Monkeys high on American stimulus

April 19, 2012

From John Roskam

New Greens leader Christine Milne said the other day she wants to ‘decarbonise’ the Australian economy by 2050.

Before that she’ll have to deal with some of the other big issues the Greens have put on the legislative agenda of the Commonwealth Parliament. Like:

banning junk food ads on the internet
taxing plastic bags
and (my favourite) the Special Broadcasting Service Amendment (Natural Program Breaks and Disruptive Advertising) Bill 2012. It’s nice the Greens don’t want our viewing pleasure of SBS shows like Food Safari and My Mum Talks to Aliens to be interrupted

At least the Greens don’t want to feed cocaine to monkeys (well, not to my knowledge). That’s what happened under Obama’s stimulus package. Here’s the story. And here’s the just-released cocaine-eating monkey election campaign ad. Go to the bottom – the ad’s 30 seconds.

These ads on billboards in Melbourne were pretty funny too – scroll to the middle of the story to see them. But you guessed it…they’ve been taken down after people didn’t see the humour in laughing at hungover stockbrokers.

This next item is no laughing matter. It’s an amazing 17 minutes of radio. It’s from the ABC Rural’s Bush Telegraph radio program three weeks ago. It’s about how Fidel Castro…sorry…the WA government has command and control of potato farming in the state. Listen and be shocked this still happens in Australia in 2012. Credit to the ABC for the story. Farm Weekly gives the incredible background.

This cartoon won the Pulitzer Prize on Monday. I don’t know why. Mark Steyn doesn’t either.

And we’ve told you about the 4^th volume of Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ out next month. There’s this fascinating 5800 word piece about Caro from The New York Times Magazine last week.

What happened to ManBearPig? is recent IPA visitor to Australia, Dan Hannan’s latest blog post. It’s a classic and he talks about fellow IPA guest James Delingpole. If you’d like to come to James’ IPA events in Australia next week – sorry – they’re all booked out.

The Heretic, a play about a climate sceptic who doesn’t have horns will also probably be booked out even before it opens in Melbourne. Here’s a review in The Telegraph of the London season. Even The Guardian didn’t completely hate it.

And our friends at the ABC’s Q&A have asked us to invite you to their climate change program on April 26 in Sydney – no, seriously. Click here for details.

And the Australian Taxpayer’s Alliance is launching in Sydney on May 1. RSVP here. There’s a $30 discount if you use the top secret code – IPA.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week: