New South Wales has joined Queensland in the segment of Australian under flood waters:

Flood waters on the New South Wales north coast are rising and thousands of residents are continuing to evacuate.
…

A torrential 240 millimetres [9.45 inches] of rain in 50 hours forced the State Emergency Service to issue the order to leave.

In contrast, we have only had an inch of rain so far today as the system that dumped all the water on Central Florida passes to the South of us. This system caused the shuttle to abort a landing attempt, and may require a California landing.

The BBC has a short interview with an MP caught up in the expenses problem

Conservative MP Anthony Steen, who has announced he will not be standing at the next election, has said that his critics are “jealous” because he has a “very, very large house”.

In the interview he asks “What right does the public have to interfere with my private life?”

Apparently, spending £87,000 [$ 138,108] to support that life for the last four years isn’t sufficient cause for Mr. Steen.

Even though Mr. Steen later apologized for what he said, the leader of his party has threatened dire consequences if Mr. Steen isn’t more judicious in his comments.

Jams O’Donnell was also annoyed with Mr. Steen.

MPs from all of the parties were involved in rather questionable expenses, but Mr. Steen is something of a lightning rod because of his serious case of “attitude” and entitlement. He apparently couldn’t honestly understand why people were upset about being told their tax dollars were being spent to protect his shrubbery from rabbits.

These are the sort of “entitlements” that I think we can all agree need to be eliminated.

The CBC reports that a Quebec court convicts Munyaneza of war crimes in Rwanda

Munyaneza was charged with seven counts related to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

Yet another country the members of the Hedgemony need to avoid.

Topic Two:

A question for English majors – how does one relitigate something that was never litigated? I keep hearing this usage from the President regarding things done by the Hedgemony, i.e. he doesn’t want to “relitigate” these issues.

In the same vein, how can you create a recidivism rate for people held in Guantanamo when they were released because there was no proof they had done anything wrong. Wouldn’t it be a more accurate reflection of the number of people who became terrorists because of their treatment by the US?

Point of View

Shoot!

[Editor: Out of six attempts, I finally achieved a sliver of Property’s eye. She left immediately following this shot, fed up with all the flashing.]

Friday Ark