It's just a jump to the [L]eft ...

If you were an alien who had crashed into Earth and, for some reason, decided to read today's Australian, you would be forgiven for thinking it's a dominantly Left-wing journal in cahoots with the US Democrats.

On page 15, you'd see at least half the page devoted to a piece from the by Andrew Sullivan - `America in a Right awful mess` - about the damage the Scooter Libby conviction has had on the Republican party.

Next to that is a story about Dick Cheney (fair to say he's no favourite among Aussies) and the civil case he and Karl Rove now face after illegally revealing the name of a CIA agent, which led to the Scooter case. `Plame suit puts heat on Cheney`.

[These first two stories received front page teasers, by the way.]

Under all that is a story about senator Barack Obama (`Angry Democrats pursue Fox over Obama remark`) and the collar-residing heat over an Obama/Osama joke made by Roger Ailes on Fox News. Naughty foxes of the Right and shame on their `supposed conservative conspiracy`, it says.

Finally we have a whole piece devoted to how George Bush is `ignoring` comments made by Hugo Chavez that the old-eyed republican is `political dead meat`. The president can ignore it as much as he likes, but the papers obviously didn't, and now you're all reading about (remember, you're the alien) how the Venezuelan socialist wrecked George's chances of making friends with Latin America. (I guess Bush is nowhere near as good at ignoring as Mr Howard).

All this in an allegedly centre-right newspaper - what a time-warp.
Has anyone seen the road signs that read `turn left at any time with care`? ...

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