Control, and the world, has lost its champion in the battle with the evil cabal Kaos. Who will keep up the struggle and continua the lucha for world domination now that Agent 86 is no more?

Vale Maxwell Smart. And Vale Don Adams. I never thought much about the actor, he was always the bumbling secret agent to me, and I only found out when he died that his name was Yarmy. When he married Adelaide Adams, he changed his name so that he woulfn't be last in auditions.

Some of Smart's lines have become catchphrases

"Would you believe? ..............."

"Let me handle it, 99."

"Sorry about that, Chief"

Get Smart spoofed the James Bond movies and Smart's charm lay in his utter humanness, the opposite of Bond's preposterous competence. In an interview with The Saturday Evening Post in 1966, Don Adams analysed Smart: "He's not superhuman. But he believes in what he does and he wants to do his best."

His best was rarely good enough. Smart called into work with a dial phone on the sole of his shoe, and often got a wrong number. He wore jet shoes that shot him up, often into the roof. He was so security-minded that he would often swallow secret messages before reading them.

You couldn't help but like him



Over at wouldyoubelieve.com you can get Max in print -- in a comic book!

It's has been one month, one week, and 4 days since I sat in a ditch in Crawford, Texas, says Cindy Sheehan

My request was very simple: I wanted to speak to the man who has sent over a million of our young people to fight, kill, and die in a country that was absolutely no threat to the United States of America. I wanted to ask him: "What is the Noble Cause that you keep talking about?"

Well, George didn't wander down to talk to her ... too busy eating cake?

Q. What is President Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?
A. He doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.

What happened in New Orleans? Australian lawyer Richard Bourke spent the past three years working in New Orleans to save death row inmates - almost all of them both black and poor - from execution. He was amongst the last to leave New Orleans before Katrina struck. Kerry O'Brien spoke to Bourke on 7.30 report 13 September.

O'BRIEN : So why were there no lessons learnt from the first hurricane experience and the attempt to evacuate the city then? (2004)


BOURKE : Well, there were definitely lessons learnt from Hurricane Ivan. They improved the road system enormously so the white middle class with their cars could get out of the city sooner. You're talking about a group of the population with no political capital at all, poor people of colour in New Orleans. They didn't rate any sort of an evacuation plan. It was too hard and it wasn't worth it for the population you were considering.

............

O'BRIEN: Given New Orleans' record for crime and violence, did the lawlessness after the hurricane hit surprise you particularly?

BOURKE: When you're subject to a mandatory evacuation order in a city where there is no means for you to get out, no means are provided, civil institutions break down, the police and Emergency Services do not provide access to food, water and the like and those resources are lost, I think human beings are entitled to look through the window of a WalGreen store and break in and get water, dairy goods and nappies for their children. Alright, we saw images of people stealing huge televisions and that sort of thing. That's just theft and I don't know what they thought they were going to do with the televisions anyway. But most of the looting really was subsistence looting by a population deserted by its civil institutions. In terms of the other violence, some of the murders, some of the sexual assaults, it remains to be seen whether there was an increase in the crime rate after the hurricane or whether it was just business as usual in New Orleans. But no-one could be surprised. The city has a murder rate close to 10 times the national average. That's on a good day.


Transcript

The impartiality of the media. You notice that black people loot and white people find




(courtesy of the eagle eye of Lynn Healey)

Philip Ruddock has overseen the arrest of an American peace activist, revoked his visitor's visa and is threatening to deport him for being a threat to national security. What the threat may be is any totalitarian watcher's guess.

Teacher Scott Parkin's crime is that of waging a campaign against the American Vice President's carpetbagger operations in Iraq, namely Halliburton, being one of millions against the Iraq war, and not keeping his mouth shut in Australia.

This is the first direct example of our new police state

From the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire :

Representative Richard Hugh Baker (Republican) of Baton Rouge, tells lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

Subject: Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush



Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town.

C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st

Yesterday the ilLiberals held " ..a morning tea to console each other and discuss the events of the previous night" (Daily Telegraph)

Ruddock (who can't let those of swarthy compexion alone) pleads with the Press to 'leave him alone', the little runt in the hot seat says "I support him". (Courier Mail, Herald Sun)

And a public statement from John 'grab-arse'Grogden "John and Lucy Brogden and their families would like to extend their enormous gratitude to everyone who has sent messages of love and support over the past few days,"

I sent a message of support,including a new packet of razor blades and a note 'Just Do It'

Please !

Imbroglio ? Imbroglio ?

In my day an imbroglio was a difficult and entangled situation, from Med.Latin in + brogliare, to mix, stir. We've been using a form of this word in English since 1066 and All That. At least the Norman mob would have. The Saxons would have said something like Verwicklungen and the Vikings Missförstånd

Perusing my dictionary I find the entry for Imbroglio
Meaning #1: an intricate and confusing interpersonal or political situation
Meaning #2: a very embarrassing misunderstanding

We have another meaning this morning, "Brogden's Imbroglio" says the
Courier Mail and recounts a "tribute" from another ilLiberal piece of grot.

This is no embarassing misunderstanding. This is about a pig of a man who gets pissed in public places and offends colleagues and passers-by alike. He spews out racist filth. He shoves his hairy hands up the skirts of the nearest woman.

He cracks it when the 'General Public' learns just some of his swinish and drunken excesses. Heavens, it will be in the newspaper! So he locks himself in his office, skolls a bottle of gin and gives himself a couple of half-hearted pokes in the hands with a pocket knife.

And now we are supposed to feel sorry for the sook?

I interrupt this blog to add 1,000 more Iraqi deaths to the Bush/Howard/Blair indictments for war crimes