thinking out loud

Crikey.com.au today confirms my perceptions that the opposition failed to lay a glove on the government on the AWB inquiry. Two rabbits caught in the headlights and one rodent moving in the general direction of away, and not a sausage, to mix a metaphor. Let's hope the inquiry itself is able to do a bottom of the harbour and reveal that which it was designed to conceal.

Cartoons: a view seems to be emerging that the furore is politically inspired and designed to protect and enhance (eeugh word) various authoritarian governments in the middle east. I suppose I should have come to this conclusion myself, but you don't always, do you?

Heffernan: most analysis seems to reflect my view - I feel empowered, not to say vindicated, as indeed I do on AWB - but it doesn't help, really. Not a hanging matter. Nothing is any more. Paddington Bear would now be identified by sniffer dogs and escorted to the VIP room for priority processing.

Now, from recent conversations a few of you - I know who you are - are dropping by this site, for which I am extraordinarily appreciative. I will be even more appreciative if you'd leave something - a dropping if you will - as acknowledgement of the substantial levels of intellectual effort that goes into my thinking out loud. I'd love to be contradicted, even. So, leave your assumptions (on second thoughts, your assumptions are necessary, but not sufficient) and misgivings behind and dive in. The water's lovely.