I can’t tell you how pleased I am that John McC-word has picked this right-wing nutjob for his veep. Shows us how ready he is to cave in to the extreme xtian right, which while it may be a significant portion of the GOP base, is a minority in the greater US voting population.

Palin is hypocrisy on two legs. Palin is pro-life, of course except for bears & moose, which she bravely chases down with a helicopter and semi-automatic weapons.  She does not support a woman’s right to choose a pregnancy termination even in cases of rape or incest. Palin advocates removing proper sex education from schools, removing birth control devices from schools (ie condoms), and worst, teaching teens that ONLY abstinence from sex is the way to go- a theory which quite obviously hasn’t worked on her own daughter. Most concerningly, Palin has supported an Alaskan secessionist party, yet wants to be seated as the alternative President of the Union, which if she is elected, would be sworn to protect. If her secessionist mates somehow present a real challenge to the Union, what will Palin do?

I hope McCain didn’t stay up too late postulating that Palin would attract votes from women who had voted for H Clinton in the primaries. Not a single one of those would give their vote to an anti-choice administration, which the McCain-Palin ticket most unmistakably will produce.

Mind you, this in no way means that I approve of the choice of Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate. Biden is a Senator for the state of Delaware, home to the most pro-banker financial laws in the US. There’s a reason why your credit card company is incorporated in Delaware and it’s not the weather. Biden also voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq.

I have previously put a prediction of an Obama landslide at 80% in favour. Post the selection of Palin as the GOP veep, I’ll call that a little closer to 90%, despite Obama selecting Biden. I simply think Biden hurts Obama less than Palin hurts McCain.

-weez

Google backs down over browser amid privacy concerns

Mex Cooper
September 4, 2008

Google has made an embarrassing backdown after it was revealed the company would have rights to any information entered into websites by people using its new internet browser.

A day after the Google Chrome browser was released, a controversial clause in its “End User License Agreement” (EULA) has been removed following concerns it breached people’s privacy and copyright.

Users who downloaded the free browser yesterday were asked to agree to a clause that gave Google a “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly, perform, publicly display and distribute” any information they typed into a website.

Part of the same clause allowed Google to share the information with “other companies, organisations or individuals with whom Google has relationships”.

Who needs spyware when you’ve got Google?

Get Firefox.

-weez

Fairfax’s decision to sack more than 500 staffers is a direct assault on quality journalism in Australia.

Support the striking Fairfax workers– don’t visit Fairfax websites until this dispute is resolved.

-weez

The ghost of John HoWARd yet lurks in… the Labor caucus room?

Labor MPs cry foul over welfare cuts

The Federal Government is having a tough time convincing its own MPs to support plans to punish parents who do not get their children to school.

Yesterday the Government announced that it wanted to suspend welfare payments to parents whose children miss too much school.

The announcement shocked some Labor MPs and several made their displeasure clear at a Caucus meeting later in the day.

Eighteen people spoke on the matter, some for, some against.

One MP described the policy as un-Laborlike.

Another questioned why it was announced through the media before being discussed with Labor backbenchers.

Well, let’s see how this works- kids won’t go to school, stop feeding the entire family.

I mean, why stop there? Why not just take the mob out and have them shot?

KRudd has NOT thought this one through.

-weez

Chinese authorities are all assholes and elbows trying to remove records posted on the net indicating gold gymnastics medalist He Kexin (???) was born on 1/1/1994… and they’re not scrubbing very well.

It’ll expire from cache soon, so here’s a screenshot of a Google Translation of a page from the Chinese government’s Chengdu sport ministry website at http://www.sport.chengdu.gov.cn, which gives He’s birthdate as 1/1/1994. The original page has been scrubbed from the sport ministry’s website but was retrieved and saved in Google’s cache on 15 August. It is still in cache as of this writing, available to run through Google’s translation engine. See the Gymnastics table, competitor number 10.

Blogger Stryde Hax (a great pun on a brand name of an American zit cream for teenies, what a nerd) shows the trail of Googlestalking records of the gymnast’s birthdate, tracing down records on Chinese government servers. Well Googlestalked, Señor Hax. 🙂

Of course, the Chinese government will get away with falsification and suppression of the records; when you run a dictatorship, of course you can do anything you like… but will IOC allow He to keep the gold medal? Yep, more than likely:

Asked about the age controversy earlier this month, IOC President Jacques Rogge said it was not his organisation’s job to check the age of athletes. “The IOC relies on the international federations, who are exclusively responsible for the eligibility of athletes,” he said.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics will go down in history as a total fraud, from a fake opening ceremony singer to an underage gymnast.

Allowing China to host the Olympics has actually made the human rights situation in China even worse, if that were possible. Ask these two septuagenarians who were sentenced to a year’s ‘re-education through labour’ after applying to protest the loss of their home in Beijing during the Olympics in so-called ‘protest parks.’

What on earth were the IOC thinking when they awarded the Olympics to a country whose government has no ability nor intention to cooperate internationally? So much for the fellowship of sport.

AND there’s been no Roy & HG.

-weez

No Roy & HG, no Fatso, no twirly dates, no hello boys, no flatbag, no Olympics.

Look away, nothing to see here…

-weez

click for larger image

click for larger image

Beijing’s filthy air is an Olympic-sized embarrassment the CCP just can’t hide with censorship.

If ordinary Chinese with grievances against the CCP can’t protest with banners, who’s to say that they’re not burning a bit of the midnight oil, so to speak?

-weez

Paris Hilton just became newsworthy for the first time in her life!

Great vid, no glowing eyes to scare children, either.

Paris shoots, she scores! Way to dis the ‘wrinkly white haired guy.’

-weez

The Chaser banned: ‘too political’ to carry on the buses

Rachel Browne
July 27, 2008

AN ADVERTISEMENT for The Chaser’s War On Everything DVD has been banned by Australia’s largest outdoor advertising company on the grounds it is “too political”.

The ad, which was planned to run on State Transit buses, features The Chaser’s APEC stunt and the slogan: “The only good thing to come out of APEC.”

Despite being accepted by magazines and newspapers, the ad was considered too controversial for Buspak, owned by APN News & Media’s APN Outdoor.

The decision has amazed The Chaser’s Julian Morrow, who approved the ad along with executives from the ABC and DVD distributor Roadshow Entertainment.

“They have flatly refused to run the artwork we have provided because it has the slogan, ‘The only good thing to come out of APEC’,” he said. “They say that’s too political. They said they will run the ad but they don’t want anything that can be construed, even jokingly, as disparaging of APEC. It’s ridiculous.”

Morrow’s spot on. Truly- the Chasers’ motorcade stunt really WAS the only good thing to come out of APEC.

You wanna see ‘too political?’ I’ll show you ‘too political.’ How about every Chaser fan/blogger boycotting any product advertised by APN/Buspak? 50,000 mgk readers per month may just agree.

-weez

Ministers’ powers to stop document release abolished

By Online parliamentary correspondent Emma Rodgers

Federal Ministers and department heads will no longer have the power to refuse access to Federal Government documents they believe not to be in the public interest, in new freedom of information (FOI) reforms announced by Senator John Faulkner today.

The ability to block documents was done under “conclusive certificates” which have now been abolished.

The certificates stop the release of government documents if a minister believed the disclosure is not in the public interest, meaning the document cannot be released under the FOI system even if the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) has ruled it should be.

Instead, the decision on whether to stop access to documents will be made by the AAT.

Democracy doesn’t work without transparency.

Bravo, Senator Faulkner & Labor- well done.

-weez