On Monday Andrew Bolt returned to work and successfully slapped down Bernard Slattery’s hostile takeover of his blog. (Can you picture a whimpering Slattery, prostrate and gesticulating, backing apologetically out of Andy’s office?) And it took only a few minutes for the trademark Bolta intellectual underhandedness to kick back in.

Tricky. How do you thank someone who didn’t actually want to help you gain freedom?

THE Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, will visit Australia this month to express gratitude for Australian efforts in toppling Saddam Hussein and to discuss trade opportunities in Iraq.

The trip follows an invitation from Kevin Rudd, but Mr Maliki will have to tread a delicate path as he seeks to praise Australia’s contribution to a war that Labor – and most Australians – did not support.

If it were up to Rudd, the Iraqi leader who’d be visiting would be Saddam Hussein.

Is this the new Godwin: person X disagreed with the Iraq war because of its completely bullshit premise and dodgy morality, so person Y continually smears person X by suggesting that they opposed the war because they supported Saddam Hussein, despite the fact that not supporting the war and not supporting Hussein are not mutually exclusive?

Name just ten times that Rudd has explicitly supported Saddam Hussein, Bolta. Just ten.

1) Feds accept Peak Oil
In a blow to those who deny the theory of Peak Oil, a Senate committee looking into the future of oil and its impact on Australia has announced in its interim report that it accepts Peak Oil as highly likely within about 20 years and that we should get off our arses and do something about it. Of course, this is a blow to “charlatans” like Mangled Douglas who quotes from the world’s dodgiest looking website to prove that oil isn’t a fossil fuel after all, and that Steve Bracks and The Age (et al.) are responsible for a worldwide ruse:

The Gas Resources Corporation explains why oil is produced cehmically, deep below the mantle in abundance, and is not a ‘fossil fuel’. Indeed, the G.R.C. only illminates what, when carefully considered, stands as nothing less than dum beleif in magic, oil is a product of fossils.

2) Steve Irwin’s death huge around world
Just check out The Guardian’s top stories last week:

Bloody Brits letting a bit of cricket get ahead of a True Aussie Bloke.

3) Teflon Pete slides it in
In a campaign effort that will be immortalised in political studies textbooks (what not to do), the National/ Liberal coalition actually managed to lose more seats in yesterday’s election to a widely disliked and distrusted Queensland Labor party led by Peter Beattie. After this clear indication that the coalition’s appeal for a sympathy vote backfired, The Editor has now given up all hope and expects the same reaction in GrodsCageFight voting.

4) US Senate finds no link between Osama and Saddam
No shit.