Getting my finger on the pulse of American politics is a fairly difficult thing to do from 12,000 kilometres away. However, when I look at the two front-runners for the Democratic nomination, my choice for the next US President is blindingly obvious.

Hillary Clinton supported King George’s misbegotten invasion of Iraq, despite all the evidence for doing so being completely bogus. That’s enough for me, despite right-wingnut claims that Obama has limited political experience. Jimmy Carter suffered precisely the same accusations from the wingnuts- but this actually worked much to Carter’s advantage back in the 1976 Presidential campaign.

Carter was the first US President to be elected after Gerald Ford served out the remainder of Richard Nixon’s second term, following Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate affair. Carter was indeed ‘inexperienced;’ that is to say he’d not gotten any really heinously stinky political poo on his shoes before running for the top job. Obama is just the same. America needs a president who is not part of the corrupt Washington machine, just as it did at the end of the Nixon era.

Obama was educated at the world renowned Harvard Law School and in fact was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. In the last issue of the Review which Obama edited prior to his graduation in 1990, Obama gleefully took the piss out of himself:

“I was born in Oslo, Norway, the son of a Volvo factory worker and part-time ice fisherman,” a mock self-tribute begins. “My mother was a backup singer for Abba. They were good folks.” In Chicago, “I discovered I was black, and I have remained so ever since.”

Oh, my- well spoken, on the thoughtful side of the political fence and has a sense of humour? Whoa.

Sign me up for the letterboxing campaign!

-weez

It should be unlawful for Tony The Abbott to make utterances which cause innocent news consumers to blow entire cups of coffee through their nostrils:

Abbott says Rudd uses religion politically

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has accused Labor leader Kevin Rudd of using religion for political purposes.

Owie! Ow ow ow…

-weez

NSW Liberal leader Peter (who?) Debnam was forced by Sutherland’s Liberal Party Lord Mayor David Redmond to remove a party-political tirade from his speech to a group of migrants who were being installed as Australian citizens.

Debnam himself had asked to speak at the Sutherland Shire (home to the world-infamous December 2005 Cronulla race-riots) ceremony, knowing that party political screeds are prohibited by Department of Immigration policy at citizenship ceremonies.

Debnam drooled:

“Becoming an Australian citizen does not give you the right to a patch of land where you simply recreate your old country in the new, separated from the rest of the community.”

Look here, Pete- you’re dealing with people, not computers. You can’t erase an accumulated lifetime and install your own cut-snake-mad nationalist operating system. If you’re going to accept migrants, you get the personality along with the person.

(more…)

Google plan to do a special aerial photographic survey of Sydney this Friday morning. The survey will add higher resolution images to Google Maps and Google Earth. Weather permitting, a small aircraft painted in Google colors and loaded with photographic gear will criss-cross Sydney at low altitude (600m), documenting the Sydney Harbour and basin area. (more…)

Big Day Out organisers are working overtime to prevent the day-long annual concert from being turned into a race-hatefest. The date has been shifted to a day before Australia Day and BDO attendees will be banned from bringing Aussie flags into the venue.

The SMH quotes BDO organiser Ken West:

“The Australian flag was being used as gang colours. It was racism disguised as patriotism and I’m not going to tolerate it,” Mr West said.

That didn’t stop Parliamentary Secretary Andrew Robb and RSL national president Bill Crews from jerking their knees right up to their cheekbones. (more…)

Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali, can’t get enough of sticking his foot in his mouth.

Annnnd…. once again, Keysar Trad is apologising for the mufti… and again claiming Hilali has been quoted out of context. Sorry Keysar, no sale. Moreover, defending the indefensible is an unbecoming look. Keysar, the mufti is wrong to the core- and you know it.

Hilali’s uneducated and thoughtless generalisations are every bit as bad as those of net-nazis… and gives said white supremacists all the ammo they need to endlessly crap on about the evils of Muslims and associated brown people. Both ends of that spectrum live in their insular little ethnic worlds, fearful to the bone of anything they don’t recognise and far more ready to hate the unfamiliar than learn about it.

The mufti does Australian Muslims about as many favours as the Short Chap.

-weez

Health and Human Services Minister Joe Hockey ought to sell used cars or real estate. In the controversy plagued smartcard campaign, now dubbed the ‘Access Card,’ J-Ho has called the card just about anything but what it is, suggesting that user-available space on the card can be used for recipes, shopping lists or MP3 files- but always dodging the core fact that the Access Card is still a national ID card connected to linked information databases containing your personal medical and financial details. (more…)