I have to confess that I watch The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox "News" Channel sometimes (it's on live at 10am here, repeated at 1pm and 6pm), mainly from a perverse fascination in watching the interviewing skills of someone so smarmy and devious. I'd heard in advance that Bono was going to be on his show, and was expecting some sort of fireworks.
I've just watched about two hours of the Wednesday night session of the Republican National Convention on broadband from C-Span. The Green Party of California described the convention as a "Fascist Infomercial". Informercial it certainly is.
It's on. JWH didn't want to do it on the weekend of the AFL grand final, or the weekend of the NRL grand final, and he didn't want to call it during the Olympics. The federal election will be held on October 9.
I'm going to leave the nuts and bolts of documenting this campaign to other bloggers to whom I shall link selectively, but I'll put my voting intention cards on the table right now.
I think that it is extremely important that the Howard Liberal/National Government is removed from office on October 9. In my view, John Howard is manifestly unsuitable to govern this country. He has presided over the most inhumane, most dishonest, most arrogant Australian government in my lifetime. He has done his darnedest to unravel much of the good work done by Hawke, Keating, Whitlam, even Fraser.
The Australian Olympians are home, they received a bipartisan polly reception at Sydney Airport on Wednesday morning. Let's put the wrappers on one of the darker moments of the Aus Athens campaign... The Sally Robbins Story.
Chinese portal sina.com.cn got itself in the poo on the weekend for reporting that China had lost the women's volleyball final to Russia... before the game was finished. Which China won. Oops.
Xinhua News Agency takes up the story.
The Games of the XXVIII Olympiad are over. Athens 2004 was not the shambles that many feared. Neil Horan, looking like a reject from an un-filmed Father Ted screenplay, was the only intrusion when far, Far, worse was feared. Yay.
What is it about the marathon that attracts serial pests? It was bad enough in 2000 when Peter Hore ran onto the course, but at least he didn't get to do anything.
You can just see Steve Cram dribbling over his keyboard as he wrote his BBC Online recap of Saturday night's athletics. But you can probably close off the polling for the 2004 BBC Sportsperson of the Year right now. Kelly Holmes has it in the bag. She won the 1500 metres to add to her 800 crown earlier in the week.
Waterford Crystal won the 8.40 jump at Markopoulo on Friday night. The thirteen year-old gelding, ridden by C.O'Connor and trained by J.Doyle, finished a neck in front of French-born Brazilian stallion Baloubet de Rouet (R.Pessoa), who took second place in a photo over US stallion Royal Kaliber (C.Kappler).
