Plus, in no other country can the electoral process be this entertaining. Seriously, Palin?

Heh. Don't you guys have your own brand of right-wing crazy going on down there, or am I, ahem, misremembering?

Also, I so hope your analysis is right, billytea.

Heh. Don't you guys have your own brand of right-wing crazy going on down there, or am I, ahem, misremembering?

Oh yes, we had Pauline Hanson, kicked out of the Liberal Party in the 90s for less than progressive views on race. She was memorably (to me, anyway) lampooned in a radio sketch as a bag of sawdust with two slogans painted on it: "Asians go home" and "No handouts for Abos". She founded a party, One Nation. Our legitimate rural party, the National Party, managed to see them off at the peak of their popularity, and her party was subsequently riven by infighting and financial scandal. She was last seen appearing on Dancing with the Stars.

Seriously, we had an election end of last year, in which we kicked out John Howard's Liberal Party. (Here, the Libs are the conservatives, and water spirals the wrong way down the sink.) He was an unrepentant social conservative, who'd failed in his first bid for the Prime Ministership in part due to a reputation for anti-Asian bigotry. He made it into power in 1996 on the back of a deeply unpopular Labor Party and a deferred payback for the recession of the early 90s (that also helped Clinton come to power), and immediately set about ushering in a bold vision of yesteryear.

In 2001, facing election defeat, he decided to demonise illegal immigrants. A boatload got into trouble coming from Indonesia, the coastguard radioed a nearby Norwegian ship (the Tampa) to rescue them, the Tampa then requested to offload them on Christmas Island, and Australian protectorate and the nearest land. Howard refused. Some reprehensible fearmongering followed about protecting our borders from the wrong sort of people (insufficiently prone to melanomas, I think; we have the highest melanoma rate in the world, and dammit, we're proud of it), including claims that the illegals on the boat had deliberately thrown their own children in the water to try to force the coastguard to pick them up (see, they don't care for their children the way we do). In fact, they were in the water because their ship had sunk. The govt never apologised.

He lost the election last year, and in a fitting postscript, became only the second PM in our history to lose his own seat as well as the election. (His seat, Bennelong, had been safe Lib when he entered Parliament. But it had changed, and by 2007, included a large population of Asian immigrants. Poetic indeed.) He was more Nixon than Bush; he had a lot of political nous and rat cunning, but no warmth and little in the way of scruples. Like Bush, however, he left his party deeply divided and without a clear way forward.

Incidentally, I believe he was also the only head of government actually in Washington on 9/11.

For the quince dresses, try this site. I don't seem to be able to link to individual dresses, but some of them ....

I think their designers were having a Disney marathon while on drugs. (I think "Bella" is especially hideous ... although parents might approve because no boy - or anyone else - could get close enough to sully their little girl's purity.)

Oh yeah, that's a Disney Crackfest.

The fact that there's a dress named "Clarice" is... disturbing. Not to mention, the dress itself is pretty disturbing as well.

The faux pull-on sleeve thingies are also scaring me. Like the ones on "Trinity" with the bows! ACK!

Hahahahahhaha..... sorry. The quince dresses make me laugh and laugh.

I think project runway, next year, should do a quince challenge. It would be harder then their normal wedding ones.

Jesse, she's off the show.

According to EW, she is only mostly off--she'll be back once or twice.

Either quince dresses or chapel-approved wedding dresses for LDS women.

For the quince dresses, try this site. I don't seem to be able to link to individual dresses, but some of them ....

Jesus Christ. Some of those dresses could hide a midget orchestra under them....

Hahahahahhaha..... sorry. The quince dresses make me laugh and laugh.

Seriously, there's a reason-- a lot of them, actually-- that I never had a quince, much to my family's dismay.