Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Man arrested over fatal shooting at Fairfield
Homicide Squad detectives have arrested a man following investigations into the fatal shooting of a man at Fairfield on November 24, 2009.
cutting in
don't forget to breathe heavily when cutting in as well. It improves your chances by 15 % I also made the christmas video public again if you feel like checking that out.
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/natalietran
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/communi...
Hope you're all well. Missed you and your funny comments. I'm back with no life, look forward to many interactions from this point on. *thrust*
Headlines Wednesday 10th February 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Big Business Is Often Bashed, But Is Not Always Bad - Vanderbilt. Source of cartoon: online version of the NYT "Cartoon bashing Cornelius" Democrats and ALP are big business, but against small business.
=== Bible Quote ===
“[Thanksgiving and Prayer] We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.”- 2 Thessalonians 1:3
===
This Valentine's Day, Republicans are hoping to one-up Hallmark by crafting a series of E-Cards that mock Obama and Dems while also raising funds for the GOP.
A new Australian report says women, especially those married to working husbands, were much better off in the 1950s compared with now in 2010
It's 3,000 acres of pristine Caribbean beachfront, and the House of Representatives wants it for $50 million — but most Americans couldn't visit.
Pleading for Bipartisanship
President calls for end to grandstanding, says it's time for Dems, Republicans to 'transcend petty politics'
Toyota Issues Worldwide Prius Recall
In another blow to the world's largest carmaker, Toyota announces 437,000 hybrids recalled over brake problems
The case of a woman who gave her daughter a lethal dose of an ADHD drug has sparked debate over whether it's approriate to diagnose such disorders in children / AP
Clinton Hostage-Taker Now a Fugitive
Man who took hostages at Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign office in 2007 cuts off his monitoring bracelet
Mystery Solved? Ad Firm Says 'Anonymous' Business Owners Behind Bush Billboard
Mystery solved? A Minneapolis-based advertising firm has cleared the air, sort of, surrounding a mysterious billboard that went up in Minnesota featuring a picture of former President George W. Bush with the words "Miss Me Yet?" Bev Master, office manager with Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising, said the billboard -- which the firm owns -- was rented out by a "group of small business owners and individuals who just felt like Washington was against them." "They thought it was a funny way to get out their message," she added. However, Master told FoxNews.com the ad buyers wish to "remain anonymous."
Saturn's Moon Does Harbor an Ocean, New Evidence Suggests
cy plumes of water vapor erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus have left scientists divided over whether a liquid ocean lies hidden beneath the icy surface. Now evidence from a 2008 plume fly-through by NASA's Cassini spacecraft has turned up short-lived water ions that suggest liquid water does indeed exist inside the moon. Negatively charged ions represent atoms that have more electrons than protons, and they seem relatively rare in the solar system. Scientists have found negative ions only on Earth, Saturn's moon Titan, the comets and now Enceladus. But negative water ions appear on Earth's surface only where ocean waves or waterfalls keep liquid water in motion — a suggestive hint of liquid water also in motion somewhere inside Enceladus. Cassini's plasma spectrometer also turned up negatively charged ions of hydrocarbons, or compounds made entirely of hydrogen and carbon.
Diggers' uniforms made in China
NEW uniforms raise national security concerns, and could put hundreds of jobs at risk.
'Predator' loses bid to dump confessions
ACCUSED Australian pedophile can't throw out taped confessions Texan authorities say he made.
Toyota could now face Corolla probe
DRIVERS report that power steering problems in its 2009-10 Corolla have caused accidents.
Stay out of roof, electricians' warn
GUTTERS, taps and stormwater dripping from live roofs could prove lethal for residents.
Men in love have no idea about partner
A COUPLE might face each other at the table each day but he often knows very little about her.
Call for Rockefeller witnesses continues
INVESTIGATORS are needed to help solve millionaire swinger Herman Rockefeller's murder.
Hospital bed situation critical
HOSPITALS across NSW would need thousands more beds if a bold national plan to slash waiting times in the state's emergency departments is to succeed.
Haitian 'survived 27 days' in rubble
DOCTORS treating an emaciated 28-year-old Haitian man today said they believed he survived 27 days buried in rubble after the January 12 earthquake. The man, named as Evans Monsigrace, told doctors at a University of Miami field hospital in Port-au-Prince that he had been buried by the quake while cooking rice. "Amazingly he got out after 27 days. It's amazing and we are p roud to have him here," said doctor Dushyantha Jayaweera, the chief medical officer at the centre. DrJayaweera said his patient was stable. "Today he is alert, oriented," he said. "His prognosis is very good."
Not for My School - principals threaten to withdraw from pupil testing
SMALL schools are fighting to get their test results removed from the Federal Government's new My School website. The schools are lobbying local MPs claiming students' literacy and numeracy scores from national tests have been presented on the website in a "misleading and inaccurate" way. Some parents, horrified at seeing poor results when they looked up their school's performance online, have either removed their child or threatened to. The results of some schools, where as few as six children took the tests, are skewed compared to those of larger groups of pupils elsewhere in the state.
Kick 'silenced mum's screams'
A WOMAN was betrayed by her trusted son in a "meticulously planned" murder, a court heard.
Illegal driver kills young mate
A 15-year-old is fighting for his life after he crashed his mother's car, killing a teenage passenger
Star exposes risks of 'naked scanners'
ACTOR handed printed image of his full-body scan, highlighting the privacy risks of the new devices.
Millionaire gives away 'miserable' money
BUSINESSMAN gives up fortune to help orphans - because money never made him happy.
Gunman foiled by first-day attendant
A GUNMAN fled empty-handed when an attendant didn't know how to open the store's till.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Al Qaeda ... Afghanistan ... terror around the globe!
Greta asks the tough questions, and gets real answers!
===
Brown's Critical Vote for Jobs
How will the GOP's 41st seat impact the Senate's labor confirmation hearing and the future of the job market?
===
Is Ronald in Hot Water?
McDonald's is sued for selling scalding cups of joe! "Is It Legal?" investigates!
===
Palin for President?
She isn't saying, but is she using the words that work to get into the White House? Frank Luntz reveals all!
=== Comments ===
A War Breaks Out Over the Tea Party
By Bill O'Reilly
As you may know, the Tea Party held a convention in Nashville over the weekend. Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker and spent some time defining the movement, beginning with President Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN: There are many things that he is doing today that cause an uneasiness in many, many Americans. I'm one of those who looks at the way that he is treating the trials of these terrorists kind of as, gosh, they're on a crime spree right now. No, we are in war. These are acts of war that these terrorists are committing. Please hear us. Congress, you have constitutional limits, and we want you to adhere to those. We have free market principles that built our country. Mr. President, we want you to remember those.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Well it took just moments after that before the left-wing media replied, hammering Governor Palin:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOB SHRUM, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: What we heard tonight was more a masterful exercise, masterful in paranoid politics. I mean, she came across to me as a merchant of hate with an "oh gosh" smile.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Now, all of this is utterly predictable. The Tea Party people do not like the liberal vision of big government and want a tougher strategy on terrorism. The far-left media despises that. Therefore they must attack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL SAMMON, FOX NEWS WASHINGTON MANAGING EDITOR: The mainstream media hates the Tea Party movement almost as much as it hates Sarah Palin, and the reason is simple. That's because both are a threat. Palin is a threat down the road, whether it be in 2012 or beyond. The Tea Party is a threat because it is galvanizing Republicans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
What Bill Sammon said is absolutely true. Of course, he was attacked.
NBC News correspondent Chuck Todd said: "Come on, Bill Sammon, an absurd attack and you know it, that [the mainstream media] hates tea party movement? Please. Didn't expect a shot like that from u."
After reading Mr. Todd's statement, "The Factor" began to research the mainstream media's coverage of the Tea Party. We found only two – two — positive comments amidst thousands of reports: one by The Detroit News, the other by the Associated Press.
I mean, this is stunning. The establishment media cannot even admire the spirit of the movement, that is Americans getting involved and trying to improve their country.
Look at it this way. You can disagree with the Tea Party people, but the spirit of honest citizen involvement in government is noble. Is it not?
Yes, the Tea Party deal has elements of extremism in it. For example, I think folks who push the birther nonsense are very misguided and some of those people embrace the Tea Party.
But the American media will never embrace the Tea Party. Why? Well, generally speaking, they look down on the folks. They think you are dumb.
But the Tea Party is around, and it's only going to get stronger.
===
CAPTURE STAGED
Tim Blair
It’s the greatest Gitmo-themed theatre production since those high-stepping David Hicks Dancers thrilled local audiences:
===
THEY KNOW NUANCE
Tim Blair
Jere P. Surber, professor of philosophy at the University of Denver, explains the politics of his kind:
===
MORE TROUBLE FOR THE IPCC
Tim Blair
It just keeps getting worse:
===
SUE-PER MARIO
Tim Blair
Brisbane man James Burt, 24, learns about copyright law:
===
POLICIES TO LIVE BY
Tim Blair
It’s very well for us pundits to sit around during an election year and criticise policies. We don’t have to do the hard work of coming up with any policies in the first place.
I mean, there’s poor Kevin Rudd just bashing away at new policies day and night, running them by focus groups, checking them with factions, maybe consulting Little Gracie of Canberra – the six-year-old who informed Rudd’s Copenhagen kindergarten speech – for final approval.
It isn’t easy. And then, if the policy turns out to be pointless or wrong, like most Rudd policies, he has to go to all the trouble of reversing it or pretending it never existed.
And what if you’re Tony Abbott? Having previously (and accurately) described global warming as “crap”, he’s since had to devise a policy on it. A crap policy, as it happens, but a policy nonetheless. Next he has to come up with a bunch of policies on economics, despite not caring much about the subject.
After all their exhaustive policy-making, Rudd and Abbott get to watch their policies get torn to bits by us journalists who in most cases have never composed a policy in our lives. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair.
So here follows a brace of my own policies, submitted for public approval. They haven’t been entirely costed yet and several would guarantee a single-digit vote – they’re slightly idealistic and Green in that regard – but they are copyright-free and any party wishing to adopt them wholly or in part is welcome to. Onward, Australians, to the future!
===
HUNDREDS MUTILATED
Tim Blair
Some 180 words into an ABC piece on female genital mutilation in Australia, this paragraph appears:
===
New study: could the sun have warmed the world?
Andrew Bolt
Yet another paper questioning the theory that man is behind the warming of the earth over the past half-century:
And, he adds, our long-tern future looks chilly.
===
Q&A students just gave Rudd the A
Andrew Bolt
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Eric Jensen on the beating Kevin Rudd got from students on the ABC’s Q&A:
Peter van Onselen agrees:
===
Media Watch guru: sure, ABC staff are Leftists. They’re educated
Andrew Bolt
David Salter, former producer of the ABC’s Media Watch, insists that Leftist bias must be expected from the ABC:
Salter’s former Media Watch colleague, presenter David Marr, has likewise defended Leftism as not just normal but desirable:
===
Rudd pays (off) Big TV
Andrew Bolt
Kochie will be grateful:
UPDATE
This should ensure that Rudd’s mate ”Kochie” will still not tell the kind of jokes about him that he freely told about John Howard:
UPDATE 2
Still on dinosaur communications, while Kevin Rudd still ploughs on with his planned $43 billion broadband network, without even a cost-benefit analysis, reader Terry notes yet another exciting development in what’s looming as a much more flexible and cheaper option.
===
Gibbs writes words on his ham fist
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama’s press secretary isn’t doing his own notoriously autocue-dependent boss any favors with his mockery of Sarah Palin:
===
They all look the same, anyway
Andrew Bolt
Queensland’s future in their hands...
Step one:
China Power International Holding’s senior vice-president instead described the agreement as a “framework agreement”, forcing Mr Palmer into desperate damage control as he flew back to Australia from China.
===
Should we be nervous about nervous Kate?
Andrew Bolt
Readers tell me I wasn’t the only one to notice how badly Kate Ellis‘s voice shook when she gave some answer in Question Time yesterday. I know she’s usefully photogenic, but is she really up to the job as Minister for Early Childhood Education, Child Care and Youth and Minister for Sport?
===
The end of certainty
Andrew Bolt
Paul Kelly in 2007:
===
Expensive savings
Andrew Bolt
I’d have told them for free how to save $750,000:
THE Rudd government has paid more than $750,000 to a consultant to tell it how to cut the air travel costs of parliamentarians.
===
Greens smash your food bowl
Andrew Bolt
I ONCE asked the boss of a big Australian company working on Hong Kong’s new airport what he’d advise young engineers back home.
“Leave,” he snapped.
Our culture had gone sour. Development was now a sin. If you wanted to build stuff, forget Australia.
In fact, Hong Kong showed it could squash an island into a giant landing strip and build a huge bridge, underwater rail link and massive airport in the time it took in Australia to get an environmental effects statement for an extension to a milk bar.
Actually, the truth is more serious - and this week showed just how much.
It’s already a criminal betrayal of our future that we’ve had governments ban genetically modified crops, new uranium mines and nuclear waste facilities for purely superstitious or rabble-rousing reasons.
It’s already beyond reckless that not a single state capital has built a new dam since 1983, which is the real reason for years of water restrictions in Melbourne.
But what we’ve seen this week from the Government now beats all that for sheer, mindless stupidity, as deep-sigh green dreaming triumphs over jobs, trade and the spirit of adventure.
I’m talking about the report the Government released that declared an end to any dream of turning the nation’s vast north into a food bowl.
===
Governor, quit politics or quit your job
Andrew Bolt
VICTORIAN Governor David de Kretser must give up his political activism ... or resign.
On Sunday, this supposedly bipartisan official will launch a divisive “civil campaign” with radical green activists and Marxists.
That campaign is explicitly political, with organisers declaring on their website they will be ”targeting individuals, community organisations, business and government”.
Has de Kretser forgotten he has a day job? For him to help whip up a political campaign against politicians is an astonishing breach of a governor’s duty to stay above politics and remain a neutral “umpire”.
As former governor, Labor stalwart and judge Richard McGarvie wrote, a governor or governor-general must be a “respected person who remains entirely above partisan politics and exerts a unifying influence”.
Yet de Kretser is listed as keynote speaker at a “mass convergence” at the Melbourne Town Hall organised by the Transition Decade Alliance, a collective of four far Left and radical green groups, including the Climate Emergency Network.
The word “convergence” and the plethora of new and grand-sounding organisations behind it are in fact the calling cards of anti-capitalist groups behind such often violent demonstrations as the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum in 2000 and the demonstrations against George Bush and George W. Bush. Their aim is to suck in more reputable groups in a “convergence” which they then try to take over.
And, indeed, the Climate Emergency Network’s members include the usual Marxist and revolutionary Left parties, such as Resistance, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity, as well as law-breaking green protest groups such as Greenpeace and Rising Tide, behind the illegal blockade of coal trains at Newcastle.
===
“No scientific merit” to IPCC document, says Hansen colleague
Andrew Bolt
James Hansen is perhaps the most radical and high-profile warmist scientist. He advises Al Gore and is head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, one of the four main bodies (and the most controversial) which calculate global temperatures.
His building, incidentally, is above the cafe shown in Seinfeld as the hang-out for Jerry and his friends. And Bishop Hill now reveals that one of Hansen’s own colleagues thinks the chapter of the IPCC 2007 report than blames man for recent warming is just another show about nothing.
While perusing some of the review comments to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, I came across the contributions of Andrew Lacis, a colleague of James Hansen’s at GISS. Lacis’s is not a name I’ve come across before but some of what he has to say about Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s report is simply breathtaking…
Remember, this guy is mainstream, not a sceptic, and you may need to remind yourself of that fact several times as you read through his comment on the executive summary of the chapter:
UPDATE
Pick how many of these 10 captions on a News Ltd slideshow to illustrate “climate change” are actually false or deceptive. And nominate the most deceptive of the lot. (I exclude caption 10 because confusing CO2 and water vapor with “smoke” is just a gimme.)
(Thanks to reader Gregory.)
UPDATE 2
The email box of organisers of Lord Monckton’s debate at Friday lunchtime at the Sydney Hilton got clogged. For those still wanting to register (essential if you wish to attend), email cool@exemail.com.au or fax (02) 4861 2029
===
Bigot vs free speech. No contest
Andrew Bolt
The discrimination police are so short of business that they’ll take up the complaint of the very hate-merchants they’re meant to police. Janet Albrechtsen:
(Thanks to reader CA,)
===
A 240 volt shock is sure some stimulus
Andrew Bolt
This insane waste of money hasn’t just had untrained fitters killed and houses burned. Now:
===
It’s the violence, stupid, not the racism
Andrew Bolt
Another day, and yet more violent attacks on Melburnians walking on one of the city’s busiest streets and travelling on one of its trains.
===
Just happened to catch the magpie eye of the IPCC
Andrew Bolt
The IPCC does it again. This time it cites a three-page document by Green by Design as some peer reviewed “study” into greener flying.
===
Hand it to Palin: her haters are insane
Andrew Bolt
Sarah Palin is photographed with crib notes for a speech written on her hand.
This shocking development is denounced by the Left. News networks analyse what it says about a politician that she needs a few prompting words when delivering a speech. A US News and World Report columnist denounces the notes as ”alarming, embrassing”. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann does a riff on how brainless she must be to need any prompts at all. Chris Matthews says she must be a ”balloon head”, and sneers: “What do we think of a would-be political leader who does it to look like she`s speaking without notes?”
Or, let’s rephrase, what do we think of a president so lost without a script - forget just a few notes on a hand - that he needs an autoprompt even when talking at a primary school:
What do we think a President who needs his own prompts so badly that he can’t keep speaking when they freeze:
Palin has the last laugh:
Yes, that’s now “Hi Mom” on her palm.
Power Line:
It’s Palin’s secret weapon: she brings out the stupidity in her political opponents.
===
Swedes smell a warming rat
Andrew Bolt
Warming alarmism is melting even in the Euro-socialist paradise, and even in the Left-leading Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest-selling afternoon paper:
To translate: this readers’ poll (caution!) shows what nearly 100,000 Swedes think of the global warming threat:
UPDATE
Meanwhile, the warmist National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an announcement to make about its new climate service:
Turns out the release was planned prepared ahead of the snowstorm, which shut federal agencies today and forced its senders to hold a press conference by telephone instead of at the National Press Club.
===
Now, how about my little mate?
Andrew Bolt
How to get a job from Kevin Rudd:
===
A dam fix
Andrew Bolt
This Rudd Government report stank of a green fix yesterday, as I reported, and stinks even more today:
===
The UN’s climate of cash
Andrew Bolt
Claudia Rossett, who helped to expose UN corruption in the oil-for-food scandal, now turns her attention to the UN warmists. One in particular:
===
IPCC warmist draws on his favorite peer reviewer: himself
Andrew Bolt
Marc Sheppard says it’s bad enough that the IPCC bought the theory of warmist Professor David Karoly that man-made warming was causing the higher temperatures and evaporation in the Murray Darling basin.
After all, new research suggests almost the very opposite - that the higher temperatures come from a natural fall in cloud cover, and a lack of rain and a subsequent lack of evaporative cooling. Drought causes higher temperatures, and not vice versa.
But Sheppard notes that Karoly’s theory was heavily relied upon in a chapter the IPCC’s alarmist 2007 report that was supposed to be reviewed by ... Karoly himself:
Is this the kind of thing that Climategate ringleader Phil Jones meant when he once boasted he’d ”redefine what the peer-review literature is”?
Big Business Is Often Bashed, But Is Not Always Bad - Vanderbilt. Source of cartoon: online version of the NYT "Cartoon bashing Cornelius" Democrats and ALP are big business, but against small business.
=== Bible Quote ===
“[Thanksgiving and Prayer] We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.”- 2 Thessalonians 1:3
===
This Valentine's Day, Republicans are hoping to one-up Hallmark by crafting a series of E-Cards that mock Obama and Dems while also raising funds for the GOP.
A new Australian report says women, especially those married to working husbands, were much better off in the 1950s compared with now in 2010
It's 3,000 acres of pristine Caribbean beachfront, and the House of Representatives wants it for $50 million — but most Americans couldn't visit.
Pleading for Bipartisanship
President calls for end to grandstanding, says it's time for Dems, Republicans to 'transcend petty politics'
Toyota Issues Worldwide Prius Recall
In another blow to the world's largest carmaker, Toyota announces 437,000 hybrids recalled over brake problems
The case of a woman who gave her daughter a lethal dose of an ADHD drug has sparked debate over whether it's approriate to diagnose such disorders in children / AP
Clinton Hostage-Taker Now a Fugitive
Man who took hostages at Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign office in 2007 cuts off his monitoring bracelet
Mystery Solved? Ad Firm Says 'Anonymous' Business Owners Behind Bush Billboard
Mystery solved? A Minneapolis-based advertising firm has cleared the air, sort of, surrounding a mysterious billboard that went up in Minnesota featuring a picture of former President George W. Bush with the words "Miss Me Yet?" Bev Master, office manager with Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising, said the billboard -- which the firm owns -- was rented out by a "group of small business owners and individuals who just felt like Washington was against them." "They thought it was a funny way to get out their message," she added. However, Master told FoxNews.com the ad buyers wish to "remain anonymous."
Saturn's Moon Does Harbor an Ocean, New Evidence Suggests
cy plumes of water vapor erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus have left scientists divided over whether a liquid ocean lies hidden beneath the icy surface. Now evidence from a 2008 plume fly-through by NASA's Cassini spacecraft has turned up short-lived water ions that suggest liquid water does indeed exist inside the moon. Negatively charged ions represent atoms that have more electrons than protons, and they seem relatively rare in the solar system. Scientists have found negative ions only on Earth, Saturn's moon Titan, the comets and now Enceladus. But negative water ions appear on Earth's surface only where ocean waves or waterfalls keep liquid water in motion — a suggestive hint of liquid water also in motion somewhere inside Enceladus. Cassini's plasma spectrometer also turned up negatively charged ions of hydrocarbons, or compounds made entirely of hydrogen and carbon.
Diggers' uniforms made in China
NEW uniforms raise national security concerns, and could put hundreds of jobs at risk.
'Predator' loses bid to dump confessions
ACCUSED Australian pedophile can't throw out taped confessions Texan authorities say he made.
Toyota could now face Corolla probe
DRIVERS report that power steering problems in its 2009-10 Corolla have caused accidents.
Stay out of roof, electricians' warn
GUTTERS, taps and stormwater dripping from live roofs could prove lethal for residents.
Men in love have no idea about partner
A COUPLE might face each other at the table each day but he often knows very little about her.
Call for Rockefeller witnesses continues
INVESTIGATORS are needed to help solve millionaire swinger Herman Rockefeller's murder.
Hospital bed situation critical
HOSPITALS across NSW would need thousands more beds if a bold national plan to slash waiting times in the state's emergency departments is to succeed.
Haitian 'survived 27 days' in rubble
DOCTORS treating an emaciated 28-year-old Haitian man today said they believed he survived 27 days buried in rubble after the January 12 earthquake. The man, named as Evans Monsigrace, told doctors at a University of Miami field hospital in Port-au-Prince that he had been buried by the quake while cooking rice. "Amazingly he got out after 27 days. It's amazing and we are p roud to have him here," said doctor Dushyantha Jayaweera, the chief medical officer at the centre. DrJayaweera said his patient was stable. "Today he is alert, oriented," he said. "His prognosis is very good."
Not for My School - principals threaten to withdraw from pupil testing
SMALL schools are fighting to get their test results removed from the Federal Government's new My School website. The schools are lobbying local MPs claiming students' literacy and numeracy scores from national tests have been presented on the website in a "misleading and inaccurate" way. Some parents, horrified at seeing poor results when they looked up their school's performance online, have either removed their child or threatened to. The results of some schools, where as few as six children took the tests, are skewed compared to those of larger groups of pupils elsewhere in the state.
Kick 'silenced mum's screams'
A WOMAN was betrayed by her trusted son in a "meticulously planned" murder, a court heard.
Illegal driver kills young mate
A 15-year-old is fighting for his life after he crashed his mother's car, killing a teenage passenger
Star exposes risks of 'naked scanners'
ACTOR handed printed image of his full-body scan, highlighting the privacy risks of the new devices.
Millionaire gives away 'miserable' money
BUSINESSMAN gives up fortune to help orphans - because money never made him happy.
Gunman foiled by first-day attendant
A GUNMAN fled empty-handed when an attendant didn't know how to open the store's till.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Al Qaeda ... Afghanistan ... terror around the globe!
Greta asks the tough questions, and gets real answers!
===
Brown's Critical Vote for Jobs
How will the GOP's 41st seat impact the Senate's labor confirmation hearing and the future of the job market?
===
Is Ronald in Hot Water?
McDonald's is sued for selling scalding cups of joe! "Is It Legal?" investigates!
===
Palin for President?
She isn't saying, but is she using the words that work to get into the White House? Frank Luntz reveals all!
=== Comments ===
A War Breaks Out Over the Tea Party
By Bill O'Reilly
As you may know, the Tea Party held a convention in Nashville over the weekend. Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker and spent some time defining the movement, beginning with President Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN: There are many things that he is doing today that cause an uneasiness in many, many Americans. I'm one of those who looks at the way that he is treating the trials of these terrorists kind of as, gosh, they're on a crime spree right now. No, we are in war. These are acts of war that these terrorists are committing. Please hear us. Congress, you have constitutional limits, and we want you to adhere to those. We have free market principles that built our country. Mr. President, we want you to remember those.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Well it took just moments after that before the left-wing media replied, hammering Governor Palin:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOB SHRUM, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: What we heard tonight was more a masterful exercise, masterful in paranoid politics. I mean, she came across to me as a merchant of hate with an "oh gosh" smile.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Now, all of this is utterly predictable. The Tea Party people do not like the liberal vision of big government and want a tougher strategy on terrorism. The far-left media despises that. Therefore they must attack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL SAMMON, FOX NEWS WASHINGTON MANAGING EDITOR: The mainstream media hates the Tea Party movement almost as much as it hates Sarah Palin, and the reason is simple. That's because both are a threat. Palin is a threat down the road, whether it be in 2012 or beyond. The Tea Party is a threat because it is galvanizing Republicans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
What Bill Sammon said is absolutely true. Of course, he was attacked.
NBC News correspondent Chuck Todd said: "Come on, Bill Sammon, an absurd attack and you know it, that [the mainstream media] hates tea party movement? Please. Didn't expect a shot like that from u."
After reading Mr. Todd's statement, "The Factor" began to research the mainstream media's coverage of the Tea Party. We found only two – two — positive comments amidst thousands of reports: one by The Detroit News, the other by the Associated Press.
I mean, this is stunning. The establishment media cannot even admire the spirit of the movement, that is Americans getting involved and trying to improve their country.
Look at it this way. You can disagree with the Tea Party people, but the spirit of honest citizen involvement in government is noble. Is it not?
Yes, the Tea Party deal has elements of extremism in it. For example, I think folks who push the birther nonsense are very misguided and some of those people embrace the Tea Party.
But the American media will never embrace the Tea Party. Why? Well, generally speaking, they look down on the folks. They think you are dumb.
But the Tea Party is around, and it's only going to get stronger.
===
CAPTURE STAGED
Tim Blair
It’s the greatest Gitmo-themed theatre production since those high-stepping David Hicks Dancers thrilled local audiences:
Mamdouh Habib is taking to the stage to relive his three-year ordeal at Guantanamo Bay because he says the media is uninterested in his story.The set must be sensational. How do they fit the Electrified Treadmill of Tormentulation up there?
Waiting For Mamdouh, starring Mr Habib as himself, opened Tuesday night at the NIDA Theatre in Sydney …
Mr Habib says it is tough for him to relive his experiences on stage.
[Writer and director Kuranda Seyit] says the play will be confronting for audiences.AC/DC, Britney Spears, the Bee Gees … what a show!
“We blind them with light and blast them with sound, just like they did in Guantanamo Bay,” he said.
Mr Habib’s wife Maha and daughter Hajer make cameo appearances in the play.No appearance from Moustafa Habib, the family’s finest actor? What a rip. Anyway, let’s hope that The Mamdouh Monologues doesn’t fall victim to timing problems.
===
THEY KNOW NUANCE
Tim Blair
Jere P. Surber, professor of philosophy at the University of Denver, explains the politics of his kind:
It is because we liberal-arts professors … have carefully studied the actual dynamics of history and culture; and we have trained ourselves to think in complex, nuanced, and productive ways about the human condition that so many of us are liberals …David Thompson translates: “In short, if you haven’t reached a similarly leftwing conclusion, you haven’t achieved sufficient complexity and nuance in your thinking, you peasant. Luckily, we can count on Professor Surber and his peers to guide us to the light, such is their benign magnificence.” Locally, enlightened leftists at Media Watch carry the load.
We’re here and mostly liberal by practical deliberation, factual investigation, and rational and moral conviction.
===
MORE TROUBLE FOR THE IPCC
Tim Blair
It just keeps getting worse:
Trees will not uproot themselves and embark on blood-soaked killing sprees by 2035, global warming experts have admitted.Meanwhile – in actual IPCC news – the New York Times has finally deigned to examine this scandal-poxed bunch of self-rewarding climate gumbies, as Mark Steyn reports.
The International Panel on Climate Change confirmed the evidence had not been peer-reviewed and will now amend the section of its 2007 report devoted to ‘killer trees’ …
The killer tree scandal is the latest embarrassment for the IPCC which has also been forced to withdraw claims that global warming will cause elephants to grow to more than 200ft tall and develop an extra pair of massive tusks after sceptics pointed out it was obviously from Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King
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SUE-PER MARIO
Tim Blair
Brisbane man James Burt, 24, learns about copyright law:
A man who bragged about illegally uploading a Super Mario Bros computer game to the internet yesterday agreed to pay manufacturer Nintendo …Ten grand? Fifty? One hundred thousand? Half a million? Keep going:
… $1.6 million in a landmark anti-piracy court settlement.If hurt Burt pays Nintendo $100 per week, he’ll have cleared his debt by October 4, 2316.
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POLICIES TO LIVE BY
Tim Blair
It’s very well for us pundits to sit around during an election year and criticise policies. We don’t have to do the hard work of coming up with any policies in the first place.
I mean, there’s poor Kevin Rudd just bashing away at new policies day and night, running them by focus groups, checking them with factions, maybe consulting Little Gracie of Canberra – the six-year-old who informed Rudd’s Copenhagen kindergarten speech – for final approval.
It isn’t easy. And then, if the policy turns out to be pointless or wrong, like most Rudd policies, he has to go to all the trouble of reversing it or pretending it never existed.
And what if you’re Tony Abbott? Having previously (and accurately) described global warming as “crap”, he’s since had to devise a policy on it. A crap policy, as it happens, but a policy nonetheless. Next he has to come up with a bunch of policies on economics, despite not caring much about the subject.
After all their exhaustive policy-making, Rudd and Abbott get to watch their policies get torn to bits by us journalists who in most cases have never composed a policy in our lives. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair.
So here follows a brace of my own policies, submitted for public approval. They haven’t been entirely costed yet and several would guarantee a single-digit vote – they’re slightly idealistic and Green in that regard – but they are copyright-free and any party wishing to adopt them wholly or in part is welcome to. Onward, Australians, to the future!
===
HUNDREDS MUTILATED
Tim Blair
Some 180 words into an ABC piece on female genital mutilation in Australia, this paragraph appears:
Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital says it is seeing between 600 and 700 women each year who have experienced it in some form.And that’s just in Melbourne. What about Sydney? Adelaide? Perth? What the hell is going on here? The hospital’s Zeinab Mohamud tries to explain:
“Some people when they hear they say, ‘how can that happen?’ It’s when something is cultural and the people have been doing it for so long, it’s not easy to either eliminate it or to say, ‘you have got a bad culture’,” she said.You have got a bad culture. It’s not that difficult to say. Dr Ted Weaver, of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, is similarly delicate:
Dr Ted Weaver agrees and he says ordering people against the practice would be inappropriate.No. Weaver’s response is inappropriate. Recall the words of Kevin Rudd from last September:
“Silence is tantamount to tacit approval,” he said …Further from Weaver:
“We cannot afford to be silent … We have a responsibility to speak up and say ‘I swear never to commit violence against a woman’.
“I swear never to excuse violence against women and I swear never to remain silent about violence against women, and this is my solemn oath as a man, that is the oath to which all men of Australia should adhere to and swear.”
“If we try and dictate and pontificate about this and not provide culturally appropriate care, we’ll further disenfranchise those women,” he said.Forget disenfranchised. They’re disfigured.
===
New study: could the sun have warmed the world?
Andrew Bolt
Yet another paper questioning the theory that man is behind the warming of the earth over the past half-century:
The notion that scientists understand how changes in Earth’s orbit affect climate well enough for estimating long-term natural climate trends that underlie any anthropogenic climate change is challenged by findings just published.Why is Rohling’s research interesting? Because the IPCC’s argument that man’s gases have caused most of the post-war warming is based not on proof that those gases did indeed do that, but on an inability to think of any other cause. Rohling suggests he may just have found that alternative explanation, or part of it.
The new research was conducted by a team led by Professor Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science hosted at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton…
According to the ‘anthropogenic hypothesis’, long-term climate impacts of man’s deforestation activities and early methane and carbon dioxide emissions have artificially held us in warm interglacial conditions, which have persisted since the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,400 years ago....
The researchers found that the current interglacial has indeed lasted some 2.0-2.5 millennia longer than predicted by the currently dominant theory for the way in which orbital changes control the ice-age cycles. This theory is based on the intensity of solar radiation reaching the Earth at latitude 65 degrees North on 21 June, the northern hemisphere Summer solstice.
But the anomaly vanished when the researchers considered a rival theory, which looks at the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth the same latitude during the summer months. Under this theory, sea levels could remain high for another two thousand years or so, even without greenhouse warming.
“Future research should more precisely narrow down the influence of orbital changes on climate,” said Rohling: “… And that is essential for a better understanding of any potential long-term impacts on climate due to man’s activities.”
And, he adds, our long-tern future looks chilly.
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Q&A students just gave Rudd the A
Andrew Bolt
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Eric Jensen on the beating Kevin Rudd got from students on the ABC’s Q&A:
In just over an hour Kevin Rudd did more to alienate young voters than he has in more than two years of government…UPDATE
Six minutes into Q&A on ABC TV, came the first question to unsettle the Prime Minister: ‘’Mr Rudd, I’d like to know how you expect us to trust you...Our generation are the ones that got behind you in the Kevin 07 and now you expect us to trust you on everything you’re saying. And you broke promises like the laptops ones and the health ones and all the ones that are important to our generation.’’
This was the tenor of the evening - a Prime Minister criticised by young people, responding to them as he would journalists, looking all the more unattractive for it. You could see Rudd expected it to be easy, but once it started he oscillated between aggression and condescension…
As one Twitter user wrote: ‘’Kevin Rudd is ripping into the sort of girls who denied him sex in high school.’’ Unfortunately, there were moments when that was exactly how it looked.
Peter van Onselen agrees:
THE performance of Kevin Rudd on Monday night’s ABC TV program Q&A was nothing short of embarrassing…Er, actually, Prime Minister it’s not. The Australian has fact-checked a list of Rudd’s wilder claims to the school children, who were right to disbelieve:
As Rudd was taken to task by the youngsters for failing to deliver on his election commitments, he became increasingly surly, lecturing them with glib uses of political spin. The audience was having none of it (neither was Jones).
At one point, Rudd almost lost his temper with a girl all of 16 years of age, who shook her head at his answer on school laptops, telling her with a sharp look and tone in his voice: “You’re shaking your head. Can I just say that is a fact, and if you ring up principals from around the country, it’s happening.”
What Rudd said on Q&A versus reality -----Continue reading 'Q&A students just gave Rudd the A'RHETORIC: “Laptops, which is computers in schools, we said we would have a computer for every young person at secondary school from Year 9 and above by, I seem to recall, 2013 or thereabouts.”
REALITY: The original 2007 election commitment was for the laptops to be rolled out in four years (by 2011).
----------------------------------------
RHETORIC: “We are on track to doing that. We have about 260,000 computers out there in schools now ... can I just say that is a fact.”
REALITY: According to Senate estimates, 154,000 of the one million promised laptops are in operation.
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Media Watch guru: sure, ABC staff are Leftists. They’re educated
Andrew Bolt
David Salter, former producer of the ABC’s Media Watch, insists that Leftist bias must be expected from the ABC:
You should expect no other than there is a sympathy to a liberal human(ist) approach.Indeed, this is not the first time that Salter has not just welcomed the overwhelmingly Leftist leanings of the ABC staff, but hailed it as proof of their fine education, since everyone knows that conservatives are just undereducated bums.
Salter’s former Media Watch colleague, presenter David Marr, has likewise defended Leftism as not just normal but desirable:
The natural culture of journalism is kind of vaguely soft-Left inquiry sceptical of authority. I mean, that’s just the world out of which journalists come. If they don’t come out of that world, they really can’t be reporters.Yet when accused of using Media Watch to preach Leftist politics and persecute conservatives for thought crimes, how they howled, and howled again at any accusation of ABC bias. And when even Jonathan Holmes, the best of the recent hosts, resumes the same witchhunt, who - alas - can be surprised.
You should expect no other...(No link to Salter’s chat on ABC Melbourne 774 with ABC Leftist Jon Faine.)
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Rudd pays (off) Big TV
Andrew Bolt
Kochie will be grateful:
THE $250 million handout from the Rudd government to Australia’s television oligarchy will flow almost directly to the profits of the networks’ owners because there are no conditions that it be used for local content.(Thanks to reader CA.)
The decision to slash the licence fees paid by the commercial networks to the government, which was made just weeks after a series of meetings between television bosses and the government, including one with Kevin Rudd just before Christmas, yesterday drew fire from critics who questioned the policy of handouts to powerful TV networks in an election year.
UPDATE
This should ensure that Rudd’s mate ”Kochie” will still not tell the kind of jokes about him that he freely told about John Howard:
UPDATE 2
Still on dinosaur communications, while Kevin Rudd still ploughs on with his planned $43 billion broadband network, without even a cost-benefit analysis, reader Terry notes yet another exciting development in what’s looming as a much more flexible and cheaper option.
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Gibbs writes words on his ham fist
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama’s press secretary isn’t doing his own notoriously autocue-dependent boss any favors with his mockery of Sarah Palin:
Robert Gibbs showed the words “hope” and “change” on his hand as he started his daily briefing with reporters on Tuesday. Many in the room, where President Barack Obama had spoken just moments before about the need for bipartisanship, groaned at the political shot.And what did happen to all that hope and change...?
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They all look the same, anyway
Andrew Bolt
Queensland’s future in their hands...
Step one:
Mr Palmer and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh on the weekend announced what they said was an agreement for China Power International Development to buy $US60 billion ($68.8bn) worth of coal over the next 20 years from the Galilee Basin in central Queensland.Oops. Step two:
China Power International Development, a listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, issued a statement yesterday in which it denied it had reached such an agreement.Oops again, Step three:
Mr Palmer then issued a statement in which he said a mistake had been made and the agreement his company, Resourcehouse, had reached was with China Power International Holding, a Chinese government-owned enterprise based in Beijing.Triple oops. Step four:
China Power International Holding’s senior vice-president instead described the agreement as a “framework agreement”, forcing Mr Palmer into desperate damage control as he flew back to Australia from China.
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Should we be nervous about nervous Kate?
Andrew Bolt
Readers tell me I wasn’t the only one to notice how badly Kate Ellis‘s voice shook when she gave some answer in Question Time yesterday. I know she’s usefully photogenic, but is she really up to the job as Minister for Early Childhood Education, Child Care and Youth and Minister for Sport?
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The end of certainty
Andrew Bolt
Paul Kelly in 2007:
Accepting the 2007 election settlement on industrial relations and climate change is essential for the Liberals.Paul Kelly in 2008:
Any prudent Australian government should move to put an emissions trading scheme in place. Both Rudd and (Opposition Leader Brendan) Nelson remain committed to this concept… Emissions trading looms as Nelson’s ultimate test: it is either the path to a stronger Coalition performance or the issue on which it blows out its political brains.Paul Kelly in 2009:
By that I mean that I believe that the (Liberal) party room will endorse a series of amendments (to the Government’s emissions trading scheme) which will be the basis for negotiation with the Rudd Government. I mean frankly if they oppose that, that would be signing their own political death warrant… This raises the prospect that the legislation won’t pass and that the election next year will see climate change as a frontline issue. Now this will be a mortal political threat to the Opposition.Paul Kelly in 2010:
The pivotal question, inconceivable a few months ago, is unavoidable: does Rudd stay the path with a double dissolution on his emissions trading scheme, or does he search for a fall-back to avoid the wild and populist confrontation that awaits his government.Beware the conventional wisdom on anything. Oh, and about Kelly’s claim that it was “inconceivable” until a few months ago that Rudd would be in such strife with his scheme, I respectfully point out that it was indeed both conceivable years ago - and conceived.
Senior Labor figures are divided on the best tactic, an ominous sign. Labor’s policy is in trouble. It is exposed by a rapidly shifting electoral sentiment; and it faces in Tony Abbott a re-energised Coalition machine capable, for the first time since the 2007 poll, of hurting Rudd Labor.
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Expensive savings
Andrew Bolt
I’d have told them for free how to save $750,000:
THE Rudd government has paid more than $750,000 to a consultant to tell it how to cut the air travel costs of parliamentarians.
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Greens smash your food bowl
Andrew Bolt
I ONCE asked the boss of a big Australian company working on Hong Kong’s new airport what he’d advise young engineers back home.
“Leave,” he snapped.
Our culture had gone sour. Development was now a sin. If you wanted to build stuff, forget Australia.
In fact, Hong Kong showed it could squash an island into a giant landing strip and build a huge bridge, underwater rail link and massive airport in the time it took in Australia to get an environmental effects statement for an extension to a milk bar.
Actually, the truth is more serious - and this week showed just how much.
It’s already a criminal betrayal of our future that we’ve had governments ban genetically modified crops, new uranium mines and nuclear waste facilities for purely superstitious or rabble-rousing reasons.
It’s already beyond reckless that not a single state capital has built a new dam since 1983, which is the real reason for years of water restrictions in Melbourne.
But what we’ve seen this week from the Government now beats all that for sheer, mindless stupidity, as deep-sigh green dreaming triumphs over jobs, trade and the spirit of adventure.
I’m talking about the report the Government released that declared an end to any dream of turning the nation’s vast north into a food bowl.
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Governor, quit politics or quit your job
Andrew Bolt
VICTORIAN Governor David de Kretser must give up his political activism ... or resign.
On Sunday, this supposedly bipartisan official will launch a divisive “civil campaign” with radical green activists and Marxists.
That campaign is explicitly political, with organisers declaring on their website they will be ”targeting individuals, community organisations, business and government”.
Has de Kretser forgotten he has a day job? For him to help whip up a political campaign against politicians is an astonishing breach of a governor’s duty to stay above politics and remain a neutral “umpire”.
As former governor, Labor stalwart and judge Richard McGarvie wrote, a governor or governor-general must be a “respected person who remains entirely above partisan politics and exerts a unifying influence”.
Yet de Kretser is listed as keynote speaker at a “mass convergence” at the Melbourne Town Hall organised by the Transition Decade Alliance, a collective of four far Left and radical green groups, including the Climate Emergency Network.
The word “convergence” and the plethora of new and grand-sounding organisations behind it are in fact the calling cards of anti-capitalist groups behind such often violent demonstrations as the S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum in 2000 and the demonstrations against George Bush and George W. Bush. Their aim is to suck in more reputable groups in a “convergence” which they then try to take over.
And, indeed, the Climate Emergency Network’s members include the usual Marxist and revolutionary Left parties, such as Resistance, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity, as well as law-breaking green protest groups such as Greenpeace and Rising Tide, behind the illegal blockade of coal trains at Newcastle.
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“No scientific merit” to IPCC document, says Hansen colleague
Andrew Bolt
James Hansen is perhaps the most radical and high-profile warmist scientist. He advises Al Gore and is head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, one of the four main bodies (and the most controversial) which calculate global temperatures.
His building, incidentally, is above the cafe shown in Seinfeld as the hang-out for Jerry and his friends. And Bishop Hill now reveals that one of Hansen’s own colleagues thinks the chapter of the IPCC 2007 report than blames man for recent warming is just another show about nothing.
While perusing some of the review comments to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, I came across the contributions of Andrew Lacis, a colleague of James Hansen’s at GISS. Lacis’s is not a name I’ve come across before but some of what he has to say about Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s report is simply breathtaking…
Remember, this guy is mainstream, not a sceptic, and you may need to remind yourself of that fact several times as you read through his comment on the executive summary of the chapter:
There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.I do not think “consensus” means what the warmists say it means.
UPDATE
Pick how many of these 10 captions on a News Ltd slideshow to illustrate “climate change” are actually false or deceptive. And nominate the most deceptive of the lot. (I exclude caption 10 because confusing CO2 and water vapor with “smoke” is just a gimme.)
(Thanks to reader Gregory.)
UPDATE 2
The email box of organisers of Lord Monckton’s debate at Friday lunchtime at the Sydney Hilton got clogged. For those still wanting to register (essential if you wish to attend), email cool@exemail.com.au or fax (02) 4861 2029
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Bigot vs free speech. No contest
Andrew Bolt
The discrimination police are so short of business that they’ll take up the complaint of the very hate-merchants they’re meant to police. Janet Albrechtsen:
In January last year, 4BC Queensland radio broadcaster Michael Smith said he thought it dangerous to allow the burka in certain public places because it had been used as a disguise by criminals. He also said he thought the burka impedes vision in a car. Days later, a listener, Omar Hassan, wrote to 4BC and complained to the Australian Communications and Media Authority that Smith had breached the code by vilifying, inciting hatred and discriminating against Muslims.We’re mad, of course. We’re actually funding an Anti-Discrimination Commission that cannot recognise the real bigot even when it shoves its manifesto in its face.Result: free speech becomes that much less free,
Last year, ACMA tossed out the complaint. No matter. Hassan also lodged a complaint with Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Commission. And the ADC accepted the complaint.
Never mind that countries such as France and Denmark are having robust debates about banning the burka for all sorts of reasons… (T)he purveyors of acceptable thoughts at the ADC now require Smith to attend a three-hour “mediation” session with Hassan.
Call it a hunch, but I’m guessing mediation won’t satisfy Hassan. In his 15-page letter to 4BC, he described Australia as a “racist country . . . No. 1 on the world list for the violation of human rights”. He said Fairfax radio is a “human zoo owned by . . . pigs and monkeys”. He said of Smith - a former policeman - that “being a cop would write you off as a decent human being for life as you can never recover from that disease of being a cop, as once a cop, the dirt and filth stick to you forever and could never be removed”.
And he had plenty to say about women in short skirts. He expressed his disgust at being “forced to look at the backside of a woman who bends over in front of me in supermarket to pick an item off a bottom shelf”. It is a health hazard, he says. “Non-Muslim women do not use water to clean themselves when they go to the toilet.” Thus, bending over in a supermarket could cause serious health risks, Hassan wrote, especially for little children who “because of their height, may have such [a] scene right in their face”.
Instead of dismissing this barrage of invective from Hassan, the ADC has decided that Smith has a case to answer.
(Thanks to reader CA,)
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A 240 volt shock is sure some stimulus
Andrew Bolt
This insane waste of money hasn’t just had untrained fitters killed and houses burned. Now:
HUNDREDS of homes that have been fitted with foil insulation under the Rudd government’s stimulus program have been turned into potential death traps because installers have laid the insulation over live wires or used metal fasteners, causing it to become electrified.He’s Kevin, and he’s here to help.
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It’s the violence, stupid, not the racism
Andrew Bolt
Another day, and yet more violent attacks on Melburnians walking on one of the city’s busiest streets and travelling on one of its trains.
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Just happened to catch the magpie eye of the IPCC
Andrew Bolt
The IPCC does it again. This time it cites a three-page document by Green by Design as some peer reviewed “study” into greener flying.
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Hand it to Palin: her haters are insane
Andrew Bolt
Sarah Palin is photographed with crib notes for a speech written on her hand.
This shocking development is denounced by the Left. News networks analyse what it says about a politician that she needs a few prompting words when delivering a speech. A US News and World Report columnist denounces the notes as ”alarming, embrassing”. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann does a riff on how brainless she must be to need any prompts at all. Chris Matthews says she must be a ”balloon head”, and sneers: “What do we think of a would-be political leader who does it to look like she`s speaking without notes?”
Or, let’s rephrase, what do we think of a president so lost without a script - forget just a few notes on a hand - that he needs an autoprompt even when talking at a primary school:
What do we think a President who needs his own prompts so badly that he can’t keep speaking when they freeze:
Palin has the last laugh:
Yes, that’s now “Hi Mom” on her palm.
Power Line:
It’s Palin’s secret weapon: she brings out the stupidity in her political opponents.
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Swedes smell a warming rat
Andrew Bolt
Warming alarmism is melting even in the Euro-socialist paradise, and even in the Left-leading Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest-selling afternoon paper:
To translate: this readers’ poll (caution!) shows what nearly 100,000 Swedes think of the global warming threat:
23,4 % it is very dangerousFor every Swede who thinks global warming is very dangerous, there are at least two who think he’s been conned.
17,2 % it is to early to have an opinion
34,9 % it is exaggerated
24,6 % it is a bluff
UPDATE
Meanwhile, the warmist National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an announcement to make about its new climate service:
More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters. People are searching for relevant and timely information about these changes to inform decision-making about virtually all aspects of their lives.NOAA could have used some of that “timely information” to inform its own decision making. Washington Wire reports:
Earlier snowmelt? That would be nice.Earlier snowmelt? That would be nice.
Turns out the release was planned prepared ahead of the snowstorm, which shut federal agencies today and forced its senders to hold a press conference by telephone instead of at the National Press Club.
Turns out the release was planned prepared ahead of the snowstorm, which shut federal agencies today and forced its senders to hold a press conference by telephone instead of at the National Press Club.
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Now, how about my little mate?
Andrew Bolt
How to get a job from Kevin Rudd:
Of all the Rudd Government’s ambitious ‘’nation building’’ plans, its scheme to plough billions of dollars into building a superfast communications network is the most risky and dubious…I’m told Kaiser is a nice bloke - and clearly nicely connected - but this must nevertheless be noted:
The latest instance of the government’s erosion of the normal processes of policy-making and public administration is the appointment of Mike Kaiser as a senior executive with NBN Co.
A highly-regarded Labor political strategist, Kaiser was appointed last November to the $450,000 a year position as head of government relations and external affairs for NBN Co, the government-owned company which is to build the $43 billion broadband network.
Now we have learnt that there was a singular lack of process around this hiring - and apparently around many of the hirings at NBN Co.
In response to Opposition questions at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, NBN Co’s chief executive Mike Quigley said it was Communications Minister Stephen Conroy who had suggested Kaiser for the position… Kaiser was hired after two interviews, one with Quigley, and reference checks. The job was not advertised. There was no executive search process. No other candidates were short-listed.
Yet Quigley insisted this was an appropriate selection processs
Kaiser is a former ALP state secretary in Queensland. He was forced to resign as a state MP after revelations about branch-stacking in Queensland Labor.Something else has just been stacked.
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A dam fix
Andrew Bolt
This Rudd Government report stank of a green fix yesterday, as I reported, and stinks even more today:
A RESEARCH report that found there was insufficient water to make northern Australia a food bowl for the nation did not consider building dams because it was against Labor policy.Your future is being locked away by green ideologues.
The Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce relied heavily on the work done by the CSIRO’s Northern Australia Sustainable Yields project, whose scientists were told not to worry about investigating dams.
The CSIRO’s Richard Cresswell said: “At the time of the study, all jurisdictions (the West Australian, Queensland and NT governments) had a no-dams policy, and therefore we did not investigate the opportunities for dams in the north.
“We weren’t asked not to investigate them, but we were told it wasn’t necessary to investigate them,” Dr Cresswell said.
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The UN’s climate of cash
Andrew Bolt
Claudia Rossett, who helped to expose UN corruption in the oil-for-food scandal, now turns her attention to the UN warmists. One in particular:
With UN climate guru Rajendra Pachauri under fire for alleged conflicts of interest and the purveying of flawed “science,” another United Nations eco-official is stepping forward to defend UN climate findings.Green is the colour of the cash.
His name is Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Program, or UNEP, based in Nairobi. If you are curious about potential conflicts of interest among the UN climate crowd, Steiner, along with Pachauri, is someone to watch.
Like Pachauri, Steiner is still talking about “overwhelming evidence” supporting the findings of Al Gore’s co-Nobelist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — despite the growing body of evidence that the IPCC’s findings were more a product of UN politics than of science. In recent remarks featured as a top item on the UN’s official news site, Steiner has just praised the IPCC and re-issued the UN’s usual apocalyptic warnings: “Any delay… risks of a magnitude…urgent international response” — etc.
Who is Achim Steiner? A German, born in Brazil, he is a longtime environmentalist, former head from 2001-2006 of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, or IUCN....
Anyway, in December, 2005, Achim Steiner served as a judge on a panel in Dubai that awarded a $500,000 environmental prize to then-Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan. With a big smile, at a banquet in Dubai, Annan — then the UN’s top official — accepted this six-figure purse for his personal use. About three months later, Annan named Steiner, one of the judges who picked Annan for the prize, to head UNEP.
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IPCC warmist draws on his favorite peer reviewer: himself
Andrew Bolt
Marc Sheppard says it’s bad enough that the IPCC bought the theory of warmist Professor David Karoly that man-made warming was causing the higher temperatures and evaporation in the Murray Darling basin.
After all, new research suggests almost the very opposite - that the higher temperatures come from a natural fall in cloud cover, and a lack of rain and a subsequent lack of evaporative cooling. Drought causes higher temperatures, and not vice versa.
But Sheppard notes that Karoly’s theory was heavily relied upon in a chapter the IPCC’s alarmist 2007 report that was supposed to be reviewed by ... Karoly himself:
But amazingly, the story doesn’t end with how wrong the chapter was. Professor Franks also pointed out that ... David Karoly, whose work was also heavily cited in WG1 Chapter 9, was its Review Editor.Fabulous peer reviewing, guys. The man in charge of the reviewing supervises reviews of his own theory.
Is this the kind of thing that Climategate ringleader Phil Jones meant when he once boasted he’d ”redefine what the peer-review literature is”?
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
An Incomplete list of Rudd's broken promises
The list of failures, blunders, budget blowouts, lies and back flips grows:
1. 2020 - 1,000 B&B; minds, $2+m = 9 useable ideas. - FAILED
2. Save the whales (using the navy to confront Japanese) - dangerous stunt. - FAILED
3. Inflation Genie - Genie = Supernatural Pre-Islamic myth
4. Taxes up (Gas, Diesel, Transport, Alcopops) – inflationary
5. Fuelwatch - cost $21 million –stunt -lenses fell out. - FAILED
6. Grocery Watch, err, Choice – June, 2009 abandoned its $13 million election promise to force grocery prices down.
7. Arresting Iranian leaders - Stunt FAILED
8. Bank Guarantee - still over 200,000 bank accounts frozen from September 2008 - blunder locking up $25 billion of savings for possibly 4 years. FAILED
9. Education Revolution - still revolving
10. National Broadband Network (from $4b, to $7b to $43 billion) - inexplicable
11. Cash Splash 1 - borrowed
12. Cash Splash 2 – also borrowed = $42 billion
13. Work Choices /Fair work – Will cost jobs
Awards Backflips – special dispensation for Tourism/Food industry.
Horticultural Industry warning new awards will put farmers out of business, eg, casual pickers weekend rates. - No response from Gillard yet. 19 August 2009.
14. Immigration/Refugees/Asylum Seekers = Open door - 31 boats to date
15. Defence - cut expenditure & increase weaponry?
16. Homeland Security Department – “a non-core promise” broken Nov 28, 2007
17. Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change/Carbon Reduction - Scam
18. Budget Surpluses - Ancient history.
19. Economic conservatism - new words, still not in ALP dictionary.
20. The buck stops with me!
21. Electric cars /Hybrid Cars - $6.2 billion – Toyota for one bemused & grateful.
22. Job creation & security from IR reforms - for Trade Union leaders.
23. Securing water on the Murray/Darling - it’s secured alright – well out of sight.
24. IVF Program – cuts - the caring ALP.
25. Medicare/Private Health – rebate not to be touched - key election promise - outright lie
26. Dental Scheme – gone – the caring ALP
27. Cataract Surgery – costs doubled – the caring ALP
28. Superannuation – the government needs it more than you.
29. Home Savers Grant - a fizzer, not enough people saving
30. First home Owners grant – increased, not aimed to generate building, inflating house prices
31. One Stop Super Childcare Centres – maybe in 2095
32. GP Super Clinics - $275 million borrowed
– 1 open Palmerston NT, ALP stronghold – struggling to provide even most basic service, . 3 approved SA – Noarlunga ALP stronghold, Playford North, ALP stronghold, Modbury , ALP stronghold.
33. No compulsory University Union Fees – an outright lie voted down
34. Coastguard – huh!
35. Maternity Leave - out in the never never
36. Worker Share Options, June 2009 – on, off, on, off, on like a light switch - blunder
37. Carbon emissions reduction - LPG conversion subsidies being phased out l – June 2009
38. Carbon Emissions reduction Part 2 - Household Solar Rebate axed 9/6
30. Schools Stimulus/? Infrastructure Program – absolute chaos. – Subject to AG inquiry.
40. Flood Relief NSW North Coast June 2009 – serves them right for living there. Qld got it so all OK
41. Ruddbank - fizzer.
42. ABCCC – back flip with twist
43. Federal takeover of hospitals by mid 2009 if no improvement. – To dream the impossible dream
44. Indigenous conditions – worse
45. Reduce consultancies by $112 million = increase to $800 million (6354 consultancies)
46. Govt will pay small business invoices on time = takes a lot longer
47. No nuclear Waste Dump NT – election promise – broken June 2008
48. $15 million to rural research & development corporations – election promise – broken May 2008.
49. A – E reporting on childcare standards & universal pre-school for 4 year olds – election promise – broken June 2009
50. Increased Skilled Immigration in economic downturn – leads to lack of work for young people. (GFC forces older workers to work longer plus additional jobs going to immigrants rather than our youth) – blunder, blunder, blunder.
51. ALP Uranium Policy/stance – in tatters. Garrett approves uranium mine.
52. Open and accountable government – no results yet 5 dead SIEV boat. NO Response to 53+ missing presumed dead on SIVE the Government knew about.
53. Diplomacy – Japan – biggest customer – snubbed first jaunt. India – Uranium contract cancelled at first opportunity. USA – conversations (real/imaginary) released to media. China, May 2009 – “difficult to deal with” Australia led Asia Pacific Body – thud.
54. NBN - July 2009, Senate Committee told by finance analysts believe plans for the national broadband network are in shambles. – blundering money wasting. August 0 experts advise costs could be as high as $20,000 per connection making $43 billion a major understatement,
55. Selling scarce arable land to foreign mining interests.
56. Boost funding for aboriginal Legal Aid – lie – actuality = cuts to funding in first budget.
57. Scale back Intervention – ignored review recommendations.
58. Revitalise aboriginal languages – $9 million for 200 languages of which how many have been translated to written language?
59. Homes /renovationsfor indigenous – not one shovel lifted to date – scheme mishandled to the point that one State govt could fall. August 09– NT Govt just scrapes in. Controversy still rife. Still nothing done.
60. Digital TV –Conroy, 2008, slash $22m from costs of changeover , figures make no sense – original estimate $16m now to cost $66m (advertising costs ?)
61. NBN plan – lack of organisation leads to inability to generate meetings with business in Tas. Already appearing to fall over.
62. Cheaper Better Childcare – Govt regulations will see Childcare costs going up by about $1500pa on July 1, 2010
63. NBN – Experts are now saying it will cost in the region of $20,00 PER CONNECTION. $43 Billion could be quite an underestimate on those figures.
64. SORRY!
Feb 8, 08. K Rudd
“We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.”
Aug 22, 09 The Australian
“WELFARE workers have swooped on the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge in northwest NSW, removing more than 40 Aboriginal children from decrepit homes in shanty towns........
Aboriginal women, stunned by the removals, say it amounts to a “modern-day Stolen Generation”, but the most recent statistics on child removals show Aboriginal children are being taken from their parents in numbers much greater than the Stolen Generations.”
65. During the 2007 federal election Labor promised it would ‘’encourage sourcing of forests from sustainable forest practices and seek to ban the sale of illegally logged timber imports’’. – broken promise Aug 2009.
66. Oops missed one from March 2008. “Labor promised bi-partisan support to pass legislation that would enable the removal of criminal convictions from fishermen caught fishing by accident in Great Barrier Reef ‘green zones’ prior to December 14, 2006.” “Minister Garrett’s statement, that the criminal convictions will stand, shows the true value of their phony pre-election promises of justice for these fishermen,” Senator Boswell said
67. January 2009. CONTROVERSIAL prison operator G4S will have its contract to run Australia’s immigration detention centres extended until at least July 31 despite Labor’s pre-election promise that the public sector would manage the centres.
68. Skills Program , Sept 2009, The Australian – “ Kevin Rudd’s $2bn skills plan in disarray”
1. 2020 - 1,000 B&B; minds, $2+m = 9 useable ideas. - FAILED
2. Save the whales (using the navy to confront Japanese) - dangerous stunt. - FAILED
3. Inflation Genie - Genie = Supernatural Pre-Islamic myth
4. Taxes up (Gas, Diesel, Transport, Alcopops) – inflationary
5. Fuelwatch - cost $21 million –stunt -lenses fell out. - FAILED
6. Grocery Watch, err, Choice – June, 2009 abandoned its $13 million election promise to force grocery prices down.
7. Arresting Iranian leaders - Stunt FAILED
8. Bank Guarantee - still over 200,000 bank accounts frozen from September 2008 - blunder locking up $25 billion of savings for possibly 4 years. FAILED
9. Education Revolution - still revolving
10. National Broadband Network (from $4b, to $7b to $43 billion) - inexplicable
11. Cash Splash 1 - borrowed
12. Cash Splash 2 – also borrowed = $42 billion
13. Work Choices /Fair work – Will cost jobs
Awards Backflips – special dispensation for Tourism/Food industry.
Horticultural Industry warning new awards will put farmers out of business, eg, casual pickers weekend rates. - No response from Gillard yet. 19 August 2009.
14. Immigration/Refugees/Asylum Seekers = Open door - 31 boats to date
15. Defence - cut expenditure & increase weaponry?
16. Homeland Security Department – “a non-core promise” broken Nov 28, 2007
17. Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change/Carbon Reduction - Scam
18. Budget Surpluses - Ancient history.
19. Economic conservatism - new words, still not in ALP dictionary.
20. The buck stops with me!
21. Electric cars /Hybrid Cars - $6.2 billion – Toyota for one bemused & grateful.
22. Job creation & security from IR reforms - for Trade Union leaders.
23. Securing water on the Murray/Darling - it’s secured alright – well out of sight.
24. IVF Program – cuts - the caring ALP.
25. Medicare/Private Health – rebate not to be touched - key election promise - outright lie
26. Dental Scheme – gone – the caring ALP
27. Cataract Surgery – costs doubled – the caring ALP
28. Superannuation – the government needs it more than you.
29. Home Savers Grant - a fizzer, not enough people saving
30. First home Owners grant – increased, not aimed to generate building, inflating house prices
31. One Stop Super Childcare Centres – maybe in 2095
32. GP Super Clinics - $275 million borrowed
– 1 open Palmerston NT, ALP stronghold – struggling to provide even most basic service, . 3 approved SA – Noarlunga ALP stronghold, Playford North, ALP stronghold, Modbury , ALP stronghold.
33. No compulsory University Union Fees – an outright lie voted down
34. Coastguard – huh!
35. Maternity Leave - out in the never never
36. Worker Share Options, June 2009 – on, off, on, off, on like a light switch - blunder
37. Carbon emissions reduction - LPG conversion subsidies being phased out l – June 2009
38. Carbon Emissions reduction Part 2 - Household Solar Rebate axed 9/6
30. Schools Stimulus/? Infrastructure Program – absolute chaos. – Subject to AG inquiry.
40. Flood Relief NSW North Coast June 2009 – serves them right for living there. Qld got it so all OK
41. Ruddbank - fizzer.
42. ABCCC – back flip with twist
43. Federal takeover of hospitals by mid 2009 if no improvement. – To dream the impossible dream
44. Indigenous conditions – worse
45. Reduce consultancies by $112 million = increase to $800 million (6354 consultancies)
46. Govt will pay small business invoices on time = takes a lot longer
47. No nuclear Waste Dump NT – election promise – broken June 2008
48. $15 million to rural research & development corporations – election promise – broken May 2008.
49. A – E reporting on childcare standards & universal pre-school for 4 year olds – election promise – broken June 2009
50. Increased Skilled Immigration in economic downturn – leads to lack of work for young people. (GFC forces older workers to work longer plus additional jobs going to immigrants rather than our youth) – blunder, blunder, blunder.
51. ALP Uranium Policy/stance – in tatters. Garrett approves uranium mine.
52. Open and accountable government – no results yet 5 dead SIEV boat. NO Response to 53+ missing presumed dead on SIVE the Government knew about.
53. Diplomacy – Japan – biggest customer – snubbed first jaunt. India – Uranium contract cancelled at first opportunity. USA – conversations (real/imaginary) released to media. China, May 2009 – “difficult to deal with” Australia led Asia Pacific Body – thud.
54. NBN - July 2009, Senate Committee told by finance analysts believe plans for the national broadband network are in shambles. – blundering money wasting. August 0 experts advise costs could be as high as $20,000 per connection making $43 billion a major understatement,
55. Selling scarce arable land to foreign mining interests.
56. Boost funding for aboriginal Legal Aid – lie – actuality = cuts to funding in first budget.
57. Scale back Intervention – ignored review recommendations.
58. Revitalise aboriginal languages – $9 million for 200 languages of which how many have been translated to written language?
59. Homes /renovationsfor indigenous – not one shovel lifted to date – scheme mishandled to the point that one State govt could fall. August 09– NT Govt just scrapes in. Controversy still rife. Still nothing done.
60. Digital TV –Conroy, 2008, slash $22m from costs of changeover , figures make no sense – original estimate $16m now to cost $66m (advertising costs ?)
61. NBN plan – lack of organisation leads to inability to generate meetings with business in Tas. Already appearing to fall over.
62. Cheaper Better Childcare – Govt regulations will see Childcare costs going up by about $1500pa on July 1, 2010
63. NBN – Experts are now saying it will cost in the region of $20,00 PER CONNECTION. $43 Billion could be quite an underestimate on those figures.
64. SORRY!
Feb 8, 08. K Rudd
“We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.”
Aug 22, 09 The Australian
“WELFARE workers have swooped on the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge in northwest NSW, removing more than 40 Aboriginal children from decrepit homes in shanty towns........
Aboriginal women, stunned by the removals, say it amounts to a “modern-day Stolen Generation”, but the most recent statistics on child removals show Aboriginal children are being taken from their parents in numbers much greater than the Stolen Generations.”
65. During the 2007 federal election Labor promised it would ‘’encourage sourcing of forests from sustainable forest practices and seek to ban the sale of illegally logged timber imports’’. – broken promise Aug 2009.
66. Oops missed one from March 2008. “Labor promised bi-partisan support to pass legislation that would enable the removal of criminal convictions from fishermen caught fishing by accident in Great Barrier Reef ‘green zones’ prior to December 14, 2006.” “Minister Garrett’s statement, that the criminal convictions will stand, shows the true value of their phony pre-election promises of justice for these fishermen,” Senator Boswell said
67. January 2009. CONTROVERSIAL prison operator G4S will have its contract to run Australia’s immigration detention centres extended until at least July 31 despite Labor’s pre-election promise that the public sector would manage the centres.
68. Skills Program , Sept 2009, The Australian – “ Kevin Rudd’s $2bn skills plan in disarray”
$2.5 Million US Census Commercial- Another Waste of Taxpayer Dollars
Your taxpayer dollars at work...
The Obama Administration blew $2.5 million on a Superbowl Census commercial tonight.
===
The One loves the camera, and has to be in front of it. I'd have done a better job for half the money.
Sarah Palin Calls for Eric Holder & Rahm Emanuel to Resign
Sarah Palin didn't hesitate today on FOX News Sunday when questioned about Eric Holder's job performance. She called for Holder and White House advisor Rahm Emanuel to resign.
===
She speaks good sense. All I hear from Obama is how hard it is for him to do the right thing.
Headlines Tuesday 9th February 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Democrat administration brings poverty.
=== Bible Quote ===
“[Love for Enemies] "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”- Matthew 5:43-45
===
For more than 20 years Angela Boneva and the U.S. gov't thought the Bulgarian-born 34-year-old was a U.S. citizen — until the State Dept. reportedly had a different opinion.
Ayatollah: Iran to 'Stun' The West on Feb. 11
Supreme leader reportedly says Iran set to deliver 'punch' to 'stun' world powers on anniversary of Islamic revolution
Rep. John Murtha, the first veteran of the Vietnam war elected to Congress, dies of complications from gall bladder surgery. He was 77.
Gov't-Run Climate Care?
Obama administration proposes new Climate Service to examine and report on global warming
Jacko Doc Charged With Manslaughter
Conrad Murray accused of acting 'without malice' in King of Pop's death, according to criminal complaint
Planned Parenthood's Sexplicit Ed
Religious groups decry Planned Parenthood report calling for 'recast' of sex education for kids as young as 10
Police escort Ayhan Memi, the father of 16-year-old daughter Medine whose bound body was discovered in a shallow hole dug in the family's chicken coup / AFP
Bashed woman in three-hour 000 wait
BOY endures three-hour wait for help after mum bashed like a blood-spattered "rag doll".
Rudd, Gillard and the ALP lied about Abbott's comments on women
PEOPLE should calm down about comments on housewives doing the ironing, Tony Abbott says.
No booze before 21, says PM
KEVIN Rudd would like to see the legal drinking age lifted to 21. - what about cigarettes and marijuana? Why did Rudd ask children if that was too harsh? - ed.
"Fearless" baby elephant ready to make her first public appearance at Melbourne Zoo, with handlers describing her as "like a human toddler learning how to play".
Soft drinks increase cancer risk - study
TWO soft drinks a week nearly doubles the risk of developing one of the deadliest cancers.
As the Mid-Atlantic digs out from a historic snowstorm that hit over the weekend, forecasters are predicting another two-footer to blanket parts of the region later this week.
'Bowser bonk' in court over servo sex
A MAN caught having sex at a petrol bowser refused to stop when police asked, court hears.
Top cop takes blame for two-car crash
NSW top cop "as accountable as any other driver" after wife and another driver injured in crash.
Crime fighter faces jail
A FORMER police superintendent has been cleared of any wrongdoing over allegations he interfered with an investigation involving former league player Bryan Fletcher.
First super teachers on salaries of almost $100,000 working in public schools
THE first "super teachers" on salaries of almost $100,000 a year have started work in public schools under a landmark performance pay deal aimed at radically lifting classroom quality. Luisa Bosco, 33, is among an initial intake of 13 superior teachers, known as HATS or highly accomplished teachers, appointed to new-style leadership roles.
Federal Labor MP Belinda Neal skips crucial debate in Canberra to plea to branch members in Woy Woy
FEDERAL Labor MP Belinda Neal failed to turn up to a crucial debate on climate change in Parliament yesterday as she fought to save her career. Ms Neal skipped the first sitting day of the parliamentary week to lobby local branch members.
Tests have caught 180 train workers under influence of drugs including cocaine and ecstasy
DRUG tests have snared 180 train drivers, guards, signallers, controllers and station staff under the influence of everything from cocaine to ecstasy. A new rail industry safety report has also revealed 85 passenger train staff have been found to be drunk at work in the past three years.
Bega schoolgirl killer moved after prison guard's love letters found
THE killer of two Bega schoolgirls has been moved to an undisclosed prison after love letters from a former security guard were found in his cell. Murderer Lindsay Beckett was moved last year after prison management at Port Phillip Prison found the letters and feared they were evidence an improper relationship was forming between the pair, The Age newspaper reported today. The unnamed woman quit her job with prison security firm G4S in June last year, before the letters were found, and has entered the Australian Defence Force.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Exclusive interview with Robert Gates!
How far has our military come in Afghanistan and what work still lies ahead?
Plus, the controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy!
===
The Dems' New Bill
They say it will create jobs and increase productivity. So, what's the catch?
===
Ad Analysis
Which ads scored at the Super Bowl? Plus, Bernie Goldberg tackles the controversial Tim Tebow spot.
===
A 'Hannity' Exclusive!
What are these controversial figures revealing about another terror attack?
=== Comments ===
All Hell Breaking Loose Over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
By Bill O'Reilly
One of the reasons "The Factor" is by far the most dominant cable news program in America is that we are often correct in our assessments.
When Attorney General Eric Holder announced last November that the Obama administration would try Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the 9/11 mastermind, and four other Al Qaeda thugs in New York City, we immediately said that was a major mistake. And now, many have turned against the decision, including big-time Democrats like Senators Feinstein and Schumer.
In my newspaper column this week, which you can access on BillOReilly.com, I run down why Mr. Holder's decision is so destructive for America. Basically, foreign terrorists should be tried by the military. We have a law stating that, but Holder remains defiant.
In an interview with the left-leaning New Yorker magazine he says, "I don't apologize for what I've done. History will show that the decisions we've made are the right ones."
Holder goes on to say that the "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial will be the defining event of his attorney generalship."
But in the same article, it's reported that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel bitterly opposes Holder's decision. Apparently, Emanuel believes that most Americans, including the entire Republican Party, are so angry that Al Qaeda thugs are getting constitutional protections that it will hurt the president's overall anti-terror agenda.
In Holder's defense, the New Yorker story lays out the case for giving the Al Qaeda killers civilian trials. You should read it to evaluate how strong that argument is.
But again, in my opinion, overseas terrorists must be handled by the military if we are able to win the War on Terror.
In the end, this all comes down to leadership. President Obama has said he allowed Holder to make the final decision, but Holder works for the president, and Mr. Obama should be the decider, as President Bush once said.
Here at "The Factor," we have reported and we have decided. Holder is extremely misguided.
===
Camel gas and other warmist nonsense
Piers Akerman
THE insanity all of those who have been engaged in running the great global warming scam is summed up by the decision to recognise belches and farts from domestic camels, and not those emitted by the feral camel population, when calculating a nation’s carbon footprint.
The left will still maintain pride through a string of abuse directed at anyone they don’t like, but that tactic has been around since before Pitt was PM in England and over two hundred years later the tactic still sways the addled and the very young. There is much work to do involving schools which have a curriculum which is not based on science either, but on various left wing myths which take the lives of many people year after year.
I still believe the great threat to prosperity is poverty. Leftwing ideology is a bastion of poverty. It takes from the people and gives to the left. A major problem for conservatives is that no matter how successful, the media can oppose it and put in some abysmal lefties. - ed.
===
Let it not all be in vain
Piers Akerman
AS Australians mark the first anniversary of the worst peacetime disaster in our history, the Black Saturday bushfires, it is worth asking whether anything has been learned from the tragedy. - Greens in politics, be they ALP or Green, have no memory of their failures. They take no responsibility for their decisions. They are not the ones risking anything on the bad decisions. They are still profiting from the disasters, making their false claims regarding global warming and collecting well intended donations and diverting funds to irrelevant causes.
They are coordinated in government and opposition and a threat wherever they may be, using the law to abuse their trust. They are a sponge for public monies, and a waster of good will. I am sorry I ever, through being even handed, endorsed anything they said to a child. They have invaded our schools and corrupted our curriculum. I don’t want there to be laws to prevent them. I don’t want people to take extreme action against them. I want responsible people to highlight their weaknesses and failures, and show the light of truth on the issues. The rest will follow. - ed.
===
LABOR COLD
Tim Blair
“Check out the ‘Hot Topics’ atop the right-hand margin of the ALP’s home page,” emails CL. “‘Abbott’ first. ‘Rudd government’ nearly last. And the party’s new symbol is now windmills? What about that lovely dirty Queensland coal?”
===
OIL AND STEAM
Tim Blair
Big Climate profits from Big Oil:
UN climate chief Rajendra Pachauri comes under attack for steamy book promoted by BP
Pachauri’s soft-core warmography had other petrochemical assistance:
It was released in Mumbai by Mukesh Ambani – India’s richest man and the head of the oil and gas conglomerate Reliance Industries, the largest private Indian company.
This is almost enough to make me return all my denialist oil money, if I hadn’t already spent it on islands and Concordes.
===
NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT
Tim Blair
A BBC reader asks:
(Via Murph, who writes: “Anyhow, each to their own. Just as long as they test their weapons behind closed doors and don’t flaunt their nuclear capabilities in my face, it’s none of my business ...")
===
SCIENTIST SAD
Tim Blair
Poor Phil Jones:
It’s interesting how greenoids are reacting to pressure, following years in which their view dominated. Some quit; others are contemplating suicide. Imagine how they would have coped if they’d been condemned as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers or deranged flat-earthers or bribe-receiving frauds. It’s a wonder that any of us realists are still alive or have jobs.
UPDATE. This seems apposite. James Delingpole responds to environmental writer Geoffrey ”apocalyptic obliteration” Lean:
===
PLANET STILL DOOMED
Tim Blair
Old-fashioned alarmy talk from the Age‘s Kenneth Davidson:
===
TALK TO THE HAND
Tim Blair
Sarah Palin torments her enemies.
===
Rudd with more Qs than As
Andrew Bolt
No transcript or video yet, but Kevin Rudd will be worried about his reception on the ABC’s Q&A last night.
Everything was in his favor. Host Tony Jones if a fellow warming alarmist. The live audience comprised school children of the “aware” kind. The usual format was junked so that Rudd had no fellow panellists to challenge him.
And yet, while most of the students still seemed indeed of the Left, as you’d expect from that age group, the evening did not go smoothly.
Rudd was openly laughed at for his mannerisms and tendency to blather. Never have I heard the phrase “you know what?” said so often. He was challenged on his broken promises.
There was huge laughter and prolonged applause when Jones noted that in answering whether he supported lifting the drinking age to 21, Rudd first said “of course”, then claimed he’d rely on “evidence” before having an opinion, and then (so characteristically) asked for a show of hands on whether such a ban would be good. Tell me what to think. I couldn’t think of a more classic demonstration of Rudd’s essential emptiness.
One student even asked him whether the Climategate and IPCC scandals, and the Dutch Government’s decision to review the IPCC advice, made him think twice about relying on the IPCC, too. Even more interesting, the question got sustained applause and Rudd was visibly angered. He refused to look at the student while answering, knowing the young man had his hand in the air, wanting to object to his claim that the IPCC just comprised 4000 (sic) scientists who just “measured things”. True, there was even more applause for Rudd’s I’ll-save-you-from-warming exhortation, but the strong division among the students was extraordinary. The great scare is crumbling, even on Rudd’s turf.
Another student, again with applause, noted that the Copenhagen climate summit was a farce, and Rudd struggled to show it wasn’t.
They’re on to him, these students. On to the scares, on to the spin, on to the populism.
UPDATE
David Penberthy agrees.
===
Media Watch grills not the media but the sceptic
Andrew Bolt
Al Gore has reputedly been made a billionaire by hyping man-made warming, even though he spreads so many false claims, lies and exaggerations that he was even taken to court and had nine of his worst errors attacked by a British judge.Yet when he comes to Australia to drum up more green business and is given fawning media coverage, Media Watch attacks one of the few journalists who point out his record. It does not question Gore’s hype, his falsehoods or his blatant conflict of interest.
Lord Monckton is brought to Australia by two retired businessman, one an environmental scientist, to counter the hype and panic unleashed by Gore. This time many in the media vilify him for his looks (the symptom of Graves disease), refuse to cover his actual arguments, report ironic jokes as serious lies, and in various other ways disgrace their profession. Never, for instance, have I seen such a vile sniggering as The Age’s effort above.
But Media Watch is onto it! Last night it turned its hostile eye on ... Monckton. This time it is interested in possible vested interests (none). And it had the temerity to actually suggest the ABC was open to debate when the truth is that the ABC’s treatment of Monckton showed the disgraceful opposite.
It offers only a single criticism of Monckton’s scientific argument against the warming alarmism - by suggesting he’s wrong to say that the sea temperatures of the Great Barrier Reef have not risen over the past 30 years, claiming instead they’ve risen over the past 130. Of course, the one claim does not at all contradict the other. Media Watch has failed.
To add to the joke, Media Watch last night even scolded a reporter for trusting observations over scary climate model predictions.
UPDATE
First, Media Watch accuses Lord Monckton of fabricating claims of vested interest against warmist Sir John Houghton, without giving the background which suggests that whatever errors Monckton made in framing his allegations, the real substance of his allegation were drawn from media reports. The real vested interests here - that of the IPCC chairman - are the real disgrace.
And to make even clearer the failure of Media Watch to disprove Monckton on the science, here is what its target actually said:
Jonathon Holmes showed a graph of temperatures over the last 100 years, with average temperatures for each period, I think of 20 years (it might have been ten, it was shown so fast). A rising trend was indicated on that graph.
The graph source was the HadSST2 dataset and since I have a copy of the same data and can extract the relevant data, I can make the following comments.
1 - HadSST2 is based on 5 degree Latitude x 5 degree longitude grid cells. The grid cell that includes the top of Cape York also has sea temperatures from the Gulf of Carpentaria. The other two grid cells cover a substantial area out into the Coral Sea and it’s dubious to claim that the temperature in each cell is an accurate recording of reef temperatures. (In fact these temperatures are reported by ships but what ships would deliberately sail along the reef when it threatens to tear the bottom out of the ship?)
===
The end of the world is nighish
Andrew Bolt
Tim Blair is rightly amazed that Age writer Kenneth Davidson could still peddle such apocalyptic tripe:
As an antidote, read Dr Dennis Jensen’s fine speech in Parliament yesterday on global warming hysteria and the Rudd Government’s deceitfully named ETS:
===
How to blame humans for anything
Andrew Bolt
Niche modeller David Stockwell is profoundly unimpressed with what’s billed as the latest “proof” of man-made warming - that winds are now pushing rain away from Western Australia, and dumping snow on Antarctica. And the funny thing is that not even the man spruiking this ”proof”, Professor Tas van Ommen, seems to have much faith in it:
And here’s the seal to the deal: this great change in the Antarctic oscillation just brings us to where we were in 1960. From Jones, J. M. and M. Widmann, 2004. Early peak in Antarctic oscillation index. Nature, 432, 290–291:
===
And it may not even work
Andrew Bolt
All that pain - for what?
===
Baillieu plays the race card
Andrew Bolt
I’m as opposed to racisim as is Ted Baillieu, but the Opposition Leader is feeding a damaging myth here - with only the Left to applaud him:
===
So many visions, so little action
Andrew Bolt
Another Rudd vision involving plenty of speeches and blueprints, and nothing practical:
===
Your future, as advertised
Andrew Bolt
The Superbowl coverage today featured Audi’s new “Green Police” ads, which are either laughing with or at…
Another version:
The scary thing is that when you first see them you’re not sure if they’ve a warning or endorsement - such are our times. I mean, check the question in the campaign’s earnest interactive quiz, when a Green Police officer starts: ”I come to your house for surprise visit, what kind of a light bulb should I find there?”
Hey! Is this actually a training aide for Kevin Rudd’s own light globe police?
===
No, Prime Minister. That drought wasn’t man-made, either
Andrew Bolt
Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:
And guess which scandal-ridden and alarmist IPCC report relied on Karoly’s claims? Reader Baa Humbug:
===
Apocalypse delayed
Andrew Bolt
Fifty per cent of hype deducted:
Democrat administration brings poverty.
=== Bible Quote ===
“[Love for Enemies] "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”- Matthew 5:43-45
===
For more than 20 years Angela Boneva and the U.S. gov't thought the Bulgarian-born 34-year-old was a U.S. citizen — until the State Dept. reportedly had a different opinion.
Ayatollah: Iran to 'Stun' The West on Feb. 11
Supreme leader reportedly says Iran set to deliver 'punch' to 'stun' world powers on anniversary of Islamic revolution
Rep. John Murtha, the first veteran of the Vietnam war elected to Congress, dies of complications from gall bladder surgery. He was 77.
Gov't-Run Climate Care?
Obama administration proposes new Climate Service to examine and report on global warming
Jacko Doc Charged With Manslaughter
Conrad Murray accused of acting 'without malice' in King of Pop's death, according to criminal complaint
Planned Parenthood's Sexplicit Ed
Religious groups decry Planned Parenthood report calling for 'recast' of sex education for kids as young as 10
Police escort Ayhan Memi, the father of 16-year-old daughter Medine whose bound body was discovered in a shallow hole dug in the family's chicken coup / AFP
Bashed woman in three-hour 000 wait
BOY endures three-hour wait for help after mum bashed like a blood-spattered "rag doll".
Rudd, Gillard and the ALP lied about Abbott's comments on women
PEOPLE should calm down about comments on housewives doing the ironing, Tony Abbott says.
No booze before 21, says PM
KEVIN Rudd would like to see the legal drinking age lifted to 21. - what about cigarettes and marijuana? Why did Rudd ask children if that was too harsh? - ed.
"Fearless" baby elephant ready to make her first public appearance at Melbourne Zoo, with handlers describing her as "like a human toddler learning how to play".
Soft drinks increase cancer risk - study
TWO soft drinks a week nearly doubles the risk of developing one of the deadliest cancers.
As the Mid-Atlantic digs out from a historic snowstorm that hit over the weekend, forecasters are predicting another two-footer to blanket parts of the region later this week.
'Bowser bonk' in court over servo sex
A MAN caught having sex at a petrol bowser refused to stop when police asked, court hears.
Top cop takes blame for two-car crash
NSW top cop "as accountable as any other driver" after wife and another driver injured in crash.
Crime fighter faces jail
A FORMER police superintendent has been cleared of any wrongdoing over allegations he interfered with an investigation involving former league player Bryan Fletcher.
First super teachers on salaries of almost $100,000 working in public schools
THE first "super teachers" on salaries of almost $100,000 a year have started work in public schools under a landmark performance pay deal aimed at radically lifting classroom quality. Luisa Bosco, 33, is among an initial intake of 13 superior teachers, known as HATS or highly accomplished teachers, appointed to new-style leadership roles.
Federal Labor MP Belinda Neal skips crucial debate in Canberra to plea to branch members in Woy Woy
FEDERAL Labor MP Belinda Neal failed to turn up to a crucial debate on climate change in Parliament yesterday as she fought to save her career. Ms Neal skipped the first sitting day of the parliamentary week to lobby local branch members.
Tests have caught 180 train workers under influence of drugs including cocaine and ecstasy
DRUG tests have snared 180 train drivers, guards, signallers, controllers and station staff under the influence of everything from cocaine to ecstasy. A new rail industry safety report has also revealed 85 passenger train staff have been found to be drunk at work in the past three years.
Bega schoolgirl killer moved after prison guard's love letters found
THE killer of two Bega schoolgirls has been moved to an undisclosed prison after love letters from a former security guard were found in his cell. Murderer Lindsay Beckett was moved last year after prison management at Port Phillip Prison found the letters and feared they were evidence an improper relationship was forming between the pair, The Age newspaper reported today. The unnamed woman quit her job with prison security firm G4S in June last year, before the letters were found, and has entered the Australian Defence Force.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Exclusive interview with Robert Gates!
How far has our military come in Afghanistan and what work still lies ahead?
Plus, the controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy!
===
The Dems' New Bill
They say it will create jobs and increase productivity. So, what's the catch?
===
Ad Analysis
Which ads scored at the Super Bowl? Plus, Bernie Goldberg tackles the controversial Tim Tebow spot.
===
A 'Hannity' Exclusive!
What are these controversial figures revealing about another terror attack?
=== Comments ===
All Hell Breaking Loose Over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
By Bill O'Reilly
One of the reasons "The Factor" is by far the most dominant cable news program in America is that we are often correct in our assessments.
When Attorney General Eric Holder announced last November that the Obama administration would try Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the 9/11 mastermind, and four other Al Qaeda thugs in New York City, we immediately said that was a major mistake. And now, many have turned against the decision, including big-time Democrats like Senators Feinstein and Schumer.
In my newspaper column this week, which you can access on BillOReilly.com, I run down why Mr. Holder's decision is so destructive for America. Basically, foreign terrorists should be tried by the military. We have a law stating that, but Holder remains defiant.
In an interview with the left-leaning New Yorker magazine he says, "I don't apologize for what I've done. History will show that the decisions we've made are the right ones."
Holder goes on to say that the "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial will be the defining event of his attorney generalship."
But in the same article, it's reported that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel bitterly opposes Holder's decision. Apparently, Emanuel believes that most Americans, including the entire Republican Party, are so angry that Al Qaeda thugs are getting constitutional protections that it will hurt the president's overall anti-terror agenda.
In Holder's defense, the New Yorker story lays out the case for giving the Al Qaeda killers civilian trials. You should read it to evaluate how strong that argument is.
But again, in my opinion, overseas terrorists must be handled by the military if we are able to win the War on Terror.
In the end, this all comes down to leadership. President Obama has said he allowed Holder to make the final decision, but Holder works for the president, and Mr. Obama should be the decider, as President Bush once said.
Here at "The Factor," we have reported and we have decided. Holder is extremely misguided.
===
Camel gas and other warmist nonsense
Piers Akerman
THE insanity all of those who have been engaged in running the great global warming scam is summed up by the decision to recognise belches and farts from domestic camels, and not those emitted by the feral camel population, when calculating a nation’s carbon footprint.
- Tim replied- That sums it up well, Piers. You were right to decry my foolishness with attempting to contribute to wikipedia on the issue. I thank the reader who introduced me to conservapedia, which has some good articles, fair and balanced, on the issue of Global Warming. Those who seized the initiative on wikipedia are still spinning their story and editing out those who question the myth of global warming.
Rudd has had every pin knocked out from under him. The ‘fete a comple’ he had lined up has faltered and collapsed. The slamdunk he had in his sights went bye bye the moment Turnbull was rolled and those damning emails hit the internet. Every thing since has been aftermath. Time is now Rudd’s enemy.
Even the most deluded true believer must acknowledge that AGW is in trouble. We are seeing poll numbers that suggest the average Ray is waking up. Well that’s not quiet fair ...the average Ray has just worked out what an ETS TAX will cost him. Self interest, ya gotta love it.
The blindsided Rudd now has little choice but to distract the public from his massive miscalculation (and poor fortune). The man has decided to go after the Liberals economic credentials - Perhaps his biggest mistake to date.
By my reckoning I give the Libs a 1 chance in 3 of winning the next election - Not too bad as I had them pegged at 1 chance in 10 two months ago.
Rudd is in trouble and he knows it. His election centerpiece is in rubble, interest rates are rising credit conditions are constricting and he has not delivered on anyone of his significant promises.
Could one of you guys do me a favour and list all of Rudd’s broken promises it would really put a cherry on this post
The left will still maintain pride through a string of abuse directed at anyone they don’t like, but that tactic has been around since before Pitt was PM in England and over two hundred years later the tactic still sways the addled and the very young. There is much work to do involving schools which have a curriculum which is not based on science either, but on various left wing myths which take the lives of many people year after year.
I still believe the great threat to prosperity is poverty. Leftwing ideology is a bastion of poverty. It takes from the people and gives to the left. A major problem for conservatives is that no matter how successful, the media can oppose it and put in some abysmal lefties. - ed.
===
Let it not all be in vain
Piers Akerman
AS Australians mark the first anniversary of the worst peacetime disaster in our history, the Black Saturday bushfires, it is worth asking whether anything has been learned from the tragedy. - Greens in politics, be they ALP or Green, have no memory of their failures. They take no responsibility for their decisions. They are not the ones risking anything on the bad decisions. They are still profiting from the disasters, making their false claims regarding global warming and collecting well intended donations and diverting funds to irrelevant causes.
They are coordinated in government and opposition and a threat wherever they may be, using the law to abuse their trust. They are a sponge for public monies, and a waster of good will. I am sorry I ever, through being even handed, endorsed anything they said to a child. They have invaded our schools and corrupted our curriculum. I don’t want there to be laws to prevent them. I don’t want people to take extreme action against them. I want responsible people to highlight their weaknesses and failures, and show the light of truth on the issues. The rest will follow. - ed.
Cheryl replied- Cheryl, this article of Piers made me think, and so I posted this. Praxis means ‘action with reflection’ one not denying the other. Rudd has this panicked pitch of “We must do something.” when what he means is he must get paid for something. It isn’t that they aren’t aware of what they are doing or are very forgetful. They are corrupt and there is no examination of their corrupt behavior. Ala Penny Easton. A teen girl marrying the father of a friend .. that was never going to work well, but that is what is inside ALP politicians. They endorse that. They will endorse any corrupt activity they profit from. I don’t mind being contradicted by counter example .. someone please provide one. - ed.
DD ball
that’s PC socialism for you DD.
Selective memory loss as we had in WA
with Carmen Laurence, Alan Bond,
Brian Burke and their ilk after the Burke govts.WA inc. fleecing of WA taxpayers and shareholders.
Nothing has changed in PC Labor - it never does.
Australians are so trusting and
gullible and sadly “gifted” with short memories which renders them unable to sort the wheat from the chaff.
===
LABOR COLD
Tim Blair
“Check out the ‘Hot Topics’ atop the right-hand margin of the ALP’s home page,” emails CL. “‘Abbott’ first. ‘Rudd government’ nearly last. And the party’s new symbol is now windmills? What about that lovely dirty Queensland coal?”
===
OIL AND STEAM
Tim Blair
Big Climate profits from Big Oil:
UN climate chief Rajendra Pachauri comes under attack for steamy book promoted by BP
Pachauri’s soft-core warmography had other petrochemical assistance:
It was released in Mumbai by Mukesh Ambani – India’s richest man and the head of the oil and gas conglomerate Reliance Industries, the largest private Indian company.
This is almost enough to make me return all my denialist oil money, if I hadn’t already spent it on islands and Concordes.
===
NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT
Tim Blair
A BBC reader asks:
Why shouldn’t Iran have nuclear capability? Israel, India, and many other countries which are no more stable than Iran have the capability. Another case of the USA trying to impose it’s homophobic prejudices on the rest of the world and, to my shame, with this country’s backing!Iran’s new status as the Land of the Gays might come as a surprise to various mullahs.
(Via Murph, who writes: “Anyhow, each to their own. Just as long as they test their weapons behind closed doors and don’t flaunt their nuclear capabilities in my face, it’s none of my business ...")
===
SCIENTIST SAD
Tim Blair
Poor Phil Jones:
The scientist at the centre of the “climategate” email scandal has revealed that he was so traumatised by the global backlash against him that he contemplated suicide.So now he’s just like all those kids who’ve been made to feel depressed by global warming alarmism. It’s isn’t nice that Jones is upset, but sympathy should be tempered considering that for decades he and his like have been banging on about humankind’s destruction of the planet and our murdering of the poley bears and all. Consider the sadness generated.
Professor Phil Jones said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times that he had thought about killing himself “several times”.
It’s interesting how greenoids are reacting to pressure, following years in which their view dominated. Some quit; others are contemplating suicide. Imagine how they would have coped if they’d been condemned as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers or deranged flat-earthers or bribe-receiving frauds. It’s a wonder that any of us realists are still alive or have jobs.
Jones, 57, said he was unprepared for the scandal: “I am just a scientist. I have no training in PR or dealing with crises.”So one of the world’s leading proponents of the view that we’re all at risk from climate change can’t deal with a crisis. Interesting.
The incident has taken a severe toll on his health. He has lost more than a stone in weight and disclosed he is on beta-blockers and using sleeping pills. He said the support of his family, and especially the love of his five-year-old granddaughter, had helped him to shake off suicidal thoughts: “I wanted to see her grow up.”Again, this is very sad. But when you’re at the vanguard of a movement telling others that their grandchildren face life on an uninhabited barbecue grill, it’s difficult to summon any tears.
He remains at risk, still receiving death threats from around the world including two in the past week: “I was shocked. People said I should go and kill myself. They said that they knew where I lived. They were coming from all over the world.”Oh, please. I get more threats than that from fellow Telegraph staffers. And they’re more credible.
Jones believes that the unit was maliciously targeted with multiple FoI requests by climate change sceptics determined to disrupt its work.When freedom of information requests are seen as “disruptive”, you’ve got to wonder what sort of information you’re trying to deliver.
UPDATE. This seems apposite. James Delingpole responds to environmental writer Geoffrey ”apocalyptic obliteration” Lean:
We love our world; we want our children and grandchildren to grow up with jobs and to be able to enjoy looking at landscapes which haven’t been destroyed by wind turbines; we understand that the richer an economy grows the more environmentally conscious it can afford to be. We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Your side, Geoffrey, does not.They might, if it was written by some dozy kid and included in an IPCC report.
===
PLANET STILL DOOMED
Tim Blair
Old-fashioned alarmy talk from the Age‘s Kenneth Davidson:
Britain’s Met Office says the world is on a path towards a potential increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees as early as 2060. If this occurs, only about half a billion people out of about 9 billion will survive, according to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate change and adviser to the British government.This sort of stuff seems almost quaint in 2010. And who these days cites the Met as any kind of authority?
===
TALK TO THE HAND
Tim Blair
Sarah Palin torments her enemies.
===
Rudd with more Qs than As
Andrew Bolt
No transcript or video yet, but Kevin Rudd will be worried about his reception on the ABC’s Q&A last night.
Everything was in his favor. Host Tony Jones if a fellow warming alarmist. The live audience comprised school children of the “aware” kind. The usual format was junked so that Rudd had no fellow panellists to challenge him.
And yet, while most of the students still seemed indeed of the Left, as you’d expect from that age group, the evening did not go smoothly.
Rudd was openly laughed at for his mannerisms and tendency to blather. Never have I heard the phrase “you know what?” said so often. He was challenged on his broken promises.
There was huge laughter and prolonged applause when Jones noted that in answering whether he supported lifting the drinking age to 21, Rudd first said “of course”, then claimed he’d rely on “evidence” before having an opinion, and then (so characteristically) asked for a show of hands on whether such a ban would be good. Tell me what to think. I couldn’t think of a more classic demonstration of Rudd’s essential emptiness.
One student even asked him whether the Climategate and IPCC scandals, and the Dutch Government’s decision to review the IPCC advice, made him think twice about relying on the IPCC, too. Even more interesting, the question got sustained applause and Rudd was visibly angered. He refused to look at the student while answering, knowing the young man had his hand in the air, wanting to object to his claim that the IPCC just comprised 4000 (sic) scientists who just “measured things”. True, there was even more applause for Rudd’s I’ll-save-you-from-warming exhortation, but the strong division among the students was extraordinary. The great scare is crumbling, even on Rudd’s turf.
Another student, again with applause, noted that the Copenhagen climate summit was a farce, and Rudd struggled to show it wasn’t.
They’re on to him, these students. On to the scares, on to the spin, on to the populism.
UPDATE
David Penberthy agrees.
===
Media Watch grills not the media but the sceptic
Andrew Bolt
Al Gore has reputedly been made a billionaire by hyping man-made warming, even though he spreads so many false claims, lies and exaggerations that he was even taken to court and had nine of his worst errors attacked by a British judge.Yet when he comes to Australia to drum up more green business and is given fawning media coverage, Media Watch attacks one of the few journalists who point out his record. It does not question Gore’s hype, his falsehoods or his blatant conflict of interest.
Lord Monckton is brought to Australia by two retired businessman, one an environmental scientist, to counter the hype and panic unleashed by Gore. This time many in the media vilify him for his looks (the symptom of Graves disease), refuse to cover his actual arguments, report ironic jokes as serious lies, and in various other ways disgrace their profession. Never, for instance, have I seen such a vile sniggering as The Age’s effort above.
But Media Watch is onto it! Last night it turned its hostile eye on ... Monckton. This time it is interested in possible vested interests (none). And it had the temerity to actually suggest the ABC was open to debate when the truth is that the ABC’s treatment of Monckton showed the disgraceful opposite.
It offers only a single criticism of Monckton’s scientific argument against the warming alarmism - by suggesting he’s wrong to say that the sea temperatures of the Great Barrier Reef have not risen over the past 30 years, claiming instead they’ve risen over the past 130. Of course, the one claim does not at all contradict the other. Media Watch has failed.
To add to the joke, Media Watch last night even scolded a reporter for trusting observations over scary climate model predictions.
UPDATE
First, Media Watch accuses Lord Monckton of fabricating claims of vested interest against warmist Sir John Houghton, without giving the background which suggests that whatever errors Monckton made in framing his allegations, the real substance of his allegation were drawn from media reports. The real vested interests here - that of the IPCC chairman - are the real disgrace.
And to make even clearer the failure of Media Watch to disprove Monckton on the science, here is what its target actually said:
The Barrier Reef Authority has established that sea temperatures in the region of the reef have not changed at all over the last 30 years… I have the figures from the Barrier Reef Authority. I have their chart. I’ve got it in my slides. I’ll be showing it at the ball room of the Sofitel Hotel at 5.30 in Melbourne today.Here is how little effort Media Watch put into checking Monckton’s information:
Well, we weren’t at his Lordship’s lecture, so we don’t know what figures were on his slide.Here is the Media Watch ”rebuttal:
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says it doesn’t measure sea temperatures itself, and doesn’t know where his figures come from.And here is John McLean’s health warning on that “rebuttal”:
But its chief scientist says that what’s important is the trend over the past century or so.The peer reviewed science we rely on indicates that there has been an increase in ocean temperatures in the last 130 years
Jonathon Holmes showed a graph of temperatures over the last 100 years, with average temperatures for each period, I think of 20 years (it might have been ten, it was shown so fast). A rising trend was indicated on that graph.
The graph source was the HadSST2 dataset and since I have a copy of the same data and can extract the relevant data, I can make the following comments.
1 - HadSST2 is based on 5 degree Latitude x 5 degree longitude grid cells. The grid cell that includes the top of Cape York also has sea temperatures from the Gulf of Carpentaria. The other two grid cells cover a substantial area out into the Coral Sea and it’s dubious to claim that the temperature in each cell is an accurate recording of reef temperatures. (In fact these temperatures are reported by ships but what ships would deliberately sail along the reef when it threatens to tear the bottom out of the ship?)
===
The end of the world is nighish
Andrew Bolt
Tim Blair is rightly amazed that Age writer Kenneth Davidson could still peddle such apocalyptic tripe:
Britain’s Met Office says the world is on a path towards a potential increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees as early as 2060. If this occurs, only about half a billion people out of about 9 billion will survive, according to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate change and adviser to the British government.UPDATE
As an antidote, read Dr Dennis Jensen’s fine speech in Parliament yesterday on global warming hysteria and the Rudd Government’s deceitfully named ETS:
===
How to blame humans for anything
Andrew Bolt
Niche modeller David Stockwell is profoundly unimpressed with what’s billed as the latest “proof” of man-made warming - that winds are now pushing rain away from Western Australia, and dumping snow on Antarctica. And the funny thing is that not even the man spruiking this ”proof”, Professor Tas van Ommen, seems to have much faith in it:
The basic conclusion is that if this is being driven by human impact then you would expect it to continue but as climate change continues to change, the current situation changes too.So if this keeps going, that’s evidence of man-made warming. And if it doesn’t, that’s evidence of climate change. It’s a win-win. And when you see van Ommen’s reasoning for assuming man is to blame you see exactly the same kind of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose reasoning:
This pattern has strengthened in the past 30 years and some of the computer models that reproduce this are showing that it looks like it has happened because of greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide – and also ozone (being depleted).The models that reproduced this warming must be believed, but the blame-man ones that didn’t should be ignored.
And here’s the seal to the deal: this great change in the Antarctic oscillation just brings us to where we were in 1960. From Jones, J. M. and M. Widmann, 2004. Early peak in Antarctic oscillation index. Nature, 432, 290–291:
Here we reconstruct the austral summer (December–January) Antarctic oscillation index from sea-level pressure measurements over the twentieth century5 and find that large positive values, and positive trends of a similar magnitude to those of past decades, also occurred around 1960, and that strong negative trends occurred afterwards. This positive Antarctic oscillation index and large positive trend during a period before ozone-depleting chemicals were released into the atmosphere and before marked anthropogenic warming, together with the later negative trend, indicate that natural forcing factors or internal mechanisms in the climate system must also strongly influence the state of the Antarctic oscillation.(Thanks to reader Berfel and also to reader Andrew on Stockwell’s thread.)
===
And it may not even work
Andrew Bolt
All that pain - for what?
Junior climate change minister Greg Combet was unable to guarantee the ETS would reduce Australia’s emissions by 2020(Thanks to various readers.)
===
Baillieu plays the race card
Andrew Bolt
I’m as opposed to racisim as is Ted Baillieu, but the Opposition Leader is feeding a damaging myth here - with only the Left to applaud him:
RACIST thugs have been put on notice with Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu saying Victoria has serious problems with racist behaviour and racial violence…As I’ve reported several times. the race problem behind many of these bashings is not the one Baillieu so easily suggests. But I guess to point out such facts would be racist.
This follows a virulent anti-Australian campaign in the Indian media after a rise in the number of reported assaults on Indian students and cab drivers.
In a move aimed to wedge the Brumby Government on its record on law and order, Mr Baillieu said racist attacks had been increasing for four years, especially against international students
===
So many visions, so little action
Andrew Bolt
Another Rudd vision involving plenty of speeches and blueprints, and nothing practical:
THE Rudd government has outlined its grand plan to create a scientifically-engaged Australia. It wants to get Australians thinking more about science and will establish, for the first time, a national framework aimed at “catapulting science into classrooms, boardrooms and lounge rooms”.It’s like the 2020 ideas summit in slow motion, with precisely the same lack of action. Spin, spin, spin.
===
Your future, as advertised
Andrew Bolt
The Superbowl coverage today featured Audi’s new “Green Police” ads, which are either laughing with or at…
Another version:
The scary thing is that when you first see them you’re not sure if they’ve a warning or endorsement - such are our times. I mean, check the question in the campaign’s earnest interactive quiz, when a Green Police officer starts: ”I come to your house for surprise visit, what kind of a light bulb should I find there?”
Hey! Is this actually a training aide for Kevin Rudd’s own light globe police?
===
No, Prime Minister. That drought wasn’t man-made, either
Andrew Bolt
Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:
This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observedPrime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:
BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…But now comes the latest evidence that Rudd and Karoly were wrong: in fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters:
In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.
“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”
Previous studies of the recent drought in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) have noted that low rainfall totals have been accompanied by anomalously high air temperatures. Subsequent studies have interpreted an identified trend in the residual timeseries of non-rainfall related temperature variability as a signal of anthropogenic change, further speculating that increased air temperature has exacerbated the drought through increasing evapotranspiration rates. In this study, we explore an alternative explanation of the recent increases in air temperature. This study demonstrates that significant misunderstanding of known processes of land surface – atmosphere interactions has led to the incorrect attribution of the causes of the anomalous temperatures, as well as significant misunderstanding of their impact on evaporation within the Murray-Darling Basin…What’s causing the evaporation and temperatures is not (man-made) warming. It’s kind of the other way around: more sunshine, through lack of cloud cover, and lack of rain and therefore evaporation is causing higher temperatures.
However, to accept the correlation [between temperature and rainfall] as the sole basis for the attribution of cause to human emissions is to implicitly assume that the correlation represents an entirely correct model of the sole driver of maximum air temperature. This is clearly not the case.
And guess which scandal-ridden and alarmist IPCC report relied on Karoly’s claims? Reader Baa Humbug:
===
Apocalypse delayed
Andrew Bolt
Fifty per cent of hype deducted:
Glaciologists at the Laboratory for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography (LEGOS РCNRS/CNES/IRD/Universit̩ Toulouse 3) and their US and Canadian colleagues (1) have shown that previous studies have largely overestimated mass loss from Alaskan glaciers over the past 40 years. Recent data from the SPOT 5 and ASTER satellites have enabled researchers to extensively map mass loss in these glaciers, which contributed 0.12 mm/year to sea-level rise between 1962 and 2006, rather than 0.17 mm/year as previously estimated.(Via Watts Up With That.)
Monday, February 08, 2010
SARAH PALIN at Tea Party Convention: We Need a Commander in Chief
At National Tea Party Convention Sarah Palin tells the crowd, "We need a Commander in Chief not a law professor."
Sarah Palin at the National Tea Party: Our Military is a Force of Good Not a Group to Apologize For
Sarah Palin at the National Tea Party Convention spoke about President Obama's national security policies. She told the president that our military is to be applauded not apologized for.
Headlines Monday 8th February 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
She makes demands of us all, but she is worth serving. Lady liberty disappointed with Lincoln, once, long ago.
=== Bible Quote ===
“Let those who love the LORD hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.”- Psalm 97:10
===
Fatalities and multiple injuries reported after massive explosion at Connecticut power plant that was under construction.
Huge explosion at power plant
UP to 50 people are feared dead and at least 20 injured in a blast at an energy plant in the US
Brennan: Christmas Bomb Suspect Not Political Issue
Obama's top counterterrorism adviser slams politicians for using national security issues 'as a political football'
Sarah in 2012? Palin Says She's 'Willing'
Former Alaska governor says she'd put her credentials up against Obama's any day
Iran Detains 7 Tied to U.S.-Funded Radio
Seven accused of training outside Iran in sabotage, disturbing public order and spreading anti-gov't rumors
'Climate-Gate' Scientist Contemplated Suicide
The scientist at the center of the "climate-gate" e-mail scandal has revealed that he was so traumatized by the global backlash against him that he contemplated suicide. Professor Phil Jones said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times that he had thought about killing himself "several times." He acknowledged similarities to Dr. David Kelly, the scientist who committed suicide after being exposed as the source for a BBC report that alleged the government had "sexed up" evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq. In e-mails that were hacked into and seized upon by global-warming sceptics before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, Jones appeared to call upon his colleagues to destroy scientific data rather than release it to people intent on discrediting their work monitoring climate change. Jones, 57, said he was unprepared for the scandal. “I am just a scientist. I have no training in PR or dealing with crises.” - it would have been easier for him if he hadn't lied in his science, or smeared others - ed.
Asian crime syndicates are abandoning historic triad gang structures and using ordinary Australians for one-off operations in the multi-billion dollar drug trade.
Two dead, 20 rescued from floods
A WOMAN and a youth have died and 20 others rescued from heavy flooding in central Queensland.
Mining magnate eyes rich list top spot
CLIVE Palmer may become Australia's richest man after his $69 billion coal deal with China.
Google leaps barrier with translator phone
GOOGLE'S making the first phone able to translate foreign languages almost instantly.
Good friends over fitness or finances
RELATIONSHIPS come first for most Australians over money, health, fitness or career success.
Many Australian homes unwary death traps
HUNDREDS of homes that have been fitted with foil insulation under the Rudd government's stimulus program have been turned into potential death traps because installers have laid the insulation over live wires or used metal fasteners, causing it to become electrified.
Teenager's death posted on Facebook first
WHEN Angela and Maryanne Vourlis woke up yesterday, their 20th birthday, they logged on to Facebook expecting to read well wishes and greetings from friends. Horrifically, the twins were confronted with the devastating news their brother Bobby, 17, had been killed in a triple-fatal accident. He and two friends died when the car they were in crashed in heavy rain in Sydney's west early yesterday.
Half naked women protest election
SEVERAL young topless women barged into a Ukrainian polling station, rowdily protesting before a candidate cast his ballot.
Ten die on drifting Gulf migrant boat
AT least 10 migrants died and 30 were missing when the boat smuggling them from Somalia to Yemen suffered an engine failure in the Gulf of Aden, officials said today. Seventy people, mostly Ethiopians, were rescued when the coastguard in the northern breakaway state of Somaliland's Sanag region spotted the boat drifting toward shore. "The rescued passengers told us that the boat was carrying around 110 migrants when it left," Said Ige Mohamed, the head of immigration for Sanag province, told AFP by phone. "Unfortunately, 10 were confirmed dead and 30 others are still missing in the sea," he said. Mohamed explained that the migrants presumably spent several days huddled inside the small boat with nothing to eat or drink and apparently jumped into the water upon seeing the coast. - Rudd causes this - ed.
Israel arrests Australian activist in raid
AN Australian woman is one of two foreign activists arrested by Israel's military in a pre-dawn raid in the occupied West Bank. Soldiers raided an apartment in the town of Ramallah about 3am on Sunday (1200 AEDT) and arrested the two activists, Bridgette Chappell of Australia and Ariadna Jove Marti of Spain, according to the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The soldiers also confiscated cameras, a computer, pro-Palestinian banners and ISM registration forms, according to Ryan Olander, a US activist who was at the home at the time of the raid.
Prehistoric human bones found in Asian cave
MALAYSIAN researchers believe they have discovered a new set of prehistoric human bones in a cave near the largest man-make lake in south east Asia, newspapers reported today. The skeletal remains are of a youth who died 8,000 to 11,000 years ago, the Sunday Star quoted Nik Hasan Shuhaimi, deputy director of the Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation of the National University of Malaysia, as saying.
Murder of drug dealer about money, police allege
DRUG dealer with links to an outlaw motorcycle gang is believed to have been killed over a fight about money. Neighbours of the 42-year-old Glenmore Park man rang police about 10.15pm on Saturday after hearing several gunshots fired inside the home on Sheoak Place. Three men wearing balaclavas were seen leaving the house shortly after the gunshots, leaving the resident to die. The man's name has not been released but he was known to police as a drug trafficker for an outlaw motorcycle gang. Police believe he was involved in a dispute over money.
=== Comments ===
America Is a Great Power, What's Wrong With That?
By Bradley Blakeman
In 2009 President Obama began his term in office by apologizing to the world for past-perceived U.S. transgressions of arrogance and heavy-handedness.
The president appeared to believe that if he just changed the tone he could unilaterally disarm our enemies and win back our allies.
The fact is, since Obama took office, the world is a much more dangerous place and America has been benefited from his weak of leadership and resolve.
Let’s look at the state of the world with Obama in charge:
- North Korea: The Obama administration has had NO effect on North Korea’s continued march toward maintaining and increasing their nuclear arms threat to the region and the world;
- Venezuela: Obama has become the new “Satan” according to Chavez. Our president had NO effect on better relations with a leader he criticized George Bush for isolating;
- China: Obama treats the PRC with kid gloves. Why? Because he’s afraid to offend the largest of America’s creditors. As a result China has not been helpful with North Korea, environmental responsibility or trade equality;
- The Middle East: No progress has been attempted or made with regard to real efforts to engage the parties on a lasting and sustained peace;
- Europe: The president spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth to Europe in his first year. But he came away with next to nothing to show for it. From apologizing, to pandering, picking up an undeserved medal and lobbying for the Olympics, (an effort that was doomed before he even took off from Washington), the president has come up empty handed;
- Russia: Obama surrendered our national security interests in Europe when he knuckled into Russia’s demand for America not to place missile defense systems in former USSR satellites with nothing in return to show for it.
The United States of America has nothing to apologize for. Why is this administration so embarrassed by America’s greatness?
===
AUSTRALIA WINS
Tim Blair
This rocks:
===
AC/DT
Tim Blair
The sound online is way skritchy, but you can still get a sense of how great were The DTs – our house band at The Daily Telegraph – during the office Christmas party:
My role: roadie. From each according to his abilities, etc.
UPDATE. Some background on our performers. On bass is Justin Lees, now working with ex-Fox international editor Scott Norvell on big globey projects; rhythm guitarist Herbie owns Billie, this site’s official dog; that’s former editor Campbell Reid on bagpipes; sensational singer Tim Ireland owes me at least 20 cartons of cigarettes; when I was ill in 2008, soloist Drew Gibson delivered a turbo Porsche for life-saving road therapy; guitarist, Walkley winner and Saturday editor Michael Beach amped up the claps; Sydney Confidential editrix Annette Sharp is under-represented here, but earlier performed an immaculate version of Warren Zevon’s Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me; and ex-Saints drummer Iain Sheddon was stolen from The Australian.
===
SCEPTICISM SETTLED
Tim Blair
As soon as something accurate turns up in the IPCC’s Nobel-winning 2007 report, I’ll be sure to let you know. Meanwhile:
===
KENNEDY CURSE
Tim Blair
David Freddoso, writing in 2009:
===
NO WONDER HE QUIT
Tim Blair
Graham Readfearn, formerly of the Courier-Mail, struggles bitterly through a debate with adults. For someone who claims to have all the science on his side, he does a remarkable job of avoiding it. Two slices of Readfearnian wisdom:
===
SHE MOCKS THE ONE
Tim Blair
Nice line from Sarah Palin, speaking in Nashville:
“How’s that hopey-changey thing workin’ out for you?” she asked at one point.
Instapundit has a post-speech roundup, video and pictures.
===
FRENCH FRED
Tim Blair
Fred Nile was ridiculed in 2002 for suggesting a ban on Muslim dress due to such garments offering easy means of concealing weapons:
Two burqa-wearing bank robbers have held up a post office near Paris, using a handgun concealed beneath an Islamic-style full veil, court officials said …
France is seeking to restrict use of the head-to-toe Islamic veil on the grounds it is incompatible with French values, after a parliament report called for a ban in schools, hospitals, government offices and public transport.
===
COMPOST INFRACTION
Tim Blair
A warmenist wonderland:
===
Have green bans killed the dream of a green North?
Andrew Bolt
Has green faith destroyed a marvellous chance to grow Australia?
But suspicion grows that what’s really holding back agriculture in the far North is not the dry season, but green philosophy - especially that advanced by the warmist CSIRO - when I read this:
But it gets worse:
The CSIRO also says dams in that area will be hard to build - but where there’s no will there’s always no way.
===
Let’s all show our tolerance by sneering at Micks
Andrew Bolt
One of our waning sources of moral authority trawls for popularity by siding against a needed other. And the bizarre thing is that endorsing the mockery of Catholics is actually hailed by the Chief Commissioner as gesture of tolerance:
POLICE Chief Commissioner Simon Overland received a rousing reception at yesterday’s gay pride march. Hundreds of supporters cheered and wolf whistled as Mr Overland, joined by members of Victoria Police, marched down Fitzroy St, St Kilda.
“Never in my life have I experienced the sort of reception and the sort of welcome that we got walking down the street to Catani Gardens today, it was just unbelievable,” Mr Overland said…
”It’s a message to the broader community about tolerance and inclusivity,” he said
===
Christmas present: go straight to Australia instead
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s boat people policy is collapsing, with Christmas Island now so full that the allegedly “vulnerable” are being moved to the mainland:
A GROUP of asylum seekers has been moved to Melbourne without visas as Christmas Island nears breaking point.
And 94 asylum seekers and crew picked up off Ashmore Reef last Thursday are being held aboard a navy ship until at least Wednesday, while authorities try to free up beds.
As another unauthorised boat was intercepted yesterday, authorities confirmed 20 “vulnerable” asylum seekers were removed from Christmas Island on Friday.
Eight went to the Melbourne Immigration Transit Centre at Broadmeadows and the remaining 12 to Brisbane. They included five unaccompanied minors and five family groups.
“No determination has been made on their cases as yet,” an Immigration Department spokesman said. “They’ve been chosen for transfer because they are vulnerable people.”
===
Rudd slipping, ETS plummetting
Andrew Bolt
Tony Abbott will be cautiously pleased, although aware he’s still behind:
Blair appalled as well
Andrew Bolt
Another Insiders’ conservative protests - give us back our chair:
Sharp-eyed viewers will have noticed yesterday that News Limited’s million-hits-a-week conservative blogger Andrew Bolt has lost his chair. Now, before anyone screams bias, we don’t mean he’s been kicked off: no, Bolt was on air but, rather than being seated to the far right of the screen, as is customary, he had to sit on the left. Was this a joke, or political correctness gone mad? Well, it is the ABC. Less than an hour after the show went to air, Bolt took to his blog, saying the show’s host, the indomitable Barrie Cassidy, told him the change was deemed necessary to “avoid seeming to label the panel’s conservative commentators” by making them sit to the right. Trouble is, they liked it there. Bolt’s News Limited colleague Tim Blair explains the seating had become an in-joke among the conservatives, invariably made to sit there. “We call it the naughty corner,” Blair says. “And it’s not to the right. It’s to the far right.” Bolt told his audience sitting on the left felt wrong to him, adding: “I want my chair back!” Blair does, too. “I was comfortable there,” he said. “Also, on behalf of my fellow troglodytes, may I say: we don’t like change.”
===
The IPCC scandals: yet another coverup
Andrew Bolt
Can the IPCC’s 2007 stink any higher?
And this is the document on which Kevin Rudd relies most for his great green tax on everything.
===
Journalist versus the sceptics. Listen if you have no pity
Andrew Bolt
The global warming debate in Brisbane between Lord Monckton and Professor Ian Plimer on the one hand and warmists Professor Barry Brook and green journalist Graham Readfearn on the other can now be heard here.
I’m not surprised Readfearn has not commented on his blog about the debate or his extraordinary contribution to it, so rich in abuse and so utterly devoid of argument. Nor am I surprised that he’s since quit the Courier Mail.
This is another proof of the maxim that journalists sound most authoritative when they are protected from debate. Take David Marr, who sounded like the Prophet Elijah when allowed to preach unchallenged at Media Watch, but is surprisingly ineffectual in debate on the panel on Insiders. That Readfearn could have dared to write for the Courier Mail for so long as its expert on global warming seems farcical when he’s put on a stage with people who actually know a little of the subject themselves.
How many other journalists pontificating on global warming would be equally embarrased in such circumstances?
And here’s another thing that doesn’t surprise me, having heard this debate. It’s no wonder barely a single Australian warmist scientist dared to debate Monckton on his tour here, or that warmist publications such as The Age preferred to counter his arguments by mocking his looks.
(To be fair, here is my own debate on the issue, with a pre-prepped climate scientist in the audience and greens on the panel. I’m only sorry I had no chance to make an answer half as long as the questions put to me.)
===
150 to run a non-existent scheme on a non-existent problem
Andrew Bolt
If this is how many people Kevin Rudd needs to run nothing, how many thousands will it take to run his colossal emissions trading scheme when it actually exists?
===
At the home of a prominent warmist
Andrew Bolt
Somewhere behind this wall of snow outside the White House windows is Barack Obama, working on his plan to stop the planet from getting so warm.
She makes demands of us all, but she is worth serving. Lady liberty disappointed with Lincoln, once, long ago.
=== Bible Quote ===
“Let those who love the LORD hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.”- Psalm 97:10
===
Fatalities and multiple injuries reported after massive explosion at Connecticut power plant that was under construction.
Huge explosion at power plant
UP to 50 people are feared dead and at least 20 injured in a blast at an energy plant in the US
Brennan: Christmas Bomb Suspect Not Political Issue
Obama's top counterterrorism adviser slams politicians for using national security issues 'as a political football'
Sarah in 2012? Palin Says She's 'Willing'
Former Alaska governor says she'd put her credentials up against Obama's any day
Iran Detains 7 Tied to U.S.-Funded Radio
Seven accused of training outside Iran in sabotage, disturbing public order and spreading anti-gov't rumors
'Climate-Gate' Scientist Contemplated Suicide
The scientist at the center of the "climate-gate" e-mail scandal has revealed that he was so traumatized by the global backlash against him that he contemplated suicide. Professor Phil Jones said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times that he had thought about killing himself "several times." He acknowledged similarities to Dr. David Kelly, the scientist who committed suicide after being exposed as the source for a BBC report that alleged the government had "sexed up" evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq. In e-mails that were hacked into and seized upon by global-warming sceptics before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, Jones appeared to call upon his colleagues to destroy scientific data rather than release it to people intent on discrediting their work monitoring climate change. Jones, 57, said he was unprepared for the scandal. “I am just a scientist. I have no training in PR or dealing with crises.” - it would have been easier for him if he hadn't lied in his science, or smeared others - ed.
Asian crime syndicates are abandoning historic triad gang structures and using ordinary Australians for one-off operations in the multi-billion dollar drug trade.
Two dead, 20 rescued from floods
A WOMAN and a youth have died and 20 others rescued from heavy flooding in central Queensland.
Mining magnate eyes rich list top spot
CLIVE Palmer may become Australia's richest man after his $69 billion coal deal with China.
Google leaps barrier with translator phone
GOOGLE'S making the first phone able to translate foreign languages almost instantly.
Good friends over fitness or finances
RELATIONSHIPS come first for most Australians over money, health, fitness or career success.
Many Australian homes unwary death traps
HUNDREDS of homes that have been fitted with foil insulation under the Rudd government's stimulus program have been turned into potential death traps because installers have laid the insulation over live wires or used metal fasteners, causing it to become electrified.
Teenager's death posted on Facebook first
WHEN Angela and Maryanne Vourlis woke up yesterday, their 20th birthday, they logged on to Facebook expecting to read well wishes and greetings from friends. Horrifically, the twins were confronted with the devastating news their brother Bobby, 17, had been killed in a triple-fatal accident. He and two friends died when the car they were in crashed in heavy rain in Sydney's west early yesterday.
Half naked women protest election
SEVERAL young topless women barged into a Ukrainian polling station, rowdily protesting before a candidate cast his ballot.
Ten die on drifting Gulf migrant boat
AT least 10 migrants died and 30 were missing when the boat smuggling them from Somalia to Yemen suffered an engine failure in the Gulf of Aden, officials said today. Seventy people, mostly Ethiopians, were rescued when the coastguard in the northern breakaway state of Somaliland's Sanag region spotted the boat drifting toward shore. "The rescued passengers told us that the boat was carrying around 110 migrants when it left," Said Ige Mohamed, the head of immigration for Sanag province, told AFP by phone. "Unfortunately, 10 were confirmed dead and 30 others are still missing in the sea," he said. Mohamed explained that the migrants presumably spent several days huddled inside the small boat with nothing to eat or drink and apparently jumped into the water upon seeing the coast. - Rudd causes this - ed.
Israel arrests Australian activist in raid
AN Australian woman is one of two foreign activists arrested by Israel's military in a pre-dawn raid in the occupied West Bank. Soldiers raided an apartment in the town of Ramallah about 3am on Sunday (1200 AEDT) and arrested the two activists, Bridgette Chappell of Australia and Ariadna Jove Marti of Spain, according to the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The soldiers also confiscated cameras, a computer, pro-Palestinian banners and ISM registration forms, according to Ryan Olander, a US activist who was at the home at the time of the raid.
Prehistoric human bones found in Asian cave
MALAYSIAN researchers believe they have discovered a new set of prehistoric human bones in a cave near the largest man-make lake in south east Asia, newspapers reported today. The skeletal remains are of a youth who died 8,000 to 11,000 years ago, the Sunday Star quoted Nik Hasan Shuhaimi, deputy director of the Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation of the National University of Malaysia, as saying.
Murder of drug dealer about money, police allege
DRUG dealer with links to an outlaw motorcycle gang is believed to have been killed over a fight about money. Neighbours of the 42-year-old Glenmore Park man rang police about 10.15pm on Saturday after hearing several gunshots fired inside the home on Sheoak Place. Three men wearing balaclavas were seen leaving the house shortly after the gunshots, leaving the resident to die. The man's name has not been released but he was known to police as a drug trafficker for an outlaw motorcycle gang. Police believe he was involved in a dispute over money.
=== Comments ===
America Is a Great Power, What's Wrong With That?
By Bradley Blakeman
In 2009 President Obama began his term in office by apologizing to the world for past-perceived U.S. transgressions of arrogance and heavy-handedness.
The president appeared to believe that if he just changed the tone he could unilaterally disarm our enemies and win back our allies.
The fact is, since Obama took office, the world is a much more dangerous place and America has been benefited from his weak of leadership and resolve.
Let’s look at the state of the world with Obama in charge:
- North Korea: The Obama administration has had NO effect on North Korea’s continued march toward maintaining and increasing their nuclear arms threat to the region and the world;
- Venezuela: Obama has become the new “Satan” according to Chavez. Our president had NO effect on better relations with a leader he criticized George Bush for isolating;
- China: Obama treats the PRC with kid gloves. Why? Because he’s afraid to offend the largest of America’s creditors. As a result China has not been helpful with North Korea, environmental responsibility or trade equality;
- The Middle East: No progress has been attempted or made with regard to real efforts to engage the parties on a lasting and sustained peace;
- Europe: The president spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth to Europe in his first year. But he came away with next to nothing to show for it. From apologizing, to pandering, picking up an undeserved medal and lobbying for the Olympics, (an effort that was doomed before he even took off from Washington), the president has come up empty handed;
- Russia: Obama surrendered our national security interests in Europe when he knuckled into Russia’s demand for America not to place missile defense systems in former USSR satellites with nothing in return to show for it.
The United States of America has nothing to apologize for. Why is this administration so embarrassed by America’s greatness?
===
AUSTRALIA WINS
Tim Blair
This rocks:
An Australian firm has signed a $60bn deal to supply coal to Chinese power stations.We need an Australian Tim Montana to commemorate our new mega-mine in song. Even better, the mine – six mines, in fact – will apparently require the construction of a new dam, a new power grid, 500km of railway line and a 570km water pipeline. That means jobs, people. Tens of thousands of wonderful, life-enhancing, car-buying, family-building jobs. Naturally, greenoids are bawling:
Clive Palmer, chairman of the company, Resourcehouse, said it was Australia’s “biggest ever export contract”.
Under the deal, the firm will build a new mining complex to give China Power International Development 30m tonnes of coal a year for 20 years.
A $69 billion coal deal announced by mining magnate Clive Palmer and Premier Anna Bligh is “another nail in the coffin of our climate”, says Friends of the Earth Brisbane.Sucked in, losers. But no word yet from Kevin Rudd; he’s likely still consoling little Gracie, who at the moment probably feels let down. We now live in a time when massive job creation is regarded by the Prime Minister as a political liability.
===
AC/DT
Tim Blair
The sound online is way skritchy, but you can still get a sense of how great were The DTs – our house band at The Daily Telegraph – during the office Christmas party:
My role: roadie. From each according to his abilities, etc.
UPDATE. Some background on our performers. On bass is Justin Lees, now working with ex-Fox international editor Scott Norvell on big globey projects; rhythm guitarist Herbie owns Billie, this site’s official dog; that’s former editor Campbell Reid on bagpipes; sensational singer Tim Ireland owes me at least 20 cartons of cigarettes; when I was ill in 2008, soloist Drew Gibson delivered a turbo Porsche for life-saving road therapy; guitarist, Walkley winner and Saturday editor Michael Beach amped up the claps; Sydney Confidential editrix Annette Sharp is under-represented here, but earlier performed an immaculate version of Warren Zevon’s Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me; and ex-Saints drummer Iain Sheddon was stolen from The Australian.
===
SCEPTICISM SETTLED
Tim Blair
As soon as something accurate turns up in the IPCC’s Nobel-winning 2007 report, I’ll be sure to let you know. Meanwhile:
This paper has discovered a series of new flaws in it including:This is the report, remember, upon which Kevin Rudd bases his religious beliefs ("I stand by what the International Panel of Climate Change Scientists have had to say").
• The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company.
• Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters.
• New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished.
• More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups …
And on Friday, it emerged that the IPCC’s panel had wrongly reported that more than half of the Netherlands was below sea level because it had failed to check information supplied by a Dutch government agency.
===
KENNEDY CURSE
Tim Blair
David Freddoso, writing in 2009:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who flies around on private planes so as to tell larger numbers of people how they must live their lives in order to save the planet, wrote a column last year on the lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.And now: “Almost 27 inches (69cm) of snow fell in Philadelphia on Saturday, while Washington DC was hit with one of the worst blizzards in its history.”
===
NO WONDER HE QUIT
Tim Blair
Graham Readfearn, formerly of the Courier-Mail, struggles bitterly through a debate with adults. For someone who claims to have all the science on his side, he does a remarkable job of avoiding it. Two slices of Readfearnian wisdom:
The essential thing to note here is that by doing nothing we continue to do nothing.Can’t fault him there. And:
The scientists have been talking about climate change for about 40 years and so far the free market has been allowed to flourish and carry on regardless.Why, the nerve of that free market. It’s as though it thinks it’s free or something.
===
SHE MOCKS THE ONE
Tim Blair
Nice line from Sarah Palin, speaking in Nashville:
“How’s that hopey-changey thing workin’ out for you?” she asked at one point.
Instapundit has a post-speech roundup, video and pictures.
===
FRENCH FRED
Tim Blair
Fred Nile was ridiculed in 2002 for suggesting a ban on Muslim dress due to such garments offering easy means of concealing weapons:
“His comments are plainly ludicrous,” said Dr Jonas.But it keeps happening:
Two burqa-wearing bank robbers have held up a post office near Paris, using a handgun concealed beneath an Islamic-style full veil, court officials said …
France is seeking to restrict use of the head-to-toe Islamic veil on the grounds it is incompatible with French values, after a parliament report called for a ban in schools, hospitals, government offices and public transport.
===
COMPOST INFRACTION
Tim Blair
A warmenist wonderland:
===
Have green bans killed the dream of a green North?
Andrew Bolt
Has green faith destroyed a marvellous chance to grow Australia?
NORTHERN Australia will never become an important food bowl to replace the drought-stricken Murray-Darling, despite massive irrigation plans and a billion litres of rain a year, a Rudd government taskforce has concluded. The expert panel, comprising the Northern Australian Land and Water Taskforce, will today release a landmark report into economic opportunities for the northern parts of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia that places new and strict limits on the region’s potential for agricultural production.On the face of it, it seems strange that the hot and often wet north is ruled out for intensive agriculture, when other nations at the same latitude seem to be able to manage it.
But suspicion grows that what’s really holding back agriculture in the far North is not the dry season, but green philosophy - especially that advanced by the warmist CSIRO - when I read this:
Referring to a water study by the CSIRO, the taskforce concludes the growth of agricultural production in the north will be limited, despite rainfall of up to 2m a year in some areas. By 2030, there will be less water available in the north than there was in 2000, the taskforce predicts.So already the task force is accepting the global warming predictions of the CSIRO, relying on regional models which studies have found worthless.
But it gets worse:
Though the north receives about a billion litres of rain a year, equivalent to eight-and-a-half times the annual runoff in the Murray-Darling Basin or 2000 times the capacity of Sydney Harbour, about 20 per cent of it enters the rivers and streams and about 15 per cent recharges groundwater resources. The remaining 65 per cent enters the soil and is absorbed by plants.Easy fixed. So build a dam, right? But no:
“Despite these huge volumes of water, the north can be described as being water-limited,” the report states. The taskforce says this paradox arises because there is almost no rain for the remaining six months.
The CSIRO water study, presented to the taskforce last year, found there was not enough water to irrigate large swaths of land in the north without doing major damage to the rivers and the surrounding environment. The report rules out more dams on environmental grounds...Rivers before people. We’ve been there before, down in water-restricted Melbourne. Queenslanders, too.
The CSIRO also says dams in that area will be hard to build - but where there’s no will there’s always no way.
===
Let’s all show our tolerance by sneering at Micks
Andrew Bolt
One of our waning sources of moral authority trawls for popularity by siding against a needed other. And the bizarre thing is that endorsing the mockery of Catholics is actually hailed by the Chief Commissioner as gesture of tolerance:
POLICE Chief Commissioner Simon Overland received a rousing reception at yesterday’s gay pride march. Hundreds of supporters cheered and wolf whistled as Mr Overland, joined by members of Victoria Police, marched down Fitzroy St, St Kilda.
“Never in my life have I experienced the sort of reception and the sort of welcome that we got walking down the street to Catani Gardens today, it was just unbelievable,” Mr Overland said…
”It’s a message to the broader community about tolerance and inclusivity,” he said
===
Christmas present: go straight to Australia instead
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s boat people policy is collapsing, with Christmas Island now so full that the allegedly “vulnerable” are being moved to the mainland:
A GROUP of asylum seekers has been moved to Melbourne without visas as Christmas Island nears breaking point.
And 94 asylum seekers and crew picked up off Ashmore Reef last Thursday are being held aboard a navy ship until at least Wednesday, while authorities try to free up beds.
As another unauthorised boat was intercepted yesterday, authorities confirmed 20 “vulnerable” asylum seekers were removed from Christmas Island on Friday.
Eight went to the Melbourne Immigration Transit Centre at Broadmeadows and the remaining 12 to Brisbane. They included five unaccompanied minors and five family groups.
“No determination has been made on their cases as yet,” an Immigration Department spokesman said. “They’ve been chosen for transfer because they are vulnerable people.”
===
Rudd slipping, ETS plummetting
Andrew Bolt
Tony Abbott will be cautiously pleased, although aware he’s still behind:
TONY Abbott’s ascension to leadership has boosted the Coalition vote, and backing for the government’s emissions trading scheme has taken a knock, in an Age/Nielsen poll showing people are confused on the climate change alternatives.===
Labor has fallen by 2 points on a two-party basis, but retains a solid 54-46 per cent lead, while support for its trading scheme is down by 10 points since late November.
Blair appalled as well
Andrew Bolt
Another Insiders’ conservative protests - give us back our chair:
Sharp-eyed viewers will have noticed yesterday that News Limited’s million-hits-a-week conservative blogger Andrew Bolt has lost his chair. Now, before anyone screams bias, we don’t mean he’s been kicked off: no, Bolt was on air but, rather than being seated to the far right of the screen, as is customary, he had to sit on the left. Was this a joke, or political correctness gone mad? Well, it is the ABC. Less than an hour after the show went to air, Bolt took to his blog, saying the show’s host, the indomitable Barrie Cassidy, told him the change was deemed necessary to “avoid seeming to label the panel’s conservative commentators” by making them sit to the right. Trouble is, they liked it there. Bolt’s News Limited colleague Tim Blair explains the seating had become an in-joke among the conservatives, invariably made to sit there. “We call it the naughty corner,” Blair says. “And it’s not to the right. It’s to the far right.” Bolt told his audience sitting on the left felt wrong to him, adding: “I want my chair back!” Blair does, too. “I was comfortable there,” he said. “Also, on behalf of my fellow troglodytes, may I say: we don’t like change.”
===
The IPCC scandals: yet another coverup
Andrew Bolt
Can the IPCC’s 2007 stink any higher?
The Meteorological Office is blocking public scrutiny of the central role played by its top climate scientist in a highly controversial report by the beleaguered United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.They falsely claim it’s never been hotter - but won’t let you check their reasoning why. They demand we change the entire way we run the economy - but refuse to divulge how they came to that conclusion.
Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report – that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years.
And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.
By the time the 2007 report was being written, the graph had been heavily criticised by climate sceptics who had shown it minimised the ‘medieval warm period’ around 1000AD, when the Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland… Early drafts of the report were fiercely contested by official IPCC reviewers, who cited other scientific papers stating that the 1,300-year claim and the graph were inaccurate.
But the final version, approved by Prof Mitchell, the relevant chapter’s review editor, swept aside these concerns.
Now, the Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The block has been endorsed in writing by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth – whose department has responsibility for the Met Office.
And this is the document on which Kevin Rudd relies most for his great green tax on everything.
===
Journalist versus the sceptics. Listen if you have no pity
Andrew Bolt
The global warming debate in Brisbane between Lord Monckton and Professor Ian Plimer on the one hand and warmists Professor Barry Brook and green journalist Graham Readfearn on the other can now be heard here.
I’m not surprised Readfearn has not commented on his blog about the debate or his extraordinary contribution to it, so rich in abuse and so utterly devoid of argument. Nor am I surprised that he’s since quit the Courier Mail.
This is another proof of the maxim that journalists sound most authoritative when they are protected from debate. Take David Marr, who sounded like the Prophet Elijah when allowed to preach unchallenged at Media Watch, but is surprisingly ineffectual in debate on the panel on Insiders. That Readfearn could have dared to write for the Courier Mail for so long as its expert on global warming seems farcical when he’s put on a stage with people who actually know a little of the subject themselves.
How many other journalists pontificating on global warming would be equally embarrased in such circumstances?
And here’s another thing that doesn’t surprise me, having heard this debate. It’s no wonder barely a single Australian warmist scientist dared to debate Monckton on his tour here, or that warmist publications such as The Age preferred to counter his arguments by mocking his looks.
(To be fair, here is my own debate on the issue, with a pre-prepped climate scientist in the audience and greens on the panel. I’m only sorry I had no chance to make an answer half as long as the questions put to me.)
===
150 to run a non-existent scheme on a non-existent problem
Andrew Bolt
If this is how many people Kevin Rudd needs to run nothing, how many thousands will it take to run his colossal emissions trading scheme when it actually exists?
The Rudd Government set up an authority to run its emissions trading system more than seven months ago, before Parliament had a chance to consider the scheme. More than 150 public servants now work in the growing organisation, whose role is to ‘’implement and administer’’ a scheme the Senate has twice rejected and which might never exist.(Thanks to reader John.)
===
At the home of a prominent warmist
Andrew Bolt
Somewhere behind this wall of snow outside the White House windows is Barack Obama, working on his plan to stop the planet from getting so warm.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
National Day of Mourning
Today Mr Rudd has declared a national day of mourning. Apparently that will be enough to erase from the public memory how bad administration cost the lives of over 170 Australians, over 800 other people suffered burns, 2029 homes were destroyed, 2439 buildings razed and 59 commercial premises lost. Locals aware of the danger were restricted from working to save themselves from green policy. In one instance a person broke the law and used a bull dozer to clear land regardless of administrative penalty.
People lost their homes and in the aftermath there have been restrictions placed on people talking about their plight, so that the danger exists of similar things happening in future. There has been an inquiry, but some media groupings have argued that 'now is not the time for recriminations' so that the same problems may play again, as had happened in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
This story concerns me, as I recently was advised by my bank that I had some thirty days to pay a bill I couldn't pay or in sixty one days the bank would move to keep my unit where I live. There is nothing sinister with the bank I work through, they have done the right thing by me. As a business, they need to be paid so that they can provide the funds to allow business, and homebuyers, to do their work. My problem is that I have been illegally blacklisted from my work by elements of the Department of Education. I am allowed to talk about it, having clean hands on the issue involving the fair reporting of the cover up of the death of school boy Hamidur Rahman. But the media groupings don't have to report on it. So after thirty one months since I left my job, I am losing my place where I live.
There is a symmetry about this, which is appealing to my Mathematics teaching self. Rudd has declared a day of mourning for what he is largely responsible for, and people can't talk about it, and I am losing my unit for another issue people can't talk about.
I am confident in writing that Rudd is largely responsible for this end that some will have ears which perk up, and may anonymously contact me to say it is outrageous to lay this at Rudd's doorstep. But if Rudd is not responsible, let him defend himself. Let him say why it is that the loss of those houses, and those people were not a result of his sexing up lies on global warming and preventing people from taking practical steps to defend themselves. This is a separate issue to the Heiner affair, where Rudd has head of Premier's office in Queensland facilitated the shredding of a child rape victim's evidence. This is a separate issue to Utegate where Rudd's people accepted campaign donations for no reason from people who claimed not to benefit from requests for benefits that were given personal attention from Rudd's people.
Today is a day of mourning for Australia's worst peace time tragedy. I will pray for those who have lost. I ask that if you pray too, that you would consider my issue too, and that of the family of that school boy. Maybe silence is no longer golden.
===
This is an editorial for posting on Zaya's site.
Andrew Breitbart to Media at Tea Party Convention: "It's You That Sucks"
Andrew told the media, "It's not your business model that sucks, it's you that sucks."
Headlines Sunday 7th February 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Cow pox was preferable to smallpox for revolutionary USA. Would Dem's make the same decision today as was made by Washington then?
=== Bible Quotes ===
“He who pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor.”- Proverbs 21:21
And
no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.' Luke 5:39
===
On what would have been Ronald Reagan's 99th birthday, his policies are still affecting America. Take a look at some major (and minor) moments of his presidency.
Obama Won't Quit Reform
President assures despondent Democrats he will not abandon commitment to overhauling health care despite GOP challenges to their congressional dominance
Tea Party Steeped in Division?
Tea partiers who emphasize fiscal responsibility urge unity as some drift in less politically profitable direction
Snow KOs Mid-Atlantic States
Blizzard batters Washington area, knocking out power to thousands as record snowfall is predicted
Anti-Whaling Ship Collides With Japanese Boat Off Antarctica
The anti-whaling ship the Bob Barker and a Japanese harpoon boat collided in the icy waters off Antarctica on Saturday — the second major clash this year in the increasingly aggressive confrontations between the two sides. No one was reportedly injured in the latest strike. The U.S.-based activist group Sea Shepherd, which sends vessels to confront the Japanese fleet each year, said a small hole was torn in the hull of its ship, but it was above the water line and the vessel was not in danger of sinking.
Jennifer and Mick Clark of Kinglake lost two grandchildren in the Black Saturday bushfires at their designated 'safe house'
Longer school hours for children
MORE money will go to needy schools to help fund longer hours and extra specialist teachers.
Taxpayers foot mass murderers' perks
TWO mass murderers are using taxpayers' money to fund their fight for prison perks and computers.
Banker Sung Kyu Chung 'stole $7m for sex with prostitutes'
A HIGH-FLYING Sydney banker who stole $7 million from his employer allegedly spent much of the cash on prostitutes, showering them with lavish gifts. Sung Kyu Chung, 41, gave evidence in Sydney District Court last week where he has pleaded guilty to fraud charges. The senior manager, who worked in the Korea Exchange Bank's Sydney office, was charged in December, 2008 by City Central Fraud Unit detectives.
Keira Knightley's stalker accused arrested
A MAN accused of stalking international actress Keira Knightley's been arrested
Killer feral pigs take over water supplies
GIANT feral pigs are roaming Australia ruining city drinking water and sparking an official cull.
Burqa-clad bank robbers stage French post office hold-up
TWO burqa-wearing bank robbers have held up a post office near Paris, using a handgun concealed beneath an Islamic-style full veil, court officials said. Staff let the pair through the security double doors of the banking branch of the postal office overnight, believing them to be veil-wearing Muslim women, before they flipped back their head coverings and pulled out a gun, officials said.
Switched on mandatory energy move
ALL Australian homes will soon have to undergo a mandatory energy-efficiency assessment costing up to $1,500 per property.
We paid $200m for rented offices
NSW taxpayers are paying more than $200m in rent for Government officials and bureaucrats to work at some of Sydney's prestigious office sites.
Audit exposes 'rorts' rent-a-cop scheme
A CORRUPTION inquiry has been launched into Sydney's largest police station over a "rent-a-cop" rort allegedly being run by a group of officers. The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that several officers at Flemington Local Area Command (LAC) have been questioned by internal affairs investigators over claims they are forging time sheets to earn extra income.
Couple clung on for life as waters raged around them on the Hawkesbury River
A YOUNG couple spent Friday night in the freezing waters of the Hawkesbury River desperately clinging to tree branches and wearing only their swimmers. Police pulled a Kurmond man, 24, and a Wilberforce woman, 23, out of the river at 8.45am yesterday.
Switched on mandatory energy move
ALL Australian homes will soon have to undergo a mandatory energy-efficiency assessment costing up to $1,500 per property.
Gifted kids let down by system
THOUSANDS of potential child geniuses are going unrecognised in schools, leaving many in danger of never reaching their full potential. For some of WA's 35,000 gifted children, their overlooked "gifts" have become a burden, forcing them to turn to misbehaviour or switch off from lessons. According to US child intelligence expert Deborah Ruf, the education system - particularly primary schools - is failing to get the most out of gifted children.
Belinda Neal defies PM's anger course order
TROUBLE-PRONE Labor backbencher Belinda Neal has apparently defied Kevin Rudd, revealing that she never undertook an anger management course after all. Despite the Prime Minister insisting the angry Central Coast MP had displayed a "pattern of unacceptable behaviour" and needed help, Ms Neal said last week it was rubbish - she had never needed treatment for anger issues, and never got it. Ms Neal, who is under siege from internal party challengers who want her seat, admitted seeking "counselling", but not for her fiery temper. She added: "There was no request from the Prime Minister for that at all." This astonishing admission is at odds with what voters were told by Mr Rudd. - They aren't an odd couple, they are the same couple. Can two people with anger management issues survive in the same parliament on the same side of politics? - ed.
=== Comments ===
The Ultimate King of Heels?
By The Stiletto
A spate of salacious new details about John Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter – and his handlers’ desperate, and possibly felonious, attempts at damage control – has become the source of endless talk recently with the publication of the bestselling campaign post-mortem “Game Change” and former campaign aide Andrew Young’s tell-all, “The Politician.” Edwards is just one in a long line of ambitious pols to cheat on his wife, and his affair with Hunter shares a number of interesting parallels with the sex scandals of previous presidents and candidates for the office. For instance:
• James Garfield had his own Rielle Hunter of sorts in the person of an 18-year-old New York Times reporter named Lucia Calhoun. He gave her up when his wife threatened to divorce him, which would have cut his political career short.
• Like Edwards, Grover Cleveland was accused of having fathered an illegitimate child early in his presidential campaign, Ignoring the advice of his aides to lie, he came clean about his affair with Maria Halpin right away and acknowledged being the boy’s father. The thing is, Halpin was something of a loose woman (or worse) and the child could have been fathered by several men, but Cleveland assumed financial responsibility for the child because all the others had wives and children to support.
In contrast, when Edwards became aware that the National Enquirer would name his lover and divulge her pregnancy a couple of weeks before the 2008 Iowa primary, he strong-armed Young – a married father of three – into a public declaration of paternity. In an interview on "Good Morning America" this week Young said he agreed to the ruse out of loyalty to Edwards, compassion for his cancer-stricken wife and because "two very powerful people" assured him that “every viable Democratic candidate” had a skeleton in his or her closet.
When Frances Quinn Hunter was born on February 27, 2008 in California, no father’s name is given on the birth certificate.
In an interview with ABC’s “Nightline” some five months later Edwards admitted to an affair with Hunter, but denied fathering her daughter or making child support payments.
===
God and the President
By Rev. Bill Shuler
At key moments in history, America’s presidents have called upon God. Most notable are the times in which America was in crisis and marked by change.
The issues that face America as outlined in President Obama’s State of the Union address last week are, at their core, issues of the heart. Two wars may have contributed to our deficit but it was the heart of man that created the wars themselves. It was greed that began the mess on Wall Street and greed that brought about the downturn in the housing market. The need of the hour is a call to place our faith not in government but in God.
At key moments in history, America’s presidents would call upon God. Most notable are the times in which America was in crisis and marked by change. Abraham Lincoln spoke of being driven many times to his knees by, “the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.
My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day.” On April 12, 1945, one day after Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral, President Harry Truman concluded his first address before a joint session of Congress with these words, “At this moment I have in my heart a prayer. As I assume my heavy duties, I humbly pray to Almighty God in the words of King Solomon, ‘Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge this Thy so great a people?’ I ask only to be a good and faithful servant of my Lord and my people.” President Truman knew that the strength of our Union would be found in calling upon God’s wisdom.
The issues outlined in the State of the Union Address are not new. They are as old as the scriptures. The Bible addresses:
===
Let it not all be in vain
Piers Akerman
AS Australians mark the first anniversary of the worst peacetime disaster in our history, the Black Saturday bushfires, it is worth asking whether anything has been learned from the tragedy.
They are coordinated in government and opposition and a threat wherever they may be, using the law to abuse their trust. They are a sponge for public monies, and a waster of good will. I am sorry I ever, through being even handed, endorsed anything they said to a child. They have invaded our schools and corrupted our curriculum. I don’t want there to be laws to prevent them. I don’t want people to take extreme action against them. I want responsible people to highlight their weaknesses and failures, and show the light of truth on the issues. The rest will follow. - ed.
===
BLOGGERS WIN
Tim Blair
In The Spectator, Matt Ridley hails tenacious amateurs:
UPDATE. Mark Steyn:
“Climate change” is not a story of climate change, which has been a fact of life throughout our planet’s history. It is a far more contemporary story about the corruption of science and “peer review” by hucksters, opportunists and global-government control-freaks. I can see what’s in it for Dr. Pachauri and professor Hasnain, and even for the lowly Environmental Correspondent enjoying a cozy sinecure at a time of newspaper cutbacks in everything from foreign bureaus to arts coverage.
But it’s hard to see what’s in it for Dan Gajewski of Ottawa and the millions of kindred spirits who’ve signed on to this racket and are determined to stick with it. Don’t be the last off a collapsing bandwagon. The scientific “consensus” is melting way faster than the glaciers.
===
A BLIMP! WHY DIDN’T THEY THINK OF THIS BEFORE?
Tim Blair
Nobody can ignore a blimp, apparently:
===
ALSO, HIS PRIUS HAS BEEN RECALLED
Tim Blair
Headline of the week:
Gay, Mentally Challenged Biracial Male Cheerleader Claims Discrimination
(Via R. Black)
===
More will die, of course
Andrew Bolt
And another, with the new technique for prompting rescue - the one that actually has had people killed:
A RESCUE mission is underwayafter distress calls were received from a boat believed to be carrying asylum seekers off Christmas Island. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) says patrol boat HMAS Larrakia has been sent to give assistance after they received word of an emergency situation aboard the boat this afternoon.The boat is believed to be carrying about 45 Tamils asylum seekers
===
Amazing how old certainties can melt once debate is allowed
Andrew Bolt
Peter van Onselen is wrong to claims sceptics didn’t like discussing climate change. In fact, what they demanded was more discussion, not censorship and media shut-ups, to achieve just what now so bemuses Peter:
How quickly things can change in politics. At the end of last year the government’s CPRS was something most Liberals wanted off the political agenda. Whether it was Malcolm Turnbull and his supporters who wanted it pasted into law so they could get back to talking about debt and deficits or the climate change sceptics who wanted the legislation defeated, conservatives didn’t particularly like discussing climate change.
The reason was simple: opinion polls showed an overwhelming majority of the public supported action on climate change and Rudd’s CPRS had become the conventional wisdom for what shape action should take....
The government has (now) looked to shift the policy agenda on to matters other than climate change for two reasons: it is concerned that selling the CPRS might be as complicated as selling the Goods and Services Tax was for John Hewson in 1993 and Howard in 1998. ..
For a government that ended last year urging action on climate change (the greatest moral challenge of our generation, as Rudd calls it), to focus policy attention elsewhere this year has been utterly brazen… The debate over climate change policy appears to be leading us unavoidably towards the calling of a double dissolution election. Rudd simply has to call one if his dependence on the CPRS as the way of lowering emissions is to remain credible… The risk for Rudd is that a double dissolution guarantees climate change is more likely to become the central issue of the campaign, exactly what the Coalition now appears to be wanting.
===
Watson harpooned
Andrew Bolt
More claims of violence from the Sea Shepherd extremists:
(No leaping to conclusions, please. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for the footage.)
===
Has Flannery actually predicted anything that’s come true?
Andrew Bolt
The ABC in 2005 reported the latest prediction of professional scaremonger Tim Flannery:
Dam levels @ 4 Feb = 50.9%
===
Those who play at identitiy politics are racist, too
Andrew Bolt
The green denies it, though:
A RACE row has erupted at a Melbourne council with a former Greens candidate accused of telling a fellow councillor not to vote on “Asian matters” because he has a Korean wife.
===
Global cooling: California now rethinks its gas-slash laws
Andrew Bolt
An admission of the fact that slashing gases is also slashing jobs:
===
Insiders back, but Rudd still not game
Andrew Bolt
The ABC’s Insiders resumes tomorrow:
UPDATE
Liberal MP Jamie Briggs taunts Rudd in Parliament:
UPDATE 2
Here’s the transcript of Rudd’s last appearance on Insiders, and his only one as Prime Minister. What went so wrong on July 6 2008 that Rudd hasn’t dared come back?
Did Rudd take exception to this string of pointed questions from Barrie on his (still unfulfilled) promise to take “tough” decisions on the “diabolical” problem of global warming - question which got a series of non-answers:
There are serious issues at play here, about accountability and misuse of power, as well as free speech and the independence of the ABC. Time Scott had a word with Rudd.
UPDATE 3
Funnily enough, while Rudd can’t find the time to appear on Insiders more than once in two years, he can manage to appear on Channel 7’s Sunrise weekly, joining his very friendly mate David Koch. And when you watch the snoozefest that results, you can tell why that’s one show that Rudd still has the courage to go on - even though he cannot answer even the viewers’ questions.
But rely on “Kochie” to keep up the pressure - or not. Typical exchange: Rudd blathers about some government program, and “Kochie” chirrups, “Oh, that’s a good idea!:
Good boy, Kochie. Have another dog biscuit, and Rudd will be back next week to feed you another.
===
Facebook says attacking Rudd is fine
Andrew Bolt
Facebook denies - but does not explain:
===
Give me back my chair
Andrew Bolt
Huge changes on the set of Insiders this year. I’ve been evicted from the chair on the far right of your screen (above) for the first time in nine years.
Cassidy says it’s to avoid seeming to label the panel’s conservative commentators, who inevitably are made to sit there. Viewers were complaining. Cassidy now wants us judged by our arguments, not by our labels.
Great, and just what I’ve long demanded, but there goes my material. No more jibes at the “couch collective”. No more jokes about the ABC tipping off viewers about where on the spectrum wicked conservatives allegedly sit - literally. No more jokes at the ABC yet again symbolically ostracising us. No more angling for the poor-victims-us sympathy vote as the couch collective once more pack-attacks the lone voice of reason.
I protest. What I once found intimidating has long become my friend. I don’t want to be mainstreamed. Give me back my chair!
===
Open up! It’s the Green Police
Andrew Bolt
The carbon police will soon be knocking down your door:A
What’s the betting this scheme will prove every bit the rip-off disaster that this similar one of Rudd’s is now:
Queensland already has a similarly intrusive and largely useless law in place. Before you sell your house, you now have to fill in this form. Read it, and ask how migrants and the elderly would even understand the damn thing, let alone be able to afford for the check and the changes demanded. Example:
===
A nasty letter to Rann
Andrew Bolt
It shows how restricted our free speech is that this issue cannot be properly discussed by voters before the election, thanks to the legal action taken by Mike Rann:
THE political sideshow to the upcoming March state election - the “she said, he said” intrigue - continues unabated with the release today of the document dubbed Michelle’s Letter.
In a heartfelt personal letter to Premier Mike Rann, Michelle Chantelois - the woman who claims they had an affair - says she felt “physically ill” when he publicly denied that they had a sexual relationship.
The letter she delivered to the Premier’s office this week pleads with Mr Rann to “publicly admit I was telling the truth about our relationship” in order to restore her reputation…
The detailed letter was attached to results of a lie-detector test which concluded it was likely Ms Chantelois was telling the truth about the affair.
===
How on earth can Rudd bet our economy on this?
Andrew Bolt
Good God, yet more errors in the IPCC’s 2007 report. And to think Kevin Rudd has based his colossal plan to completely reengineer our economy on this deeply suspect document:
Cow pox was preferable to smallpox for revolutionary USA. Would Dem's make the same decision today as was made by Washington then?
=== Bible Quotes ===
“He who pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor.”- Proverbs 21:21
And
no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.' Luke 5:39
===
On what would have been Ronald Reagan's 99th birthday, his policies are still affecting America. Take a look at some major (and minor) moments of his presidency.
Obama Won't Quit Reform
President assures despondent Democrats he will not abandon commitment to overhauling health care despite GOP challenges to their congressional dominance
Tea Party Steeped in Division?
Tea partiers who emphasize fiscal responsibility urge unity as some drift in less politically profitable direction
Snow KOs Mid-Atlantic States
Blizzard batters Washington area, knocking out power to thousands as record snowfall is predicted
Anti-Whaling Ship Collides With Japanese Boat Off Antarctica
The anti-whaling ship the Bob Barker and a Japanese harpoon boat collided in the icy waters off Antarctica on Saturday — the second major clash this year in the increasingly aggressive confrontations between the two sides. No one was reportedly injured in the latest strike. The U.S.-based activist group Sea Shepherd, which sends vessels to confront the Japanese fleet each year, said a small hole was torn in the hull of its ship, but it was above the water line and the vessel was not in danger of sinking.
Jennifer and Mick Clark of Kinglake lost two grandchildren in the Black Saturday bushfires at their designated 'safe house'
Longer school hours for children
MORE money will go to needy schools to help fund longer hours and extra specialist teachers.
Taxpayers foot mass murderers' perks
TWO mass murderers are using taxpayers' money to fund their fight for prison perks and computers.
Banker Sung Kyu Chung 'stole $7m for sex with prostitutes'
A HIGH-FLYING Sydney banker who stole $7 million from his employer allegedly spent much of the cash on prostitutes, showering them with lavish gifts. Sung Kyu Chung, 41, gave evidence in Sydney District Court last week where he has pleaded guilty to fraud charges. The senior manager, who worked in the Korea Exchange Bank's Sydney office, was charged in December, 2008 by City Central Fraud Unit detectives.
Keira Knightley's stalker accused arrested
A MAN accused of stalking international actress Keira Knightley's been arrested
Killer feral pigs take over water supplies
GIANT feral pigs are roaming Australia ruining city drinking water and sparking an official cull.
Burqa-clad bank robbers stage French post office hold-up
TWO burqa-wearing bank robbers have held up a post office near Paris, using a handgun concealed beneath an Islamic-style full veil, court officials said. Staff let the pair through the security double doors of the banking branch of the postal office overnight, believing them to be veil-wearing Muslim women, before they flipped back their head coverings and pulled out a gun, officials said.
Switched on mandatory energy move
ALL Australian homes will soon have to undergo a mandatory energy-efficiency assessment costing up to $1,500 per property.
We paid $200m for rented offices
NSW taxpayers are paying more than $200m in rent for Government officials and bureaucrats to work at some of Sydney's prestigious office sites.
Audit exposes 'rorts' rent-a-cop scheme
A CORRUPTION inquiry has been launched into Sydney's largest police station over a "rent-a-cop" rort allegedly being run by a group of officers. The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that several officers at Flemington Local Area Command (LAC) have been questioned by internal affairs investigators over claims they are forging time sheets to earn extra income.
Couple clung on for life as waters raged around them on the Hawkesbury River
A YOUNG couple spent Friday night in the freezing waters of the Hawkesbury River desperately clinging to tree branches and wearing only their swimmers. Police pulled a Kurmond man, 24, and a Wilberforce woman, 23, out of the river at 8.45am yesterday.
Switched on mandatory energy move
ALL Australian homes will soon have to undergo a mandatory energy-efficiency assessment costing up to $1,500 per property.
Gifted kids let down by system
THOUSANDS of potential child geniuses are going unrecognised in schools, leaving many in danger of never reaching their full potential. For some of WA's 35,000 gifted children, their overlooked "gifts" have become a burden, forcing them to turn to misbehaviour or switch off from lessons. According to US child intelligence expert Deborah Ruf, the education system - particularly primary schools - is failing to get the most out of gifted children.
Belinda Neal defies PM's anger course order
TROUBLE-PRONE Labor backbencher Belinda Neal has apparently defied Kevin Rudd, revealing that she never undertook an anger management course after all. Despite the Prime Minister insisting the angry Central Coast MP had displayed a "pattern of unacceptable behaviour" and needed help, Ms Neal said last week it was rubbish - she had never needed treatment for anger issues, and never got it. Ms Neal, who is under siege from internal party challengers who want her seat, admitted seeking "counselling", but not for her fiery temper. She added: "There was no request from the Prime Minister for that at all." This astonishing admission is at odds with what voters were told by Mr Rudd. - They aren't an odd couple, they are the same couple. Can two people with anger management issues survive in the same parliament on the same side of politics? - ed.
=== Comments ===
The Ultimate King of Heels?
By The Stiletto
A spate of salacious new details about John Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter – and his handlers’ desperate, and possibly felonious, attempts at damage control – has become the source of endless talk recently with the publication of the bestselling campaign post-mortem “Game Change” and former campaign aide Andrew Young’s tell-all, “The Politician.” Edwards is just one in a long line of ambitious pols to cheat on his wife, and his affair with Hunter shares a number of interesting parallels with the sex scandals of previous presidents and candidates for the office. For instance:
• James Garfield had his own Rielle Hunter of sorts in the person of an 18-year-old New York Times reporter named Lucia Calhoun. He gave her up when his wife threatened to divorce him, which would have cut his political career short.
• Like Edwards, Grover Cleveland was accused of having fathered an illegitimate child early in his presidential campaign, Ignoring the advice of his aides to lie, he came clean about his affair with Maria Halpin right away and acknowledged being the boy’s father. The thing is, Halpin was something of a loose woman (or worse) and the child could have been fathered by several men, but Cleveland assumed financial responsibility for the child because all the others had wives and children to support.
In contrast, when Edwards became aware that the National Enquirer would name his lover and divulge her pregnancy a couple of weeks before the 2008 Iowa primary, he strong-armed Young – a married father of three – into a public declaration of paternity. In an interview on "Good Morning America" this week Young said he agreed to the ruse out of loyalty to Edwards, compassion for his cancer-stricken wife and because "two very powerful people" assured him that “every viable Democratic candidate” had a skeleton in his or her closet.
When Frances Quinn Hunter was born on February 27, 2008 in California, no father’s name is given on the birth certificate.
In an interview with ABC’s “Nightline” some five months later Edwards admitted to an affair with Hunter, but denied fathering her daughter or making child support payments.
===
God and the President
By Rev. Bill Shuler
At key moments in history, America’s presidents have called upon God. Most notable are the times in which America was in crisis and marked by change.
The issues that face America as outlined in President Obama’s State of the Union address last week are, at their core, issues of the heart. Two wars may have contributed to our deficit but it was the heart of man that created the wars themselves. It was greed that began the mess on Wall Street and greed that brought about the downturn in the housing market. The need of the hour is a call to place our faith not in government but in God.
At key moments in history, America’s presidents would call upon God. Most notable are the times in which America was in crisis and marked by change. Abraham Lincoln spoke of being driven many times to his knees by, “the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.
My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day.” On April 12, 1945, one day after Franklin Roosevelt’s funeral, President Harry Truman concluded his first address before a joint session of Congress with these words, “At this moment I have in my heart a prayer. As I assume my heavy duties, I humbly pray to Almighty God in the words of King Solomon, ‘Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge this Thy so great a people?’ I ask only to be a good and faithful servant of my Lord and my people.” President Truman knew that the strength of our Union would be found in calling upon God’s wisdom.
The issues outlined in the State of the Union Address are not new. They are as old as the scriptures. The Bible addresses:
1. Jobs: “…the laborer is worthy of his wages.” Luke 10:7President Obama is right in stating that these are not ordinary times and we will not overcome our challenges by ordinary measures. Even as President Ronald Reagan called the nation to the principles of God by declaring 1983 as the national “Year of the Bible,” America now needs leadership with the audacity to call America back to God. The scriptures declare, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14
2. Equality: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28
3. Responsibility: “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” James 4:17
4. Unity: “…a house divided against itself will fail.” Luke 11:17
5. Civility: “Come now, let us reason together…” Isaiah 1:18
6. Environment: “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it…” Psalm 24:1
7. Freedom: “…proclaim liberty throughout the land to all of its inhabitants…” Leviticus 25:10
8. Human Dignity: “So God created man in his own image.” Genesis 1:27
9. Corporate Greed: “Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him.” Leviticus 19:13
10. Values: “…Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”Isaiah 1:17
===
Let it not all be in vain
Piers Akerman
AS Australians mark the first anniversary of the worst peacetime disaster in our history, the Black Saturday bushfires, it is worth asking whether anything has been learned from the tragedy.
Indeed the environmental agenda does not include humans. They want us living like urchins in the 13th century. They want our living standards gone and our technology destroyed.- Greens in politics, be they ALP or Green, have no memory of their failures. They take no responsibility for their decisions. They are not the ones risking anything on the bad decisions. They are still profiting from the disasters, making their false claims regarding global warming and collecting well intended donations and diverting funds to irrelevant causes.
You can throw that 173 into the ‘sacrifices have to be made’ column.
Rudd and Wong are so confident that they can get the ETS TAX up and running that they have set up a secret agency staffed by invisible crats to administer it. Check it out
This insidious body is plotting the redistribution of our hard earned money as we speak. This secret organisation has no right to exist not even in an informal manner till parliament says so - That simple.
Funny how clarity has disappeared from our political system with the advent of Labor. One thing is for sure - By keeping this black project off the books Labor has tacitly admitted that the tide has turned against Anthropogenic Global Warming and they need to resort to covert means to keep their shakedown alive.
Party on
Tim
They are coordinated in government and opposition and a threat wherever they may be, using the law to abuse their trust. They are a sponge for public monies, and a waster of good will. I am sorry I ever, through being even handed, endorsed anything they said to a child. They have invaded our schools and corrupted our curriculum. I don’t want there to be laws to prevent them. I don’t want people to take extreme action against them. I want responsible people to highlight their weaknesses and failures, and show the light of truth on the issues. The rest will follow. - ed.
===
BLOGGERS WIN
Tim Blair
In The Spectator, Matt Ridley hails tenacious amateurs:
Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.Do read on. One more extract:
Despite 20 years of being told they were not just factually but morally wrong, of being compared to Holocaust deniers, of being told they deserved to be tried for crimes against humanity, of being avoided at parties, climate sceptics seem to be growing in number and confidence by the day. What is the difference?Miranda Devine has further on this delightful turn of events. Meanwhile, watch those numbers move …
In a word, the internet.
UPDATE. Mark Steyn:
“Climate change” is not a story of climate change, which has been a fact of life throughout our planet’s history. It is a far more contemporary story about the corruption of science and “peer review” by hucksters, opportunists and global-government control-freaks. I can see what’s in it for Dr. Pachauri and professor Hasnain, and even for the lowly Environmental Correspondent enjoying a cozy sinecure at a time of newspaper cutbacks in everything from foreign bureaus to arts coverage.
But it’s hard to see what’s in it for Dan Gajewski of Ottawa and the millions of kindred spirits who’ve signed on to this racket and are determined to stick with it. Don’t be the last off a collapsing bandwagon. The scientific “consensus” is melting way faster than the glaciers.
===
A BLIMP! WHY DIDN’T THEY THINK OF THIS BEFORE?
Tim Blair
Nobody can ignore a blimp, apparently:
Imagine...a “Peace Blimp"- defiantly displaying a message of peace across the skies of the nation, unable to be dismissed, ignored or brushed aside. Rallies for peace greet the blimp in every city it visits. Politicians, celebrities, movie stars, athletes, war veterans and peace activists make the call to bring our troops home by boarding the blimp for a ride. Crowds flock to the events and are educated about the war. With each stop along the tour the momentum for peace grows from a dull roar into an undeniable fervor until the seemingly endless wars come to an end.(Via Paco)
Now, let’s make this a reality.
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ALSO, HIS PRIUS HAS BEEN RECALLED
Tim Blair
Headline of the week:
Gay, Mentally Challenged Biracial Male Cheerleader Claims Discrimination
(Via R. Black)
===
More will die, of course
Andrew Bolt
And another, with the new technique for prompting rescue - the one that actually has had people killed:
A RESCUE mission is underwayafter distress calls were received from a boat believed to be carrying asylum seekers off Christmas Island. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) says patrol boat HMAS Larrakia has been sent to give assistance after they received word of an emergency situation aboard the boat this afternoon.The boat is believed to be carrying about 45 Tamils asylum seekers
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Amazing how old certainties can melt once debate is allowed
Andrew Bolt
Peter van Onselen is wrong to claims sceptics didn’t like discussing climate change. In fact, what they demanded was more discussion, not censorship and media shut-ups, to achieve just what now so bemuses Peter:
How quickly things can change in politics. At the end of last year the government’s CPRS was something most Liberals wanted off the political agenda. Whether it was Malcolm Turnbull and his supporters who wanted it pasted into law so they could get back to talking about debt and deficits or the climate change sceptics who wanted the legislation defeated, conservatives didn’t particularly like discussing climate change.
The reason was simple: opinion polls showed an overwhelming majority of the public supported action on climate change and Rudd’s CPRS had become the conventional wisdom for what shape action should take....
The government has (now) looked to shift the policy agenda on to matters other than climate change for two reasons: it is concerned that selling the CPRS might be as complicated as selling the Goods and Services Tax was for John Hewson in 1993 and Howard in 1998. ..
For a government that ended last year urging action on climate change (the greatest moral challenge of our generation, as Rudd calls it), to focus policy attention elsewhere this year has been utterly brazen… The debate over climate change policy appears to be leading us unavoidably towards the calling of a double dissolution election. Rudd simply has to call one if his dependence on the CPRS as the way of lowering emissions is to remain credible… The risk for Rudd is that a double dissolution guarantees climate change is more likely to become the central issue of the campaign, exactly what the Coalition now appears to be wanting.
===
Watson harpooned
Andrew Bolt
More claims of violence from the Sea Shepherd extremists:
DRAMA again has broken out at sea near Antarctica with the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling vessel accusing Japanese whaling ships of ramming a conservation vessel....I wish I had footage of these wicked harpoonists and the Sea Shepherd, but search on both terms and the best I could find was this - which makes me actually think it’s Watson’s lot that has questions to answer:
Sea Shepherd founder, Captain Paul Watson, said the Japanese harpoon ship rammed the conservationists’ ship the Bob Barker and tore a 90cm gash in the hull above the water line.
(No leaping to conclusions, please. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for the footage.)
===
Has Flannery actually predicted anything that’s come true?
Andrew Bolt
The ABC in 2005 reported the latest prediction of professional scaremonger Tim Flannery:
Leading environmentalist Professor Tim Flannery has warned that Australia is now entering long-term climate change, which could cause longer and more frequent droughts.Five years later:
He also predicts that the ongoing drought could leave Sydney’s dams dry in just two years.
Sydney’s catchments have been swamped in rain, bringing some of the best falls in up to four years.Sydney Water reports:
Dam levels @ 4 Feb = 50.9%
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Those who play at identitiy politics are racist, too
Andrew Bolt
The green denies it, though:
A RACE row has erupted at a Melbourne council with a former Greens candidate accused of telling a fellow councillor not to vote on “Asian matters” because he has a Korean wife.
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Global cooling: California now rethinks its gas-slash laws
Andrew Bolt
An admission of the fact that slashing gases is also slashing jobs:
Republican politicians and conservative activists are launching a ballot campaign to suspend California’s landmark global-warming law, in what they hope will serve as a showcase for a national backlash against climate regulations.Meanwhile another reminder that getting warming won’t be so awful, after all, since it’s a cold planet that’s least comfortable, as Americans have found all winter:
Supporters say they have “solid commitments” of nearly $600,000 to pay signature gatherers for a November initiative aimed at delaying curbs on the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants and factories until the state’s unemployment rate drops.
A winter storm continued its blizzard rage in some parts of the Mid-Atlantic region on Saturday morning, dumping nearly two feet of wet, heavy snow that cut power to about 200,000 residents, caused the roof of a private jet hangar to collapse at Washington Dulles International Airport and forced the nation’s capital into quiet hibernation.(Via Instapundit.)
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Insiders back, but Rudd still not game
Andrew Bolt
The ABC’s Insiders resumes tomorrow:
Insiders ABC 1 9am Sunday, on the panel The Australian’s Lenore Taylor, The Age’s Mischa Schubert and The Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt.Kevin Rudd has maintained his ban on the show, making it just one appearance in more than two years on the country’s leading political TV chat show. Was it something I said, or is it all Barrie’s fault?
UPDATE
Liberal MP Jamie Briggs taunts Rudd in Parliament:
The National Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2009 is a perfect Labor bill to go into question time with. It is a bill about three things: union power, union power and union power. That is all this is about. There is nothing wrong with the ABC; this is a bill about union power. The one reform the ABC wants is for this Prime Minister to appear on Insiders just once this year. He is on Sunrise every week but he spends no time on Insiders. We need to see him on Insiders. That is the reform the ABC wants.(Thanks to reader Foehn.)
UPDATE 2
Here’s the transcript of Rudd’s last appearance on Insiders, and his only one as Prime Minister. What went so wrong on July 6 2008 that Rudd hasn’t dared come back?
Did Rudd take exception to this string of pointed questions from Barrie on his (still unfulfilled) promise to take “tough” decisions on the “diabolical” problem of global warming - question which got a series of non-answers:
BARRIE CASSIDY: A diabolical political problem, the toughest any government has faced in a lifetime - that’s enough to overwhelm anybody. Do you feel in any sense overwhelmed by this?…ABC boss Mark Scott must step in and ask Rudd what his game is. Is he trying to punish the ABC’s flagship political program simply because Cassidy is doing his job in holding the Government to account? Or is Rudd in fact trying to blackmail the ABC into banning from the show the three conservative commentators it has on its roster of some 15 otherwise Leftist panelists?BARRIE CASSIDY: And you say it will be tough. What’s the toughest decision you’ve taken so far as Prime Minister? ...Or was it this series of question that had Barrie put on the very short list of journalists Rudd has frozen out for having the cheek to ask him something hard:
BARRIE CASSIDY: And I think it’s understood that you will need to take tough decisions and that’s why I asked you to nominate one tough decision that you’ve taken so far....
BARRIE CASSIDY: But in retrospect what was the tough decision in the Budget?…
BARRIE CASSIDY: It’s just I think some people would argue that means testing certain benefits to people beyond $150,000 is not particularly tough.
BARRIE CASSIDY: ... In plain, simple terms, what is an emissions trading scheme? (An unplain and very unsimple 310-word answer followed.)
BARRIE CASSIDY: Sure, but in simple terms, what are you asking of people out in the suburbs? You’re asking them to pay more for power, more for petrol…
BARRIE CASSIDY: And if it’s $2 a week or something on the power bill and maybe four cents a litre on petrol, given the mood of the country on this issue, they’ll accept that won’t they?…
BARRIE CASSIDY: Now there is another diabolical aspect I suppose to all of this - inflation. Inflation is public enemy number one and your responses to climate change surely must by definition by inflationary…
BARRIE CASSIDY: And what about jobs? Obviously jobs can be created in some areas but they’ll be lost in others.
There are serious issues at play here, about accountability and misuse of power, as well as free speech and the independence of the ABC. Time Scott had a word with Rudd.
UPDATE 3
Funnily enough, while Rudd can’t find the time to appear on Insiders more than once in two years, he can manage to appear on Channel 7’s Sunrise weekly, joining his very friendly mate David Koch. And when you watch the snoozefest that results, you can tell why that’s one show that Rudd still has the courage to go on - even though he cannot answer even the viewers’ questions.
But rely on “Kochie” to keep up the pressure - or not. Typical exchange: Rudd blathers about some government program, and “Kochie” chirrups, “Oh, that’s a good idea!:
Good boy, Kochie. Have another dog biscuit, and Rudd will be back next week to feed you another.
===
Facebook says attacking Rudd is fine
Andrew Bolt
Facebook denies - but does not explain:
FACEBOOK has denied claims of censorship after a group criticising Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was deleted from the social networking site.(Thanks to reader CA of WA.)
It was revealed this week a group titled “KEVIN RUDD = EPIC FAIL”, devoted to highlighting grievances with the prime minister, was removed by Facebook.
In a statement to news.com.au, Facebook said: “We do not take down groups that speak out against countries, political entities or ideas.”
However it refused to say exactly why the group had been deleted. Speaking generally, Facebook said that a group would only be removed if it violated the site’s terms of use policy…
“Specifically, we are sensitive to groups that threaten violence and these groups are taken down. We also remove groups that express hatred towards individuals and groups that are sponsored by recognised terrorist organisations.”..
The Prime Minister’s office earlier confirmed to The Punch website that it did not lodge a complaint against the “EPIC FAIL” group.
===
Give me back my chair
Andrew Bolt
Huge changes on the set of Insiders this year. I’ve been evicted from the chair on the far right of your screen (above) for the first time in nine years.
Cassidy says it’s to avoid seeming to label the panel’s conservative commentators, who inevitably are made to sit there. Viewers were complaining. Cassidy now wants us judged by our arguments, not by our labels.
Great, and just what I’ve long demanded, but there goes my material. No more jibes at the “couch collective”. No more jokes about the ABC tipping off viewers about where on the spectrum wicked conservatives allegedly sit - literally. No more jokes at the ABC yet again symbolically ostracising us. No more angling for the poor-victims-us sympathy vote as the couch collective once more pack-attacks the lone voice of reason.
I protest. What I once found intimidating has long become my friend. I don’t want to be mainstreamed. Give me back my chair!
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Open up! It’s the Green Police
Andrew Bolt
The carbon police will soon be knocking down your door:A
LL Australian homes will soon have to undergo a mandatory energy-efficiency assessment costing up to $1500 per property.Didn’t Kevin Rudd once claim his great global warming policies would cost you only a dollar or two a week?
The assessment has to be done before any property can be sold or rented under new laws to tackle carbon emissions.
What’s the betting this scheme will prove every bit the rip-off disaster that this similar one of Rudd’s is now:
It was pitched as yet another federal government plan to help Australians tackle climate change - a free energy assessment for hundreds of thousands of homes and “green loans” for those who wanted them. Not only would it boost household energy efficiency, it would create jobs in the process.UPDATE
But barely six months since its launch, the $175 million Green Loans program has become just the latest government green scheme to descend into farce, hot on the heels of the solar panel and insulation rebates.Thousands of people could be unemployed and thousands of dollars out of pocket after paying to be trained to work under a scheme that is likely to end more than two years early.
Queensland already has a similarly intrusive and largely useless law in place. Before you sell your house, you now have to fill in this form. Read it, and ask how migrants and the elderly would even understand the damn thing, let alone be able to afford for the check and the changes demanded. Example:
E12 No air-conditioning or(Thanks to reader LH.)
fixed evaporative air-conditioner or
___ out of ___ air-conditioners are energy efficient
(minimum 2.9 Energy Efficiency Ratio [EER])
===
A nasty letter to Rann
Andrew Bolt
It shows how restricted our free speech is that this issue cannot be properly discussed by voters before the election, thanks to the legal action taken by Mike Rann:
THE political sideshow to the upcoming March state election - the “she said, he said” intrigue - continues unabated with the release today of the document dubbed Michelle’s Letter.
In a heartfelt personal letter to Premier Mike Rann, Michelle Chantelois - the woman who claims they had an affair - says she felt “physically ill” when he publicly denied that they had a sexual relationship.
The letter she delivered to the Premier’s office this week pleads with Mr Rann to “publicly admit I was telling the truth about our relationship” in order to restore her reputation…
The detailed letter was attached to results of a lie-detector test which concluded it was likely Ms Chantelois was telling the truth about the affair.
===
How on earth can Rudd bet our economy on this?
Andrew Bolt
Good God, yet more errors in the IPCC’s 2007 report. And to think Kevin Rudd has based his colossal plan to completely reengineer our economy on this deeply suspect document:
And yet more evidence that the IPCC “sexed up” its report with gross exaggerations, hype and outright untruths:The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report is supposed to be the world’s most authoritative scientific account of the scale of global warming. But this paper has discovered a series of new flaws in it including:Last month, the panel was forced to issue a humiliating retraction after it emerged statements about the melting of Himalayan glaciers were inaccurate.
The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company.
Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters.
New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished.
More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups.
They are the latest in a series of damaging revelations about the IPCC’s most recent report, published in 2007.
Last weekend, this paper revealed that the panel had based claims about disappearing mountain ice on anecdotal evidence in a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine. And on Friday, it emerged that the IPCC’s panel had wrongly reported that more than half of the Netherlands was below sea level because it had failed to check information supplied by a Dutch government agency…
However, senior scientists are now expressing concern at the way the IPCC compiles its reports and have hit out at the panel’s use of so-called “grey literature” — evidence from sources that have not been subjected to scientific scrutiny.
...the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.What a fiasco. And for this we must have a huge green tax on everything, and shut down our sources of cheap power. To risk so much on such disintegrating evidence is grotesquely irresponsible.
At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.
Unlike the glacier claim, which was confined to a section of the technical Working Group II report, this “50 percent by 2020? claim forms part of the key Synthesis Report, the production of which was the personal responsibility of the chair of the IPCC, Dr R K Pachauri. It has been repeated by him in many public fora.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
That Didn't Take Long... ABC Reporter Attacks Tea Party Nation Leaders During Press Conference
They could only sit on their hands for so long. After biting his lip for twenty minutes New York-based ABC reporter John Berman ripped into the Tea Party Nation leaders at their press conference today. John was visibly upset after attending former Rep. Tom Tancredo's speech last night that opened the conference. Instead of confronting Tancredo, Berman attacked the organizers of the event and demanded they speak for the former representative. Berman also attacked organizer Mark Skoda for not listing the names of the board members of new organization after Skoda said he would have the names listed by the end of the week. Funny, Berman's never been this hard on the Team Obama?
===
The disenchantment that many feel with mainstream left leaning press is apparent in their plunging listening, watching and reading figures.
Headlines Saturday 6th February 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Obama is not the first Democrat to exploit racial divides. The Democrats have accused Republicans from the time of Lincoln.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”- Psalm 33:4-5
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How well did Penn State probe key 'Climate-gate' figure who brought school big money? Critics say barely.
Change in the Wind?
As Americans look ahead to the mid-term elections, anything new is preferable to anything old — such as an incumbent, Fox News poll finds.
Obama: 'We're Climbing Out'
Obama upbeat on drop in jobless rate but Labor Department numbers, debt ceiling show it's not all roses
... and Mom Is 11 Years Old
A New York 11-year-old girl is facing years of physical and psychological challenges after giving birth a few days ago
NYC Student, 12, Arrested for Doodling on Desk
NEW YORK — A New York City middle school student has been arrested for doodling on her desk with a marker. Twelve-year-old Alexa Gonzalez scribbled "Lex was here 2/1/10" on her desk Monday. She also wrote "I love my friends Abby and Faith." The girl says the doodles could have been erased, according to the Daily News.
John Terry is no longer England captain as the fallout from his affair with model Vanessa Perroncel (inset), when she was the partner of Terry's Chelsea teammate, continues
Bankers in secret Aussie meet
THE world's top bankers gather in Sydney for crisis talks as the global economy teeters.
Knife bandit goes on terror rampage
A MAN who held a knife to the throat of a three-year-old girl continues to target women.
Diggers' private hells are nation's shame
IT'S a secret suffering most are unaware of - the mental scars of our young veterans.
Gen Y 'too lazy and unprofessional to hire'
EMPLOYERS are refusing to hire Generation Y workers because they lack a work ethic.
Jackson doctor to be charged over death
MICHAEL Jackson's doctor will be charged in connection with the pop star's death, prosecutors confirm.
Life shattered by act of violence
A FAMILY in Nepal prays. They hope their son, Bepin Shrestha, 30, comes out of his coma. Last Sunday, two men allegedly jumped him from behind in Dee Why.
N Ireland parties agree to 'new chapter'
NORTHERN Ireland will take control of its police and justice system under a deal being hailed as a vital one for preserving peace.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Sarah speaks at the Tea Party Convention!
The politics, the people's demands and how Palin thinks Washington can shape up!
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Maintenance Needed!
On 65,000 flights that is! So why are they still taking off? We find out!
===
Exclusive: Tony Blair
Under fire from his government for going to war with Iraq -- Tony on his explosive testimony!
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Exclusive: Robert Gates
How far has our military come in Afghanistan and what work still lies ahead? Plus, the controversial Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy!
=== Comments ===
Is Jon Stewart Open to Being Bill O'Reilly's Vice President?
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 4, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Now for the top story tonight, we wrap up our talk with our pal Jon Stewart.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
O'REILLY: Let's play a little bit of a scenario. I'm thinking about running for president.
JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": I think that is a really bad idea.
O'REILLY: I want you to be my vice president.
STEWART: I think that's a really bad idea, too.
O'REILLY: OK.
STEWART: I got pictures of me from college that I have in a shoe box that preclude me from working at the post office.
O'REILLY: It doesn't matter. Stewart…
STEWART: So I would not…
O'REILLY: At this point…
STEWART: You have no idea the trouble you'd be getting into.
O'REILLY: No, this is why I have selected you as my vice president.
STEWART: All right.
O'REILLY: OK? Your image is so bad, no matter what they found, it wouldn't matter, OK. Now, I have to vet you. I'm vetting you on the air.
STEWART: All right.
O'REILLY: Global warming?
STEWART: What about it?
O'REILLY: All right. You're big on that. You're frightened of it. You want to flee, don't you?
===
From Tim on Piers
The U.S and the South and East of Europe are already in depression. The USA is running a U6 17% unemployment level - 15% is the depression level yardstick. Also their figures for GDP are doctored. The 5% one they put out last week will be revised down to 3% last quarter. I dread to think what the real figure is ..- 8% by my reckoning for 09.
Ben Benanke flooded the system with cash from September 08 and on and this has taken stocks back up from the DOW 6500 low in March 09. My expectation was that Ben had a DOW 10 000 target by July of 09 but it took him a couple of extra months to reach it. PE ratios value the DOW at about 6000 ..The present 10 000 is insane. But as I have said all along “you can go broke waiting for markets to act rationally.” Besides, no one wants it to tank ... it would shatter confidence. Ideally it would be better for everyone if the stock exchange was placed on the back burner and more emphasis placed on the real earnings of businesses. Anyone who views the stockmarket as anything more than a fixed card game needs their head examined.
The big problem for the yanks is real estate. Most regions are stagnant or heading South still. Ben has failed to draw a line under the US property crash and this has continued to see pressure applied to the debt instruments built on it.
Greece , Spain , Portugal , Italy and the East will have little choice but to default. Ireland will cop it and the UK pound will also cop it as Brown drives that country to debt ruin. While Copenhagen was going on these idiots would have been meeting in a back room somewhere discussing how they can quietly default without anyone noticing. There are several options but make no mistake the Eurozone wont be a growth zone for a long long time after the stims wear off.
The survival of the EU itself is at stake. Countries like Greece have continually violated EU deficit policy and have had to be continually saved by countries like Germany ...This situation cannot continue.
The solution to the problem is as obvious as it is painful - Write off debt or just plain pay it all back. Many pollys and economists don’t understand that the solution to the problem is the depression.
This thing has years to run and there will be ups and downs all over the joint. One thing is for sure climate change is a non starter now. But depression and recessions end ..its better to view the cataclysm as an opportunity - one which Rudd is wasting.
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Rudd can promise, but can’t deliver
Andrew Bolt
Is there a noble Kevin Rudd plan that’s actually worked? From today’s papers, the latest on how sounds-good Rudd in fact delivers:
Item:
Rudd’s attention to the detail of the delivery of his promises last as long as the next news cycle. It’s telling that its his green rhetoric in particular that’s led to such chronic underdelivery.
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Children killed by the “stolen generations” myth
Andrew Bolt
Yet another example of how the “stolen generations” myth can kill - by making welfare officials too scared to remove Aboriginal children they’d save if they were white:
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The new Jew-haters
Andrew Bolt
Harry’s Place:
It’s actually not the offence caused to Jews that I find the most disturbing aspect of this slur, but the vilification of them as Nazis themselves - because when your enemy is a Nazi, what are you then entitled to do in “resistance”?
This new report helps to answer that question.
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Sea the difference
Andrew Bolt
Dr Roy Spencer says the sharp spike in global temperatures last month - when so many countries suffered a freezing winter - was driven mostly by an abrupt rise in sea surface temperatures.
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The Governer becomes a far-Left activist
Andrew Bolt
Victorian Governer David de Kretser has forgotten his duty and is now playing at politics. Even less forgiveably, this supposedly bi-partisan official is playing his politics overtly in a “civil campaign” with activists from the radical green Left:
But to have allied himself with such players shows a naivity that’s shocking. Here’s just some of de Kretser’s new political allies.
David Spratt, for instance, speaks at conferences organised by Marxist groups and demands we switch to a ”war-type economy” and spend “more than 30 per cent ... of the economy” to “save most humans and species from a global warming apocalypse”.
Sponsor Friends of the Earth is an anti-corporate activist of the far Left which elped to organise the often violent 2000 S!! blockade in Melbourne of the World Economic Forum, and now insists ”wealthier peoples need to consume less” and we must “bring about an end to new fossil fuel exploration” and coal-fired power stations.
The members of Climate Emergency Network, another sponsor, include Marxist and revolutionary Left parties, such as Resistance, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity, as well as law-breaking green protest groups such as Greenpeace and Rising Tide.
De Kretser will also share the stage with Christine Milne, one of the more radical MPs of the Australian Greens - a party whose green policies he will thereby seem to endorse over those of the Liberal and Labor parties, neither of which is represented, nor, I suspect would agree to come. Can’t de Kretser seen just from this alone how inappropriate it is that he be there?
Former governor, Labor stalwart and judge Richard McGarvie long ago spelled out the duties of the office de Kretser now fills, saying a governor or governor-general must be a “respected person who remains entirely above partisan politics and exerts a unifying influence”.
There is a critical reason for that, beyond the fact that political meddling by an unelected governor is undemocratic, which is why we’d be shocked if the Queen tried what her man in Government House is now playing.
Even more important is that the essential role of a governor is to make sure the constitution works as it should. Usually that’s an uncontroversial task—signing into laws the Bills passed by parliament, swearing in an elected government and dissolving parliament when the premier asks. But as we saw with the sacking of the Whitlam government in 1975, or of NSW Premier Jack Lang in 1932, sometimes a governor-general or governor must act in ways that can—if not done carefully by an apolitical figure—have us at each other’s throats, screaming that democracy is dead. It will then be critical that no one can prove him a partisan.
De Kretser is clearly passionate about global warming, and even preached on that subject - inappropiriately, thought some guests - at his reception last month for Prince William. He’s entitled to have his opinions, but he is not entitle to abuse his position to advance his highly political and divisive views on the biggest issue now in Australian politics..
If de Kretser wants to become active in politics, he should first resign as Governor. As it is, he is betraying his office.
If he cannot see this for himself, the Premier must call in to help clear his vision.
===
The Climategate whistleblower?
Andrew Bolt
As I suspected, not a thief or hacker or spy, but a whistleblower, if police really have their Climategate leaker:
UPDATE
Nonsense, says Paul Dennis.
Obama is not the first Democrat to exploit racial divides. The Democrats have accused Republicans from the time of Lincoln.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”- Psalm 33:4-5
===
How well did Penn State probe key 'Climate-gate' figure who brought school big money? Critics say barely.
Change in the Wind?
As Americans look ahead to the mid-term elections, anything new is preferable to anything old — such as an incumbent, Fox News poll finds.
Obama: 'We're Climbing Out'
Obama upbeat on drop in jobless rate but Labor Department numbers, debt ceiling show it's not all roses
... and Mom Is 11 Years Old
A New York 11-year-old girl is facing years of physical and psychological challenges after giving birth a few days ago
NYC Student, 12, Arrested for Doodling on Desk
NEW YORK — A New York City middle school student has been arrested for doodling on her desk with a marker. Twelve-year-old Alexa Gonzalez scribbled "Lex was here 2/1/10" on her desk Monday. She also wrote "I love my friends Abby and Faith." The girl says the doodles could have been erased, according to the Daily News.
John Terry is no longer England captain as the fallout from his affair with model Vanessa Perroncel (inset), when she was the partner of Terry's Chelsea teammate, continues
Bankers in secret Aussie meet
THE world's top bankers gather in Sydney for crisis talks as the global economy teeters.
Knife bandit goes on terror rampage
A MAN who held a knife to the throat of a three-year-old girl continues to target women.
Diggers' private hells are nation's shame
IT'S a secret suffering most are unaware of - the mental scars of our young veterans.
Gen Y 'too lazy and unprofessional to hire'
EMPLOYERS are refusing to hire Generation Y workers because they lack a work ethic.
Jackson doctor to be charged over death
MICHAEL Jackson's doctor will be charged in connection with the pop star's death, prosecutors confirm.
Life shattered by act of violence
A FAMILY in Nepal prays. They hope their son, Bepin Shrestha, 30, comes out of his coma. Last Sunday, two men allegedly jumped him from behind in Dee Why.
N Ireland parties agree to 'new chapter'
NORTHERN Ireland will take control of its police and justice system under a deal being hailed as a vital one for preserving peace.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Sarah speaks at the Tea Party Convention!
The politics, the people's demands and how Palin thinks Washington can shape up!
===
Maintenance Needed!
On 65,000 flights that is! So why are they still taking off? We find out!
===
Exclusive: Tony Blair
Under fire from his government for going to war with Iraq -- Tony on his explosive testimony!
===
Exclusive: Robert Gates
How far has our military come in Afghanistan and what work still lies ahead? Plus, the controversial Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy!
=== Comments ===
Is Jon Stewart Open to Being Bill O'Reilly's Vice President?
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 4, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Now for the top story tonight, we wrap up our talk with our pal Jon Stewart.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
O'REILLY: Let's play a little bit of a scenario. I'm thinking about running for president.
JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": I think that is a really bad idea.
O'REILLY: I want you to be my vice president.
STEWART: I think that's a really bad idea, too.
O'REILLY: OK.
STEWART: I got pictures of me from college that I have in a shoe box that preclude me from working at the post office.
O'REILLY: It doesn't matter. Stewart…
STEWART: So I would not…
O'REILLY: At this point…
STEWART: You have no idea the trouble you'd be getting into.
O'REILLY: No, this is why I have selected you as my vice president.
STEWART: All right.
O'REILLY: OK? Your image is so bad, no matter what they found, it wouldn't matter, OK. Now, I have to vet you. I'm vetting you on the air.
STEWART: All right.
O'REILLY: Global warming?
STEWART: What about it?
O'REILLY: All right. You're big on that. You're frightened of it. You want to flee, don't you?
===
From Tim on Piers
The U.S and the South and East of Europe are already in depression. The USA is running a U6 17% unemployment level - 15% is the depression level yardstick. Also their figures for GDP are doctored. The 5% one they put out last week will be revised down to 3% last quarter. I dread to think what the real figure is ..- 8% by my reckoning for 09.
Ben Benanke flooded the system with cash from September 08 and on and this has taken stocks back up from the DOW 6500 low in March 09. My expectation was that Ben had a DOW 10 000 target by July of 09 but it took him a couple of extra months to reach it. PE ratios value the DOW at about 6000 ..The present 10 000 is insane. But as I have said all along “you can go broke waiting for markets to act rationally.” Besides, no one wants it to tank ... it would shatter confidence. Ideally it would be better for everyone if the stock exchange was placed on the back burner and more emphasis placed on the real earnings of businesses. Anyone who views the stockmarket as anything more than a fixed card game needs their head examined.
The big problem for the yanks is real estate. Most regions are stagnant or heading South still. Ben has failed to draw a line under the US property crash and this has continued to see pressure applied to the debt instruments built on it.
Greece , Spain , Portugal , Italy and the East will have little choice but to default. Ireland will cop it and the UK pound will also cop it as Brown drives that country to debt ruin. While Copenhagen was going on these idiots would have been meeting in a back room somewhere discussing how they can quietly default without anyone noticing. There are several options but make no mistake the Eurozone wont be a growth zone for a long long time after the stims wear off.
The survival of the EU itself is at stake. Countries like Greece have continually violated EU deficit policy and have had to be continually saved by countries like Germany ...This situation cannot continue.
The solution to the problem is as obvious as it is painful - Write off debt or just plain pay it all back. Many pollys and economists don’t understand that the solution to the problem is the depression.
This thing has years to run and there will be ups and downs all over the joint. One thing is for sure climate change is a non starter now. But depression and recessions end ..its better to view the cataclysm as an opportunity - one which Rudd is wasting.
===
Rudd can promise, but can’t deliver
Andrew Bolt
Is there a noble Kevin Rudd plan that’s actually worked? From today’s papers, the latest on how sounds-good Rudd in fact delivers:
Item:
THE Rudd government’s ambitious plan for a new, more transparent system for lobbying politicians and a cleaner system of political funding is in crisis.Item:
Corporate Australia and unions are exploiting gaps in the new disclosure rules… Big accounting and legal firms are emerging as some of the biggest players on the professional lobby circuit, using former political heavyweights and their minders to access the corridors of Parliament on behalf of clients, free of scrutiny…
Some of the more high-profile figures include Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s former boss, Wayne Goss, as chairman of accounting giant Deloitte, former NSW premier Bob Carr with Macquarie Group, and former Victorian premier Steve Bracks a KPMG consultant.
BLACKLISTED insulation operators are continuing to trade under the federal government’s $2.7 billion ‘’pink batts’’ program, despite appearing on the government’s list of deregistered installers....Item:
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, unveiled the program to insulate 2.7 million homes last February as part of the government’s $42 billion stimulus package. The program has been dogged by claims of rorts and malpractice. This week a fourth insulation installer was killed in Queensland while trying to crawl out of a manhole in a roof.
It was pitched as yet another federal government plan to help Australians tackle climate change - a free energy assessment for hundreds of thousands of homes and “green loans” for those who wanted them. Not only would it boost household energy efficiency, it would create jobs in the process.Item:
But barely six months since its launch, the $175 million Green Loans program has become just the latest government green scheme to descend into farce, hot on the heels of the solar panel and insulation rebates.Thousands of people could be unemployed and thousands of dollars out of pocket after paying to be trained to work under a scheme that is likely to end more than two years early…
By January 22, more than 182,000 assessments had taken place. One week later it reached 205,000 - suggesting 23,000 assessments had taken place in seven days… The big problem was that the market became flooded with assessors because no limit was set on their number. The scheme was also promoted enthusiastically by training organisations charging between $1500 and $2000 for the assessor course… The biggest irony is that despite the hundreds of thousands of home assessments, the Green Loans have been a fizzer, with just 1000 taken up.
THE Green Loans scheme is the second government debacle in just over six months that has left masters student Rob Campbell, of Sunshine, disillusioned.Item:
The first time around, he co-ordinated a group of 140 households in the outer eastern suburbs to bulk-buy solar panels under the government’s rebate scheme, which Environment Minister Peter Garrett canned with a day’s notice in June after it blew a half-a-billion-dollar hole in his department’s budget. Only half the households on Mr Campbell’s list got their panels…
Now, Mr Campbell, like thousands of others, is at the centre of another bureaucratic bungle - the Green Loans scheme… Mr Campbell completed a course to become a qualified household assessor… But after spending about $4000 on training, accreditation and insurance to obtain one of the new ‘’green jobs’’ spruiked by the government, Mr Campbell received just one government referral in six months
Now, backed by unions flexing their muscles under the Rudd government’s new workplace laws, some of these angry workers suddenly have the power to shut down Karratha, the remote Pilbara town that generates a big chunk of the nation’s economic growth and will be at the epicentre of the next wave of major jobs-generating projects.All these reports come from just today’s newspapers.
Rudd’s attention to the detail of the delivery of his promises last as long as the next news cycle. It’s telling that its his green rhetoric in particular that’s led to such chronic underdelivery.
===
Children killed by the “stolen generations” myth
Andrew Bolt
Yet another example of how the “stolen generations” myth can kill - by making welfare officials too scared to remove Aboriginal children they’d save if they were white:
AT a remote health clinic in the dusty reaches of central Australia, a toddler is being airlifted to hospital. The little boy, John (not his real name), has been burned so badly he needs skin grafts. Despite the severity of his burns and his agonising pain, John’s Aboriginal carers have not sought medical aid for the boy. Amid the alcohol-ridden violence of their remote community life, it takes a lot to trigger an emergency.Those who helped to fake the “stolen generations” myth have blood on their hands.
In the offices of Northern Territory ministers, there is a growing understanding that the crisis in child protection is finally coming home to roost… At the centre of the crisis is a particular failure to protect Aboriginal children, who are routinely placed in the care of relatives in unsafe circumstances, where they are often exposed to sexual abuse and violence.
(Pyschologist Howard) Bath (in a government report) blames the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle—a national guideline that stipulates indigenous children should be put in the care of relatives wherever possible to maintain links to their culture—for the lack of rigour in assessment of relative carers.
“The present data suggests, as do some of the decisions in the case studies, that in some cases this principle appears to be given primacy over basic child protection considerations,” Bath says…
Recent coronial hearings into the deaths of 12-year-old Deborah Melville and a seven-week-old baby hinted at the extent of the government’s failings…
The Country Liberals’ member for the Alice Springs seat of Araluen, Jodeen Carney, says the scale of the crisis is on clear display in the streets of Alice Springs, where children as young as five roam the streets in packs at midnight.
“In Aboriginal communities and in Alice Springs, anyone can walk down the street and see children who are clearly neglected,” she says.
“And there seems to be an acceptance of that neglect. Anywhere else in Australia, those children would be reported to welfare and they would be taken away from their families because they are not being fed properly, they are allowed to roam the streets at night and they are not going to school. If that’s not child abuse, I don’t know what is.”
===
The new Jew-haters
Andrew Bolt
Harry’s Place:
Today the Community Security Trust released its report on antisemitism in 2009. It is the most depressing report ever, with levels of attacks on Jews and and antisemitic harassment – both verbal and physical – at a level not witnessed in this country for generations. Indeed, the 924 cases reported reflect an increase in over 50% from the previous record high in 2006…The report does not actually mention the Left, but does mention a typical Leftist slur that equates Israelis - or Jews generally - to Nazis:
The Report sites the war in Gaza at the beginning of last year as a “trigger event"… (T)he question remains why British Jews - of all religious or ethnic minorities - alone are targeted in connection with foreign events. People do not rampage through Soho’s China Town smashing the windows of Chinese shops whenever there’s some incident in Tibet… But Jews, particularly those who appear ‘visibly’ Jewish, have to go on the alert if violence erupts over 3,500 km away…
Another part of that story may very well be the creeping acceptance of antisemitism on Liberal/Left circles when framed in an “anti-Zionism” context and the gradual merging of far-Left and far-Right narratives. The source of the attacks and abuse seems spread fairly evenly over far-right white supremacists, and Islamists and leftists.
For example, incidents that equate Israel with Nazi Germany would normally be recorded as antisemitic, whereas those that compare Israel to, for instance, apartheid South Africa normally would not be. While the charge that Israel practises apartheid upsets many Jews, it does not contain the same visceral capacity to offend Jews on the basis of their Jewishness as does the comparison with Nazism, which carries particular meaning for Jews because of the Holocaust.I suspect the report had this kind of thing in mind, drawn by Michael Leunig, the far Left cartoonist of The Age:
It’s actually not the offence caused to Jews that I find the most disturbing aspect of this slur, but the vilification of them as Nazis themselves - because when your enemy is a Nazi, what are you then entitled to do in “resistance”?
This new report helps to answer that question.
===
Sea the difference
Andrew Bolt
Dr Roy Spencer says the sharp spike in global temperatures last month - when so many countries suffered a freezing winter - was driven mostly by an abrupt rise in sea surface temperatures.
===
The Governer becomes a far-Left activist
Andrew Bolt
Victorian Governer David de Kretser has forgotten his duty and is now playing at politics. Even less forgiveably, this supposedly bi-partisan official is playing his politics overtly in a “civil campaign” with activists from the radical green Left:
Invitiation (sic) to the launch of The Transition Decade,Just to launch any kind of “civil campaign” for political change - change of the kind that would be rejected by the Liberal Party - is already a betrayal of a Governor’s fundamental duty to stay above politics and remain the neutral “umpire”. I’m astonished that de Kretser would even considered involvement in such a campaign, let alone launch it.
Sunday February 14th 2010
The Governor of Victoria will launch a new national climate action civil campaign to restore a safe climate.
A growing alliance of groups has created the foundation for a powerful collaboration of groups and individuals – working together to start a campaign for Transition Decade to estore a safe climate ..
Keynote Speakers Include:
Professor David de Kretser A.C, The Governor of Victoria
Professor Will Steffen, Executive Director ANU Climate Change Institute
Uncle Bob Randall, Yankunytjatjara Elder And Traditional Owner Of Uluru
Professor Rob Adams Am Director Design & Urban Environment, City Of Melbourne
Philip Sutton Safe Climate Australia…
“This could be the most important Climate Change event of the year”
- David Spratt, Co-author Climate Code Red
Kind Regards,
The Transition Decade Guiding Team
http://www.t10.net.au
The Transition Decade Alliance:
Beyond Zero Emissions
Climate Emergency Network
Friends of the Earth
Sustainable Living Foundation
But to have allied himself with such players shows a naivity that’s shocking. Here’s just some of de Kretser’s new political allies.
David Spratt, for instance, speaks at conferences organised by Marxist groups and demands we switch to a ”war-type economy” and spend “more than 30 per cent ... of the economy” to “save most humans and species from a global warming apocalypse”.
Sponsor Friends of the Earth is an anti-corporate activist of the far Left which elped to organise the often violent 2000 S!! blockade in Melbourne of the World Economic Forum, and now insists ”wealthier peoples need to consume less” and we must “bring about an end to new fossil fuel exploration” and coal-fired power stations.
The members of Climate Emergency Network, another sponsor, include Marxist and revolutionary Left parties, such as Resistance, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity, as well as law-breaking green protest groups such as Greenpeace and Rising Tide.
De Kretser will also share the stage with Christine Milne, one of the more radical MPs of the Australian Greens - a party whose green policies he will thereby seem to endorse over those of the Liberal and Labor parties, neither of which is represented, nor, I suspect would agree to come. Can’t de Kretser seen just from this alone how inappropriate it is that he be there?
Former governor, Labor stalwart and judge Richard McGarvie long ago spelled out the duties of the office de Kretser now fills, saying a governor or governor-general must be a “respected person who remains entirely above partisan politics and exerts a unifying influence”.
There is a critical reason for that, beyond the fact that political meddling by an unelected governor is undemocratic, which is why we’d be shocked if the Queen tried what her man in Government House is now playing.
Even more important is that the essential role of a governor is to make sure the constitution works as it should. Usually that’s an uncontroversial task—signing into laws the Bills passed by parliament, swearing in an elected government and dissolving parliament when the premier asks. But as we saw with the sacking of the Whitlam government in 1975, or of NSW Premier Jack Lang in 1932, sometimes a governor-general or governor must act in ways that can—if not done carefully by an apolitical figure—have us at each other’s throats, screaming that democracy is dead. It will then be critical that no one can prove him a partisan.
De Kretser is clearly passionate about global warming, and even preached on that subject - inappropiriately, thought some guests - at his reception last month for Prince William. He’s entitled to have his opinions, but he is not entitle to abuse his position to advance his highly political and divisive views on the biggest issue now in Australian politics..
If de Kretser wants to become active in politics, he should first resign as Governor. As it is, he is betraying his office.
If he cannot see this for himself, the Premier must call in to help clear his vision.
===
The Climategate whistleblower?
Andrew Bolt
As I suspected, not a thief or hacker or spy, but a whistleblower, if police really have their Climategate leaker:
A scientist at the University of East Anglia has been questioned by detectives investigating how controversial emails were leaked from the campus’s climate research unit.Norfolk police have interviewed and taken a formal statement from Paul Dennis, 54, another climate researcher who heads an adjacent laboratory.If he’s the whistleblower who exposed the corruption, fakery, collusion, evasion and bullying among the top climate scientists, I wonder whether he’ll get the Left’s normal applause for such public-spirited souls.
UPDATE
Nonsense, says Paul Dennis.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Glenn Beck Catches Obama In Another Lie- Kiss Your Doctor Good-Bye
After repeatedly telling audiences that you will be able to keep your doctor with Obamacare, President Obama admitted last Friday that you will not have that option if the democrat's health care bill is passed. Glenn Beck shows the video
Obama Gives Liberal Stump Speech at National Prayer Breakfast
Barack Obama gave a liberal stump speech at the National Payer Breakfast this morning in DC. The president pushed immigration, Obamacare, gay marriage, cap and trade, etc. He learned well from his mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
===
He is still trying to find a way to be civil, but it isn't that hard. He just needs to be civil.
Headlines Friday 5th February 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Again the cartoonist got the wrong people, Obama is a war monger, as his results show.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”- Psalm 33:4-5
===
New Mass. Sen. Scott Brown, the White House are already in a fight over the job-creating results of the stimulus.
Toyota Hitting the Brakes
Report says automaker will recall 270,000 Prius hybrid vehicles in United States and Japan over brake problems
N. Korea to U.S.: He's All Yours
State media in Pyongyang reports the country has 'decided to leniently forgive and release' detained American missionary Robert Park after he slipped in Christmas Day
Morning-After Pill' Ordered at Bases
For the first time, the Pentagon will require military bases worldwide to offer emergency contraception
India to Pull Back From IPCC, Create Independent Climate Panel
Recent scandals involving the IPCC have undercut its creditability to such an extent that the nation of India plans to look for an independent assessment. According to a report from the Hindustan Times, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh believes his country cannot depend solely on reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). India plans to create its own panel to do an independent analysis of climate change science. "There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am all for climate science but not for climate evangelism. I think people misused the IPCC report," Ramesh told an Indian news channel.
Hubble Spies the Faces of Pluto?
Spurned Pluto is changing its looks, donning more rouge in its complexion and altering its iceball surface here and there. Color astronomers surprised. Newly released Hubble Space Telescope photos show the distant one-time planet -- demoted to "dwarf planet" status in 2006 -- is changing color and its ice sheets are shifting. The photos, released by NASA Thursday, paint a Pluto that is significantly redder than it had been for the past several decades. To the layman, it has a yellow-orange hue, but astronomers say it has about 20 percent more red than it used to have.
Travel agents reveal the dark secrets of the business including charging you extra to fund their own lavish holidays and gifts as well as taking advantage of those in grief
School feud dad clings to life
A MAN is in a critical condition in hospital after a schoolyard feud involving his son turned violent.
Suicide waitress spat on, called fat
TEENAGE waitress committed suicide after relentless bullying by her co-workers, court is told.
Bird acquitted of second assault claim
NRL star Greg Bird is acquitted of attacking a woman with a glass bottle at a nightclub.
'There was a lot of blood in the water'
LIFEGUARD describes how he dragged an injured surfer from bloodied, shark-infested waters.
Facebook denies political censorship
FACEBOOK denies censorship claims after deleting a group that criticised Kevin Rudd.
'Killer' surgeon hides from court
DISGRACED brain surgeon Suresh Nair has remained in his cell instead of appearing in court to face new charges over the deaths of two young women.
Girl buried alive in honour killing
A 16-YEAR-OLD girl was buried alive by relatives in a gruesome honour killing because she reportedly befriended boys.
Cops 'use CCTV to perv on schoolgirls'
A MAN has been charged over the firebombing of the TIO Insurance and Banking office in Darwin that left 19 people injured. The 45-year-old was charged with nine counts of attempted murder, unlawfully setting fire to a building, intending serious harm by causing an explosion and recklessly endangering life, Northern Territory police said. Police allege he entered the TIO office in Darwin's CBD about 11am (CST) on Wednesday and lit jerry cans of fuel and fire crackers in a shopping trolley, causing an explosion and fire that injured 19 people. He then drove to the Darwin police station where he handed himself in, they said. The charges were laid as evidence emerged that security cameras which could have been used to stop the alleged bomber were switched off at the city's police station because officers had been using them to check out schoolgirls, The Northern Territory News reported today.
=== Journalists Corner ===
A powerhouse for 8 years!
Congratulations on being number one!
Greta reflects on her favorite moments.
===
Bonus Backlash!
Should the government set a limit for bank bonuses? Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg reacts!
===
Holy Smoke!
CA opens America's first Marijuana superstore! Is it a pharmaceutical need or cause for concern?
===
Is the world getting worse? No!
John exposes the facts & shows why our planet isn't actually in peril !
=== Comments ===
Jon Stewart in the No Spin Zone
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 3, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight: Seems like just yesterday, but it was 2004 when Comedy Central guy Jon Stewart last entered the No Spin Zone. Well, this afternoon, Mr. Stewart somehow got lost in midtown Manhattan and wound up here.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
O'REILLY: You know what I notice when I do your program, I go over and the audience, they love President Obama. Your audience, the guys who sit in the little bleachers…
JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": That's right.
O'REILLY: For them, it's like going to Lourdes to go on your show because they know they're going to get…
STEWART: Many have been healed.
O'REILLY: Right.
STEWART: There's no question.
O'REILLY: (INAUDIBLE) Obama. And it's going to — so it's perceived that you are a big fan of the president.
STEWART: All right.
O'REILLY: How is President Obama doing so far?
===
Garnaut fooled, too. Call an inquiry
Andrew Bolt
Here’s another reason the Opposition should demand an inquiry into the science behind the Rudd Government’s multi-billion-dollar global warming policies.
Kevin Rudd’s advisor on global warming, Professor Ross Garnaut, repeated in his influential report to the Government on its emissions trading scheme a wild claim on Himalayan glaciers from the green group WWF - a claim the IPCC has now admitted is fake:
Yet Garnaut not only fell for it, clearly without checking, but went on to discuss the purported catastrophic consequence of such melting at length, quoting from a paper by Grahan Pearman from the green activist Climate Institute and a security analyst Alan Dupont. An extract::
So how carefully have the Government and its advisors ever checked the claims of warming catastrophe, when even the Himalayan hoax could get accepted?
With the IPCC, Rudd’s other major source of global warming advice, now mired in allegations of bias, exaggeration, censorship, collusion, false claims and conflicts of interest involving its chairman, we now desperately need an inquiry into the state of the warming science before we spend a single million more.
===
Penny’s media tips: How to seem shifty and dangerous
Andrew Bolt
Here are just some of the questions Climate Change Minister Penny Wong refused to answer last night in her excruciating interview on Lateline
When I say Wong didn’t answer Jones’ questions, I don’t mean that she simply failed to give an answer that was full or frank. I mean exactly what I say: that she did not supply any kind of answer to these specific questions, leaving every viewer with the clear impression that she had something very ugly to hide.
Fact is, of course, that she does. The clear message last night was that Rudd’s warming plans will cost you more than you’ve been told - or will be told, either.
===
Whatever it takes
Andrew Bolt
Tom Switzer:
Looking at Rudd’s political career since 1998, it is also difficult to identify anything he seems genuinely to believe other than his own political success.
===
How many more before Rudd says “oops”?
Andrew Bolt
The boatloads seem to be getting bigger, too:
===
How cartoonishly evil did they think us?
Andrew Bolt
Mad to have even thought them worth checking, but such is the reluctance to disbelieve the “stolen generatiions”:
IT made frontpage headlines and prompted the Rudd Government to order an investigation that cost taxpayers more than $100,000, but it now appears there was no evidence to support claims authorities forcibly tested drugs on members of the stolen generation.
===
Manne still can’t find those 10
Andrew Bolt
Extraordinary. Five years after my challenge, Robert Manne still cannot come up with even 10 names of the 25,000 children he claims were stolen just for being Aboriginal.
Manne has just published a long, dust-in-the-eyes defence to Keith Windschuttle’s allegation that he deceived readers into thinking the Commonwealth Government had adopted a proposal to wipe out the Aboriginal race.
This was Windschuttle allegation:
But this isn’t actually about stealing 25,000 children, of course, which is the claim I most looked for Manne in this article to finally back up. In particular, could Manne at last name just 10 children stolen just to “breed out the colour”.
Manne spins his typical web of quotes from letters, out-of-context remarks, expressions of unachieved aims and unexamined assumptions and generalisations to insist there were indeed these thousands of racist child thefts by “genocidal” officials. But check, in so far as we can, the instances he actually gives.
Manne actually gives fewer than 10 names, actually, which makes this difficult. But let me try to do what he does not, and identify the children he does mention en bloc, like here:
Well, first, of course, you’d have to say he must have been slack in his duties to have found just 167 part-Aboriginal children in all Queensland in five years. Maybe he wasn’t looking hard, or just maybe, he removed only those children who actually gave him so other reason for rescue. Maybe when the courts declared these (almost inevitably fatherless) children “neglected”, it actually meant it.
Manne has not publicly identified the individual circumstances of any of those 167 children (with the partial exception of one) to show precisely why they prove his case. But I have indeed looked into the individual circumstances of those children I could trace and found only children it would have been a crime not to rescue and send into care.
They included a fatherless 12-year-old girl with syphilis, a 13-year-old who was seven months pregnant and working for no wages on a station, and a boy who was kept chained up in a back yard by white employers when he was bad. Shirleene Robinson says Roth also rescued children kept as virtual slaves: “These children were extremely vulnerable to exploitation because of their position as members of a colonised population and because of their youth. During the period from 1842 to 1902, large number of Aboriginal children were kidnapped and removed from their families and traditional localities for employment, received no remuneration and suffered abuse by their employers.”
Or as Professor Gordon Briscoe (an Aboriginal academic) has written of some of the children Roth saved::
There in no way these children could be said have have been stolen, as Manne claimed, just because they were Aboriginal and not because they needed help. If these children were “stolen” then every single child we save from rape and violence is “stolen” too and the term is meaningless. Or a lie.
But let’s go to the few names Manne does give, clearly suggesting - without openly saying - that these are examples of children who were stolen for racist reasons:
===
IPCC goofs again: now Holland is drowned
Andrew Bolt
Yet another blunder in that IPCC 2007 report which Kevin Rudd uses to justify his great green tax to “stop” global warming:
Nor is that the only sceptical news from the Netherlands:
Demand an inquiry now.
UPDATE
India goes even further:
===
Sceptical scientists now speaking out
Andrew Bolt
More scientists cast doubt on the IPPC (and Rudd) theory that man has heated the world to dangerous and unprecedented levels.
From Sweden, more evidence that the world was warmer just a 1000 years ago (and thrived):
UPDATE
JoNova notes the biggest seven “errors” in the poor-me whinge of warmist Professor Andy Pitman. Robyn “100 metres” Williams may take note.
UPDATE 2
Senator Cory Bernardi nails the Labor MPs still repeating discredited IPCC material. The video is on the new Menzies House website, worth a visit.
UPDATE 3
The Spectator also notes that bloggers were covering the climate scandals long before most of the mainstream media deigned to notice.
===
Rudd is very productive … if strikes are what you want
Andrew Bolt
From the same government that now preaches productivity comes these utterly predictable results of its strangling new workplace laws:
Rudd would rather take their job than let them choose one he doesn’t like:
===
How Jaspreet made Australia toast, too
Andrew Bolt
IT’S because so many people want to believe Australians are racist that Jaspreet Singh became the latest fake example of our evil.
Singh, a 29-year-old Indian “student”, turned up last month burned to a crisp, with a tale of having been attacked in Essendon by four racists with a can of petrol.
The story smelled from the start, and not just of premium unleaded. Police even warned it sounded suss, starting with this notion that gangs roam Essendon late at night with cans of petrol, looking for Indians to burn.
But what followed is a golden example of a phenomenon that’s made this country seem like a madhouse lately. If people really want to believe something they will, and facts barely matter. Indeed, facts are then evil.
That’s why so many millions believe in the “stolen generations”, for instance, especially when no one can name even 10 children stolen just for being Aboriginal.
That’s why millions more are sure man is heating the world dangerously, even when the planet has cooled for more than eight years.
And that’s why so many of our preacher-teacher class, from academics to ABC broadcasters, have so eagerly insisted that every Australian (except themselves, funnily) is a racist redneck - a smugly self-regarding lie they’re now shocked to see is believed of them, too, by an Indian media only too happy to pander to its own chip-on-the-shoulder xenophobes.
It’s the wanting to believe that counts. So here’s what we read last month about the bizarre barbecueing of Jaspreet Singh from Indian journalists and Australian cause-pushers.
Sindh Today, January 9: “Days after India asked Australia to take urgent action against those behind the murder of an Indian student a week ago, a 29-year-old Indian was set ablaze Saturday by four unidentified attackers in Melbourne, putting bilateral ties under strain.”
The New Indian Express, January 11: “Victoria Police say ... there is no reason at this stage to consider this (attack) racially motivated. If the statement had been calculated to enrage, it could hardly have been more provocatively phrased. Perhaps, in Australia, opportunist crimes also involve setting the victim ablaze. In any other country, this would prima facie be considered a hate crime, in this case racist.”
===
How to define an Australian
Andrew Bolt
We often have trouble defining what the Australian character is, but I can safely say that I know what a real Australian would say in response:
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Code Red may actually kill
Andrew Bolt
THE Code Red bushfire warnings brought in since Black Saturday are going to get someone killed.
They are not just confusing and impractical, but blur the lesson learned in almost every past bushfire.
That lesson? The safest place when a fire is close is a well-prepared home.
But see the makings of a new tragedy in the surveys released this week by the CFA, which show a quarter of people in fire-prone areas would consider leaving their homes on Code Red days - but only when the fires actually threatened their property. Too, too late.
Before Black Saturday the CFA advice, backed by countless studies, was clear. In you live in a fire zone, prepare your house. And then either leave early on fire days or stay and fight.
As the Royal Commission on the Black Saturday fires has been told, research on 552 civilian bushfire deaths in Australia over the past 100 years showed that just one in 12 occurred inside homes, and most of those dead were people too old, sick, drunk or unprepared to fight the flames.
“Only one person is said to have died while defending a defensible shelter,” said counsel assisting, Peter Rozen.
A 1984 Melbourne University study of deaths in the 1983 Mt Macedon fires explains why: you just need your house to save you long enough for the fire front to pass, and “conditions (outside) are thought to remain unbearable for no longer than 15 to 20 minutes”. Just make sure your house is built and defended to last that long. If you flee, you just risk being caught in burning forests on roads choked with smoke and crashed cars.
But Black Saturday’s fires were fiercer than almost anything before. And this time 113 of the 173 victims died in their homes, most of them fighting the flames they’d thought they could beat.
There are lessons to be learned. Should we burn off more fuel around vulnerable bush towns? Should bush houses be better fire-proofed?
But the commission and the State Government chose first to change our fire warnings - to change what had worked as a rule, because of a freak exception.
===
But Woger is still not weleased
Andrew Bolt
Biggus Dickus lives:
Again the cartoonist got the wrong people, Obama is a war monger, as his results show.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”- Psalm 33:4-5
===
New Mass. Sen. Scott Brown, the White House are already in a fight over the job-creating results of the stimulus.
Toyota Hitting the Brakes
Report says automaker will recall 270,000 Prius hybrid vehicles in United States and Japan over brake problems
N. Korea to U.S.: He's All Yours
State media in Pyongyang reports the country has 'decided to leniently forgive and release' detained American missionary Robert Park after he slipped in Christmas Day
Morning-After Pill' Ordered at Bases
For the first time, the Pentagon will require military bases worldwide to offer emergency contraception
India to Pull Back From IPCC, Create Independent Climate Panel
Recent scandals involving the IPCC have undercut its creditability to such an extent that the nation of India plans to look for an independent assessment. According to a report from the Hindustan Times, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh believes his country cannot depend solely on reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). India plans to create its own panel to do an independent analysis of climate change science. "There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am all for climate science but not for climate evangelism. I think people misused the IPCC report," Ramesh told an Indian news channel.
Hubble Spies the Faces of Pluto?
Spurned Pluto is changing its looks, donning more rouge in its complexion and altering its iceball surface here and there. Color astronomers surprised. Newly released Hubble Space Telescope photos show the distant one-time planet -- demoted to "dwarf planet" status in 2006 -- is changing color and its ice sheets are shifting. The photos, released by NASA Thursday, paint a Pluto that is significantly redder than it had been for the past several decades. To the layman, it has a yellow-orange hue, but astronomers say it has about 20 percent more red than it used to have.Travel agents reveal the dark secrets of the business including charging you extra to fund their own lavish holidays and gifts as well as taking advantage of those in grief
School feud dad clings to life
A MAN is in a critical condition in hospital after a schoolyard feud involving his son turned violent.
Suicide waitress spat on, called fat
TEENAGE waitress committed suicide after relentless bullying by her co-workers, court is told.
Bird acquitted of second assault claim
NRL star Greg Bird is acquitted of attacking a woman with a glass bottle at a nightclub.
'There was a lot of blood in the water'
LIFEGUARD describes how he dragged an injured surfer from bloodied, shark-infested waters.
Facebook denies political censorship
FACEBOOK denies censorship claims after deleting a group that criticised Kevin Rudd.
'Killer' surgeon hides from court
DISGRACED brain surgeon Suresh Nair has remained in his cell instead of appearing in court to face new charges over the deaths of two young women.
Girl buried alive in honour killing
A 16-YEAR-OLD girl was buried alive by relatives in a gruesome honour killing because she reportedly befriended boys.
Cops 'use CCTV to perv on schoolgirls'
A MAN has been charged over the firebombing of the TIO Insurance and Banking office in Darwin that left 19 people injured. The 45-year-old was charged with nine counts of attempted murder, unlawfully setting fire to a building, intending serious harm by causing an explosion and recklessly endangering life, Northern Territory police said. Police allege he entered the TIO office in Darwin's CBD about 11am (CST) on Wednesday and lit jerry cans of fuel and fire crackers in a shopping trolley, causing an explosion and fire that injured 19 people. He then drove to the Darwin police station where he handed himself in, they said. The charges were laid as evidence emerged that security cameras which could have been used to stop the alleged bomber were switched off at the city's police station because officers had been using them to check out schoolgirls, The Northern Territory News reported today.
=== Journalists Corner ===
A powerhouse for 8 years!
Congratulations on being number one!
Greta reflects on her favorite moments.
===
Bonus Backlash!
Should the government set a limit for bank bonuses? Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg reacts!
===
Holy Smoke!
CA opens America's first Marijuana superstore! Is it a pharmaceutical need or cause for concern?
===
Is the world getting worse? No!
John exposes the facts & shows why our planet isn't actually in peril !
=== Comments ===
Jon Stewart in the No Spin Zone
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 3, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight: Seems like just yesterday, but it was 2004 when Comedy Central guy Jon Stewart last entered the No Spin Zone. Well, this afternoon, Mr. Stewart somehow got lost in midtown Manhattan and wound up here.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
O'REILLY: You know what I notice when I do your program, I go over and the audience, they love President Obama. Your audience, the guys who sit in the little bleachers…
JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": That's right.
O'REILLY: For them, it's like going to Lourdes to go on your show because they know they're going to get…
STEWART: Many have been healed.
O'REILLY: Right.
STEWART: There's no question.
O'REILLY: (INAUDIBLE) Obama. And it's going to — so it's perceived that you are a big fan of the president.
STEWART: All right.
O'REILLY: How is President Obama doing so far?
===
Garnaut fooled, too. Call an inquiry
Andrew Bolt
Here’s another reason the Opposition should demand an inquiry into the science behind the Rudd Government’s multi-billion-dollar global warming policies.
Kevin Rudd’s advisor on global warming, Professor Ross Garnaut, repeated in his influential report to the Government on its emissions trading scheme a wild claim on Himalayan glaciers from the green group WWF - a claim the IPCC has now admitted is fake:
Melting of the Himalayan glaciersAs we’ve learned, the claim that the Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035 is utterly false, is unsupported by any research and was included in the IPCC 2007 report (from where Garnaut clearly picked it up) only for political reasons.
After the polar regions, the Himalayas are home to the largest glacial areas.Together, the Himalayan glaciers feed seven of the most important rivers in Asia—the Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Huang. These glaciers are receding faster than any other glaciers around the world, and some estimates project that they may disappear altogether by 2035 (WWF Nepal Program 2005).
Rivers fed from glaciers are projected to experience increased streamflows over the next few decades as a result of glacial melt, followed by a subsequent decline and greater instability of inflows as glaciers begin to disappear altogether, leaving only seasonal precipitation to feed rivers (WWF Nepal Program 2005).
Glacial retreat can also result in catastrophic discharges of water from meltwater lakes, known as glacial lake outburst
Yet Garnaut not only fell for it, clearly without checking, but went on to discuss the purported catastrophic consequence of such melting at length, quoting from a paper by Grahan Pearman from the green activist Climate Institute and a security analyst Alan Dupont. An extract::
The melting of the Himalayan and Tibetan plateau glaciers illustrates the complex nexus of climate change, economic security and geopolitics. Well over a billion people are dependent on the flow of the area’s rivers for much of their food and water needs, as well as transportation and energy from hydroelectricity. Initially, flows may increase, as glacial runoff accelerates, causing extensive flooding. Within a few decades, however, water levels are expected to decline, jeopardising food production and causing widespread water and power shortages.This can’t be brushed aside as one trivial mistake in an otherwise carefully checked report. Garnaut has repeatedly shown he’s attracted to apocalyptic language and scenarios, and his report lavishly quotes those people and claims that suit his agenda - not least Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, whose predictions of warming disaster for the Great Barrier Reef have so far failed to come true, yet is quoted making yet another breathless claim:
Reef-building corals have already been pushed to their thermal limits by increases in temperature in tropical and subtropical waters over the past 50 years.The Rudd Government’s White Paper picked up Garnaut’s panic over Himalayan glacial melt, warning of “decreased freshwater availability to more than a billion people” in the region.
So how carefully have the Government and its advisors ever checked the claims of warming catastrophe, when even the Himalayan hoax could get accepted?
With the IPCC, Rudd’s other major source of global warming advice, now mired in allegations of bias, exaggeration, censorship, collusion, false claims and conflicts of interest involving its chairman, we now desperately need an inquiry into the state of the warming science before we spend a single million more.
===
Penny’s media tips: How to seem shifty and dangerous
Andrew Bolt
Here are just some of the questions Climate Change Minister Penny Wong refused to answer last night in her excruciating interview on Lateline
TONY JONES: The Prime Minister has spelled out that in the first two years of your emissions trading scheme, electricity prices would rise by 7 and then by 12 per cent in the second year; a total of 19 per cent by 2013. What happens after 2013?It’s hard to recall a worse performance by a federal Minister.
TONY JONES: I’ll just interrupt there because you put out some of the modelling. There’s no modelling, is there, that we’ve seen or that I’ve seen beyond 2013?
TONY JONES: Yes, understood. That’s the difference as you paint it. But let me ask you this: you say that the big question is about the two schemes, but actually one of the big questions is about the costs. So what happens after 2013? What does Treasury model tell you? For example, if your targets go from 5 to 10 per cent, does that mean automatically and exponentially you get a doubling in the cost of electricity from 20 per cent increases to 40 per cent increases?
TONY JONES: Yes, but the open question is: how much will you have to increase? You must have Treasury modelling which tells you what a 10 per cent reduction would be, a 15 per cent reduction, a 20 per cent, or even a 25 per cent reduction in emissions would cost in terms of cost-of-living increases. Do you have that modelling?
TONY JONES: That’s not the only policy question. The policy question that is on a lot of people’s minds at the moment is what this is going to cost. And so I’m asking you: do you have Treasury modelling that tells you what the additional costs will be to electricity and cost of living if your targets increase from 5 to 10 per cent, from 10 to 15, or even to 25 per cent, as you’ve canvassed, if the rest of the world moves?
TONY JONES: Alright, but before the voters go to an election with an emissions trading scheme, potentially, as a virtual referendum on how to deal with climate change - before the voters go to election, are they entitled to know what your modelling is telling you about what different targets would do to the cost of electricity and the cost of living?
TONY JONES: OK, but what happens? Is there an exponential change to the cost of electricity? Does it double from a 20 per cent increase with a 5 per cent reduction in emissions trading to a 40 per cent increase in electricity costs with a 10 per cent and so on, up to 80 per cent with 20 per cent reductions? Does it work like that, or is it somehow different? What does the modelling tell you?
TONY JONES: OK. But before people vote for this in an election, as they are likely to do this year, do you commit to giving the complete Treasury modelling to the public so they can see what happens at the different targets that you’ve proposed?
TONY JONES: Will you release the full Treasury modelling about the potential cost to electricity and cost of living with the different targets?
TONY JONES: But they won’t know prior to the election, based on what you’ve just said, what the potential economic impact is of higher targets.
TONY JONES: Yes, but you’ve already told the rest of the world that you’re prepared to go to 25 per cent if the rest of the world moves. You’ve also set a target for 2050 of 60 per cent, so there has to be large reductions over time, and don’t the public have the right to know what the cost of those increases will be?
TONY JONES: Well, no, we don’t have to, I was just trying to get to the bottom of whether you’re prepared to release that modelling. I think the answer is no.
TONY JONES: If that is the issue, let me ask you this: is it now standard practice to pass confidential departmental briefing documents to the press, or to sections of the press, I should say, as part of a media strategy to undermine the Opposition’s position?
TONY JONES: No, no, I’m not talking about honesty. I’m talking about the way in which this information was released. And isn’t it precisely the sort of thing that infuriated you about the previous government: the use of confidential departmental material to undermine the Opposition’s case?
When I say Wong didn’t answer Jones’ questions, I don’t mean that she simply failed to give an answer that was full or frank. I mean exactly what I say: that she did not supply any kind of answer to these specific questions, leaving every viewer with the clear impression that she had something very ugly to hide.
Fact is, of course, that she does. The clear message last night was that Rudd’s warming plans will cost you more than you’ve been told - or will be told, either.
===
Whatever it takes
Andrew Bolt
Tom Switzer:
Looking at Rudd’s political career since 1998, it is also difficult to identify anything he seems genuinely to believe other than his own political success.
===
How many more before Rudd says “oops”?
Andrew Bolt
The boatloads seem to be getting bigger, too:
Another boat carrying 89 asylum seekers arrived in Australia’s northern waters yesterday and those on board are being taken to Christmas Island.At this rate Kevin Rudd will smash his record of last year by August.
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How cartoonishly evil did they think us?
Andrew Bolt
Mad to have even thought them worth checking, but such is the reluctance to disbelieve the “stolen generatiions”:
IT made frontpage headlines and prompted the Rudd Government to order an investigation that cost taxpayers more than $100,000, but it now appears there was no evidence to support claims authorities forcibly tested drugs on members of the stolen generation.
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Manne still can’t find those 10
Andrew Bolt
Extraordinary. Five years after my challenge, Robert Manne still cannot come up with even 10 names of the 25,000 children he claims were stolen just for being Aboriginal.
Manne has just published a long, dust-in-the-eyes defence to Keith Windschuttle’s allegation that he deceived readers into thinking the Commonwealth Government had adopted a proposal to wipe out the Aboriginal race.
This was Windschuttle allegation:
Manne said this remained the government’s position for most of the remainder of the 1930s:Manne’s defence, laced with his trademark abuse and insinuations of racism in his critics, is that the Government nevertheless “encouraged” half-caste girls to marry outside Aboriginal tribes, which apparently was evil of them.the policy of breeding out the colour received the full endorsement of the Commonwealth for at least another five years.In an article in the Weekend Australian (January 30-31, 2010), I pointed out that Manne’s account is far from the truth. It even runs counter to evidence readily available in the archives Manne cited himself. In the House of Representatives on August 2 1934, J. A. Perkins, the Minister for the Interior in the Joseph Lyons government, denounced the proposal. He said:It can be stated definitely, that it is and always has been, contrary to policy to force half-caste women to marry anyone. The half-caste must be a perfectly free agent in the matter.
But this isn’t actually about stealing 25,000 children, of course, which is the claim I most looked for Manne in this article to finally back up. In particular, could Manne at last name just 10 children stolen just to “breed out the colour”.
Manne spins his typical web of quotes from letters, out-of-context remarks, expressions of unachieved aims and unexamined assumptions and generalisations to insist there were indeed these thousands of racist child thefts by “genocidal” officials. But check, in so far as we can, the instances he actually gives.
Manne actually gives fewer than 10 names, actually, which makes this difficult. But let me try to do what he does not, and identify the children he does mention en bloc, like here:
Protector Walter Roth ... pointed out in his 1905 report, in the past five years 167 “half-caste” children in Queensland had been removed to missions… Windschuttle is aware that under a Queensland law of 1865 having an Aboriginal or half-caste mother was in itself legal proof of “neglect”.So did Roth, as Manne clearly suggests, just steal Aboriginal children simply because they were Aboriginal, in line with a law that Manne wrongly argues was intended for just that purpose?
Well, first, of course, you’d have to say he must have been slack in his duties to have found just 167 part-Aboriginal children in all Queensland in five years. Maybe he wasn’t looking hard, or just maybe, he removed only those children who actually gave him so other reason for rescue. Maybe when the courts declared these (almost inevitably fatherless) children “neglected”, it actually meant it.
Manne has not publicly identified the individual circumstances of any of those 167 children (with the partial exception of one) to show precisely why they prove his case. But I have indeed looked into the individual circumstances of those children I could trace and found only children it would have been a crime not to rescue and send into care.
They included a fatherless 12-year-old girl with syphilis, a 13-year-old who was seven months pregnant and working for no wages on a station, and a boy who was kept chained up in a back yard by white employers when he was bad. Shirleene Robinson says Roth also rescued children kept as virtual slaves: “These children were extremely vulnerable to exploitation because of their position as members of a colonised population and because of their youth. During the period from 1842 to 1902, large number of Aboriginal children were kidnapped and removed from their families and traditional localities for employment, received no remuneration and suffered abuse by their employers.”
Or as Professor Gordon Briscoe (an Aboriginal academic) has written of some of the children Roth saved::
Children suffered in almost all locations in which Aborigines lived, as the Chief Protector reported to his Minister when he advised that many Aboriginal children were suffering from syphilis. The dilemma Roth faced in providing health care was that he lacked the legislative power to act. This remained a difficult issue. For example, Topsy, ‘a little girl, twelve years of age, from Magoura Station, suffered with syphilis. The station owner brought her to Normanton where [she was] joined by her sister in the local camp’. Roth reluctantly sent the children directly to Mapoon mission. His report to the Minister indicated that he asked Protector Galbraith toBe clear about Manne’s deceit here. He counts Topsy and children like her - sexually abused, diseased, enslaved and kidnapped - as children that were not saved by Roth, but as ones he stolen to “breed out the colour”. This is not such a cheap semantic trick by the professor. It is a gross moral error.report as to the ability of the sister to provide Topsy’s wants....[Roth explained to the Minister about how he] did not care to trespass too much on the kindness of the Mapoon Mission people, to whom we have already sent diseased half-caste children; and if, ultimately, it may be desirable to send her there, I think it only fair that the Superintendent be consulted beforehand.
There in no way these children could be said have have been stolen, as Manne claimed, just because they were Aboriginal and not because they needed help. If these children were “stolen” then every single child we save from rape and violence is “stolen” too and the term is meaningless. Or a lie.
But let’s go to the few names Manne does give, clearly suggesting - without openly saying - that these are examples of children who were stolen for racist reasons:
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IPCC goofs again: now Holland is drowned
Andrew Bolt
Yet another blunder in that IPCC 2007 report which Kevin Rudd uses to justify his great green tax to “stop” global warming:
A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of the Netherlands is currently below sea level.Funny how every mistake now coming to light is of the kind that tended to make global warming scarier. You know, that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, the Amazonian rain forests were extremely vulnerable, the Antarctica would become too fragile even for dirty shoes. And funny, too, how the IPCC boss cadged so many grants, directorships and business deals as his IPCC hyped the dangers. (Just read a fuller list of IPCC controversies here.)
In fact, just twenty percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.
Nor is that the only sceptical news from the Netherlands:
Dutch researchers reporting to Minister Cramer on Wednesday said that global warming appears to be slower than had been assumed.Surely Cramer’s demand now for a review of the climate science by her scientists is exactly what’s needed here, too. I mean, shouldn’t Climate Change Minister Penny Wong be saying exactly this sort of thing herself:
Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer says she will no longer tolerate errors by climate researchers. She expressed her anger to Dutch researchers who presented their annual report on the state of the climate on Wednesday.Here’s Tony Abbott’s way out of the pinch of claiming to still believe in dangerous man-made warming, yet blocking Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. Surely there’s now so many scandals engulging the IPCC and its science, that it’s mad for us to spend a single dollar more until an inquiry - with sceptical scientists on board too - reviews all the science we were once falsely told was “settled”.
Demand an inquiry now.
UPDATE
India goes even further:
India has threatened to pull out of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and set up its on climate change body because it “cannot rely” on the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri…(Thanks to readers Tony, Steve, Wand and Carlyle,)
In India the (IPCC’s) false claims (on the Himalayas) have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government… In Autumn, its environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing despite global warming…
(L)ast night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further. He announced that the Indian government will establish a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s “third ice cap”, and an “Indian IPCC” to use “climate science” to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.
“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. ...” he said.
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Sceptical scientists now speaking out
Andrew Bolt
More scientists cast doubt on the IPPC (and Rudd) theory that man has heated the world to dangerous and unprecedented levels.
From Sweden, more evidence that the world was warmer just a 1000 years ago (and thrived):
Sundqvist et al. write that “the stable isotope records show enriched isotopic values during the, for Scandinavia, comparatively cold period AD 1300-1700 [which they equate with the Little Ice Age] and depleted values during the warmer period AD 800-1000 [which they equate with the Medieval Warm Period].” And as can clearly be seen from the figure above, the two ?18O depletion “peaks” (actually inverted valleys) of the Medieval Warm Period are both more extreme than the “peak” value of the Current Warm Period, which appears at the end of the record.From Australia, Professor Peter Ridd tells Alan Jones that warmist scientists have grossly exaggerated the danger to the Great Barrier Reef. He’s too nice to name you-know-who as one who’s made these “wild” predictions and made scientists “look like used-car salesmen”:
I actually have quite a lot of faith in the voter. They can look through the hype and almost the advertising that’s gone on at the moment to sort of push these stories.(Thanks to reader Steve.)
UPDATE
JoNova notes the biggest seven “errors” in the poor-me whinge of warmist Professor Andy Pitman. Robyn “100 metres” Williams may take note.
UPDATE 2
Senator Cory Bernardi nails the Labor MPs still repeating discredited IPCC material. The video is on the new Menzies House website, worth a visit.
UPDATE 3
The Spectator also notes that bloggers were covering the climate scandals long before most of the mainstream media deigned to notice.
===
Rudd is very productive … if strikes are what you want
Andrew Bolt
From the same government that now preaches productivity comes these utterly predictable results of its strangling new workplace laws:
MINING giant Rio Tinto has warned that growing industrial unrest in Australia’s booming resources sector could spread to its critical iron ore mines, as it prepares to start bargaining with unions over workers’ pay and conditions for the first time in 15 years.And another consequence of the Rudd Government’s meddling:
The warning came as Fair Work Australia deputy president Brendan McCarthy was last night locked in a meeting with Woodside Energy in a last-ditch bid to stop workers building its $12 billion Pluto gas plant in the Pilbara from walking off the job again as early as today.
In an internal memo obtained by The Australian, Rio Tinto Iron Ore chief executive Sam Walsh warned staff that the ramp-up in industrial activity under the Rudd government’s new workplace laws could serve as an omen for Rio Tinto and other companies in the Pilbara…
WA Premier Colin Barnett has urged federal Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard to “roll up her sleeves” and help settle the growing number of crippling disputes in the Pilbara, which last week saw members of the Maritime Union of Australia secure pay rises of up to $50,000 in exchange for no productivity gains.
MATTHEW Spencer, 17, wants to keep his after-school job at his local Victorian hardware store and his employer, Charlie Duynhoven, wants to keep him on as well.UPDATE
But Matthew and five other youths, all aged between 16 and 18, have been sacked from the Terang and District Co-operative, 210km southwest of Melbourne, because the Rudd government’s Fair Work Act won’t let them work less than three hours a day.
Rudd would rather take their job than let them choose one he doesn’t like:
Asked why the youths couldn’t be allowed to work for 1.5 hours, Mr Rudd continued to defend the system.Rudd knows best what such workers want.
“We’ve got to be very careful about industrial relations systems which enables people, incrementally, to be exploited,” he said.
===
How Jaspreet made Australia toast, too
Andrew Bolt
IT’S because so many people want to believe Australians are racist that Jaspreet Singh became the latest fake example of our evil.
Singh, a 29-year-old Indian “student”, turned up last month burned to a crisp, with a tale of having been attacked in Essendon by four racists with a can of petrol.
The story smelled from the start, and not just of premium unleaded. Police even warned it sounded suss, starting with this notion that gangs roam Essendon late at night with cans of petrol, looking for Indians to burn.
But what followed is a golden example of a phenomenon that’s made this country seem like a madhouse lately. If people really want to believe something they will, and facts barely matter. Indeed, facts are then evil.
That’s why so many millions believe in the “stolen generations”, for instance, especially when no one can name even 10 children stolen just for being Aboriginal.
That’s why millions more are sure man is heating the world dangerously, even when the planet has cooled for more than eight years.
And that’s why so many of our preacher-teacher class, from academics to ABC broadcasters, have so eagerly insisted that every Australian (except themselves, funnily) is a racist redneck - a smugly self-regarding lie they’re now shocked to see is believed of them, too, by an Indian media only too happy to pander to its own chip-on-the-shoulder xenophobes.
It’s the wanting to believe that counts. So here’s what we read last month about the bizarre barbecueing of Jaspreet Singh from Indian journalists and Australian cause-pushers.
Sindh Today, January 9: “Days after India asked Australia to take urgent action against those behind the murder of an Indian student a week ago, a 29-year-old Indian was set ablaze Saturday by four unidentified attackers in Melbourne, putting bilateral ties under strain.”
The New Indian Express, January 11: “Victoria Police say ... there is no reason at this stage to consider this (attack) racially motivated. If the statement had been calculated to enrage, it could hardly have been more provocatively phrased. Perhaps, in Australia, opportunist crimes also involve setting the victim ablaze. In any other country, this would prima facie be considered a hate crime, in this case racist.”
===
How to define an Australian
Andrew Bolt
We often have trouble defining what the Australian character is, but I can safely say that I know what a real Australian would say in response:
IT’S a symbol of Australia’s fighting spirit. Now the Boxing Kangaroo is at the centre of an international incident, with the International Olympic Committee ordering it taken down from the Winter Games athletes’ village in Vancouver.And the athletes have done what any Australian would.
It can be revealed that IOC officials ordered the green and gold flag be removed just 24 hours after it was draped over a balcony - because it was deemed to be “too commercial”.
===
Code Red may actually kill
Andrew Bolt
THE Code Red bushfire warnings brought in since Black Saturday are going to get someone killed.
They are not just confusing and impractical, but blur the lesson learned in almost every past bushfire.
That lesson? The safest place when a fire is close is a well-prepared home.
But see the makings of a new tragedy in the surveys released this week by the CFA, which show a quarter of people in fire-prone areas would consider leaving their homes on Code Red days - but only when the fires actually threatened their property. Too, too late.
Before Black Saturday the CFA advice, backed by countless studies, was clear. In you live in a fire zone, prepare your house. And then either leave early on fire days or stay and fight.
As the Royal Commission on the Black Saturday fires has been told, research on 552 civilian bushfire deaths in Australia over the past 100 years showed that just one in 12 occurred inside homes, and most of those dead were people too old, sick, drunk or unprepared to fight the flames.
“Only one person is said to have died while defending a defensible shelter,” said counsel assisting, Peter Rozen.
A 1984 Melbourne University study of deaths in the 1983 Mt Macedon fires explains why: you just need your house to save you long enough for the fire front to pass, and “conditions (outside) are thought to remain unbearable for no longer than 15 to 20 minutes”. Just make sure your house is built and defended to last that long. If you flee, you just risk being caught in burning forests on roads choked with smoke and crashed cars.
But Black Saturday’s fires were fiercer than almost anything before. And this time 113 of the 173 victims died in their homes, most of them fighting the flames they’d thought they could beat.
There are lessons to be learned. Should we burn off more fuel around vulnerable bush towns? Should bush houses be better fire-proofed?
But the commission and the State Government chose first to change our fire warnings - to change what had worked as a rule, because of a freak exception.
===
But Woger is still not weleased
Andrew Bolt
Biggus Dickus lives:
A high-ranking Pakistani diplomat reportedly cannot be appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia because in Arabic his name translates into a phrase more appropriate for a porn star, referring to the size of male genitals, Foreign Policy reported.(Via Instapundit.)
The Arabic transaltion of Akbar Zeb to “biggest d**k” has overwhelmed Saudi officials who have refused to allow his post there.
Obama and Democrats Get Together- Crack Jokes About $1.4 Trillion Deficit
Because tripling the US National Budget Deficit is one big joke.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Headlines Thursday 4th February 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
What Rudd will do with his share of the tax.
=== Bible Quote ===
“But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.”- Psalm 59:16
===
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel meets with advocates for the disabled after 'f-ing retarded' comment.
U.S. at Risk for Cyber Attack
National Intelligence director warns U.S. is not up to task of defending 'malicious cyberactivity' that can wreak havoc
Dealing Another Blow to Toyota
Shares of embattled carmaker dive after off-the-cuff remark about not driving them from transportation secretary
$2M Super Bowl Ad — Paid By You
Census bureau spending millions,paid for with taxpayer dollars, to get Americans to answer simple survey
45-Foot Ancient Snake Devoured Crocs
The largest snake the world has ever known likely had a diet that included crocodile, or at least an ancient ...
Penn St. Investigating Scientist Over Research Misconduct
Penn State will move forward with an investigation into a leading climate scientist after an internal inquiry into four possible allegations of research misconduct. A university committee has been looking into the work of meteorology professor Michael Mann since late November, when leaked e-mails were obtained by computer hackers from a British research center. Mann's research has long been a target of criticism by skeptics of man-made global warming theories.
Space Agency to Ignore Space, Study Climate Change
NASA's new proposed budget will shift the space agency's focus from landing people on the moon back to Earth, with more money slated for projects that will help us understand our planet's climate -- and even re-launch the carbon observatory that failed to launch last year. The 2011 proposed budget for NASA, announced on Monday, cancels the Constellation program to build new rockets and spacecraft optimized for the moon, but increases NASA's overall budget by $6 billion over the next five years. Of that $6 billion, about $2 billion will be funneled into new and existing science missions, particularly those aimed at investigating Earth sciences, particularly the climate.
Climate-Gate Scientist Promises to Be More Open
The scientist at the center of the climate change row over stolen e-mails has admitted that he and his colleagues need to be more open with their data. Professor Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia, has been accused of blocking requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act. He said: "We are facing more and more public scrutiny and any future work we do is going to have much greater scrutiny by our peers and by the public. We do need to make more of the data available, I fully accept that." Jones continued, "We need to work differently, making more data available and making our assumptions clear. Everything needs to be more and more open and we will be striving to do that in the future."
Frederick Martens, with wife Rose, was jailed for nearly 1000 days on false child-rape claims and says the AFP wanted to "get the bastard" before their case was exposed.
Darwin blast 'a mini Bali attack'
DOCTOR likens Darwin attack which left many with serious burns to a "small scale Bali bombing".
Coach 'spiked kids' drinks before abuse'
CHILDREN "plied with spiked milkshakes and drug-laced macaroni before being molested"
AFL star faces life ban over drug charges
STAR footballer Mathew Stokes' promising career could be over following drug-dealing charges.
We're all aliens, says British scientist
THE human race began as "microbes brought to Earth by comets millions of years ago".
Macquarie Dictionary reveals top word
A HYPHENATED word has been named Macquarie Dictionary's word of the year for 2009.
Laws urged as dog attack stats revealed
NEW statistics reveal how an alarming number of babies and toddlers are being mauled by dogs.
Teen jailed over 'senseless' bashing
CHEF Daniel Owen never had a chance to hand over his money to two teenage robbers before they viciously bashed him to death outside his home.
Belinda Neal battles as Labor revolts against her
CONTROVERSIAL Federal MP Belinda Neal's own branch members have called on her to resign for "the good of the nation" in an unwanted pre-election headache for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In another sign Mr Rudd is preparing for a possible early election, rank and file ballots for 14 NSW Federal seats, including the marginal Sydney and Central Coast electorates, have been brought forward to next Monday.
Families feeling groceries pain as prices soar
GROCERY prices have soared with the cost of a standard basket of goods rising by about $10 in three months. Figures released yesterday show families were slugged far more for meat, fruit and vegetables, beer and various other grocery items in the three months to Christmas, compared with the three months to September.
=== Journalists Corner ===
an awesome art show opening this Saturday at the Open Center Gallery in New York. The show will feature fifteen Burmese artists, including a presentation about Burmese art from artist Aung Kyaw Moe, and will display paintings, photography, sculptures, performance and video art and documentary films.
The show opens Saturday, February 6 at 8 pm and runs for four days.
For more about the art show, see its website: http://www.opencenter.org/contemporary-burmese-art-ideas-and-ideals/
Show hours are:
February 6 - 8 pm opening
February 7 - 6:30-9 pm
February 8 - 10 am-6 pm
February 9 - 10 am-5 pm
The New York Open Center is located at 22 E. 30th St., NY, NY 10016
===
The "Sultan of Satire" visits the "King of Cable News!"
What will happen when these TV titans collide?
It's no joke -- Jon Stewart's entering the "No Spin Zone"!
===
Your World Exclusive!
Rep. John Boehner calls out Obama's budget strategy. Now, he lays out the GOP alternative for America's economy
===
Guest: Dr. Phil
Dispensing straight talk & sound advice for America. Dr. Phil makes a 'Hannity' house call!
===
Guest: Sen. John McCain
No holding back! Sen. John McCain talks tough on the president's plans.
=== Comments ===
Mad mullahs believe bad science is gospel
Piers Akerman
GLOBAL warming believer Kevin Rudd has adopted the strategies of radical ayatollahs to push his agenda for a huge new tax on Australians and a global wealth redistribution scheme.
It is misleading to refer to weather events and call it climate change, but then you are not a scientist and may not know this, possibly because alleged scientists have been doing this very thing so as to promote their agenda which is nothing to do with science.
Rudd does not believe in global warming, and does not have to. Rudd believes in an enormous pork barrel which this mad tax will become for his party. His agenda has nothing to do with belief as to what will happen to the world in forty years time, but what will line his pockets tomorrow. - ed.
===
President Obama's Biggest Gamble
By Bill O'Reilly
All this talk of debt and deficits is deadly boring, but when you strip out all the math and BS, you get down to one very fascinating thing: The president of the United States is rolling the dice on America's future.
Right now, this country owes $13 trillion. We can't pay it back. The interest in December alone was more than $100 billion. $100 billion. About as much as New Zealand's entire economic output for a year.
Adding it up, the USA is paying out hundreds of billions in interest alone every year. That's staggering and dangerous. And Monday we learned that the budget next year, 2011, will add another $1.3 trillion to the national debt.
Really? This is unbelievable. The feds are spending $3.8 trillion in a year, and they can't pay for 35 percent of it. Are you kidding me?
Now President Obama says the budget is an investment in America's future because a lot of the money is going to so-called green projects that will change the way that energy is used, and the economy will rise. The president believes we must transition for future growth, and there is some validity to that.
Also, the massive spending will help rebuild infrastructure that has to be upgraded or bridges will start falling into the water. And then you add the incredible expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with all the War on Terror expense, and what we have is financial chaos.
But the Obama administration doesn't see it that way. It believes it can run up the massive debt and somehow pay for it all down the road, primarily by raising taxes. People like me will soon pay about 50 percent of their income in taxes, and corporations can get hit as well. But corporations can pass the tax expense on to you, and they will.
So in effect, everybody will pay more for nearly everything. Not good when the economy is stagnant.
In addition, the capital gains tax goes up five points to 20 percent. This will inhibit investment in America, another big risk.
As you may know, liberal philosophy holds that the federal government has a responsibility to redistribute income and level the playing field for all Americans, but the truth is we simply can't afford to do it. Not with 320 million people. Sweden can do it. They have nine million. But not us. And we have to fight the world's villains; Sweden does not.
"Talking Points" is afraid that the entire financial system in this country will collapse under the mountain of debt. If that happens, there will be no playing field to level. It's a scenario too frightening to think about.
Simply put, the feds need to stop spending. They need to cut across the board, get out of Iraq as fast as we can and stop the social engineering. But I don't expect President Obama to do any of that with the exception of Iraq.
So there's no question the huge federal spending is the president's biggest gamble. All of our lives will be affected by it.
===
NEWSPAPER EYEIST
Tim Blair
Christopher Monckton suffers from Graves’ Disease, which causes unusual protrusion of the eyes. You can imagine the embarrassment and suffering. This is how the online edition of the Age sensitively addresses the issue, on its current front page:
And again when you click on the story. (Here’s a screen grab in case adults subsequently remove the shot.) Now, I’m all for mockery, but this fellow is the victim of a disease, and the Age is determinedly focusing on a primary physical symptom of his illness. (Australia’s media union has ethical objections to this sort of thing, which should interest the host of Media Watch.)
By comparison, note how reasonably the Age‘s Sydney sister publication dealt with comedian Adam Hills, who was born without a right foot. His prothesis isn’t even shown in the accompanying photograph. But let’s imagine that Hills were to add climate scepticism to his act. How would the Age respond? On form, I’m guessing that Nine’s Australian cricket broadcasts would suddenly have a rival stump cam.
And by the way, what’s so bad about Monckton meeting Tony Abbott? You never saw this Age headline: Churchyard Homilist Meets Failed Divinity Student.
===
KEVIN’S KOOLING KONTINUES
Tim Blair
A little late to the party, the SMH’s Peter Hartcher notices that Kevin Rudd no longer wants to talk about climate change:
===
WARMENISTS AT THE BARRICADES
Tim Blair
Their faith upset by recent events, warmenists are lashing out. Canada’s Chris Wood believes that reporting damage to the warmenist cause amounts to reckless endangerment:
===
SOURCE LOST
Tim Blair
An unusual expression of news priorities from Reuters:
===
HOT CARBON
Tim Blair
Carbon rustlers attack:
(Via Brat)
UPDATE. Eco-boy Dan Box reports that carbon rustlers face a thin future:
===
DIVE ON IN
Tim Blair
All Wall Street Journal content is free today, for one day only.
===
PEAS BE UPON HIM
Tim Blair
Quick-thinking medical improvisation following a fire attack in Darwin. Fifteen people were injured. Five are presently being treated in Royal Darwin Hospital’s high dependency unit.
===
REVIEWS REVIEWED, RETRACTED
Tim Blair
Peer review – actor Ed Begley’s favourite subject – ain’t so great, as The Lancet belatedly discovers:
===
HEY, KIDS!
Tim Blair
Potato Day looms:
There’ll be a free and exclusive coloured potato for each child bringing his/her parents along and the children will get in free.
===
THINGS YOU LEARN ABOUT KATE BUSH FROM YOUTUBE COMMENTS
Tim Blair
Now we know:
===
DOUBT ON THE MARCH
Tim Blair
Mark Steyn notes a telling silence:
UPDATE. A. Kam Napier, editor of Honolulu magazine:
===
Why is this hysteric still head of the IPCC?
Andrew Bolt
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, explains why critics of his vested interests, flawed science and deceits are wrong:
===
Facebook censors Rudd’s critics
Andrew Bolt
Labor and its friends really have a problem with free speech on the Internet:
Question: who complained to Facebook? Anyone in Rudd’s office?
===
Panic! NASA warns you’ll drown in another 300,000 years
Andrew Bolt
Earth Observatory, of the pro-warmist NASA, warns that Antarctica “has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002” and that “if all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet)”
Now, why would you scare folks so when the truth, as Steven Goddard notes, is that:
===
Climategate: the slow, slow holding of the guilty to account
Andrew Bolt
Pennsylvania State University announces a new inquiry into Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann’s role in the Climategate scandal. It seems from the press release that Penn State’s aim is to show critics it won’t ignore the allegations against Mann, but that it prefers not to uphold them against one if its own.
Meanwhile even warming extremist George Monbiot insists Dr Phil Jones should be dumped as head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, and the tiny and stupid best that he can say for deeply compromised IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri is that the great Satan Bush seemed to prefer him.
===
Psst. Rudd doesn’t really believe it any more, either
Andrew Bolt
Peter Hartcher has a good question:
===
How the 7.30 Report nobbled Monckton
Andrew Bolt
When I heard that Lord Monckton would appear on the ABC’s 7.30 Report, I wondered: “How will they rig this?”
I mean, would host Kerry O’Brien, a warmist, really dare interview Monckton on his own, and let him put his arguments? Would he really give Monckton the same opportunity to speak that O’Brien regularly allows warmists such as Sir Nicholas Stern, Tim Flannery and Al Gore - none of them climate scientists themselves, and with records between them of exaggeration, grotesque alarmism, statistical trickery, vested interests, untruths, misrepresentations and false predictions that O’Brien let’s go through unchallenged?.
Answer: of course not. Check those links on the warmists’ names to see how O’Brien lets climate alarmists put their case directly, in friendly one-on-one discussions with him . But now see how Monckton, a sceptic, was set up.
First, Monckton was denied a similar in-studio interview, unedited, with O’Brien, presumably because O’Brien would have been hopelessly exposed and outgunned. Instead, he appeared only in an edited report, interspliced with comments from three fervent warmists: green lobbyist and lawyer John Connor from the Climate Institute, Chief Scientist Penny Sackett and Ben McNeil from the Climate Change Research Centre. (Naturally, not a single sceptical scientist was interviewed in this report.)
Second, the first of those warmists was interviewed before we even got to hear from Monckton, just to set the scene.
Third, the condescending reporter attempted to portray Monckton as merely some colorful “showman”, giving more air time to his jokes than to his arguments, but also asking whether he was “dangerous” and part of a “disinformation campaign”.
Fourth, Monckton’s real arguments about the weaknesses of the IPCC warmist science and the fraud we’ve since seen in its “peer review” processes were largely skipped over, reduced to little more than bland summaries. I’ll quote the references to Monckton’s criticism of the warming science in their entirety:
Fifth, despite this being purportedly a report on Monckton and his views, it’s in fact Monckton’s critics who get most air time. The three warmists get to say 412 words (not including those of the reporter or of IPPC chairman Rajendra Pachauri); Monckton himself is permitted 401.
Sixth, while Monckton’s motives and funding were questioned, his critics’ were not, allowing them to falsely present themselves as disinterested. Yet Connor’s institute, for instance, depends on the warming scare for almost all its donations from green sympathisers. Sackett has conceded her appointment by the Rudd Government was a political one.
Yet with all this spin, all these restrictions, all the red herrings and all the abuse, see how Monckton’s critics actually betrayed themselves - and their political agenda.
Did a single one of them actually advance a single argument to prove Monckton’s arguments false? No.
But check instead the truly pathetic kind of arguments - mere political sloganeering from the Left - advanced by McNeil, who calls himself a scientist:
And this is Connor’s attempt at rebuttal:
Your (ABC) news is being manipulated, but you can now see the fraud backstage though the gaping cracks.
UPDATE
Several readers point out that the reporter had so little interest in Monckton’s views that she could even sum them up correctly, even after being told on camera what they were:
TRACY BOWDEN: In simple terms, Lord Monckton disputes the fact that the earth is warming ...
LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: First of all, there has been warming, yes.
===
The media is now turning on Rudd, too
Andrew Bolt
I’d say the News Ltd papers have cooled a little on Kevin Rudd. Check this unusual and hostile joint check-his-promises exercise today.
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph:
Daily Telegraph (which backed Rudd in 2007):
Not only is he facing a resurgent Coalition under Tony Abbott, but (Rudd) has a string of broken promises to explain to the Australian people… Mr Rudd is on the back foot for the first time since coming to power and yet to show whether he can move forward. - so how come no discussion on a successor? - ed.
===
We’re just their cyber-world
Andrew Bolt
No rules, no sympathy:
HOTELIERS have told a federal government inquiry into youth violence that pub brawls had not increased but attacks were more vicious and visible.
The Australian Hotels Association said generation Y drinkers had been raised on TV violence but lacked the empathy that a thumping in the school ground had instilled in previous generations. ‘’We are getting people … going out having shaved, showered and slipping a knife in the pocket, which is a very strange attitude to going out and having a good time,’’ the association’s national president, Thomas McGuire, said.
This ‘’significant change in social concern for one another’’, and not alcohol, was to blame.
The association’s chief executive, Bill Healey, ... told the government’s family and youth committee that while the number of violent attacks at pubs and bars had not increased from 10 years ago, there had been a rise in viciousness.
‘’These kids have been, on the one hand, exposed to substantial amounts of violence in what they see on TV and video games … but they [have] not actually experienced a lot of pain. They don’t get kicked at school - the empathy factor of knowing how it feels.’’
Mr Healey complained that the rules of the street once meant you did not ‘’king-hit’’ people but now incidents involved people being kicked in the head on the ground and women being hit with beer glasses.
===
The Age of barbarians
Andrew Bolt
In this one picture and caption, it not only mocks sceptic Lord Monckton as a monkey and ridicules a symptom of his Graves Disease, but appeals to anti-Catholic bigotry by calling Opposition Leader Tony Abbott the “mad Monk”. Only a special kind of savage, terrified by a threat to his animistic deities, could concentrate so much invective into one image.
When I was recruited by The Age in 1979, it was still clinging on to its reputation as the paper of record. Three decades on it’s now an embarrassing measure of the decline of reason, and the rise of hooting, cat-calling, mob-whipping vilification and myth-making in its place.
Warning. Are you a scientist with a club foot or freckles? Are you short or overweight? Bald? Are you confined like a Stephen Hawking to a wheel chair? Then for God’s sake do not out yourself as a climate sceptic, for there is no telling what The Age might then do to you, too?
===
Warmist scientists own hungry dogs
Andrew Bolt
New Zealand warmists claim they’ve lost their original data, too:
===
How our defence minister (allegedly) got $150,000 from China
Andrew Bolt
The Fitzgibbon scandal turns out to be just as serious as I suspected:
Mind you, questions should now also be asked again of the gifts Kevin Rudd received from sources suspiciously close to the Chinese regime. And when was Julia Gillard planning to come clean:
Fitzgibbon denies strongly receiving the cash and says he’s taking legal action against Fairfax. Gillard has told Parliament the allegations were “news to me” and the first she’d heard of them was this morning.
===
What on earth has Rudd actually done?
Andrew Bolt
Niki Savva, a self-confessed Leftist who worked for Peter Costello, on the mirage that’s Kevin Rudd:
===
Laugh at warmist King. Please
Andrew Bolt
Britian’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is a global warming zealot. And with the same scrupulous regard for evidence he’s reach this conclusion:
===
Aren’t the ABC, SBS, Seven, Nine and Ten just one same-same too many?
Andrew Bolt
I wonder if Australian viewers would like an alternative to no-argument Left politics on their televisions, too:
Niki Savva, the journalist and former Costello staffer, in her new book, So Greek, only confirms the bias:
Network Ten political editor Paul Bongiorno also gets a swipe. Savva says he “made clear his distaste for the government and couldn’t wait for it to be booted out” but insisted the Coalition members appear as guests on Meet the Press or there would be grief. “Is that a threat?” she asked. “That’s a promise,” he replied.
===
Just follow the money … to Labor
Andrew Bolt
It’s odd that the cash-strapped Liberals are portrayed as the party backed by big money, when it’s Labor which has its pockets stuffed. Andrew Norton:
What Rudd will do with his share of the tax.
=== Bible Quote ===
“But I will sing of your strength, in the morning I will sing of your love; for you are my fortress, my refuge in times of trouble.”- Psalm 59:16
===
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel meets with advocates for the disabled after 'f-ing retarded' comment.
U.S. at Risk for Cyber Attack
National Intelligence director warns U.S. is not up to task of defending 'malicious cyberactivity' that can wreak havoc
Dealing Another Blow to Toyota
Shares of embattled carmaker dive after off-the-cuff remark about not driving them from transportation secretary
$2M Super Bowl Ad — Paid By You
Census bureau spending millions,paid for with taxpayer dollars, to get Americans to answer simple survey
45-Foot Ancient Snake Devoured Crocs
The largest snake the world has ever known likely had a diet that included crocodile, or at least an ancient ...
Penn St. Investigating Scientist Over Research Misconduct
Penn State will move forward with an investigation into a leading climate scientist after an internal inquiry into four possible allegations of research misconduct. A university committee has been looking into the work of meteorology professor Michael Mann since late November, when leaked e-mails were obtained by computer hackers from a British research center. Mann's research has long been a target of criticism by skeptics of man-made global warming theories.
Space Agency to Ignore Space, Study Climate Change
NASA's new proposed budget will shift the space agency's focus from landing people on the moon back to Earth, with more money slated for projects that will help us understand our planet's climate -- and even re-launch the carbon observatory that failed to launch last year. The 2011 proposed budget for NASA, announced on Monday, cancels the Constellation program to build new rockets and spacecraft optimized for the moon, but increases NASA's overall budget by $6 billion over the next five years. Of that $6 billion, about $2 billion will be funneled into new and existing science missions, particularly those aimed at investigating Earth sciences, particularly the climate.
Climate-Gate Scientist Promises to Be More Open
The scientist at the center of the climate change row over stolen e-mails has admitted that he and his colleagues need to be more open with their data. Professor Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia, has been accused of blocking requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act. He said: "We are facing more and more public scrutiny and any future work we do is going to have much greater scrutiny by our peers and by the public. We do need to make more of the data available, I fully accept that." Jones continued, "We need to work differently, making more data available and making our assumptions clear. Everything needs to be more and more open and we will be striving to do that in the future."
Frederick Martens, with wife Rose, was jailed for nearly 1000 days on false child-rape claims and says the AFP wanted to "get the bastard" before their case was exposed.
Darwin blast 'a mini Bali attack'
DOCTOR likens Darwin attack which left many with serious burns to a "small scale Bali bombing".
Coach 'spiked kids' drinks before abuse'
CHILDREN "plied with spiked milkshakes and drug-laced macaroni before being molested"
AFL star faces life ban over drug charges
STAR footballer Mathew Stokes' promising career could be over following drug-dealing charges.
We're all aliens, says British scientist
THE human race began as "microbes brought to Earth by comets millions of years ago".
Macquarie Dictionary reveals top word
A HYPHENATED word has been named Macquarie Dictionary's word of the year for 2009.
Laws urged as dog attack stats revealed
NEW statistics reveal how an alarming number of babies and toddlers are being mauled by dogs.
Teen jailed over 'senseless' bashing
CHEF Daniel Owen never had a chance to hand over his money to two teenage robbers before they viciously bashed him to death outside his home.
Belinda Neal battles as Labor revolts against her
CONTROVERSIAL Federal MP Belinda Neal's own branch members have called on her to resign for "the good of the nation" in an unwanted pre-election headache for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In another sign Mr Rudd is preparing for a possible early election, rank and file ballots for 14 NSW Federal seats, including the marginal Sydney and Central Coast electorates, have been brought forward to next Monday.
Families feeling groceries pain as prices soar
GROCERY prices have soared with the cost of a standard basket of goods rising by about $10 in three months. Figures released yesterday show families were slugged far more for meat, fruit and vegetables, beer and various other grocery items in the three months to Christmas, compared with the three months to September.
=== Journalists Corner ===
an awesome art show opening this Saturday at the Open Center Gallery in New York. The show will feature fifteen Burmese artists, including a presentation about Burmese art from artist Aung Kyaw Moe, and will display paintings, photography, sculptures, performance and video art and documentary films.
The show opens Saturday, February 6 at 8 pm and runs for four days.
For more about the art show, see its website: http://www.opencenter.org/contemporary-burmese-art-ideas-and-ideals/
Show hours are:
February 6 - 8 pm opening
February 7 - 6:30-9 pm
February 8 - 10 am-6 pm
February 9 - 10 am-5 pm
The New York Open Center is located at 22 E. 30th St., NY, NY 10016
===
The "Sultan of Satire" visits the "King of Cable News!"
What will happen when these TV titans collide?
It's no joke -- Jon Stewart's entering the "No Spin Zone"!
===
Your World Exclusive!
Rep. John Boehner calls out Obama's budget strategy. Now, he lays out the GOP alternative for America's economy
===
Guest: Dr. Phil
Dispensing straight talk & sound advice for America. Dr. Phil makes a 'Hannity' house call!
===
Guest: Sen. John McCain
No holding back! Sen. John McCain talks tough on the president's plans.
=== Comments ===
Mad mullahs believe bad science is gospel
Piers Akerman
GLOBAL warming believer Kevin Rudd has adopted the strategies of radical ayatollahs to push his agenda for a huge new tax on Australians and a global wealth redistribution scheme.
- Any heat experienced in Australia was not record breaking. Further, it was not the cause of any fires. However, the cold in the North has been record breaking, and is the cause of many deaths.mentioned that Europe and North America have just endured a record-breaking deep freezeNor has it been quoted that Australia recently endured a record breaking hot summer and drought.
For the left or the right to use individual seasons to adjudicate temperature is wrong (Sydney endured a record cold snap on 2007, ice on the windows in the inner west) Under this research http://weather.about.com/od/climatechange/a/HottestYears.htm 2006 may be the warmest year on record, though 2998 may pip it.
All I say, Mr Akerman, is that the science isn’t in yet, the early indicators aren’t looking good, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. Mr Abbot and Mr Rudd have both launched flawed trading schemes, let’s play it safe either way.
BV of Sydney
It is misleading to refer to weather events and call it climate change, but then you are not a scientist and may not know this, possibly because alleged scientists have been doing this very thing so as to promote their agenda which is nothing to do with science.
Rudd does not believe in global warming, and does not have to. Rudd believes in an enormous pork barrel which this mad tax will become for his party. His agenda has nothing to do with belief as to what will happen to the world in forty years time, but what will line his pockets tomorrow. - ed.
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President Obama's Biggest Gamble
By Bill O'Reilly
All this talk of debt and deficits is deadly boring, but when you strip out all the math and BS, you get down to one very fascinating thing: The president of the United States is rolling the dice on America's future.
Right now, this country owes $13 trillion. We can't pay it back. The interest in December alone was more than $100 billion. $100 billion. About as much as New Zealand's entire economic output for a year.
Adding it up, the USA is paying out hundreds of billions in interest alone every year. That's staggering and dangerous. And Monday we learned that the budget next year, 2011, will add another $1.3 trillion to the national debt.
Really? This is unbelievable. The feds are spending $3.8 trillion in a year, and they can't pay for 35 percent of it. Are you kidding me?
Now President Obama says the budget is an investment in America's future because a lot of the money is going to so-called green projects that will change the way that energy is used, and the economy will rise. The president believes we must transition for future growth, and there is some validity to that.
Also, the massive spending will help rebuild infrastructure that has to be upgraded or bridges will start falling into the water. And then you add the incredible expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with all the War on Terror expense, and what we have is financial chaos.
But the Obama administration doesn't see it that way. It believes it can run up the massive debt and somehow pay for it all down the road, primarily by raising taxes. People like me will soon pay about 50 percent of their income in taxes, and corporations can get hit as well. But corporations can pass the tax expense on to you, and they will.
So in effect, everybody will pay more for nearly everything. Not good when the economy is stagnant.
In addition, the capital gains tax goes up five points to 20 percent. This will inhibit investment in America, another big risk.
As you may know, liberal philosophy holds that the federal government has a responsibility to redistribute income and level the playing field for all Americans, but the truth is we simply can't afford to do it. Not with 320 million people. Sweden can do it. They have nine million. But not us. And we have to fight the world's villains; Sweden does not.
"Talking Points" is afraid that the entire financial system in this country will collapse under the mountain of debt. If that happens, there will be no playing field to level. It's a scenario too frightening to think about.
Simply put, the feds need to stop spending. They need to cut across the board, get out of Iraq as fast as we can and stop the social engineering. But I don't expect President Obama to do any of that with the exception of Iraq.
So there's no question the huge federal spending is the president's biggest gamble. All of our lives will be affected by it.
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NEWSPAPER EYEIST
Tim Blair
Christopher Monckton suffers from Graves’ Disease, which causes unusual protrusion of the eyes. You can imagine the embarrassment and suffering. This is how the online edition of the Age sensitively addresses the issue, on its current front page:
And again when you click on the story. (Here’s a screen grab in case adults subsequently remove the shot.) Now, I’m all for mockery, but this fellow is the victim of a disease, and the Age is determinedly focusing on a primary physical symptom of his illness. (Australia’s media union has ethical objections to this sort of thing, which should interest the host of Media Watch.)
By comparison, note how reasonably the Age‘s Sydney sister publication dealt with comedian Adam Hills, who was born without a right foot. His prothesis isn’t even shown in the accompanying photograph. But let’s imagine that Hills were to add climate scepticism to his act. How would the Age respond? On form, I’m guessing that Nine’s Australian cricket broadcasts would suddenly have a rival stump cam.
And by the way, what’s so bad about Monckton meeting Tony Abbott? You never saw this Age headline: Churchyard Homilist Meets Failed Divinity Student.
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KEVIN’S KOOLING KONTINUES
Tim Blair
A little late to the party, the SMH’s Peter Hartcher notices that Kevin Rudd no longer wants to talk about climate change:
He has not made one speech on climate change in the past few weeks. Instead, Rudd is trying to change the subject …Others were alert to Rudd’s change on climate change slightly earlier. As for the next “great moral challenge of our time”, it might be the challenge to admit error on global warming. One editor already has his hand up.
Is it no longer ‘’the great moral and economic challenge of our time’’, as Rudd once told us?
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WARMENISTS AT THE BARRICADES
Tim Blair
Their faith upset by recent events, warmenists are lashing out. Canada’s Chris Wood believes that reporting damage to the warmenist cause amounts to reckless endangerment:
It is the equivalent of failing to shout fire in a crowded theater that is slowly filling with deadly fumes.Lie about warming: good. Expose lies about warming: a fraud on the consumer. And in Australia, Labor MP Nick Champion declares that those who reject global warming alarmism are threats to our national security:
To pass it off as journalism is professional negligence ... I think they chose to ignore the only value that justifies our trade at all, and conceal the truth. We used to call that dishonest reporting—a fraud on the consumer.
Climate change sceptics have a profoundly irresponsible approach to our national security because their ideology does not allow them to acknowledge the potential threats we may face, and their denial of the evidence could leave our nation unprepared for a hostile and uncertain future. Make no mistake; if you’re a self confessed climate sceptic then you’re as soft as butter on Australia’s defence.Logically, this means that pacifist hippie types who believe in global warming are in fact the most hawkish of Australian defenders. Who knew?
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SOURCE LOST
Tim Blair
An unusual expression of news priorities from Reuters:
The internet will potentially lose one of its main sources of bestiality videos under a ban approved by the upper house of the Dutch Parliament.Tragic. Bestiality fans will presumably have to fall back on secondary sources instead.
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HOT CARBON
Tim Blair
Carbon rustlers attack:
Sneaky cyber-thieves have made millions by fraudulently obtaining European greenhouse gas emissions allowances and reselling them. The scam has hampered trading of the credits, which are seen as an important tool in curbing climate change, in several European countries ...It might pay these companies to be more sceptical about emails. According to the report, one German concern lost carbon allowances worth US$2.1 million. That’s a lot of nothing.
According to a report in the Wednesday edition of the Financial Times Deutschland, hackers sent e-mails last Thursday to several companies in Europe, Japan and New Zealand …
The cyber-thieves then exploited the user data that was entered into their spoof Web site to transfer emissions allowances to other accounts, mainly in Denmark and Britain, from which they were quickly resold.
(Via Brat)
UPDATE. Eco-boy Dan Box reports that carbon rustlers face a thin future:
Things have got so bad that various sources tell me many traders have now decided to quit the carbon business altogether.No problem. There’s probably still some money to be made in tulip futures.
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DIVE ON IN
Tim Blair
All Wall Street Journal content is free today, for one day only.
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PEAS BE UPON HIM
Tim Blair
Quick-thinking medical improvisation following a fire attack in Darwin. Fifteen people were injured. Five are presently being treated in Royal Darwin Hospital’s high dependency unit.
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REVIEWS REVIEWED, RETRACTED
Tim Blair
Peer review – actor Ed Begley’s favourite subject – ain’t so great, as The Lancet belatedly discovers:
The Lancet today finally retracted the paper that sparked a crisis in MMR vaccination across the UK, following the General Medical Council’s decision that its lead author, Andrew Wakefield, had been dishonest.But surely the paper was reviewed before publication? You know, by peers? Yes, it was, according to Horton:
The medical journal’s editor, Richard Horton, told the Guardian today that he realised as soon as he read the GMC findings that the paper, published in February 1998, had to be retracted. “It was utterly clear, without any ambiguity at all, that the statements in the paper were utterly false,” he said. “I feel I was deceived.”
The Lancet had done what it could to establish that the research was valid, by having it peer-reviewed. But there is a limit, he said, to what peer-review can ascertainAll of this comes a little late for some:
Children had been subjected to invasive procedures that were not warranted, a disciplinary panel ruled. They had undergone lumbar punctures and other tests solely for research purposes and without valid ethical approval.Fred Pearce has further on peer-style reviewishness.
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HEY, KIDS!
Tim Blair
Potato Day looms:
There’ll be a free and exclusive coloured potato for each child bringing his/her parents along and the children will get in free.
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THINGS YOU LEARN ABOUT KATE BUSH FROM YOUTUBE COMMENTS
Tim Blair
Now we know:
Her foot print is in The Bata Shoe Museum here in Toronto. She’s a size 4.UPDATE. Commenter and shoe enthusiast Anne B.:
I visited the Bata Shoe Museum a few years ago. It probably helps to be female, but I enjoyed the place – a sizable exhibit of Shoes Through History (ancient sandals, Eskimo boots, alarmingly tiny Chinese shoes for women with bound feet) as well as a collection of recent designs, tending toward the spike-heeled, gaudily colored, and downright silly. Also, the Bata Museum *replaced* a lefty bookstore that used to stand on that site, so perhaps that will permit you to think of the place more kindly.Much more kindly. Thank you, Anne.
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DOUBT ON THE MARCH
Tim Blair
Mark Steyn notes a telling silence:
You have to assume that America’s dying monodailies are now actively auditioning for state ownership. How else to explain the silence of the massed ranks of salaried “environmental correspondents” on the daily revelations emerging from the fast disintegrating “scientific consensus” on “climate change”? You get livelier coverage from the Chinese press.So does the BBC. Click to hear Professor Chris Field, co-chairman of the IPCC Working Group, describe the 2007 report as the most “ambitious” scientific assessment ever undertaken. Interesting word. Meanwhile, unsettled scientist Phil Jones feels the heat:
But in competitive newspaper markets they still know a story when they see one. Surely the most worrying sign for the thuggish enforcers of “settled science” is that even the eco-lefties at the Guardian and the Independent, two of the most gung-ho warm-mongers on the planet, are beginning to entertain doubts.
“I feel tremendously pressurised by all this but I’m trying to continue my work in the science. I think it’s very important and it’s potentially very serious for the future of mankind in decades to come.”One commenter responds:
Professor Jones feels tremendously pressurised? What does he think we feel when based on his “evidence”, we will see escalating fuel, energy and transport bills, jobs lost to the Far East, and a whole raft of social engineering that will make us wonder whether life is worth living?Good point.
UPDATE. A. Kam Napier, editor of Honolulu magazine:
Because of manmade global warming, I warned in 1996, that “sea levels could rise as much as three feet by the year 2100 … warming can lead to hotter and more frequent heat waves … stronger and more frequent hurricanes to Hawai‘i … endanger native plants species [and] coral reefs.” These dire predictions came from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia provide much of the IPCC’s analysis and predictions. In November 2009, hackers released thousands of e-mails from the CRU, going back years, and it is these e-mails that reveal the very unscientific, unethical activities I described above.Read on.
I feel I’ve been had.
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Why is this hysteric still head of the IPCC?
Andrew Bolt
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, explains why critics of his vested interests, flawed science and deceits are wrong:
They are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder – and I hope they put it on their faces every day.That’s it. Goodbye.
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Facebook censors Rudd’s critics
Andrew Bolt
Labor and its friends really have a problem with free speech on the Internet:
Today, we can reveal that online political speech has been dealt another blow with Facebook, the popular social networking site, being accused of political censorship after it removed the group KEVIN RUDD = EPIC FAIL.Really? Facebook normally isn’t so sensitive - well, not when the vitriolic abuse is heaped on conservatives, instead.
Before it was removed the Facebook group is understood to have had over 3000 members and focused on building a list what it described as Kevin Rudd’s broken promises…
The group is believed to have been banned because it criticised an individual, the Prime Minister.
Question: who complained to Facebook? Anyone in Rudd’s office?
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Panic! NASA warns you’ll drown in another 300,000 years
Andrew Bolt
Earth Observatory, of the pro-warmist NASA, warns that Antarctica “has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002” and that “if all of this ice melted, it would raise global sea level by about 60 meter (197 feet)”
Now, why would you scare folks so when the truth, as Steven Goddard notes, is that:
- Satellite data shows Antarctica cooling, not warming.You’d really, really have to have an agenda to have issued the scare that NASA has.
- Antarctic sea ice has expanded over the past three decades, not shrunk.
- At even NASA’s claimed rate of melting, it would take 300,000 years for that Antarctic ice to melt.
- At the rate of sea level rise measured over the past century, it will take more than 18,000 years for the seas to rise 60 metres.
- In fact, the seas have not risen for nearly four years.
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Climategate: the slow, slow holding of the guilty to account
Andrew Bolt
Pennsylvania State University announces a new inquiry into Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann’s role in the Climategate scandal. It seems from the press release that Penn State’s aim is to show critics it won’t ignore the allegations against Mann, but that it prefers not to uphold them against one if its own.
Meanwhile even warming extremist George Monbiot insists Dr Phil Jones should be dumped as head of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, and the tiny and stupid best that he can say for deeply compromised IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri is that the great Satan Bush seemed to prefer him.
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Psst. Rudd doesn’t really believe it any more, either
Andrew Bolt
Peter Hartcher has a good question:
Tony Abbott’s Coalition doesn’t believe that man-made climate change is real. Last year Abbott called the idea ‘’absolute crap’’. So why would he bother announcing a policy to fix it?But Hartcher really should ask that very same thing of Kevin Rudd, who still plans to spend countless more billions - and cause countless more damage - on the very same “crap”. Yet as even Hartcher now belatedly notices:
But the intriguing part is that Rudd is not working to rally public opinion. He has not made one speech on climate change in the past few weeks. Instead, Rudd is trying to change the subject… Is it no longer ‘’the great moral and economic challenge of our time’’, as Rudd once told us?Well, no, Peter. Rudd’s greatest conviction last year has now turned to “crap”. So ask him why he’s spending so much on something he now barely dares to mention and and in which he seems no longer to believe.
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How the 7.30 Report nobbled Monckton
Andrew Bolt
When I heard that Lord Monckton would appear on the ABC’s 7.30 Report, I wondered: “How will they rig this?”
I mean, would host Kerry O’Brien, a warmist, really dare interview Monckton on his own, and let him put his arguments? Would he really give Monckton the same opportunity to speak that O’Brien regularly allows warmists such as Sir Nicholas Stern, Tim Flannery and Al Gore - none of them climate scientists themselves, and with records between them of exaggeration, grotesque alarmism, statistical trickery, vested interests, untruths, misrepresentations and false predictions that O’Brien let’s go through unchallenged?.
Answer: of course not. Check those links on the warmists’ names to see how O’Brien lets climate alarmists put their case directly, in friendly one-on-one discussions with him . But now see how Monckton, a sceptic, was set up.
First, Monckton was denied a similar in-studio interview, unedited, with O’Brien, presumably because O’Brien would have been hopelessly exposed and outgunned. Instead, he appeared only in an edited report, interspliced with comments from three fervent warmists: green lobbyist and lawyer John Connor from the Climate Institute, Chief Scientist Penny Sackett and Ben McNeil from the Climate Change Research Centre. (Naturally, not a single sceptical scientist was interviewed in this report.)
Second, the first of those warmists was interviewed before we even got to hear from Monckton, just to set the scene.
Third, the condescending reporter attempted to portray Monckton as merely some colorful “showman”, giving more air time to his jokes than to his arguments, but also asking whether he was “dangerous” and part of a “disinformation campaign”.
Fourth, Monckton’s real arguments about the weaknesses of the IPCC warmist science and the fraud we’ve since seen in its “peer review” processes were largely skipped over, reduced to little more than bland summaries. I’ll quote the references to Monckton’s criticism of the warming science in their entirety:
TRACY BOWDEN: In simple terms, Lord Monckton disputes the fact that the earth is warming and that the activity of humans is to blame. He’s totally opposed to plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and believes growing crops for biofuels has left millions of children starving.That’s it, complete. Much of the rest of his comments on this long report (which did at least refer to the recent IPCC scandals) were instead replies to questions about his motives and claims that he was part of a “conspiracy” and “a full scale orchestrated misinformation campaign”.
LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: We will not tolerate lies anymore. No more bogus statistics. No more bent graphs. No more made up results…
LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: First of all, there has been warming, yes. For 300 years. So where would you expect the warmest years to come? Of course at the end of the period. Let’s also going on to the ice sheets for instance. In fact, there’s been no significant loss of ice worldwide, sea ice, for instance. There’s no clear evidence that sea level is rising any faster than it has for the last couple of hundred years.
Fifth, despite this being purportedly a report on Monckton and his views, it’s in fact Monckton’s critics who get most air time. The three warmists get to say 412 words (not including those of the reporter or of IPPC chairman Rajendra Pachauri); Monckton himself is permitted 401.
Sixth, while Monckton’s motives and funding were questioned, his critics’ were not, allowing them to falsely present themselves as disinterested. Yet Connor’s institute, for instance, depends on the warming scare for almost all its donations from green sympathisers. Sackett has conceded her appointment by the Rudd Government was a political one.
Yet with all this spin, all these restrictions, all the red herrings and all the abuse, see how Monckton’s critics actually betrayed themselves - and their political agenda.
Did a single one of them actually advance a single argument to prove Monckton’s arguments false? No.
But check instead the truly pathetic kind of arguments - mere political sloganeering from the Left - advanced by McNeil, who calls himself a scientist:
Lord Monckton is a former political adviser for a UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. I think it’s very dangerous for us to take scientific advice from someone like that.Oohhh, Thatcher. Booga booga. Actually, young Ben, Monckton is also a gifted mathematician and a scholar, which explains how he came to mauil you in a debate on Channel 7.
And this is Connor’s attempt at rebuttal:
It’s unhealthy to be in denial about the risks that is poses for Australia, the Australian economy and even the for the global economy.Summing up: the ABC finds it almost impossible to hold an honest debate on global warming. Warmists are allowed unchallenged air time, while sceptics are made examples of. Yet even then warmist scientists and activists cannot find an argument to save themselves from the few sceptics who finally get half a hard word in edgewise.
Your (ABC) news is being manipulated, but you can now see the fraud backstage though the gaping cracks.
UPDATE
Several readers point out that the reporter had so little interest in Monckton’s views that she could even sum them up correctly, even after being told on camera what they were:
TRACY BOWDEN: In simple terms, Lord Monckton disputes the fact that the earth is warming ...
LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: First of all, there has been warming, yes.
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The media is now turning on Rudd, too
Andrew Bolt
I’d say the News Ltd papers have cooled a little on Kevin Rudd. Check this unusual and hostile joint check-his-promises exercise today.
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph:
Kevin Rudd’s 795 days of empty promisesMelbourne’s Herald Sun:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yet to deliver on dozens of election promisesAdelaide’s Advertiser:
Trail of broken promisesThe full list of the broken promises is not on line, But the Herald Sun’s news story gives the flavor:
KEVIN Rudd is yet to deliver on dozens of election commitments, leaving a trail of backflips and broken promises as he prepares to fight for a second term.The editorials now tend to the hostile, too.
A Herald Sun analysis of Labor’s 2007 election commitments reveal many have been quietly axed or are far from being met.
The Prime Minister apologised to the Stolen Generations and signed the Kyoto Protocol, but just one of 2650 promised trades training centres will accept students this semester.
Of 260 childcare centres he pledged would be built in schools and TAFES, only one has opened its doors.
And just two of Labor’s 31 promised GP Super Clinics are fully operational.
Promised Healthy Kids Checks have failed to make an impact on preschooler health, with GPs seeing just 62,823 children so far.
Plans to attract retired nurses back into hospitals have also bombed, with just 752 accepting a $6000 return-to-work bonus. Labor hoped 7750 would take up the offer.
Daily Telegraph (which backed Rudd in 2007):
Simply put, Rudd has thus far failed to match his words with deeds.Herald Sun:
Not only is he facing a resurgent Coalition under Tony Abbott, but (Rudd) has a string of broken promises to explain to the Australian people… Mr Rudd is on the back foot for the first time since coming to power and yet to show whether he can move forward. - so how come no discussion on a successor? - ed.
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We’re just their cyber-world
Andrew Bolt
No rules, no sympathy:
HOTELIERS have told a federal government inquiry into youth violence that pub brawls had not increased but attacks were more vicious and visible.
The Australian Hotels Association said generation Y drinkers had been raised on TV violence but lacked the empathy that a thumping in the school ground had instilled in previous generations. ‘’We are getting people … going out having shaved, showered and slipping a knife in the pocket, which is a very strange attitude to going out and having a good time,’’ the association’s national president, Thomas McGuire, said.
This ‘’significant change in social concern for one another’’, and not alcohol, was to blame.
The association’s chief executive, Bill Healey, ... told the government’s family and youth committee that while the number of violent attacks at pubs and bars had not increased from 10 years ago, there had been a rise in viciousness.
‘’These kids have been, on the one hand, exposed to substantial amounts of violence in what they see on TV and video games … but they [have] not actually experienced a lot of pain. They don’t get kicked at school - the empathy factor of knowing how it feels.’’
Mr Healey complained that the rules of the street once meant you did not ‘’king-hit’’ people but now incidents involved people being kicked in the head on the ground and women being hit with beer glasses.
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The Age of barbarians
Andrew Bolt
‘Mad Monk’ meets MoncktonCould The Age declare its politics - and it’s reliance on childish abuse - any more clearly?
Tony Abbott meets the world’s most famous climate change sceptic, Lord Christopher Monckton.
In this one picture and caption, it not only mocks sceptic Lord Monckton as a monkey and ridicules a symptom of his Graves Disease, but appeals to anti-Catholic bigotry by calling Opposition Leader Tony Abbott the “mad Monk”. Only a special kind of savage, terrified by a threat to his animistic deities, could concentrate so much invective into one image.
When I was recruited by The Age in 1979, it was still clinging on to its reputation as the paper of record. Three decades on it’s now an embarrassing measure of the decline of reason, and the rise of hooting, cat-calling, mob-whipping vilification and myth-making in its place.
Warning. Are you a scientist with a club foot or freckles? Are you short or overweight? Bald? Are you confined like a Stephen Hawking to a wheel chair? Then for God’s sake do not out yourself as a climate sceptic, for there is no telling what The Age might then do to you, too?
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Warmist scientists own hungry dogs
Andrew Bolt
New Zealand warmists claim they’ve lost their original data, too:
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has been urged by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) to abandon all of its in-house adjustments to temperature records. This follows an admission by NIWA that it no longer holds the records that would support its in-house manipulation of official temperature readings.Is this the work of the same dog that ate the University of East Anglia’s homework, too?
In December, NZCSC issued a formal request for the schedule of adjustments under the Official Information Act 1982, specifically seeking copies of “the original worksheets and/or computer records used for the calculations”. On 29 January, NIWA responded that they no longer held any internal records, and merely referred to the scientific literature.
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.Pardon the scepticism, but:
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The “climategate” controversy intensified last night when the senior British scientist at its centre, Professor Phil Jones, faced fresh accusations that he attempted to withhold data that could cast doubt on evidence for rising world temperatures.Background to the allegations against NIWA here.
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How our defence minister (allegedly) got $150,000 from China
Andrew Bolt
The Fitzgibbon scandal turns out to be just as serious as I suspected:
PRIVATE records of a Chinese-Australian businesswoman close to the former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon say he received substantial payments as part of a campaign to cultivate him as an agent of political and business influence.Fitzgibbon denies receiving any more from Liu than he’s declared already. Yet this latest news makes the suspicion even stronger that Liu cultivated (the no doubt foolishly unsuspecting) Fitzgibbon as a source of information for the Chinese regime. I don’t claim at all that Fitzgibbon revealed to her anything he should not have, or that he’d have every agreed to do so. But how colossally and irresponsibly stupid was he to accept such gifts as he did, and to put himself under such obligations?
Confidential papers of the businesswoman Helen Liu contradict claims last year by Mr Fitzgibbon - and his father, the former Labor MP Eric Fitzgibbon - that they had no financial or business relationship with Ms Liu.
Mr Fitzgibbon resigned from cabinet last June… The minister’s political standing had already been weakened by his failure to disclose that he had accepted two first-class flights to China from Ms Liu, a wealthy entrepreneur with high-level political and military contacts in Beijing.
The documents show Ms Liu recorded her payment of 850,000 yuan - about $150,000 - to Joel Fitzgibbon under the heading ‘’money paid including expenses and gifts’’.
Mind you, questions should now also be asked again of the gifts Kevin Rudd received from sources suspiciously close to the Chinese regime. And when was Julia Gillard planning to come clean:
It can also be revealed that the office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was told last April by lawyers for a former business associate of Ms Liu that Mr Fitzgibbon might have had more extensive dealings with the businesswoman than acknowledged.UPDATE
Fitzgibbon denies strongly receiving the cash and says he’s taking legal action against Fairfax. Gillard has told Parliament the allegations were “news to me” and the first she’d heard of them was this morning.
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What on earth has Rudd actually done?
Andrew Bolt
Niki Savva, a self-confessed Leftist who worked for Peter Costello, on the mirage that’s Kevin Rudd:
As Opposition Leader, Rudd dragged out the brand new conservative suit Therese had bought for him, and vowed to halt reckless government spending. He said climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time and pledged to tackle it, promised to take over hospitals in a year and bring in an education revolution, threatened to take the Japanese to court over whaling, warned he would turn back refugee boats, and promised to live at the Lodge.I think a couple of big newspapers are about to take up this very theme.
He has done none of those things, and I doubt he ever will.
I don’t know why he is there, who he thinks or is, or what he thinks a Prime Minister’s job involves. It actually means he can and must do things, big things, which can shape the country he leads and not just spin from one pic fac to another.
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Laugh at warmist King. Please
Andrew Bolt
Britian’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is a global warming zealot. And with the same scrupulous regard for evidence he’s reach this conclusion:
A highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency, according to the Government’s former chief scientist. Sir David King...After being laughed at very loudly, King hurriedly retracted:
Sir David King admitted he possessed no inside information about the leaks of embarrassing emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, and had merely been speculating on material already in the public domain. His remarks to a journalist had been a ‘side-issue’, he said. But it emerged that he had been misinformed about key facts.Overheated speculation because on misinformation about key facts? If King is now laughed at for his warmist beliefs, will he now retract them on the same grounds, too?
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Aren’t the ABC, SBS, Seven, Nine and Ten just one same-same too many?
Andrew Bolt
I wonder if Australian viewers would like an alternative to no-argument Left politics on their televisions, too:
Fox News ... had the top 13 programs on cable news in total viewers for the fifth month in a row, and the top 13 programs in the A25-54 demographic for the first time in more than five years.UPDATE
Niki Savva, the journalist and former Costello staffer, in her new book, So Greek, only confirms the bias:
Network Ten political editor Paul Bongiorno also gets a swipe. Savva says he “made clear his distaste for the government and couldn’t wait for it to be booted out” but insisted the Coalition members appear as guests on Meet the Press or there would be grief. “Is that a threat?” she asked. “That’s a promise,” he replied.
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Just follow the money … to Labor
Andrew Bolt
It’s odd that the cash-strapped Liberals are portrayed as the party backed by big money, when it’s Labor which has its pockets stuffed. Andrew Norton:
Of the $6.5 million in political expenditure declared in 2008-09 (down dramatically from the 2007-08 election year spending of $50.6 million) 94.6% was spent by unions, 3.6% by GetUp!, 1.5% by environmental groups, and the remaining $11,170 by the Aged Care Association (SA)… This year the only individual I could find named in donor disclosure statements was ‘Mr/Ms Jo Skrynski’, who I presume is Joseph Skrzynski. He gave $137,500 to GetUp!Joseph Skrzynski? Who might this man be, who is so far to the Left that he’d donate so much even to GetUp!, whose spokesman was once Kevin Rudd’s now press secretary?
The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy today announced the appointment of Mr Joseph Skrzynski AO as the new Chair of SBS.Gosh, a politically active Leftist appointed chairman of the SBS by the Rudd Government. Now there’s a surprise.
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