SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT AUSTRALIA

I have just been reading the thoroughly sensible things that Ambra, a black blogress, says about black English and standard English. She rightly says that being at ease in standard English is essential if you wish to communicate widely and easily with others. I note however that she seems to have no regrets about not speaking black English. I must say that I greatly regret my inability to write in broad Australian on this blog. I would love to refer to Leftists as "drongoes", "galahs", "ratbags" and "big-noters" and say that they are not "fair dinkum" or "ridjy didj" but I know that I would just not be understood outside Australia. Even many younger Australians might not understand. I grew up in the country before the age of TV so acquired a full measure of traditional Australian slang but the TV generation in Australia probably knows American slang better than they do their own vivid linguistic heritage. I also try to avoid obscure academic words such as "arcane" and "lacunae" and "orthogonal" but I slip up sometimes.

Australia must have the world's worst internet service provider. Our erstwhile telecoms monopoly, Telstra, runs an internet service that they call "Bigpond" and lots of people I know have been suckered in to signing up with them. So I have been sending emails to Bigpond addresses for years now. And Bigpond regularly "bounces" (fails to deliver) emails sent to it. They have been doing it for years, have allegedly spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "fixing" the problem but they still cannot get it right. One person I email regularly is in fact a Telstra techie but they are still randomly bouncing emails to him too. They are at least 100 times worse than any other ISP I know. Anybody with a Bigpond address is missing a lot of mail. The only way I can be sure my techie friend gets what I send is to copy everything to his Yahoo address as well. Those emails are never bounced, though they can occasionally be held up for a few hours. Government-owned bureaucracies just don't know how to be efficient.

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ELSEWHERE

GWB as Not Kerry: Nothing that Bush has done, or will do, has anything whatsoever to do with John Kerry's truthfulness, his character or his mental stability. Humans are not a zero-sum game."

Abandonment of conservatives may cost Bush the election: "The latest presidential election polling data should be giving President Bush's campaign staff a lot of concern. The most recent Zogby poll released earlier this week shows the Democratic presidential ticket of Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, leading President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney by a seven point margin at 50-43% which is the largest lead that Kerry has ever had over Bush since the man that conservative talk-show host, Rush Limbaugh, has described as America's most accurate pollster, John Zogby, began polling when Kerry became the de-facto nominee back in February."

A huge cost everyone pays: "Federal government regulators issued 4,148 new rules in the 71,269-page Federal Register in 2003, 19 fewer than they did in 2002. The cost of those rules appears nowhere in the federal budget. In his fiscal year 2005 federal budget, President Bush proposed $2.4 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending. Although that figure fully expresses the on-budget scope of the federal government, there is considerably more to the government's reach. Federal environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year on top of official federal outlays."

The marvels of socialized medicine in New Zealand: "Hundreds of Hawke's Bay people are waiting for gastroenterology procedures as the health board desperately appeals for general surgeons to help with the hospital's sole specialist's gruelling workload. Hawke's Bay Regional Hospital's only gastroenterologist and part-time general physician, Malcolm Arnold, said there were 458 patients were on his waiting list alone, with 180 still awaiting a definite time to have their procedures performed... Those with highest priority included patients with bowel cancer or cancer of the oesophagus".

An interesting article here on the neurological evidence that Leftists are driven more by emotion than by reason. I have been pointing out for years that Leftism is substantially genetic.

Drug terrorists: "A guns-drawn raid at a high school last year did not violate civil rights laws and the case is closed, the U.S. Justice Department said. The decision means there will be no criminal charges, said Andy Savage, a lawyer for officers in the sweep at the Goose Creek high school. Fifteen officers entered Stratford High School's main hallway and ordered 130 students to the floor November 5 of last year. They used plastic ties to handcuff 18 students and school officials opened and searched 17 book bags using a drug dog. Police found no drugs or weapons, but the raid frightened children, provoked marches and lawsuits and brought national media attention and the resignation of the school's longtime principal."

Bitchy feminists: "The Los Angeles, California chapter of the pro-abortion group Planned Parenthood has been the subject of several recent complaints of racism and discrimination by both African-American and Latino employees which were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as well as the California Fair Employment & Housing Administration. The complaints by the Planned Parenthood employees allege that the group is led by Caucasian women who have created a hostile working environment for men as well as minorities. In one sworn affidavit, an African-American employee said a female manager with Planned Parenthood looked directly at him and called him a 'nigger. ... I am African and was shocked by her cultural insensitivity,' the employee wrote in his affidavit and asked not to be identified."

Californian business-people are voting with their feet: ""Legislators don't seem to get it that businesses have far more options now. They can open another factory in another state, send manufacturing offshore, go into the cash economy, or even go out of business," says Mr. Kyser. "How they deal with the reforms will have serious consequences on states around us for years." Business raiders from Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas have been eager to welcome frustrated California businesses, and developers can barely suppress smiles over new home sales generated by newly arrived California families.... Partly because of California's housing costs, higher taxes, more regulation, and higher utility rates, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada are all faring better than California from job growth to personal income."

There is an interesting blog here from a conservative atheist medic with the U.S. Army in Iraq. Beat that!

GUN WATCH has an Oldie but Goldie up today. If it isn't true it ought to be. New rubric below today too.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of Great Britain -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hated is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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