Headlines Friday 1st August

Killing is cheaper than curing
Andrew Bolt
Legalised euthanaisa offers an easier death - for penny-pinching health bureaucrats:

Opponents of physician-assisted suicide are fired up this summer, and rightfully so, over an ethically questionable provision of the Oregon Health Plan…
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Rudd hands Kirby some sorry business
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd insisted that his apology to the “stolen generations” would not have legal ramifactions - especially on compensation claims:

“We have made it clear we do not expect the apology to cause a rush of claims,” the spokeswoman said.
However, as Bolt points out

And so we see not just Rudd at his worst, apologising for something that didn’t happen, to keep alive a compensation culture and myth that kills more than it helps. And we see also the worst of judicial activism, seizing on evidence not tendered, and interpreting it in ways not intended, to create new rights not legislated.
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Fragile is what our nerves are, instead
Andrew Bolt

~ this land designated “fragile” has so far managed to survive 4,500 million years.

~ this land designated “fragile” survived being under water from 2000 to about 2003, too.

~ this land designated “fragile” looks much like thousands of other square kilometres of such land, of which we have no known shortage.
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Penguins seek relief from warming in Copacabana
Andrew Bolt
I love the contortions gone to by this environmentalist to link some dead penguins in Brazil with global warming:

About 300 penguins have recently been found dead and alive along the coast of the Brazil’ s Bahia state, 1200km northeast of Rio de Janeiro, the Associated Press reports....

Quick reality check. Penguins upset by warming seas near the Antarctic decide to swim to cooler seas off ... Brazil? Pull the other flipper.
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HAMAS v FATAH: FUZZ WAR!
Tim Blair
Amid the stubble of crisis-torn Gaza:
Hamas has resumed its policy of shaving mustaches of political opponents to humiliate them, Fatah officials said Wednesday.
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RIELLE FACTOR
Tim Blair
Further to John Edwards and his crazy babymama antics, Rielle Hunter’s old web site—containing, er, penetrating insights—has been restored.
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RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, OPRAH
Tim Blair
• “The physical, social and economic impacts of global warming affect women more than men.”

• ”African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change.”
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BUY A VOWEL
Tim Blair
St Stephen’s Anglican Church in Bellevue Hill:

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Women make bad drivers
A recent survey has found that men think women are terrible drivers, and Chris Smith reckons they're right.
Have you noticed that women can always sleep in the passenger’s seat. Not men, unless we’re full as a boot!
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Choice: rate cut or a recession
THE Reserve Bank's rate hikes have gone too far, and economists say only urgent rate cuts will hold back a full-blown recession.
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Pudgy pussy cat Princess Chunk tips scales at 20kg
A 20kg cat has been found, and officials at a New Jersey animal shelter hope she gets a nice - hopefully, diet-friendly - home.

"She's built like a quarterback," the big cat's volunteer foster owner Deborah Wright said yesterday. "I mean, how do you lose a 20-kilo cat?!"
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Why is Nelson caned for what Rudd is excused?
Andrew Bolt
If Kevin Rudd refuses to promise categorically an emissions trading scheme by a set date, there’s no criticism:

BARRIE CASSIDY: Now the 2010 deadline, are you determined to meet that?

KEVIN RUDD: Our ambition remains 2010...
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Will she be Rudd’s Butler?
Andrew Bolt
Quentin Bryce isn’t making a promising start to her career as Kevin Rudd’s Governor General. Her handling of staff relations reminds me of another Labor vice-regal appointee.
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Monckton warns Wong: You’re steering Labor to doom
Andrew Bolt
Christopher Monckton warns Climate Change Minister Penny Wong that the Rudd Government’s mad plans to cut “carbon pollution” is a disaster built on a fallacy:
If you introduce an emissions-trading scheme, when it transpires that the scheme and its associated economic damage had never been necessary - and it will, and sooner than you think - you and your party will be flung from office, perhaps forever.
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The cranky Left
Andrew Bolt
Arthur Brooks checks US surveys and discovers a truth that’s confirmed by simply reading the comments on this blog:

Today, very liberal people spend more than twice as much time feeling angry as do political moderates.
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Rates to fall, but gloom to rise
Andrew Bolt
Terrry McCrann, usually spot on in such predictions, gives the Rudd Government cause to hope:

A rate cut at the September RBA meeting in little more than four weeks is certain.

Except, of course, the cut is coming because the economy is slowing - and perhaps faster than expected. Which makes it a terrible time to be planning an expensive and useless carbon tax.
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How much of Rudd’s aid went to Burma’s dictators?
Andrew Bolt
I warned in March that Kevin Rudd’s decision to funnel aid to Burma through the United Nations, rather than Australian aid groups, was kissing goodbye to our cash.
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Weasels bow to China’s will
Andrew Bolt
WEASELS gave the Olympics to China’s dictators - so how lovely to see this deal now backfiring on both.

And how especially nice to see the IOC’s chief spokesweasel, our own unctuous Kevan Gosper, squirm as he tries to explain just how the IOC sold out even free speech.

Yes, explain again, Kevan, just why IOC officials secretly broke their word and let China censor the internet even for journalists covering the Games.

But let’s first set the scene of the IOC’s latest shame.

It was actually the whole pack of weasels at the International Olympic Committee who - undeterred by the lessons of the 1936 Berlin Games - decided seven years ago it was time for another totalitarian regime to exploit their brand. And so they handed the franchise for 2008 to China.
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A million blogging warnings to a lazy media
Andrew Bolt
THE blog culture has been slow to take off here. I can tell, because too few politicians and journalists are jumping like they’ve been bitten.

But having last month had a record one million visits to my own blog, pardon me if I issue a threat: that’s changing.

Blogs - online journals, essentially - can be as trivial and unread as the usual Facebook page.

But the United States has already witnessed the rise of political blogs, and learned that even elections for president may turn on their needling.

What makes such blogs most effective are two things.

The first is that they can give like-minded readers a place to meet, to find encouragement and ammunition. In Australia, that’s the role of GetUp, less a blog, than a site for Leftist activists to distribute form letters, slogans and email addresses of political targets.

The second big weapon of a blog is to publish information that the main-stream media (MSM) won’t, but which, when passed on fast, can end up with people in a position to use it, like even journalists half a world away.

And that role becomes especially important when the media has become lazy, sanctimonious or especially preachy, as it too often is right here.

In fact, the worse the media, the more powerful the blog. So thanks.
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Er, Nelson actually won, folks
Andrew Bolt
Peter Hartcher tells how the shadow cabinet rolled Brendan Nelson when he tried to get it to tougher the party’s position against emissions trading:

Everybody in the room spoke on the issue; no one supported Nelson. Minchin spoke in favour of the existing policy. He wanted to preserve flexibility for the inevitable Senate negotiations.

At the end of the meeting, Nelson faithfully summed up everything that his colleagues had said. He implicitly accepted his defeat. His isolation and humiliation on the issue was complete.
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Gosper should cut his ties to IOC liars
Andrew Bolt
Kevan Gosper may be a dupe but at least he does good remorse - unlike the IOC colleagues who made him their fall-guy:

A HUMILIATED Kevan Gosper has accused the International Olympic Committee of betrayal, condemning the world sporting body for striking a secret deal with China to censor the international media during the Beijing Games. A red-eyed and crestfallen Gosper, a senior IOC member for 31 years, told The Australian that both his reputation and that of the controversy-plagued IOC had been seriously dented by China’s decision to restrict internet access for journalists covering the Games.
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Obama says he’s black again
Andrew Bolt
Has Barack Obama told you he’s black lately?

Democrat Barack Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, says John McCain and his Republican allies will try to scare them by saying Obama ”doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”