First Lady Michelle Obama. Just because.
- Tony Abbott, Australia's Conservative Party leader, secured a victory in parliamentary elections ousting Kevin Rudd's labor government. Labor Party governance since 2008 has been marked by division and dysfunction, including under the turbulent premiership of Julia Gillard.
Election officials said with about 65 percent of the vote counted, Abbott's Liberal-National Party coalition had won around 54 percent of the national vote, and projected it would win at least 77 seats in the 150-seat parliament.
Party analysts said Abbott would end up with a majority of around 40 seats, ending the country's first minority government since World War Two. Labor had relied upon independent and Greens support for the past three years.
Labor, however, is touting the fact that they performed better than the public polls, giving them a good base on which to rebuild.
- Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel appears poised for re-election in Germany's September 22nd election. Merkel has been moving leftward all year adopting language favoring a minimum wage (Germany has none, but strong labor unions keep wages up), rent control, and higher pensions for mothers. Political analysts predict she will form a grand coalition with the SDP opposition, as the right-wing FDP, her current partner, lags in the polls.
- The Kingdom of Norway has parliamentary elections this Fall, and center-right candidate for Prime Minister Erna Solberg appears, for now, headed to victory:
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg guided Norway through a global downturn with little more than a scratch. But growth is slowing, his record on health care is mixed and critics accuse him of squandering the oil revenues that have shielded Norway.
Opinion polls suggest Conservative leader Erna Solberg, an admirer of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, would need the support of smaller parties, raising the prospect that the populist Progress Party, which wants to restrict immigration, could hold the balance of power.
Keep in mind that 'conservative' in Norway is still generally to the left of the Democratic Party in America.
- In news about the upcoming U.S.-Syrian War, the European Union issues a joint statement at the G-20 meeting that only France, of all its members, was willing to join the United States in attacking Syria:
The clearest blow to U.S. coalition-building at the summit came from the leaders of the E.U. In a briefing on Thursday afternoon, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said the Syrian conflict was a “stain on the world’s conscience,” but stressed that the E.U. believes in a “political solution” to the crisis. Standing beside him, E.U. President Herman van Rompuy drove this point home. “There is no military solution to the Syrian conflict. Only a political solution can end the terrible bloodshed,” he said. Of all E.U. members, he added, “only France is ready to cooperate” with the U.S. on a military strike.
I guess you go to war with the allies jihadists you have, not the ones you wish you had a treaty of alliance with.
- Cops catch 'Afroduck.' Watch Afroduck's record-setting 24-minute loop around Manhattan in a BMW roadster. Video here.
- Peyton Manning was absolutely masterful.
- I really wish, on behalf of normal, tolerant people everywhere, that curmudgeons would leave Miley Cyrus alone and find someone else to complain about. She's a young woman doing nothing that hasn't been done before: exploring her world in her own way. She's a good kid. In her own time, she'll settle down, get into Kabbalah, adopt a black baby, marry an Englishman and buy a manor house. That's been done before too.