There has been many spats between Tim Flannery and Andrew Bolt... One problem is that Bolt is a professional spruiker with a clever questioning tongue, while Tim is a scientist trying to be over-popularly alarmist on what he knows is a major problem for years to come. 

The man occupying the prime minister's chair today is a very different political character to the one who first sat in it a year ago.

David Leyonhjelm got lucky... His party of "democratic Liberals" (Laissez-faire all the con artistry of the ultra-rightwing nuts) was first of the list on the one-point-five metre long senate paper in the New South Wales ballot for the Federal elections... Many people tick-a-box and the first one will do. 

In fact David Leyonhjelm is in favour of guns for all to solve crime in the streets and of GM vegies to solve the crimes from bugs and weeds on the farms. 

One cannot start getting soft in the brains and start making allowances for Tony Abbott being a liar. At present the MMMM (mediocre mass media de mierda) is touting our globe trotter PM as a diplomatic super-hero while all he is, is a crummy door-to-door second-hand vacuum salesman, with the gab to match that of a foot in the door.

On a serious note, super strong vacuum cleaners are being made illegal in Europe for good reasons... I have an 850 watts vacuum cleaner made in Australia and the little blither sucks far better than Chinese made 2400 watts machines. The secret is in the configuration of the fan blades and the lower revving engine.

from Crikey ….

The real threat of terrorism to Australians, by the numbers

Dear Mister president

Australia’s attorney general, George Brandis, has warned of the risk posed by “trusted insiders” ranging from Judas Iscariot to the “treacherous” former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Treasurer Joe Hockey has hailed the agreement to axe the mining tax  - which will cost the budget $6.5 billion - as a "damn good deal" for the Australian people.

On hearing the news this arvo of how Tony's off to Inda to hand over our uranium, I dug up my notes here from exactly 8 years ago.  This reprint might contain useful background information for anyone keen on following what's (probably this time, maybe?) about to unfold:

When Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar and a "cast of thousands" of Australian dignitaries launched the Adelaide-Darwin in early 2004 everybody was talking about what a boon to Australian exports Mr Cheney's conquest of the Australian desert would be.  Of course, nobody was talking about uranium at the time....

Well, the inevitable has happened, and we're going to see boxcars of yellowcake trundling from Adelaide to Darwin within the next few years,   Immediately following the announcement of opening of a new Australian uranium mine (at Honeymoon in South Australia's far north east

In boldly defending his government’s decision to commence direct arms shipments to the Kurdish regional government in Erbil, without a request from the government of Iraq or the UN, Prime Minister Tony Abbott proclaimed that Australia would not leave the Iraqi people to the mercy of the Islamic State ‘death cult’.

When studying global warming in depth, one has to make allowances for uncertainty, fluctuations and elasticity. One has to always question whether one is right or wrong...