Rudd's big fraud: all symbols & no substance …..

Right at the heart of the Rudd Government is an emptiness - a vacuum between the rhetoric and the reality; between the empathy and the action. 

Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it.

Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.” 

the legacy of a war criminal ….. 

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one historian.

*After Air Force One landed at Heathrow at 1.45pm, George Bush flew in his helicopter Marine One to Windsor Castle, where he spent 45 minutes with the Queen. She gave the President and Laura Bush a tour of her Berkshire palace's White Drawing Room. They were joined by the Duke of Edinburgh and America's ambassador to London, Robert Tuttle, and his wife Maria, for afternoon tea, sandwiches and cakes. 

When George Bush announced that he favoured keeping troops in Iraq for decades, the media apparently didn't think the opinion of Iraqis mattered. 

US President George W Bush has landed in Slovenia at the start of what is expected to be his last European tour, with economic concerns a key issue. 

He will attend the annual US-European Union summit, where he is expected to push for a strong US dollar and action on high fuel prices. 

Iraq will not allow its territory to be used to attack Iran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said during a visit to Tehran. 

He was speaking after meeting Iran's foreign minister and is later due to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

Wall Street suffered its worst losses in more than two months on Friday after crude oil prices spiked over $138, an increase of nearly $11, and the unemployment rate rose more than expected. 

All 30 of the stocks that make up the Dow Jones industrials took a hit as the index dropped nearly 400 points on fears that high energy prices will extend and deepen an economic slowdown. 

As the prospective presidential nominees ponder choosing their running-mates, the spectre of Vice President Dick Cheney looms large. 

The Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, hit back after an outcry against the Government's controversial planning reforms - which passed through the Legislative Assembly at 2am yesterday - by calling the state's peak local government bodies 'dumb'.

In response, the president of the Shires Association of NSW, Bruce Miller, said sections of the Government were 'malicious and dishonest'. 

France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, reveals today that she fell in love with the President for his good looks and his 'five or six brains'. 

In a book containing Mme Bruni-Sarkozy's first extensive interviews on her high-profile, whirlwind, power romance, the pop singer says her attraction to the President at a 'blind date' was 'immediate'. 

The ugly side of science — the one we fought Adolph Hitler, amongst his other nasties, to stop his radical medical experiments — was defended by scientists but thankfully exposed by a revolted reporter. Even long aware of the crap that's going on behind the sterilised doors, I nearly spewed too...  

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. 

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared the United States to a "frightening monster" on Friday and urged France to distance itself from its American ally. 

"How can one be such a shining example of democracy at home and a frightening monster abroad?" Putin said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde transmitted live to journalists in Paris. 

Such is the relentlessness of Tony Blair's public immersion into matters of faith these days that Alastair Campbell's 'we don't do God' assertion in Downing Street has now been fully exposed for what it was: a skilful piece of diversionary spin.