While Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is getting all the attention, the current vice president, Dick Cheney, was able to pontificate about Russia and Georgia with barely any notice from the media. 

courtesy of the Progressive Daily Beacon 

Palin appointed unqualified friends to high-paying government jobs, said scientists claimed global warming didn't threaten polar bears—emails prove she lied 

September 11, 2008

Try to laugh, please. The news is now officially parody and a game for all the family to play. 

from Crikey ….. 

Jeff Sparrow, editor of Overland writes: 

Americans used to have a love affair with intelligence. Parents and their parents and their parent's parents worked hard to provide funding for schools that ensured all children received the best possible education.

Reading a book was considered important. Writing skill meant something. The ability to comprehend math was considered vital.  

For scientists, today is D-day: the long-awaited moment when they fire the first sub-atomic particles round the world's largest particle accelerator in search of the keys to the cosmos.  

from Crikey ….. 

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes: 

That hissing sound is the Peter Costello bubble deflating. 

Former NSW planning minister Frank Sartor says he feels cheated, claiming Premier Nathan Rees has made a mistake in dropping him from the front bench. 

Sarah Palin is part of a frontier myth that goes back to the earliest years of the Republic: the beautiful, intrepid frontierswoman, shoulder to shoulder with her man, firing at the redskins circling the wagon and dispatching the roaring grizzly with a steady aim as it towers over her infant's cradle.  

from Crikey ….. 

Richard Farmer writes: 

The parliamentary theatre of the absurd

"The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against the revolt from within and attacks from abroad.  

from Crikey …..

Union buster Iemma writes for scab Herald 

A former US marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi prisoners has been acquitted after a ground-breaking trial in which a civilian jury determined whether he was guilty of war crimes. 

Prosecutors in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, told the jury that Nazario had ignored rules about how to treat prisoners and ordered the execution-style killing of four "unarmed, submissive, docile" detainees. 

The US State Department yesterday warned that disclosure of secret information in the case of a British resident said to have been tortured before he was sent to Guantanamo Bay would cause "serious and lasting damage" to security relations between the countries.  

The Editor,

Sydney Morning Herald.                                                          August 29, 2008.