Chris Kenny, dangerous liberals, and the anonymous Australian editorialist strikes a blow for ancient Egypt ...

Heaven help any member of the Australian Liberal party who might identify themselves as members of same in the United States of America.

Why the very thought of a Liberal sends a shudder through the bosom worse than having a satanist nearby ...

After less than two years of watching a far-Left administration and Congress show their contempt for the citizenry and pursue a radical agenda that only hyper-liberal-progressive voters could support, the nation woke up and realized the disaster highlighted by the 2008 election of Barack Obama: Liberals had been given way too much power. (here)

Oh indeed. Liberals have always been given way too much power. Way worse than the reds under the bed scare of the nineteen fifties.

How bad is it?

Americans have witnessed with disgust the progressives' efforts to tear at the very fabric of America.

Oh dear. The very fabric. How should we proceed?

The midterms were a rejection of the Left. But that's where we must be careful -- like a wounded animal, liberals are dangerous when exposed and backed into a corner.

A wounded animal? Why back on the farm mah pappy always told me the kindest thing to do with a wounded animal was to put it down. A clean shot to the head is always the best ... and then you get to skin and mount the beast, as well as feast on the flesh ...

Meanwhile, you can read the deluded Chris Kenny cavorting and carrying on in (naturally) The Australian in Blaming Palin will not help the healing in Tucson.

After explaining how liberals as usual are totally in the wrong (at great length, naturally, it's The Australian), and how the rabid discourse of the right has nothing much to do with anything - keep it up, brave chappies - Kenny offers up these fine and noble sentiments:

The horror of the Tucson shooting should spark action. At the very least we hope that it prompts a reinstatement of the federal law against semi-automatic weapons, as a first step towards stricter gun control. It should also prompt the US to examine better ways to identify and treat mental health cases.

Take away guns, in clear breach of the constitution, and institute a socialistic government medical scheme to certify Americans as crazy? Hmm, this Kenny sounds like a dangerous wounded Liberal ... And you know what to do with a dangerously wounded beast right?

Oops, that could be construed as inflammatory dialogue. Must take some anti-inflammatory pills and hope it goes away ...

Sssh, nobody mention the elephant in The Australian's editorial room, otherwise known as Rupert Murdoch:

Yet blame they did, with American liberals attacking Palin, the Tea Party activists and some media. Closer to home, former NSW premier Bob Carr posted a blog blaming the "diabolical climate of abuse, anger, hatred and paranoia whipped up by Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and their colleagues day after day on Fox".

Actually, I prefer day after day on Murdoch's evil empire ...

Meanwhile, the anonymous editorialist at The Australian - still strenuously resisting demands to be outed, and instead cavorting around like some sordid anonymous blogger on the intertubes and so ruining western civilisation as we know it - is at it again in Queenslanders stood strong during disaster, and this time seems to have discovered climate change:

Questions must also be asked about Queensland's climate change plan, which warns of a threat to Brisbane from cyclones, storm surges and seas rising in the east.

Climate change? But only a year or so ago Lord Monckton and sundry pundits in the rag were assuring us all was well, and the myth of climate change required no plan, and no action, as editor in chief went on his anti-climate change warrior campaign, and even threatened to sue a tweeter for mentioning that one journalist had mentioned that climate change got a kinda funny treatment in the rag. But do go on:

This week's disaster came from the west. When warm ocean air is pushed inland to the Great Divide, it rains. When this occurs in extraordinary amounts, some of the water rolls west, spreading across the slopes and plains and threatening country towns. But the deluge can also roar down the range, rushing to the coast below. There is nothing we can do to stop this enormous, natural recycling system.

There's nothing we can do? Nothing at all? Not even the teeniest weeniest bit of something? Well that sounds like a one hundred per cent useless piece of advice.

This week, the results of the present La Nina unleashed anything up to 7.5 billion tonnes of water on to the ground below in just 72 hours. But we can work to reduce its impact. Since ancient Egyptian engineers worked to harness the annual Nile flood, the strength of civilisations is marked by their determination not to submit to nature.

The ancient Egyptians? And not submitting to nature? Didn't the old kingdom collapse? And do we have a reason?

Lo, the desert claims the land Towns are ravaged, Upper Egypt became a wasteland Lo, everyone's hair [has fallen out] Lo, great and small say, 'I wish I were dead' Lo, children of nobles are dashed against walls Infants are put on high ground Food is lacking Wearers of fine linen are beaten with [sticks] Ladies suffer like maidservants Lo, those who were entombed are cast on high grounds Men stir up strife unopposed Groaning is throughout the land, mingled with laments See now the land deprived of kingship What the pyramid hid is empty [The] People are diminished.

Gee thanks Egyptian sage Ipuwer, that's tremendously reassuring.

It seems the failure of flooding in the Nile, and therefore the failure of crops might have had something to do with the failure of the Old Kingdom, and once again climate change is mentioned in despatches:

The scale of the failure of the floods is shown by the fact that the Faiyum, a lake of some 65 metres deep, dried up. This means that the lake actually evaporated over time. These low floods were related to global climatic cooling which reduced the amount of rainfall in Ethiopia and East Africa. In Iceland, researchers have detected a transition from birch and grassland vegetation to arctic conditions in about 2150 BC. This correlates with a shift to drier climate in south-eastern Europe c.2200 - 2100 BC. Also, the reappearance of oak at White Moss, UK, suggests fluctuating wetness in around 2190 - 1891 BC. In Italy, drier conditions are found around 2200-1900 BC in Lake Castglione. Dry spells have also been detected as far away as Western Tibet at Lake Sumxi.

Well there's more here at the BBC, Britain's home of liberal cardigan wearers, in Professor Fekri Hassan's interesting piece The Fall of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, but can we for the moment just take from it the thought that mentioning Egyptian engineering as an inspiration might be a mis-step?

They might have known how to build a pyramid or three to withstand the winds of time, but they knew bugger all what to do about the fluctuations in the Nile and the climate ... (and I'm still not sure of the benefits to the average joe blow of a lifetime spent building bloody great sarcophagi to ease the way for the rich to cross over the river Styx).

Never mind, it's reassuring that one way or another, rather like China, the Egyptians managed to hang around, despite the collapse of the old kingdom, and the anonymous editorialist is certainly inspired to imagine vast engineering achievements:

In southeast Queensland, this may mean restricting riverside development, expanding Wivenhoe Dam or implementing other engineering solutions across the region.

Uh huh. A tad late in the matter of Brisbane ... speaking of riverside development ...

But it is 100 per cent accurate and 100 per cent useless to say that because Brisbane is on a flood plain, it will be inundated every now and again.

And no better a summary of the anonymous editorialist's editorialising could be made by anyone, including the always helpful pond, speaking of one hundred per cent useless ...

To argue we are powerless before storm and floods is to admit defeat, and that is not the Australian way. And definitely not the Queensland way.

It is however The Australian's way when it comes to the matter of climate change, a curious combination of crusading denialism and wayward denialist contributors ...

Now having lived through endless floods as a child - being poor we lived on the flood plain, as poor people are wont to do, while rich people positioned themselves on the hill - and behind a regularly breached or circumvented levee - there's no point in trying to diminish or make light the cruel impact of the mud or in this case the deaths and destruction of property.

But if there's going to be a new tone in the political discourse, perhaps this year is it too much to expect a new tone in The Australian when it comes to the discussion of climate and the environment, rather than the simple minded notion - when it's the year of bushfires - that the bush must be burned to the ground in order to save it, or the equally convenient idea - when it's the year of floods - that dams can be used for flood mitigation and water storage and recreation, and everything will be sorted, because that's the kind of pup thinking that was used to sell Wivenhoe dam.

Like multifocal glasses, multifocal dams have their issues, and if the Murdoch media spends the next year swinging behind a Tony Abbott campaign for great big new taxes to support great big new dams, the discussion could well be reduced to the level of American right wingers discussing the dangers of wounded liberals skulking like dingoes in the darkness ...

Oh wait, now the pond is sounding as silly as Chris Kenny. Time to go about other Sunday business ...

(Below: and without wanting to sound like Phillip Adams - the thinking person's way to nod off quickly at night - in the grip of an egyptology fixation, ain't it grand that the intertubes is now full of information on ancient Egypt. Start here for a look at Agriculture and horticulture in ancient Egypt, and an idyllic use of flood plains).