My daughter Liz sent me this pic. She thinks its fake, I’m not sure.

Can any US or local readers comment?

Capt Christopher Strickland ejects from a USAF ‘Thunderbirds’ F-16C less than one second before it hits the ground at Mountain Home Air Base Idaho, on Sep 14th 2003.

Update:

Wallace from Big Gold Dog says it’s true and who am I to argue with a Texan. See comments.

Janet Albrechtsen says ‘Marriage must matter’ and is happy that Latham mentions the problem. The Left can no longer claim a push for the return to the old standards of supporting marriage is a right-wing conspiracy aimed at leading us back to white picket fences. Latham has said it’s OK to support marriages.

Pointing to the 600,000 children who live in single-parent households, Latham has promised to set up a national mentoring program. He told the conference: “For boys without men in their lives this is a real issue: a lack of male mentors and role models teaching them the difference between right and wrong. I see this in my own community: boys who have gone off the rails. And lost touch with a thing called society.”

These are fine ideas that will resonate with voters who were left wondering if judgment-shy politicians would ever catch up with the social problems inflicted by a 30-year experiment in fatherlessness.

The thirty year experiment in fatherlessness takes us back to social engineering days of Latham’s hero, Whitlam, and his partners in social disharmony, Cairns and Murphy who in paying homage to the gods of the left trivialised marriage. No-fault, easy divorces was a warm and fuzzy ideal that lead to the national trauma of the Family Court and a mentality that thinks 600 000 fatherless kids is cool.

It’s not. It’s tragic.

Relationship too hard – too easy – split – damn the kids. No committment become the order of the day. Married bliss comes and goes and if it is always bliss then it is only so because one or the other partner is ignoring reality. Thousands of years of experience in all cultures of the world has left us with one basic tenet for marriage – committment.

The seven year itch, menopausal uncertainty, the instinctive proclivity of men to keep on ‘spreading their seed’ are, or were, all covered by ‘committment’. Settle down mate, think it through lady, the family unit becomes the driving force and anything attacking this should be repelled. If times are bad, they will improve. If love looks lost it will come back but not if you’re apart.

Most understand this and marriages last. Some don’t and kids suffer. Obviously some marriages should never have been – wife beating, serial adultry and when it happens a split can be the only answer, but breaking up after a bloody domestic arguement is plain stupid.

Janet continues;

As English conservative journalist Roger Scruton wrote last year marriage is more than the bond between one man and one woman in time. It is a social contract where the dead and yet to be born are also parties. It is “the principal forum in which social capital is passed on”. As with same-sex marriages, the push to equate de facto relationships with marriage is misguided. Co-habitation is not marriage. Most people, when asked, express a long-term desire to get married. They don’t say they want to settle down into a good de facto relationship.

Go read Janet’s article, it makes sense

The Sun Herald reports Stockman may have to wear hard hats after OH&S Nannies took a case to court over the death of a jackaroo.

THE owners of a cattle station yesterday pleaded guilty to breaching occupational health and safety rules after the death of a jackaroo.

Daniel Croker, 23, was killed when thrown from a horse mustering at Gunbar station, near Hay in New South Wales in 2001.

Mr Croker was not wearing a helmet.

The case, the first of its kind to go before the NSW Industrial Relations Commission, could result in hard hats replacing the traditional Akubra worn by stockmen and farmers across the country.

The NSW WorkCover Authority prosecuted Gunbar’s owners, B.H. MacLachlan Pty Ltd, claiming the company failed to provide safety equipment and training for Mr Croker.

B.H. MacLachlan faces a fine of up to $550,000 but will contest some facts of the case when submissions on penalty are heard in June.

Seems a bit odd to me. Will MacLachlan and Company have to muzzle the horses as well. They bite you know. What about hobbling them to stop them kicking. We should also look at filling in all the small holes in the paddocks to stop the horses tripping in a rabbit warren and maybe we should get rid of the cattle – they’ve been known to spook horses.

Yellow hard hats – bloody hell. The hat rack on the verandah of the Boulia Pub will never look the same.

And the new OH&S Ringer – hardly an inspiration for country music.