Dummy Spits of the Week

Tuesday, 4 March 2003

Time to brush the carpet fluff off the Trotsky dummy and resume blogging after a weekend of fear and loathing somewhere near Syracuse (that's the ancient city in Sicily, rather than any contemporary US namesake). The big dummy spit in Oz politics was produced by ACT Treasurer Ted Quinlan who, according to the ABC's AM, was one of four signatories to a letter to Federal Stealth Treasurer Peter Costello saying that there was no way that mr Graeme Samuel was acceptable as the new chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Why? Because

... Graeme Samuel has not only a pedigree at the big end of town, but he also has the image of a pedigree at the big end of town, and both those things I think mitigate against it being an appropriate appointment.

Mr Quinlan also expressed his hope that Mr Costello would display more maturity than himself and that the ACT would not lose Commonwealth funding as a result of this ... principled stand.

But the soft patter of silicon rubber hitting the carpet was loudest from Washington this week. On Saturday, Whitehouse spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed Iraq's decision to destroy its Al-Samoud missiles as

... propaganda, wrapped in a lie, inside a falsehood.

Fleischer continued this dismissive line in his press briefing of 3 March: as far as the Bush administration is concerned it's too little, too late. The optimist in me wants to believe that this is a case of the US government talking tough to get the result it wants (Saddam disarmed) but the pessimist doubts it. Still, I'm determined to look on the bright side - as soon as I can scrape a few thousand dollars together I'm investing in Brie futures. They're bound to go up once this whole thing is settled, one way or the other.