US President George W Bush has warned lawmakers against a mammoth Wall Street bailout that the threat to the US economic "will grow worse each day" that goes by without an rescue package.
Following his warning, Wall Street opened higher as buyers emerged after a record plunge for blue chips, lifted by renewed hopes that financial rescue package will be passed.
Poor widdle Timmeh Blair has had a raging erection for Sarah Palin ever since she was announced as John McCain’s running mate. And such is his lust/love for sweet, sweet Sarah that he gets very defensive when anyone dares take the piss out of her.
And here I thought Blair was into guys. Anyway, Grods team member Bridgit Gread elaborates on the Palin problem:
Democracy means that everyone can choose government; it doesn’t mean everyone can be in it. Commonality is not a barrier to political participation but on its own it means nothing.
Personally I don’t give a shit that Palin is inexperienced, it’s her obvious lack of anything else that’s a problem: education, an empathy for the environment, secular logic, worldliness, tolerance of other living things. And if she hasn’t the mind to deal with Katie Couric then she certainly doesn’t have it to be 2IC to the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal. If JFK’s days were spent reading Sweet Valley High instead of The Guns of August then we’d all be cinders.
Here's a catalogue of Bridgit's obvious errors.
Democracy does mean that "everyone can be in it".
Commonality has nothing to do with it; the word is commonalty.
It is impossible to have "empathy for the environment".
JFK couldn't read "Sweet Valley High", which was published after his death.
We were almost cinderised in a missile crisis resulting from Kennedy's provocations of the the Soviet Union.
Palin looks a genius in comparison.
Update: In an earlier channel 10 "moron program" social commentator Stephen Mayne explains why it's important for our Prime Minister to be in New York:
You have to go to New York to watch the American financial system collapse, I mean it's falling over. He's gotta be talking to the leaders there. This is history being made and Australia's fine, we're strong. New York is the place to be with the world's leaders while America collapses... We're fine.
Mayne's analysis of Australia's Security Council bid is even more insightful. With Tracee Hutchison and SBS's Julia Zemiro you know the show is worth watching, so watch it.
Writing in the Guardian's Comment is free online site John Gray, formerly professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science, reckons the "era of American global leadership" is finished:
With the nationalisation of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.
The predominately left-wing readers are wetting themselves in delight on hearing of America's "demise":
"The era of American dominance is over"
Thankyou God (or whoever)
These jokers won't be so delighted if Gray is actually right: the scramble to fill the vacuum created by America's fall would be ugly beyond imagining.
China's three astronauts have returned to Earth after a three day mission which included a walk in space. Unfortunately, the Chinese-designed US$4.4 million space-walk-suit had to be left behind owing to lack of space in the rather cramped higb-tech reentry module.
A couple of readers have pointed out that this week’s GrodsThink episode hasn’t yet appeared. Well, that’s because it was shit and we decided not to publish it.
Yep, it would be pretty hard to top the previous effort featuring cock-monkeys and titty-fucking.
Update: My thanks to The Editor at Grods for pointing out that it's cock-monkeys, not cock-monkies (now edited). I'd also like to thank The Editor for making me aware that it's even within the realm of possibility that "Jeremy Sear engages in sexual activities with his cat". I imagine this might involve a can of tuna and some rohypnol laced kitty cocktails.
Update II: The wild, irreverent but oh so sensitive Grods crew reckon I'm an arse-licking, cock-sucker, with Tim Blair the object of my, well, affection. Hey, the guy ishot.
Antony Loewenstein's counter shows he's currently getting 216 visits a day. For Jason Soon at Catallaxy this makes Loewenstein "prominent":
The next event will feature prominent blogger Antony Lowenstein...
Not prominent enough for Soon to spell his name correctly, however. The same mistake was made by Melbourne's Age, which today features an opinion piece by the semi-literate Loewenstein in which he asserts:
Journalism skills are hardly rocket science and can be acquired with experience and a little training.
Well, Loewenstein has been a "journalist" for some time now and has yet to acquire these skills. A Catallaxy commenter summarises:
It is not Loewenstein’s ideology that is a problem - and yes he is just a low-rent mini-Pilger - it is the fact he is an illiterate boxhead with an IQ of 90.
Read Loewenstein's article and decide for yourself.
Recent TV adverts from Jim Beam and Carlton are funny but not nearly as funny as the reaction from man-haters:
Oh that’s horrible, I just threw up a little in my mouth. No matter how gently I point out sexism to those around me they still don’t get it.
Here's the plan ladies, next time one of those horrible adverts comes on the box change channels instead of vomiting. (To see the adverts click the link above and scroll up.)
Appearing on Bill Maher's Real Time, British subject Andrew Sullivan raves about a President's obligation to protect "our constitution", claims that the British ignored the IRA's bombing campaigns (other than tightening security) and says that the "first Americans" would have reacted more appropriately to the Islamic terrorism threat:
The first Americans would say to al Qaeda come and kill us, we will never give up our freedoms, that's why we came here. These people [the Bush administration] throw away our freedoms for the sake of phony security you can't even secure permanently.
Sullivan's wrong: Thomas Jefferson didn't dare the Barbary Pirates – the Islamic terrorists of the day – to "come and kill us", he sent in the Marines. Military action seeing the U.S. ending tribute payments in 1815 despite some European nations continuing to pay off the pirates until the 1830s. Thus the Barbary terrorism threat was permanently neutralised.
Here's how the threat was described by Tripoli's ambassador to Great Britian, as reported to Congress:
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.
Sound familiar?
Anyway, please do watch the whole Real Time vidoe clip, which also contains plenty of lunacy from Bill Maher and Naomi Klein.
An opinion article published in The Canberra Times by Irfan Yusuf on August 18, ''Justice the remedy required to help Bosnia heal'', cited the US analyst Daniel Pipes as predicting that Europe's next Holocaust victims would be Muslim migrants and it alleged that Mr Pipes suggested Muslims thoroughly deserved such slaughter. The Canberra Times and Irfan Yusuf accept that Mr Pipes never predicted nor has he ever endorsed a Holocaust of European Muslims, and they unreservedly apologise to him for the errors.
Yusuf's blog Planet Irf continues to show the following:
During his last visit to Australia, Pipes caused major embarrassment to one of his hosts by allowing a national broadsheet to reproduce a speech he gave to a Sydney audience. In that speech, Pipes predicted another European holocaust, suggesting effectively that this time the (Muslim migrant) victims would deserve to be slaughtered.
The offending post really should be corrected to reflect the apology.
Update: Rather than apologise to Pipes Yusuf has rewritten the Planet Irf post, omitting the passage above. He fails to note, however, that the post is a rewrite. Very sneaky, indeed.
It's worth noting that Yusuf has also rewritten his blog's blurb which read:
Irf is an irreverent small-'c' conservative whose take on world affairs appears in some newspapers & online (Crikey, ABC Unleashed & New Matilda). He sometimes gets harassing after-hours calls from a News Limited journo threatening defamation proceedings. Irf first realised he was in love when his fiance screamed these romantic words into his eardrums: "Shut the f#ck up, you rightwing fascist bull-artist!". Irf was endorsed Liberal Party candidate in Local Govt & Federal Elections.
The blurb now reads:
Irf is an irreverent small-'c' conservative whose take on world affairs appears in newspapers & online (Crikey, ABC Unleashed & New Matilda). He recently joined the ever-growing line of sensible people threatened by Daniel Pipes with defamation proceedings. Irf was once an endorsed Liberal Party candidate in Local Govt & Federal Elections but is now partyless. Anyway, now that he has your attention, why don't you just bugger off and let him finish writing?
Eloquently erudite journalist and best-selling author Antony Loewenstein pitches his new book, The Blogging Revolution:
The fidgeting odd-mouth-noise Loewenstein in the video is the real thing:
Not the smouldering dreamboat fantasy Loewenstein:
In researching his new book Loewenstein claims to have visited Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Cuba but there's no telling where he ended up and he wouldn't know – his previous book, My Israel Question, has Lebanon inside northern Israel and he thinks Columbia is more than a university; it's a South American country. [Loewenstein has now edited the numerous "Columbia" posts – although this post still refers to the "Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia" – so they now read "Colombia". The posts are still archived under the "Columbia" tag. Hoping to save him self embarrassment, Loewenstein does not indicate that the posts have been edited.]
Loewenstein, probably unqiue amonst best-selling authors in writing a blog nobody reads, is something of an authority on censorship, however, using the features of his Wordpress powered site to exclude dissenting commenters. Thus he has been invited to provide censorship tips to fellow lefties at the Brisbane Writers Festival.
Anyway, if you want to read a book that tells you everything you already know about blogging, The Blogging Revolution is for you.
Update: Loewenstein links favourably (in a post titled Screw the black types) to a Medialens story about Western media supposedly ignoring events in Haiti quoting this, allegedly from an anonymous BBC journalist:
"I'm sure once that Hurricane gets to Florida we'll have live coverage of the telephone polls falling over, but sixty dead people in Haiti. Not that interesting."
No journalist wrote that nonsense. Hell, even Loewenstein writes better than that and he's only a wanna be journalist.
Abd: After writing My Israel Question, a book highly critical of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians, you've now written a book that slams some Arab states and their abuse of human rights. Is this an attempt on your part to bring a bit of balance into your body of work?
Loewenstein: [Chuckles] I thought I might get asked that question at some point. Umm... look, not really... uh, I think... umm... uh, look, in my first book, My Israel Question, obviously I was looking critically at the Jew as you rightly say about how appalling Israel treats the Palestinians and also umm... Arabs within its own state.
Loewenstein's anti-Jewishness has never been in doubt. More on Loewenstein's efforts to promote his latest book to follow.
