Mr Cain and Mrs Bachmann expressly endorsed the controversial interrogation technique – in which subjects are repeatedly made to feel they are drowning – with Mr Cain denying it was torture.

Without naming waterboarding, Governor Rick Perry said that any techniques that might "save young American lives" would be approved if he were in the White House.

Waterboarding was expressly condemned by Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. Mr Paul, a libertarian Texas congressman, described it as "illegal", "immoral" and "un-American".

The 0.1% only use small bills to light up their cigars... any more would be a waste of money...
We Are the 99.9%

Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have been accused of telling TV viewers blatant untruths about Barack Obama.

The candidates deny their TV commercials are deceitful and dishonest but both ads selectively quote the president to make it appear he is saying one thing when he is saying another.

The advertisements have been widely scorned for crossing a line from a longstanding practice of political campaigns pushing the truth to its limits, over to misrepresentation. One ad appears to show Obama admitting he will lose next year's election if he talks about the economy. The other has him calling American workers lazy.

...

In recent times, Peter Slipper's political career has tilted onto a decidedly slippery slope. Former Howard government minister Mal Brough has coveted Slipper's electorate of Fisher for some time and has been busily signing up new members to take his preselection away.

Slipper himself gave the Brough putsch a significant lift last week when he accompanied former Labor PM Kevin Rudd on a school tour in his Sunshine Coast electorate.

Barry O'Farrell has vowed there will be no more "crazy" bike lanes on the city's main roads when he becomes premier. Has has also claimed that Clover Moore "deliberately set out to inconvenience motorists" with the city's 200km bike network. Click here to read the full story in the Daily Telegraph

http://www.bicyclensw.org.au/content/barry-o%E2%80%99farrell-no-more-%E2%80%9Ccrazy%E2%80%9D-bike-lanes

from Gus's collection of stuff... Joyce could be the kid with the air sickness bag on Qantas...

Me thinks that Jenkins resigned to go back and support Labor against an el stupido negative opposition...

Gus's picture of a stencil by annon.

Senior Liberals are closing ranks around Opposition Leader Tony Abbott after accusations by Liberal MPs that he is leaving them in the dark over important policy decisions.

In the Coalition party room yesterday, Victorian MP Kelly O'Dwyer and Paul Fletcher from New South Wales questioned the economic wisdom of retaining the Government's superannuation boost while, at the same time, dumping the mining tax that funds it.

The decision was made outside the party room by the Liberal leadership group - although key finance spokesman Andrew Robb was excluded from the phone hook-up a fortnight ago.

picture by Gus

The frozen “cryosphere” of the Earth, from the Arctic sea in the north to the massive ice shelves of Antarctica in the south, is showing the unequivocal signs of climate change as global warming accelerates the melting of the coldest regions of the planet, leading polar scientists warned yesterday.

If the current rapid extermination of animals, plants and other species really is the "sixth mass extinction", then it is the amphibian branch of the tree of life that is undergoing the most drastic pruning.

In research described as "terrifying" by an independent expert, scientists predict the future for frogs, toads, newts and salamanders is even more bleak than conservationists had realised.

Around half of amphibian species are in decline, while a third are already threatened with extinction. But scientists now predict that areas with the highest diversity of amphibian species will be under the most intense threat in the future.

soldier on ground: "might not be enough protection against Turnbull..."