Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Headlines Wednesday 13th August

Coates unbuttoned
Andrew Bolt
Class act, Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates:

“Great Britain may have been in lane seven and eight but, um, they seemed to be getting there for a country that has very few swimming pools and not much soap,’’ Coates said.

This is the bloke who has asked for more of our millions because he ”it would be too much for my pride for (Britain) to go ahead of us”. Has this man got a problem? Does he need a long holiday, and less responsibility?
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IT CONTINUES
Tim Blair
Previously mentioned: “City of Sydney Council has become the first level of Australian government to go ‘carbon neutral’ – costing residents $56,000.” Well, let’s upgrade that a little:
The City of Sydney has become Australia’s first “carbon neutral” government. It will spend about $2.5 million a year buying wind power to offset the electricity and fuel used to power council offices and public amenities including street lights, pools and libraries.
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YANG DENIED
Tim Blair
From this site’s Olympic opening ceremony coverage:
The tiny child is lip-syncing! These Olympic Games are ruined for me.
Confirmation:
Lin Miako, the little girl who stole the show on Friday, did not actually sing a note and was miming throughout.

Instead, the voice heard by millions around the world was that of seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, who was ditched from the ceremony because of her chubby face and uneven teeth.
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IT BEGINS
Tim Blair
In today’s Daily Telegraph (not online):
City of Sydney Council has become the first level of Australian government to go “carbon neutral” – costing residents $56,000.
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NOT A PEOPLE PERSON
Tim Blair
London-based Marxist academic Slavoj Zizek isn’t exactly a cheery fellow:
Q: What makes you depressed?

A: Seeing stupid people happy.
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PEAK ENVIRO PASSED
Tim Blair
The Business & Media Institute’s Nathan Burchfiel notes a media/reality disconnect:
In spite of the media’s obsession with global warming, only 25 percent of Americans view climate change as the world’s biggest environmental threat, according to a new ABC News poll. Fewer than half – 47 percent – viewed global warming as “extremely” or “very” important to them ...
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ART HAPPENS
Tim Blair
Modern art on the rampage:
A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a window before it landed again.
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Davis’s fiction defies facts
Andrew Bolt
NEVER mind the facts. To too many arts academics, what counts is the right-on ideology.

Today’s example: Melbourne University academic Mark Davis.

Davis has a new book, The Land of Plenty, which Melbourne University Press claims is a “lacerating dissection” of conservatives and which it published without bothering to correct even the most obvious howlers.

Two in particular interest me.

Howler A: “A low point was a Bolt-penned beat-up that appeared on the front page of the Herald-Sun (sic) to discredit the Aboriginal leader Lowitja O’Donoghue with the incorrect claim that she had falsely claimed to be stolen . . .”
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Don’t Barack for Russia
Andrew Bolt
WE have just had a lesson in how the next president of the US would react to a real menace to the world’s peace.

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain were set a test with Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

The results? Be terrified that Obama leads in the polls.

Russia has driven deep into Georgia on the excuse of defending separatists in the Georgian territory of South Ossetia - a pro-Russian statelet that Georgia has tried to bring back under its control.

But the truth is Georgia is being punished for its sins against Russian pride and power. Let me count the ways it offended.
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The East bares its teeth
Andrew Bolt
Paul Kelly:

AS China uses the Olympic Games to showcase the return of its civilisational power, Russia has launched an attack on Georgia to remind the world that it will reclaim its historic influence by resort to force…
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What was their excuse for giving up on Iraq?
Andrew Bolt
Christopher Hitchens now agrees the war in Iraq is won - and demands answers from the Left that preached defeat:

I remind you that, as little as a year ago, the whole of smart liberal opinion believed that the dissolution of Baathism and militarism had been a mistake, that Iraq itself was a bottomless pit of wasted dollars and pointless casualties and that the only option was to withdraw as fast as possible and let the inevitable civil war burn itself out…
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Barbarians too young for taming
Andrew Bolt
We don’t have laws yet to cope with the new barbarian age:

A SEVEN-year-old boy who allegedly stabbed a teenage girl in an unprovoked attack has had to be released by authorities because of his age.
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Column: The jackboot Games
Andrew Bolt
Beautiful Sunset
THE Beijing Games are a party held in a prison. Never have the Olympics been held under such oppressive military control.

It’s bad enough that the security is choking the life out of the Games. Worse is that its aim seems less to protect athletes from terrorists than to save China’s regime from its people.
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ABC approves its bias
Andrew Bolt
Gerard Henderson says the ABC’s fairness boss, Paul Chadwick, seems unable to spot a bias he doesn’t like:

Recently Chadwick’s department has issued a number of final reports. They all find that the ABC is 100 per cent correct - or close to that.
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China eliminates the imperfect
Andrew Bolt
Beautiful Sunset
(Lin Miaoke, the lip-syncher, and Yang Peiyi, the singer.)

The Chinese regime refuses to let even a seven-year-old girl stand in the way of its dreams of totalitarian perfection:

Chinese officials have admitted deceiving the public over another highlight of the Olympic opening ceremony: the picture-perfect schoolgirl who sang as the Chinese flag entered the stadium was performing to another girl’s voice.
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For lovers of Al Gore warming porn
Andrew Bolt
From reader Warren, this handy set of links - the core of a GoreWatch:

Gore deception ~ Polar Bears

Gore hypocrisy ~ cars

Gore & friends hypocrisy ~ jets

Gore hypocrisy ~ jets +

Gore hypocrisy ~ home energy use

Gore lies ~ An Inconvenient Truth

Gore hoodwink ~ carbon offsets

Gore inc - the green cash
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Rudd’s spin unspun
Andrew Bolt
Why is anyone even discussing a scheme so stupid?

THE Rudd Government’s key measure to shield Australians from soaring petrol prices appears headed for defeat in the Senate, with independent senator Nick Xenophon yesterday joining opposition to the controversial FuelWatch scheme… Senator Xenophon said that while he supported the scheme when it was introduced in Western Australia, he was now convinced the system would not work as planned to foster competition and help to contain petrol prices.
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Students fed Flannery
Andrew Bolt
The Geography Teachers Association of Queensland wants the global warming preaching of Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery taught as gospel:

Tim Flannery’s books The Weather Makers and We Are the Weather Makers changed minds and hearts about global warming. They contributed to a radical shift in our nation’s understanding of climate change and the need for an urgent response.
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Dam water bills
Andrew Bolt
The business pages of The Age - henceforth to be known as the Resistance - discuss yet another conservative idea that Age editor Andrew Jaspan refuses to consider in the rest of the paper:

Water Minister Tim Holding, using data from a study that had been kept under wraps until yesterday, had earlier revealed that a big dam on the Mitchell River duplicating the Thomson Dam would cost $1.35 billion. He made out that this was a high price, yet it is less than half the cost of the Wonthaggi desalination plant… The Government’s cost estimate of the Wonthaggi proposal is $3.1 billion…

The (desalination) plant would produce water for Melbourne at more than 300¢ a kilolitre — five times the cost of water from a new Gippsland dam.
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Yet another sceptical scientist
Andrew Bolt
Add another warming sceptic to the list - now so long that surely even the ABC must doubt the “consensus”. This time it’s Professor Bill Collins of James Cook University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences:

[The global warming debate is] not about mainstream (read official) scientists versus sceptics, enthusiasts or bloggers. Many of these people are good scientists. The debate is about how and why climate change is happening…

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