I Read The News Today (oh, boy!)

Congratulations to Al Gore and The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change on the well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize. It is difficult to argue that the work Al Gore has done on climate change hasn’t begun to make a difference to the way people think and feel about the environment. Yet the naysayers remain – many of them among the Australian government. It is frustrating, hard to digest. It makes me fear that An Inconvenient Truth wasn’t inconvenient enough to truly influence the policy of some governments. I hope I’m proved wrong.

Please join me in giving the boot to our Prime Minister, John Howard. Today, at noon, he called a Federal Election for November 24. In the words of Sally in the famous orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally – Yes, Yes, Yes, YEEEEEEESSSSSSSS!

There is definitely something orgasm-inducing about getting rid of that old, uber-conservative coot. Kevin Rudd, leader of the Australian Labor party is so far ahead in the polls that Howard has as much chance of winning this election as I do of appearing on the cover of Australian Vogue. It’s definitely gonna be – KEVIN IN ’07!

Want to see an apocalyptic vision of the future? Well, that would be putting your trust in this man. Rodney Adler, smarmy, corporate fraudster and modern-day snake-oil peddler has been released from jail after 2 and a half years for his part in the largest corporate collapse in Australian history. He personally defrauded the insurance company HIH of two million dollars which led to the company’s collapse in 2001 with debts of 5.3 billion. I personally know two of his hundreds of investors. These people are good people, honest people, blue-collar people, who each lost over two hundred thousand dollars. Money they had been saving for their retirement which they will never see again. Rodney Adler goes home to his mansion in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, with his personal wealth reputed to still be around the 18 million dollar mark (in his wife’s name), drinking Cristal champagne and eating beluga caviar canapes on his terrace overlooking the ocean while my friends take on cleaning jobs and eat peanut butter sandwiches as they try to claw their way out of the chasm of debt he has forced them into. And what will be done about it? NADA!

Rodney Adler said his time in jail has changed him, that he is a better man for it; but I bet he still watches Wall Street every night on DVD before he goes to bed and instead of Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, recites Greed Is Good over and over again like all the other corporate thugs. Rodney Adler, you can kiss my proverbial.

Sometimes, reading the news is bad for my blood pressure…..