http://www.thepunch.com.au/tags/america/ Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/reports-of-ron-pauls-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/ Reports of Ron Paul’s political demise have been greatly exaggerated and his tactical genius is becoming apparent as he gives Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential candidate, a serious fright. The curious Dr Paul, the only remaining challenger to Romney after Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich pulled out of the race, has been widely written off as a nuisance candidate after failing to win a single state in the caucus and primary race. That has changed. The elderly Texas congressman has won the majority of delegates in Romney’s home state of Massachusetts, as well Maine and Nevada, even though Mitt Romney had supposedly “won” these states months earlier. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/reports-of-ron-pauls-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/reports-of-ron-pauls-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/#item8524 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-seedy-little-CD-store-where-music-is-strict-taboo/ A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-seedy-little-CD-store-where-music-is-strict-taboo/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-seedy-little-CD-store-where-music-is-strict-taboo/#item8474 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/stolen-and-raised-by-a-different-tribe/ As best I know, Australia has no true accounts of white people being kidnapped or rescued and raised by tribal Aborigines. In America’s West, punitive parties were always on the search for white women held captive by the feared Comanche tribes of Texas and New Mexico. Repatriating stolen white women was a considerable political and military issue, so much so that it arguably contributed to the destruction of the Comanche people, the largest and most warrior-like of the native American tribes. In Australia, stories of Aborigines raising whites really only exist in fiction. There’s Michael “Crocodile” Dundee, born in a Northern Territory cave and raised by a helpful tribe that schooled him in his broad Australian accent. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/stolen-and-raised-by-a-different-tribe/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/stolen-and-raised-by-a-different-tribe/#item8356 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/my-love-for-this-country-is-bigger-than-texas/ “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could,” reads the bumper sticker of a passing Ford F250, nearly the size of an Australian tow-truck. Everything is BIG in Texas – trucks, hats, steaks, beer and most of all pride. Texans are damn proud of the land their grandfathers fought to own, as if their very blood flowed beneath the soil and not the rich black oil the pump-jacks work non-stop to extract. The Texan flag is the only State flag legally flown at the same level as the Stars and Stripes. Following our first ever Thanksgiving lunch, my wife and I settled down with our extended family to watch a football match between the University of Texas ‘Longhorns’ and Texas A&M University, The Aggies. It was a room divided, as if a new civil war was being played out over turkey and ham leftovers. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/my-love-for-this-country-is-bigger-than-texas/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/my-love-for-this-country-is-bigger-than-texas/#item8318 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-saddest-weirdest-most-honest-little-town-in-America/ New Mexico is strange country. On the White Sands Missile Range, they conducted the first atmospheric test of an atom bomb. Just to the east is Roswell, where the aliens allegedly crash-landed and the Men in Black concealed their crushed little bodies from the world. There’s the Holloman Airforce Base, near Alamogordo, where in the early 60s they launched the first chimp into space. There’s a lot of feeling in the atmosphere of central New Mexico. Driving through this vast, rugged, treeless place of towering mountains and their little brothers, the buttes that erupt from the broken landscape, you wouldn’t at all be surprised if the minute hand on your watch started spinning and the full petrol tank inexplicably drained to empty. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-saddest-weirdest-most-honest-little-town-in-America/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/The-saddest-weirdest-most-honest-little-town-in-America/#item8188 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/steubenville-a-place-where-dreams-arent-made/ There is no Dean Martin Museum in Steubenville, Ohio. And the town’s other most famous export, former porn star Traci Lords, is not honoured with a statue in the town park. Steubenville is a dying steel town on the Ohio River. In fact, the place is more or less deceased. Dean Martin, born Dino Crocetti, got out of here in the mid-1930s, at the age of 17, and headed for the lights of Chicago. Ms Lords got out of here in 1980, when she was 12. Back then, her name wasn’t Traci Lords. It was Nora Kuzma. Her father’s family was Ukrainian and her mother’s side was Irish. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/steubenville-a-place-where-dreams-arent-made/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/steubenville-a-place-where-dreams-arent-made/#item7973 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/serious-music-for-serious-times/ No ads on the ABC? Don’t believe it for a minute. Last Sunday’s Insiders was chockers with ads. The political interview guy, Graig Emerson, was plugging his book, Vital Signs, Vibrant Society, even offering to sign copies for an extra buck. Then host Barrie Cassidy gave a big leg up to sometime Insiders couch buddy George Megalogenis’s new volume of thoughts, facts and analysis, The Australian Moment. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/serious-music-for-serious-times/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/serious-music-for-serious-times/#item7959 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/back-when-the-barstuds-boiled-their-bloody-billies/ Published in 1943 and given to every American serviceman heading Down Under to help with the war effort, the US War Department’s A Pocket Guide To Australia can be now be read in a different light. Almost 70 years on, the Pocket Guide appears to be a pretty accurate description of who we were. It may be quaint, but it’s a time capsule that says much about how we have changed as a people in outlook, ethnic composition, custom and language. It tells of a mad gambling, umpire-hating people, who have strange ways of speaking, putting an ‘i’ where the ‘a’ should be. The booklet’s glossary of Australian slang contains words that have long since passed from our everyday usage. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/back-when-the-barstuds-boiled-their-bloody-billies/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/back-when-the-barstuds-boiled-their-bloody-billies/#item7917 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Pass-the-doritos-the-greatest-13-super-Bowl-ads/ Went to a Super Bowl once. Hung out afterwards with 160 kilo nude, crying black dudes in the losers’ dressing room. Oh, but you don’t want to hear about that. The Super Bowl is all about the ads, which this year are said to cost $3.5 million for 30 seconds. Some recession they’re having in America. When the 100 million Americans watching the Super Bowl go to the toilet in the ad breaks, they say city sewerage systems overflow. That’s actually a myth. No one takes a pee during the ad breaks. The ads are too good. The Super Bowl is the opposite of normal telly. That pesky football keeps interrupting some damn fine viewing. Super Bowl ads are so highly-anticipated that you get teased beforehand. This year we’ve had the (thankfully false) threat of a Ferris Bueller remake and a sneak peak of David Beckham’s undies ad, which to be frank is more torture than tease. Fortunately, there have been some brilliant ads down the years. Let’s go the video(s). penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Pass-the-doritos-the-greatest-13-super-Bowl-ads/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Pass-the-doritos-the-greatest-13-super-Bowl-ads/#item7662 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology. http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/paradise-lost-but-a-pocket-of-america-found/ Just looking at him, elderly Miami resident Pedro C. Alvarez is not the type who would be inclined to take in the scenery on Ocean Drive. It’s not his kind of place. There, on famous South Beach, along the row of deco hotels, including the one where they shot the chainsaw scene for “Scarface”, wild-looking babes endurance test the elastic on their overbrimming bikinis. Coke dealers, or possibly dentists, or maybe they’re porn stars, drive their black Bentley convertibles at stall speed down the main drag. Miami’s a look-at-me place, until you leave its shiny edges. penberthyd@newsltd.com.au (David Penberthy) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/paradise-lost-but-a-pocket-of-america-found/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/paradise-lost-but-a-pocket-of-america-found/#item7678 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 A few months ago, Bill, the owner of Rainbow Music, spent several hours trapped under collapsed piles of CDs in the tiny back storeroom of his tiny music store in lower Manhattan. He wasn’t pinned down by the weight. Rather, he was trying to carefully extricate himself, like a human Pick-Up Stick, so he would not upset the “order” of the CDs that had fallen around him. Bill, who declines to give his surname (“I never give it to anyone”), claims everything inside Rainbow Music, located in the East Village just off St Mark’s Place, is carefully arranged. If so, the filing system is Mayan. Or Byzantine. Possibly Han Dynasty. It is not any known western methodology.