Remember: ninety per cent of the time this site is full of loons and the other three per cent of the time it's full of facts ...

(Above: but surely intended to be a fatuous statement. You can catch the relevant bit of the Colbert video at Gawker, here, or head off to Comedy Central).

Republican Senator Jon Kyl is today's inspirational leader on the pond:

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) got a lot of grief after saying, during a speech on the floor, that "well over 90 percent" of Planned Parenthood's activities are related to abortion. The number is actually 3 percent and when it was pointed out, Kyl's office put out a clarification, saying the Senator's statements weren't intended to be "factual." (here).

Naturally Colbert and Stewart and suchlike seditious satirical tongues made hay with the good Senator. After all, anything you find on this blog isn't intended to be factual, like the suggestion that well over ninety per cent of the good Senator's brain cells are dead.

But it got even better with the news that the good Senator has now stricken the phrase from the Congressional record. Just as you can do with Australia's Hansard, the Senator corrected his remarks, so that as well as not being factual, they're now non-existent.

This entitles the good senator to a lifetime pond membership ...

Thankfully Paul Keating's remark "unrepresentative swill" still survives on the record (or at least so Malcolm Knox alleges in his report on Hansard for the Monthly For the Record), but perhaps the best antipodean example of changing a speech after the fact was Pauline Hanson's error-riddled maiden effort:

Pauline Hanson: I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians; they have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. Time is running out. We may only have 10 to 15 years left to turn things around. Because of our resources and our position in the world, we won't have a say because neighbouring countries such as Japan, with 250-million people, China, 1.2-billion, India 1-billion, Indonesia, 250-million and Malaysia, 300-million, are well aware of our resources and potential. (as recorded in the ABC's Media Report on her first speech).

Yes, 300 million Malaysians would do a lot of swamping, and the Hansard was hastily corrected to remind the world that in fact there were only twenty million Malaysians standing by, ready and willing to do the swamping (you can find that version in all its revered, revisionist, racist glory here and naturally in Hansard).

Which somehow perversely brings to mind Miranda the Devine and her splendid piece Weight off their minds, an intrepid breathless tale of the approaching royal wedding and Kate Middleton losing weight:

The d aacj agr vu is inescapable, five days before the royal wedding, as the spectre of Diana’s unhappy marriage, her battle with bulimia and the media intrusion that pushed her over the edge, looms over the young couple.

Say what? It's d aacj agr vu all over again?

Never mind, let he or she who is without typos throw the first stone, since a typo to meet a deadline is a little bit different to a politician making a prepared, or even an unprepared speech, without the facts of the matter to hand. And then dissembling about the lie rather than apologising for the error ...

Being an intrepid royalist and monarchist, the Devine does her very best to spin her gossamer thin piece of royal watching into a piece of fairy floss worthy of the Easter show, and ends up with distilled essence of soap as she heroically trawls through Diana's life one more time to reach a resounding conclusion:

On Friday, the memories will crowd in, as Kate walks down the aisle of Westminster Abbey in front of millions of television viewers across the world.

It is the same aisle down which a dejected 15-year-old William followed his mother’s coffin in 1997. But the omens are good for this ceremony. It will be a welcome ray of sunshine in a troubled world and William will be smiling as the ghost of Diana is finally laid to rest.

Uh oh.

Kate Middleton will copy Princess Diana and omit the word "obey" from her wedding vows, a British newspaper has reported.

The future queen will instead promise to "love, comfort, honour and keep" Prince William, according to the Daily Mirror. (Kate to do a Diana and refuse to obey)

Seems like the ghost of Diana will lurk under the bed, like the cookie monster or the tooth fairy:

The decision follows the lead of Diana, who at the age of 20 when she married Prince Charles in 1981 was the first and one of the last royal brides to refuse to "obey".

Oh dear these uppity, feisty young things, and their wretched disobedient ways.

Can someone please lay to rest in this troubled world the notion that the Devine is a commentator with the capacity to say anything interesting about anything?

Surely the Diana-like refusal to obey was the angle du jour, du minute?

Reading the Devine's royalist worshipping piece of regal twittery felt like watching twenty hours of television straight, and as we all know, thanks to the Devine and Susan Greenfield, such activities are sure to warp the brain into a new state of cheap toxic plasticity.

Ah hits and memories of the Devine. Who can forget We're losing our minds over technology, and Just think, for a bigger piece of mind?

In which the dangers of a plastic brain were explained in detail, only for the Devine then to forget all this, and how it was making teenagers go mad, to explain in detail how it turns out Gen Y are civic-minded heroes, with the most in common with the last heroic generation, and how they are worthy inheritors of the proud conservative Anzac tradition. (Spirit of Anzac lives on in Gen Y).

Talk about statements never intended to be factual.

These days, as the Devine descends into low level Murdochian hackery, it's getting harder to remember her golden days at Fairfax, and even worse, these days the Herald is infested by a Daddo. Actually reading a Daddo (Sick of standing in that snaking line? Join the queue) will make you realise that you need something more substantial in your diet, like shifting from fairy floss to a sticky yucky toffee apple.

Never mind. As the ominous soap wedding approaches, one David Ritter, scribbling furiously in The Australian, with Attacks on the Windsors will backfire, attributes attacks on the personal lives and stylings of the Windsors to republicans, and calls for a more civil republicanism, while advising solemnly to avoid ad hominem attacks and pursue a less shrill vision of republicanism.

Cant and nonsense of course, of the kind we can expect to see in abundance during the final count down, and completely ignoring the efforts of monarchists like the Devine, as she assaults Chuck in The Right Prince, and talks of the sheer pointlessness of (William's) father, Prince Charles ...

Now if calling someone sheerly pointless isn't an ad hominem attack, then well over ninety per cent of monarchists are intelligent people. When we know it's really only three per cent, and that number specifically excludes David Flint, who's not just an April Fool monarchist. He reliably turns up in Quadrant, as in Why aren't we being told?

Now I have to conceded that I am as much an expert on man-made global warming as the Herald editor, Penny Wong or indeed, Professor Ross Garnaut or Professor Tim Flannery.

Indeed. Now we have to conceded that David Flint is right up there in the typo stakes. Not to mention the right royal git stakes.

Meanwhile, as Ritter rabbits on endlessly about Chuck's environmental glories, and his stoic efforts to save the planet, the Devine is determined to make Chuck redundant and send him out to early retirement (Royal wedding makes Charles Redundant), with fear and loathing for Cow-milla, and a fear and loathing of the greenie Chuck as the republicans' best tool.

Sorry Mr Ritter, but when it comes to abusing the royals, a stout-hearted monarchist like the rabid Devine leaves the average republican shocked, and left stranded in the starting gate ...

Never mind. Despite endless blather by the Devine about the monarchy and Anzacs and the plastic brained Gen Y, there's been a good result this easter, in Does religion unite or divide us?

No spoilers, but the poll accompanying the piece shows John Dickson and his ilk at the Centre for Public Christianity getting a hammering, with the respondents convinced that religion does indeed divide us.

Trouble is the figures are heading towards ninety per cent in the affirmative, which surely means that it might only be three per cent ...

Well at least if you listen to your average dissembling Republican, Hansonite, or Xian ...

(Below: getting ready for the surreal, existential, nightmarish, Huis Clos horror?)