Some unhappy news in today's press about reports of racial abuse directed at Monty Panesar at the SCG during the England v NSW game this week.

My heading says it all. The great man, Yabba, was a witty barracker in his day ("Hey Jardine! Leave our flies alone!"), but he would never have hit below the belt.

There are plenty of good-natured ways of getting a point across without resorting to abuse, racial or otherwise.

What do you think when you hear the term "no-fly zone"?

There's the exclusion zones set up to stop prying eyes getting close to top security bases, for example Pine Gap, the top secret US intelligence satellite tracking base in the Northern Territory that everyone has known about for three decades.

There's the no-fly zone set up in northern and southern Iraq in the 1990s by the US and UK governments, ostensibly to stop Saddam from gassing his neighbours.

There's the no-fly zone over the White House, Camp David, the "Western White House" at Crawford Texas, and anywhere else those pesky terrorists might try and mow down His Beloved Dubyaness.

With the passing of Jack Palance at the age of 87 on Friday, I thought it might be worthwhile to compile a list of my favourite Jack Palance performances on film (with the help of IMDb to jog my memory):

• Shane (1953) memorable western villain
• I Died A Thousand Times (1955) Great villain from that sub-genre of film noir called "Shelley Winters gets murdered again"
• I Mongoli (1962) Hamming it to the hilt as a warlord of Genghis Khan, dubbed into Italian and subtitled back into English

In Seattle, 63% of voters have opposed changes to strip club regulations, while 74% of them have supported an initiative to ban taxpayer-funded subsidies for professional sporting teams. The Supersonics are threatening to take their basketball and dribble somewhere else.

In San Francisco, 59% of voters have called for the impeachment of George W Bush and Dick Cheney. In the City of Berkeley, the impeachment vote was 69%.

Goodbye Rummy.

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones."

- Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon press conference, 12.2.02

If the 1994 mid-term election represented the start of the right-wing chill in the US, we can only hope that the 2006 election represents its end. The Democrats have taken control of the House of Reps. Maybe, just maybe, they may yet grab control of the Senate.

Bush 43's response at a Wednesday afternoon presser will be interesting. Is Rumsfeld's sword ready to be fallen upon?

Special mention to the squirrel in Oklahoma that ate through some cables and blacked out polling booths for a couple of hours. Honourable mention also to those thousands of fine, upstanding, computer-illiterate volunteers who muddled through manning the booths in the World's Greatest Democracy.

"Dear Mr Bono, Jeanette and I would be delighted to meet your good self and Cher on your next visit to Sydney." - the joke I didn't get to use after all.

There are, however, reports that Little Johnny said, after being told that his U2ness would be at Telstra Stadium this Saturday night, "I didn't know there was a footy game at Telstra Stadium this Saturday. Who's playing?"

"And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues;

They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

- Mark 16:17-18 (NIV), quote attributed to Jesus following His resurrection

A 48 year-old woman died on Sunday after being bitten by a timber rattlesnake during a church service in London, Kentucky. Despite reptile-handling in churches being illegal in Kentucky, this is the seventh such liturgial fatality in that state since 1980.

Never mind the politics in the States. Staggering news from Newcastle this morning as the NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Member for Swansea, Milton Orkopoulos, has been arrested by a police task force on about thirty sex and drug-related charges, some related to minors.

I wish we could have this standard of coverage in, for example, Nicaragua, the DRC or Tajikstan.

Anyway, for blog coverage of the US election count, my starting point today is the Daily Kos.

I'll add my own observations here from time to time.