Headlines Wednesday 9th July

Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan, two seriously injured
An Australian soldier has been killed and two others injured in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan. -just as Rudd promised, another Australian death from his underfunded war. The IED may have been Iranian made. -ed.
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You can't begrudge $21 extra a week
In the grand scheme of things you can't begrudge those on minimum wage their $21-a-week pay rise, according to Alan Jones.
There are actually people out there getting up, paying to get to work on $25,000 a year. No one surely can deny them an extra 21 dollars a week.Alan Jones -no one would begrudge them, but what saddens me is that it is in line with inflation caused by the ALP. Under Mr Howard, real wages grew substantially. - ed.
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Howard takes a swipe at Rudd
Former Prime Minister John Howard has taken a swipe at his successor Kevin Rudd, eight months after Mr Rudd led Labor to victory for the first time in more than a decade.
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Howard pings Rudd perfectly
Andrew Bolt
Sums it up, really:

FORMER prime minister John Howard has taken a swipe at his successor Kevin Rudd, eight months after Mr Rudd led Labor to victory for the first time in more than a decade.

Mr Howard, who has kept a low profile since losing government and his own seat in last November’s federal election, has told a Liberal party dinner in Perth that he did not think Mr Rudd had what it took to lead the country.

“You sometimes get the impression that my successor is more interested in the process of government than the opportunity of leadership that government provides,” Mr Howard said.
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Heard it all before
Andrew Bolt
Beautiful. Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman writes the generic column for international meetings:

An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless intergovernmental bodies.

“We are seriously concerned about this most serious outbreak of seriousness,” said the head of the institution, either a former minister from a developing country or a mid-level European or American bureaucrat. “This is a wake-up call to the world. They must take on board the vital message that my
organisation exists.”

The director of the body, based in one of New York, Washington or an agreeable Western European city, was speaking at its annual conference, at which ministers from around the world gather to wring their hands impotently about the most fashionable issue of the day. The organisation has sought to justify its almost completely fruitless existence by joining its many fellow talking-shops in highlighting whatever crisis has recently gained most coverage in the global media.
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Greens plot
Andrew Bolt
The Greens want you to prime Tony Jones with the right questions:

As well as watching the program, please think about asking questions of Christine and the other panellists - about the Senate and balance of power, about the Garnaut Review, about appropriate responses to climate change, peak oil and the trasnport crisis, or anything at all that interests you!

Go here to submit a question online. Or you can SMS a question during the program to 197 55 222 - costs 55c including GST.

Well, they don’t want you, exactly.
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Nelson’s worst enemies attack
Andrew Bolt
No sooner does Brendan Nelson develop a strategy for victory, than the usual suspects begin spiking his guns:

BRENDAN Nelson is under pressure from Liberal MPs to show “leadership” on an emissions trading scheme as a split emerged over his new policy of conditional support only.

Several Liberal MPs including Russell Trood, Petro Georgiou and Judi Moylan warned that Dr Nelson should not delay support for an ETS until international polluters had taken action. -under Mr Howard such idiots served the useful purpose of exposing the support for the silly case. They still do under Dr Nelson. However, the press can lever this to be an assault on Dr Nelson's popularity. - ed.
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Doomed to their fatal delusion
Andrew Bolt
PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of “climate change delusion” - and they haven’t even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.

Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children’s Hospital say this delusion was a “previously unreported phenomenon”.

“A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events.”

(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)

“The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies.”

But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What’s scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this “climate change delusion”, too.

Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic vision: “If we do not begin reducing the nation’s levels of carbon pollution, Australia’s economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands.”

And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd’s guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: “Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . .”

Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd’s next campaign slogan?
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Lending a naked daughter for a stunt
Andrew Bolt
LET me count the ways Age art critic Robert Nelson misused his daughter - and misled the public.

Nelson is the father of Olympia, who was just six when her mother photographed her sitting nude.

This is the picture that five years later Nelson has allowed to be used on the cover of the taxpayer-funded Arts Monthly in protest at the public condemnation of artist Bill Henson, who photographed a 13-year-old girl, using her breasts-bared picture on invitations to his latest exhibition.

Other than criticism, better known in the arts industry as publicity, Henson has suffered nothing for that, except the bother of adding zeroes to the price tags of his pictures.

But it wasn’t enough for the arts tribe that Henson was unpunished. It now demands approval, too, and thus naked Olympia now stars in a jeering edition of Arts Monthly, meant, says editor Maurice O’Riordan, to “validate nudity and childhood as subjects for art”.

But what a sneaky rationalisation. No one doubts nudity and children are a valid subject for art. The real argument is whether the two should merge in erotic pictures of children.

But if O’Riordan couldn’t be frank, how about Nelson, who lent his daughter’s body to this deliberately provocative protest?
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Anyone not been given a scare yet?
Andrew Bolt
Ross Garnaut stumps the country, preaching fear:

Climate change will hit South Australia harder than other areas of the country, the government’s chief climate change adviser says.

Er, South Australia, this time? But it turns out that whatever place a global warming preacher happens to be is the very one that’s in gravest danger -Bolt develops a good length list - ed.
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Winery demands more of Rudd’s pollution
Andrew Bolt
Too much carbon dioxide around? Not in Western Australia:

Capel Vale winery, which operates a contract bottling facility for up to 100 wineries, has run short of carbon dioxide gas used in the bottling process as a result of the Varanus Island accident. The bottling plant could stop operating early next week unless emergency arrangements are made.

Incidentally, Kevin Rudd has a new rhetorical trick to drive up fear of global warming:
THE science tells us that continued high levels of carbon pollution have led to global warming...

If carbon dioxide is really “pollution”, would wineries use it to bottle wine? Or is Rudd, you know, exaggerating?
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Costa reveals Labor’s sneaky plot to get rid of Iemma
Michael Costa and the NSW Labor Party have clashed, over what the Treasurer says is an unprecedented campaign to destabilise the Premier.
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Warnings $21 pay rise could drive up inflation
A $21.66 pay rise to Australia's lowest paid workers could drive up inflation, industry chief Heather Ridout has warned.
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Gas the planet green
Andrew Bolt
Green the world. Buy an SUV and turn up the heat:

The dangerous rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may be troubling scientists and world leaders but it could prove to be a boon for plants, German researchers said Tuesday.

Increasing exposure to carbon dioxide appears to boost crop yields, Hans-Joachim Weigel of the Johann Heinrich von Thuenen Institute for rural areas, forestry and fisheries in the central city of Brunswick told AFP.

“Output increased by about 10 percent for barley, beets and wheat” when the plants were subjected to higher levels of carbon dioxide, Weigel said.