Eastern Australia just can’t catch a break.

As the flood crest heads South in Victoria’s rivers, a king tide looms for flood-weary Brisbane. A king tide is the highest tide of the season, which will meet the flood waters trying to enter the sea, so coastal flooding is ensured.

It is still raining in the area, although not at the ferocious pace that cause the major flooding, just enough to make people miserable as they try to clean up and dry things out.

Now they read that Weather bureau monitoring potential cyclone

There is a chance a tropical cyclone will develop in the Coral Sea off north Queensland after Australia Day.

They just can’t catch a break.

CNN reports that Dem stands by Nazi comparison

Rep. Steve Cohen, the Tennessee Democrat who compared Republican efforts to criticize health care to the works of a famous Nazi propagandist, is standing by his heated rhetoric on the House Floor Tuesday night.

But in an interview with CNN’s John King, Cohen said he was not directly comparing Republicans to Nazis, but rather merely suggesting they are employing the same techniques of that of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Statements of fact are not “heated rhetoric”. Goebbels is a major figure in political propaganda, and his techniques are still in use because they work. Saying that people are using Goebbels techniques is not calling them Nazis, any more than doing something that Lincoln did make you a Republican.

The headline and phrasing by CNN shows that they just don’t want to report the news, they want to slant it. Even though the story explains that Cohen was not calling the Republicans Nazis, CNN wants people to think he did. Their bias is as obvious as the organization of Jewish Republicans claiming that Cohen was making a Holocaust reference.

The Republicans have been lying about the health insurance bill since the beginning, as every investigation of their claims has shown. Repeating the same lie even after it has been exposed is a standard Goebbels technique.

As they had the Constitution read to them, it is a bit odd that the Republicans in the House still don’t understand that promoting “the General Welfare” is not socialism, it is a Constitutional mandate.

The Pensacola News Journal has a local story about one of the “minor” problems with out-sourcing business functions: Sheriff, state investigate payroll company AES

The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office and State Attorney’s Office have launched an investigation into a local payroll company and its owner.

The Pensacola News Journal reported on Jan. 13 that some payroll checks from AES, which provides payroll services for businesses, could not be cashed due to insufficient funds.

If you think these guys possibly absconding with the payroll is “the” problem, you haven’t been in business. “The” problem is that they probably haven’t been making your withholding payments to the Feds, or payments to the state or local governments. Believe me, angry employees is a minor problem to the hell your life becomes when the IRS takes “an interest” in your business for failure to pay withholding.

Payroll is a major PITA for a business, and I know it would be wonderful to just pay someone else to do it – write one check and forget about it – but if they mess up, you are still liable.