Many people are familiar with surveys that claim that only a small percentage of Americans "believe" in Evolution. Surveys have come out in the past showing as that creationism is in the Majority.

This month the  Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology have  an editorial around their a survey that gives a somewhat more optimistic view, and suggests that politicians claiming to support Creationism may have hitched their cart to the wrong Equus caballus

In a public relations coup for the New Australiann Government, Japan has agreed to drop the 50 Humpbacks from their planned 'Research' whaling for 2007-2008. They still plan to kill 950 minke whales and 50 fin whales, though.

In the last week, the Labor Government laid out a series of plans to shadow the Japanese fleet with RAAF recon aircraft and customs vessels to document the slaughter and then use it in evidence in a international court action.

Journalists in Australia received a 10 page file on a member of John Howard's government claiming that he was gay, that he attended bathhouses, and that he was having male affairs with members of his staff.

No paper published that accused's name, however a few places did accuse the opposition Labor government of trying a smear. But this morning one of the veteran journalists revealed who had given him the file in the first place.

The source was also member of John Howard's Government, who was looking to swing factional numbers his way by removing a left-leaning member of his own party.

When Dick Cheney was here in Australia in February, this banner was shown to the crowd in a media beat-up stunt:

Now George Bush turns up, and the same tiny rent-a-crowd turns up. They had to go with a refurbished banner, and they just chucked a new name on :

The pro bush demonstration was outnumbered by photographers, media, police and anti-bush demonstrators.

So, are they out of money, or just out of ideas ?

Sorry for the bad pictures, they were grabbed from a video where a anti-bush protester squirted tomato sauce onto the sign. Don't worry, I'm sure there will be much high resolution ones on Fox and Drudge in a few hours.

George Bush landed in Australia last night, and was whisked through guarded, closed streets to his harbour-side room in a mere 17 minutes.

By contrast, the Prime Ministers of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Singapore, the President of Peru and the Chief Executive of Hong Kong all arrived on commercial scheduled flights.

While our government has given up our streets to a foreign power, allowed them ignore our strong quarantine laws with their 15 sniffer dog teams, allowed the US (and the US alone over objections of Russia) to bring their own weapons and given the entire security detachment immunity from prosecution, and today they used the NSW Supreme court case to ban the planned Saturday March.

On Monday, George Bush will fly out of Washington bound for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting in Sydney, Australia. There he will meet with Asian leaders, including Australian Prime Minister John Howard, announce a new intelligence sharing treaty with Australia, there will be some photo opportunities and some soundbites for the news in the US, some pictures of a Sunny Sydney, and then he'll fly back home.

Australian PM John Howard arranged for this meeting to be held in Sydney, rather then the Australian Capital of Canberra, because he has an election coming up in the next 3 months and wanted to look more presidential then the person running against him.

It has backfired dramatically, and George Bush's visit will quite possibly cost him the election.

Check out Fox News for this latest effort. I'm torn between calling this a blatant lie, or a statement so tortured that it may as well have spent the last 5 years at Guantanamo Bay.

And in politics





Yes, they are actually claiming with a straight face on their front page that the bill was defeated 52-47.

After all, the truth is so dangerous to their readers.

Today say the release of the  2007 Australian Defense update the Australian Defense Minister Dr Brendon Nelson said the following :

Energy security is extremely important to all nations throughout the world, and of course, in protecting and securing Australia's interests," he said.

"The defence update we're releasing today sets out many priorities for Australia's defence and security, and resource security is one of them," he told ABC radio.

"The entire (Middle East) region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world.

"Australians and all of us need to think well what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq?"

From that paragon of journalistic integrity, the Washington Times

New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.

OK "New Intelligence", "US Officials with Access", that's two unsourced claims. Lets see how we add up when we look at the complete article.

For the first time since modern records were started a tropical cyclone is lined up to hit Iran in the next few hours.

Super Cyclonic Storm Gonu is unprecedented cyclone also has winds of over 150 mph, and with a central pressure of 898 mb it's the strongest storm ever recorded in the Arabian sea. It has already hit Oman's Gas Terminal and ports but it is heading at a country that has never had to deal with this problem in living memory.

Arabian Business lists the possible weather effects

• Storm surge generally 4.0-5.5 metres (13-18 feet) above normal.
• Major damage to lower floors of structures near the shore.
• Terrain lower than 3 metres (10 feet) above sea level may be flooded requiring massive evacuation of residential areas as far inland as 10 km (6 miles).

Just before the repeat, MSNBC confirmed that it was Tancredo, Brownback and Huckabee who were the three people that raised their hands saying they do not believe in evolution.

It's important that these people be asked follow up questions on the Germ Theory of Disease, Heleocentrism, Gravity and so on.

Also, someone needs to ask Brownback why he doesn't support Pope John Paul II's statements on how he could not see any conflict between the bible and evolution.

I thought the idea was to embrace the 18th Century Political Ideas of Jefferson, not the 18th Century Biological Thinking of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck .

On April the 2nd, John McCain did his staged photo op in a flak jacket, 100 troops, 2 Apaches and 3 Blackhawks to say "This market is Safe"

In a story today in the London Times, they report on this Obscenity:

...21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.

It's almost certain that this market was targeted because of McCain's visit. Which would mean his photo opportunity meant that 21 innocent workers were kidnapped, tied hand and foot and shot in the head.

The Debate and Discussion crowd over at the Something Awful Forums have decided to start merging their ongoing discussion of political scandals into the Ultimate Scandal Megathread, to try to keep track of what is going on.

Their total so far : 17, and more coming every day.

Click below for the list.

Remember The Smallpox Hoax on the plane in Charlotte ? A drunk on a plane claimed to have smallpox, and shut the airport down.

Now you'd think the person who did this would be up for heavy jailtime. After all People have been shot dead on the mere suspicion of having a bomb. So surely a person who commited a hoax like this would be in some serious trouble.

All charges have been dropped and the investigation has been closed. The U.S. Attorney in Charlotte will not file charges for disruption of the flight, nor any terroristic threat charges.

Not suprising when you find out that the person who made this threat is Rear Adm. Brian Brannman of the U.S. Navy, who is the Director of the Navy Medical Service Corps.

I've just downloaded the OCR'd version of the Department of Justice emails, and run some quick analysis on them.

Number of emails per week, April 2004 to Date.

Then I narrowed it down to just the last year

There certainly does seem to be a bit of a gap in November, but there also is a second drop in email volume in Feb 2007 when the story first started being discussed.

Steps taken to get these graphs below

An earlier diary by Skulnick covered this in more details, but I'll touch on it again before delivering my report after a trip to Free Republicville.

From The Airforce Times

Strained by the demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a significant risk that the U.S. military won’t be able to quickly and fully respond to yet another crisis, according to a new report to Congress.

The assessment, done by the nation's top military officer, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, represents a worsening from a year ago, when that risk was rated as moderate.

Over on FR, and it was the started with the usual comments, but after a few posts it took a turn for the sane...

The lead story on Drudge is this photo, actually taken yesterday morning as Cheney arrived in Australia

How large was this Pro-Cheney protest ?

A group of three men held a counter-protest nearby with a banner reading: "The world need more men like Dick Cheney, we love America."

How about the group they were arguing with ?

That's the Pro Cheney protest in the top NorthEast corner. at the brown brick building.

This is a straight out LIE - his visit is extremly unpopular, and I'm going to post some reaction below.

Here in Australia, we have the usual polls, and they show that Prime Minister John Howard is heading on the way out. This week his party was trailing by 16%, needing only a 3-5% swing to be voted out.

But there's a second way of checking to see how the political wind is blowing.

It's been said that Australians will bet on two flies crawling up a wall, and our legalised gambling industry knows all about this - elections can see very heavy betting even a long way out.

Today Centrebet reported that over the last two months, the payout on a bet for the Opposition Labor Party winning at the next election has gone from $2.75 to $1.80, while the payout for Howard's Liberal has gone from $1.40 to $1.90