After making the recent-ish decision to redirect my career path towards the field of psychology a few friends and acquaintances in the legal profession suggested my passions might be better directed towards becoming a lawyer. My first response was to decline citing my impatience and inability to handle the copious amounts of paperwork involved, but after reading this article in today’s The Age newspaper I would like to add the fact that I am a terrible liar and would never be able to keep a straight face if I were made to spout such bollocks as this

Defence counsel Tony Robinson said the court appearance had seen Milne plunge into depression, think about suicide [Ed's note: pity it only remained a thought] and the use of drugs.

He said Milne had only paid for child pornography a couple of times. [Ed's note: so what?]

He said it was difficult to imagine how someone with an almost unblemished record could now be facing time in jail. [Ed's note: WTF?]

I understand it is the task of the defence counsel to, well, come up with a defence as an attempt to curtail the severity of any sentence imposed, custodial or otherwise. But pray tell, how did this bloke keep a straight face? Seriously. Do law schools provide courses in Poker Face 101 for Litigators or what?

I’m sorry Mr Robinson, but it is not difficult to imagine “how someone with an almost unblemished record could now be facing time in jail” for your client is a noxious, demented p.o.s. with an inclination which leads to the destruction of innocent lives. Actually, let me rephrase that because the future tense is redundant in this case. It doesn’t lead to the destruction of innocent lives, it already has destroyed innocent lives. If there were no demand for child pornography there would be no supply, so forget the vicarious claptrap because every image Milne viewed is a life he helped destroy.

Just because one might have “an almost unblemished record” does not necessarily mean an unblemished life has been led, it can often mean someone simply hasn’t been caught. So I can only hope Mr Robinson was making a secret attempt at irony to in fact emphasise the need for a lengthy custodial sentence.

As the wise Denny Crane once said

Of course we believe you. We even believe the part about the car being stolen. We believe it all, Ronald. That’s why you pay us.

Denny Crane.

Crossposted at: Urban Kvetching

But American’s wanted ‘CHANGE’!  So, in 2006 they votedin a Democratic Congress and yes — we got ‘CHANGE’ all right.

This is an interesting story…….

A MAJOR Melbourne hospital has been treating pet animals as private cancer patients in secret after-hours appointments.

The Alfred struck a deal with at least one vet to treat cats and dogs with its multi-million-dollar radiation therapy machines in 2001.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well Y’all,

It’s time for my annual treck to THE NAROOMA BLUES FESTIVAL.

This will be the fifth year in a row I’ve been and it’s safe to say that it won’t be the last.

Cheerio and I’ll be writing a review of Narooma 2008 upon my return.

I wonder what makes people join an organization, knowing full well it’s rules and regulations, then set about trying to change them.

This business with the Gentleman’s Club, Melbourne’s Athenaeum has had me giggling for days. Apparently some of the “gentlemen” want to have women admitted to this exclusive mens only hang out.

John Ridley, former state Liberal Party director in Victoria, sent the scathing assessment to a large group of fellow members of Melbourne’s Athenaeum Club after attending the club’s AGM in April, when the issue of women members was discussed.

In his emailed account of the meeting, obtained by The Weekend Australian, Mr Ridley wrote: “When I looked around the room last night, I suddenly felt a chill about the attitudes and qualities that so many club members reflect.

And how long after you were told “no women allowed” did you work that out John?

Now for me, heres the nub. I the Paddy would not go somewhere or join something my wife was not welcome at. I don’t believe it is “gentlemanly” to go play with the boys and leave your wife at home……making supper presumably, or perhaps in this case, chit chatting with the maid.

I believe some very influential men are members of this club, I guess thats how they attract members willing to sell out their principals (assuming they do in fact have some) to and join something their life partner is excluded from.

If grown men want to hang out in nappies smoking cigars while being disciplined by a dominatrix or whatever the hell it is they do away from the gaze of their wives, then go for it. Normal people with a deep respect and love for their wives wouldn’t want to be there anyway. Just leave the little men alone to play their little power games. At least we know where Neanderthals in suits hang out.

I’ve played video games on and off for years, and there have been some really violent ones. Playing them has not made me want to go out and kill people - going to work every day makes me want to do that, so should going to work be banned?

Yes, the new Silent Hill game has been banned because it is too violent! But it’s worse than that, it’s been banned because there is no R-rating for games in this country. In other words, anything deemed to be more “grown-up” than M15+ doesn’t even get a look in. This irritates me not only because it’s so bloody easy just to get the game from overseas but also because it makes a mockery of the whole ratings system in the process…Extremely irritating…

Read the rest of this entry »

It is always a sad day when a legend moves on.

Our condolences go out to his wife (Joanne Woodard), and family. He was a remarkable man. There isn’t anything I can say about him that the world doesn’t already know. Paul rest in peace.

Mission commander Zhai Zhigang floated around outside in space for about 13 minutes making him the first Chinese Astronaut to spacewalk.

“Shenzhou 7 has left the module, physically feel very good. Greetings to all the people of the nation and all the people of the world,” Zhai said.

Fellow astronaut Liu Boming also emerged briefly from the capsule to hand Zhai a Chinese flag that he waved for an exterior camera filming the event. The third crew member, Jing Haipeng, monitored the ship from inside the re-entry module.

The successful spacewalk paves the way for assembling a space station from two Shenzhou orbital modules, the next major goal of China’s manned spaceflight program. China is also pursuing lunar exploration and may attempt to land a man on the moon in the next decade — possibly ahead of NASA’s 2020 target date for returning to the moon.

We here at It’s A Matter Of Opinion are quite happy to see China’s space program moving forward so nicely. It would be better if China could join forces with Russia, The United States, Japan, and I believe even Europe is getting into the race for space. These countries could combine their money, science, and technology to create a truly fantastic space program.

We would just have to keep these governments noses out of the program. Governments tend to hinder progress for the sake of advancement. Where as I don’t believe there should be a global government, I do believe in other global ventures. Especially in the fields of science and technology. Combining efforts to become great explorers sounds more appealing than letting our governments make us enemies.

I always wanted to go into space but it won’t happen. The space race has moved at such a slow pace I think it would be better to call it a spacewaste. The United States seems to be more interested in putting toys in space than people.

Now that China is in the race, maybe we will have a race once more. Once again the moon is the goal! China wants to beat the USA back to the moon. I think China wants to see if there is really an American flag up there surrounded by a used space buggy and trash. As much as I like a good race I say let China get there first. They can prove to conspiracy theorist that the US did make it. That is, unless it was all a hoax.

Congratulations China and let the race commence.

Joe Biden is the guy with the experience. He is the man that the Democrats hope will make Obama look better to swing voters. If the Democrats were smart they would have backed Joe Biden as president with Obama as his running mate.

They like to point out that his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash that injured his two sons. Why? That happened about 36 years ago. So why is that the second thing they think you would want to know about him? Are they hoping to catch the sympathy vote? He did remarry, so why was it mentioned as anything more than an after thought? That isn’t what would make me vote for him.

Joe Biden was one of those politicians that voted for the war in Iraq and then start whining once it began. Instead of admitting that he voted for the war, and giving the reasons why he felt we should go to war. He just bitched and moaned about the war and Bush. This isn’t exactly a plus to most voters.

In 1987, seen as a rising young political star who could draw big crowds and deliver fiery yet often long-winded speeches, Biden ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He dropped out after charges of plagiarism in one speech and exaggerating his academic record. Biden said, “In my zeal to rekindle idealism I made some mistakes.”

The problem isn’t that he made a mistake, the problem is did he learn from that mistake? By that I don’t mean did he learn to cover his tracks better. He is a politician so you can decide.

Last year, early in his own failed presidential campaign, Biden apologized after calling Obama “articulate and bright and clean”

Two questions here… Why apologize, did he say “for a black man”? Calling someone articulate, bright, and clean is a compliment not an insult. I never heard him say it, and the quote was being used out of context. That is why I asked this question.

The second question is why did Joe lose to Obama or Hillary as the Democrats choice? He has more experience and is better known than Obama. He is also less uptight and better liked than Hillary. Could it be that the Democrats cared more about “tokenism” than “patriotism” when picking their candidate for President of the United States? And they have the nerve to call the right irrational.

They would have had a better chance of getting my vote had they chosen to run with Joe Biden and made Obama his running mate. The inexperienced and unknown should be vice president so it gives the people the chance to see who they are and what they really stand for. Maybe it is just me but I prefer the man at the helm to have experience. Joe would have been a much better presidential candidate than a running mate.

Democrats contend that Palin lacks experience to be a heartbeat away from the presidency and say her selection weakens McCain’s argument their candidate Barack Obama, a first-term U.S. senator, is too green to be president.

What the Democrats fail to realize is that there is a big difference between being the president and lacking the experience needed, than being a vice president gaining experience. Also Sarah Palin has done more for the State of Alaska than Barack Obama has done for Illinois. But the race isn’t between Palin & Obama.

The Democrats though enamored with ‘tokenism’ have been nothing but nasty to Palin. Even if they wouldn’t vote Republican, you would think they would like the idea of a woman vice president. But this isn’t about who is most qualified, who would be the best choice, or even who is your favorite ‘token’. It always comes down to an ‘us or them’ mentality.

Democrats unable to find anything personally wrong with Sarah resorted to blatant lies. Suggesting her baby was secretly her daughters. Even though anybody with half a brain knows a downs syndrome baby is more likely to be born to a woman over 40. Also the fact her daughter is pregnant makes it impossible for Sarah’s daughter to be the mother of Trig. That is just one example of the many lies told about Sarah to try to make her look bad.

Sarah is young and a very nice looking woman. She is the darling of the Republicans because she is 100% real conservative. She believes in the environment and loves animals but not at the expense of the people. She believes in a hand up instead of a constant hand out. She believes in limited government and tax cuts. She is the type of Republican we haven’t seen in a long time. She has an 80% approval rating in her own state of Alaska. She believes in your rights, she hunts and fishes too. She is almost perfect and comes in the shape of a woman.

There are two things that can hurt her. She is anti-abortion and that pisses off some people. The mere fact she would give birth to a downs syndrome child is unforgivable to these people when she could have had an abortion. But personally I’m not one of them. I have a lot of respect for her giving birth to Trig instead of sneaking off and covering up an abortion. Hopefully so will a lot of other people.

The other thing that could hurt her is

Palin remains under investigation by Alaska’s state legislature to determine if she fired a public safety commissioner after he declined to fire a state trooper who had divorced Palin’s sister.

But then this probably won’t hurt much either. After all we have our share of scandals during election time. We also know that most of the time there isn’t much to it, or we don’t care in the end. But we will be kept ignorant of the whole proceeding until after the election, just in case.

Sarah Palin is also there to make her candidate look better to the swing voters.

Neither John McCain or Barack Obama are the perfect candidates. Sarah and Joe are everything that
John and Barack aren’t. It is the job of Sarah Palin and Joe Biden to fill in John and Barack’s missing pieces. It is sad that on both political sides it takes two people to make one good candidate for president.

John McCain is basically, ‘the old guy’. Though he is somewhat conservative, he is as far from being a Republican as Obama is. He claims to be a Republican so that is all it takes for the Democrats to not like him. Republicans aren’t too sure about him either, which should look good to the swing voters.

Since he isn’t much of a Republican, he would be the person most capable of reforming the Republican party. But not much chance he can reform the Federal Government as easily. Politicians can say what the like but they can’t reform the Federal Government. Not without the backing of the very politicians (Dems & Pubs alike) that screwed up everything in the first place. That won’t likely happen.

If you are looking for experience John McCain is your man. He has been a bona fide politician since 1982 when he was elected to the House of Representatives. He served two terms in the House then was elected to the Senate. Where he has won re-election ever since.

If you prefer your politicians to be militarily patriotic, once again McCain is your man, He was a naval aviator that was shot down in Vietnam and was held as a POW until 1973.

He was held from 1967 to 1973, experiencing episodes of torture and refusing an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer; his war wounds would leave him with lifelong physical limitations.

If that doesn’t impress you then you are hard to impress.

I can’t find much negative to say about John McCain. He is likely to annoy his own party more than the opposition. Since I don’t belong to either party, I will say that might not be a bad thing. As far as policy goes, its subjective. So I won’t mention McCain’s policies any more than I mentioned Obama’s.

Actually I never liked John McCain as the Republican candidate. That is until he announced that Sarah Palin would be his running mate. The fact that a woman would be vice president if McCain wins appeals to me. This is the most logical way of putting a woman in the White House. By the time she decides to run for president the people will know her.

I mean really, if you think about it, John McCain is the most logical choice as president. He has the experience, and he doesn’t care about towing the party line. He actually IS what Obama professes to be and hasn’t been yet. I haven’t noticed him resort to childish insults. I could have missed that but had it happened I’m sure the media would have made it hard to miss. He is also quite nice looking for an old fart, which should help bag the ‘grandma’ vote.

He should be, but will he be our next president? Depends on the voters. Who knows which way the wind will blow.

Well we all knew they would play the race card in this election. After-all if Obama loses they have to blame the racism of the “White Man”. What else is there to blame? Not themselves, of course.

The media started playing the race card months ago when Obama was still battling Hillary. The only difference then was they were talking about Democrats voting for Hillary as being racist. What they failed to realize in that race was the most important thing wasn’t black/white it was male/female. Unfortunately Obama was just a damn man.

Also with Obama there is the question of inexperience. Hillary knew what was expected, and how to run the country because she did it before. At least she tried to while Bill was otherwise preoccupied. Obama on the other hand, as a politician was still a fetus.

There also was the lies he told in relation to his racist pastor. Who preached what would be classified as “Hate Speech” against whites. Yet he called his white grandmother who raised him a racist because she was scared of some black people. That in its self should have cost him the race against Hillary. But it didn’t.

He is linked to “climbing in bed with” as opposed to “taking on” the corruption of the
Illinois political system. If he didn’t have the gonads to take on that government why would we believe he will make a difference in Federal Government? Are we supposed to believe he will be anything more than a Democratic puppet?

We also heard his little Freudian slip. Proclaiming himself to be Muslim! But wait we were under the impression that he was a Christian. His racist pastor is a Christian, right? How many Christians slip and call themselves Muslim? How Many Jews slip and call themselves Christian? How many Muslims slip and call themselves Jew? I’m betting none. Should we believe he is a Christian, or a Muslim with an agenda? Maybe he was terrified of mentioning his Muslim background that he ended up blurting it out. We have all been there.

Do you still like him after he referred to Sara Palin as a ‘pig in lipstick’. That certainly lacked class. Not exactly the kind of remarks you would want coming from the President of the United States. Definitely not the kind of remark you would expect coming from somebody who wants to be president. Trashy remarks are what we hear coming from foreign politicians but don’t like hearing coming from our own. You also hear trashy comments coming from white trash celebrities but we aren’t likely to vote for them any time soon.

He is also a Democrat which means most die hard right-wingers won’t vote for him as long as their ass points to the ground! As divided as the media says the right and left are in America, it would imply millions of people won’t vote for him simply because he is a Democrat. Of course McCain has the same problem in reverse.

People have been given a few reason not to vote for Obama. Some of those reason are unforgivable in the eyes of some people. But can race be counted as a reason if he loses? I suppose to a degree it can since there isn’t a country on this planet that doesn’t have its fair share of racist. Some people do only see skin deep. But given all the reasons that people will or will not vote for a person, do you really believe it will all come down to the race card? After-all Obama is as white as he is black and just another American Heinz 57!

I am wondering right now, why women can be so hateful.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love woman in general. There is no being on earth with the gifts bestowed upon women. I am not about to go into great detail about women Vs man, thats not what this post is about. It’s about the awesome rage that some women have treated the ascendancy of Sarah Palin with. Ya know I would have thought women would be proud that (A…Hem) “one of their own” was within a baby’s breath of the vice presidency of the USA.

Here are some quotes from women about another woman, one which I might add has more class, intelligence, honesty and forthrightness than any of her raving lunatic Nemesis’s (or is that Nemesii?).

Read the rest of this entry »

We are about to begin season 3 of Dexter, which is one of the most innovative television series since TV began.

Dexter (played by Michael C. Hall) is a forensic scientist working for the Miami Police Dept, But this isn’t Bones. Dexter was adopted by a police office and his wife, both now deceased. His sister is a police office working at the same branch that Dexter does.

Dexter’s girlfriend is a divorced woman with two children that Dexter cares for quite a lot. Dexter has friends within the police force that he enjoys working with and having lunch and/or drinks. Dexter is the guy who brings in the doughnuts every morning to work. He is the guy who works hard at making and maintaining his relationships. He is the kind of guy everybody would like to know… kind of.

You may think Dexter is the perfect guy but he has one flaw, Dexter is a serial killer. One difference between Dexter and other serial killers is, Dexter kills other serial killers. When Harry (Dexter’s adopted dad played by James Remar) realizes what Dexter will become he doesn’t seek help for the young Dexter. Harry decides to instill a code of ethics in young Dexter. Basically the code of Harry is as follows, “if you have to kill, kill the bad guys. Before you do make sure they are guilty, and above all, don’t get caught”!

Dexter becomes an unusually twisted hero who goes after those really bad guys that slip through the system. Don’t get me wrong if Dexter gets caught you won’t feel sorry for him because he does love to kill. Though you won’t feel the least bit of sympathy for his victims, you do understand they are victims just the same. You won’t love Dexter but you won’t hate him either. You will want him to get caught but not before he cleans up Miami, and then cleans up your town.

You know someday Dexter will ignore the code of Harry and cross the line. When that happens you will want him locked up for life. But until that day comes you will watch as he brings down his next victim. Try not to smile too big as it happens.

Season 3s first episode of Dexter airs September 28 on Showtime. Season 1 & 2 are for sale on dvd. Showtime leaked episode 1 of season 3 on the net two weeks ago to get people excited. If you are sick of that mind numbing reality tv, or you have had enough of watching the same old same old, then this is the series for you. This is NOT a refurbishing of some old cop show. This is NOT a show trying to see how much writers can get away with. This is a show that gives you a new code of ethics that you may or may not be alright with. Whether you love to hate Dexter, or hate to love him you will get hooked.

This is a serial killer even Boz wouldn’t add to the vault.