I"ll give you the first couple of verses- if you want to read it to it's end and sign, I'd be eternally in your debt.  There are two weeks till the South Australian election.  Every signature to this will make a difference to the Park's survival!  The end of the poem is here: Garden

Waltham, September 11, 2011: Three men, throats slit, cash and drugs left on the bodies. Two years later, two dead suspects: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and a friend who the FBI says was about to confess. One haunting question: Could solving this case have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings?

Un-Australian and unhinged, and not doing well in the three big states, the Liberals are seeing the doom of their house, writes Bob Ellis.

What is rent? You don't make it past the elementary economics class unless you know that's a trick question. In economics there are two kinds of rent: common or garden rent and ''economic rent''.

from mike carlton ….

Hate to say I told you so, etc, but the crystal ball gazing in my first column for this year is already coming good.

A French organic winemaker could face a prison sentence and a hefty fine after refusing to spray his vines with pesticide.

Two doves — released by the Pope in a call for peace in Ukraine — have been attacked by two larger birds, in what many interpreted as an ominous sign for the country.

from civil liberties australia …..

Aussies hate government surveillance 

Before our eyes, day by day, Scott Morrison becomes the hollow man. His face tightens and twists, his eyes are dead, and his words strangled with jargon.

After some rummaging inside my pigeon loft that I cleaned thoroughly with a large serve of red ned and some cheap shoe polish, I have arrived at the startling conclusion that it could have been Martin Ferguson who fed the bullshit about the "coward" incident to the member of Batman, David Feeney.

An eyewitness account from last week's 15th Frances Folk Gathering:

Witching Hour at Frances, all was going well

till a bunch of new arrivals started raising hell

banging a tent together in the middle of the night

then yelling at each other until the dawn's first light

from Crikey

When governments drape a flag over their secrets, we need whistleblowers

Qantas this morning reported a $252 million half-year loss and announced it would cut 5000 jobs as part of an overall plan to reduce costs by $2 billion over 3 years.

The results come as the government weighs up assistance measures for the struggling airline.