on 90% of the questions, because they will be from the period 1700 to 1877. You would have done far better to spend the 90% of x on the time period that will have 90% of the questions”.
• proclaiming that girls are academically weaker than boys (”Think girls can excel in math as well as boys can? Liberals teach they can, which is teaching a falsehood“) and setting different curriculum to accommodate this gender difference
• and, of course, teaching a curriculum jam-packed with a blind, unquestioning allegiance to the conservative mind (if such a thing exists)

Note to Dr (sic) John ‘TingTong’ Ray, get out those diplomas, polish up that CV - there may be another academic gig for you after all.

UPDATE

Current topics up for discussion amongst Eagle Rock University’s study groups include:

1. Judicial Attacks on our Culture

(Bad. See Roe v. Wade)

2. U.S. Sovereignty vs. Globalism

(’Right’ vs. ‘Wrong’) 

3. Immigration and Border Security

(Shoot to kill and drive away the wetbacks)

4. How Candidates are Elected: Elections, Political Parties & Lobbying

(God)

5. Family and Life Issues: Abortion, Cloning, Feminism & ERA

(Sin) 

6. Guns, Gambling & Government

(Problem?)