World

ᔥ Facebook

What’s the bet he knows more about some kind of political shit than most pundits.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Typical of the whinger and sanctimonious. Promise the world and deliver the same bile their predecessors did, with a lot of extra sanctimony. They probably eat organic food and drive a hybrid car. Next Rob Oakeshott will be calling out “Chicken” in the house.

This will be a different Parliament” Rob Oakeshott claimed when he announced he would swing behind Labor and make Julia Gillard Prime Minister, again, after the 2010 election. ”We believe in the ‘Sunshine Test’.” And Gillard responded: ”So let’s draw back the curtains and let the sunshine in, let our Parliament be more open than it was before.”

The independents have long claimed that if only the Parliament were not controlled by members of any one political party it would operate on a higher plane. Likewise, feminists promised that as more women entered Parliament they would civilise the place and reduce confrontation in favour of co-operation.

Now we have the double – a female Prime Minister kept in office by independents. So does this mean the 43rd Parliament will be remembered as the Sunshine Parliament? Hardly.

More likely it will be remembered as the Sleaze Parliament. The Speaker cannot sit because he is dealing with allegations of travel rorts and sexual harassment.

Phil and Willie Robertson show Conan how to summon a duck.

ᔥ The Telegraph

This is going to bend a few people out of shape…oh well no matter. I expect we will get some along who will insist that the gay can be prayed away:

Every spring for six years Gentoo penguins Inca and Rayas have lovingly built a nest together, only to find that no eggs arrive to fill it. It doesn’t seem to have dawned on the couple that both of them are male.

But after the repeated heartbreak of watching other penguins become parents and raise their young, the “gay” couple finally have something to celebrate after their keepers gave them an egg of their own to care for.

Rather than questioning how the improbable scenario arose, the inseparable pair has seized their one chance at fatherhood with the zeal of a couple who know they may not get another.

Inca has taken on the “female” role of incubating the donated egg, obtained by keepers a month ago, and stoically remains atop his prize for most of the day, refusing the temptation to dip his feathers into the water.

His partner Rayas, meanwhile, keeps a watchful guard over the nest while eating whatever he can fit in his beak in preparation for the traditional male job of feeding his young with regurgitated fish.

His keepers report that Rayas has become more anxious due to nervous anticipation of his due date in June, but that the job seems to have made him into a “new penguin”, according to The Times.

ᔥWashington Post

It looks like Obama’s support for gay marriage did absolutely nothing to his support…if anything it slightly improved.

There’s been a dramatic zero-point shift in the polls since Obama came out for gay marriage.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) May 21, 2012

As it happens, today is the first day that all of the polls included in the Real Clear Politics head-to-head average were taken fully or mostly after May 9th, the day President Obama endorsed gay marriage. As of this morning, they show Obama with a 1.7 percent lead. Looking back at the Wonkbook Dashboards, on the morning of May 9th, however, Obama had a 0.2 percent lead in the RCP head-to-head average. So since coming out for gay marriage, his numbers have slightly improved.

A 1.5 percent swing in the polling average isn’t nothing. But it’s not much. And it’s certainly not clear it was caused by Obama’s comments on gay marriage. What we can say is that for all the hubbub, and all the column inches devoted to gaming out the political fallout, Obama’s announcement led to little evident movement in the polls, and what movement there has been has been in his favor. That doesn’t mean gay marriage can’t matter later in the campaign — if it increases turnout among Ohio evangelicals, or leads to much-improved superPAC fundraising for Obama, it could have an impact on the election without having a major effect in national polling — but for now, it doesn’t appear to be changing many votes.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

This is the question Nissan is really asking….Are you an idiot?

Some customers have “failed” a Nissan test to see if they were suitable for the new Leaf electric car.

Nissan has knocked back some customers interested in purchasing its first electric car, the Leaf, because they have been deemed “unsuitable” for ownership.

The plug-in electric vehicle officially hits the market on June 1, but interested customers need to pass a two-stage approval test before being issued with a certificate that will allow them to purchase the $51,500 car from one of Nissan’s special EV dealerships.

The test involves answering five questions about their intended usage for the car, followed by a visit from Nissan’s electrical supplier Origin Energy for an assessment of the suitability of the customer’s home electrical network.

ᔥ Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan posts about why he is so passionate about gay marriage.

You can feel secure but without civil marriage, you aren’t. So many of us learned this in the plague years – watching de facto spouses denied entrance to hospital rooms, thrown out of shared apartments by the spouse’s family, denied access to the funeral, brutalized by those who never cared for someone until he died. I swore to myself then that this would be my life’s work: to prevent such horror from happening again. We’ve made a start. But as this video shows, we are not close to the end yet. And that churches - churches - should be in the vanguard of brutalizing these people in this way – and justifying it -  fills me with oceans of sadness. And grief again.

How can anyone deny basic rights to those in a committed relationship? How is that conservative? How is that just? And how can politicians promote something as meaningless as a gay mardi gras instead of something as meaningful as marriage?

ᔥ The Telegraph

This time it is the Anglicans. They haven’t worked out that the world won’t end if they have women bishops. Better than covering up the buggering of little boys though.

Historic plans to allow women to become bishops have been plunged into crisis after existing bishops voted through an eleventh-hour concession to traditionalists.

Campaigners for women in the episcopacy in the Church of England are considering whether to vote the plan down themselves, with some privately condemning it as a “compromise too far”.

Others say that the concession would give legal status to the view that women bishops would carry a “taint”.

Yet traditionalists also voiced disappointment at the measure, which they said falls far short of the assurances they say they need, and warned the Church is facing a “terminal” crisis.

It comes after the Church’s House of Bishops met behind closed doors in York to give its approval to the long-awaited legislation.

In theory it clears the way for a landmark vote at the Church’s General Synod in July to ordain women as bishops.

ᔥ CarScoop

What a nice cop – with a sense of humour all round.

A pair of Russians who were driving their car through the Ukraine was caught speeding by the local cops. As you would imagine, the two men wanted to dismiss the ticket so they came up with the bright of idea of speaking in English, convinced that the Ukrainian police officers would not understand a word they said.

And indeed, the first cop who approached their car did not speak English, which of course, made the two men happy. However, the euphoria did not last long as there was a second officer on hand who happened to know English…

ᔥ NZ Herald

…or banning the use performance enhancing drugs:

Russian athletes might have to be sneaky if they want to celebrate a medal with a traditional vodka at this year’s Olympics.

The Russian government announced today that alcohol will be banned during all receptions involving officials and athletes at the London Games.

Russian newspaper Kommersant reported the story under the headline ‘Stone Cold Sober’.

“Olympic values are not commensurate with the consumption of alcohol,” a spokeswoman for Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak told the newspaper, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Poor performances at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010 has been cited as a reason behind the booze ban.