Headlines Sunday 7th September

Rudd’s climate change hot air
Piers Akerman
NO SINGLE issue better illustrates the Rudd Government’s gross incompetence than its blindly ideological approach to the question of climate change.
Fortunately, and perhaps accidentally, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s own hand-picked climate change guru, Professor Ross Garnaut, has now driven a truck through its principal argument.

In the 10 months since Rudd, Treasurer Wayne Swan, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and Environment Minister Peter Garrett have held office, the Government has constantly decried and denigrated as ``irresponsible climate-change deniers’’ all who question their views .

The snide use of the word “denier’’ to link sceptics with those who deny the actuality of the Holocaust is so obvious it hardly deserves mention.

But its repeated usage is indicative of the gutter nature of the massive propaganda campaign waged by Rudd and his colleagues as they attempt to capitalise on their symbolic signing of the politically correct Kyoto Protocol.

Fixated with the flawed reports prepared by the totally partisan Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and falsely claiming there is a “consensus’’ among climate scientists that human activity is responsible for global warming, Rudd has pushed a warped agenda based on extraordinarily dubious modelling.

And such an agenda can, in all reality, have no effect on the planet, let alone the behaviour of other nations.

For the whole of their period in office, federal Labor’s mantra has been simple: the cost of doing nothing about climate change will be greater than the cost of doing something.

Now, however, former foreign affairs mentor Professor Garnaut has revealed that mantra is false.
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The West stirs. UPDATE: Cliffhanger result
Andrew Bolt
The answer at 10pmAEST is that the polls are indeed pretty accurate. The count shows a big swing against Labor, but so far the Liberals seem to have only eight of the nine extra seats they need to win. This will chill Labor, even if it scrapes home. But, still, a win is a win…

Takeout so far: After the big swing against Labor last month in the early election it cynically called in the Northern Territory, and a big swing against it at this snap election, Rudd’s veiled threats of calling his own early double-dissolution election to win control in the Senate will be canned.
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Who you calling angry, #$%&#@?
Andrew Bolt
George Bush takes a swipe at the “angry Left”, which in turn suggests he’s not being quite reasonable. John Gibson has their, er, restrained responses read out, word for word.
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Wong misquotes a misquote
Andrew Bolt
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong does the booga-booga:

There is a great deal of scientific advice about the impact of climate change on rainfall, particularly in southern Australia… We know the IPCC said by 2050 that Australia should expect around about a 25 per cent reduction in rainfall in the southern part of ... Australia.
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Turn off whose teleprompter?
Andrew Bolt
A new lines of sneering is now being used against Sarah Palin since her knock-’em-dead speech to the Republic convention. Radio host Ed Schultz sums it up:

So she can read a teleprompter. Big deal.

Scoffs Jim on Politico:

Turn off the teleprompter and she’ll be back to her Wasilla self.

Or on Time’s Swampland blog:


Let’s see her face reporters without a speechwriter and a teleprompter.

Oh, you mean like this?

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The Liberals win one at long last
Andrew Bolt
Finally, after 24 straight defeats at state and territory elections, the Liberals snag one:

THE West Australian Liberals are poised to form government but were facing tough negotiations with the Nationals to enable them to do so…

Huge swings of more than six per cent against the government in many seats exceeded poll predictions of a four per cent swing to the opposition…

Labor appeared unlikely to be able to gain more than 27 seats in the 59-seat parliament, while the Liberals were likely to take 25 and the Nationals four, with two independents and another seat to be decided.
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Obama’s token Palin
Andrew Bolt
The Left blasted John McCain for his ”cynicism” in picking running mate Governor Sarah Palin as his token woman. But speaking of the cyncial use of a token woman you’d never actually pick on her merit:

In a strange twist of logic, the Obama campaign is touting the woman they passed over as the woman they need to beat the woman the other guy picked.
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Oprah’s tears
Andrew Bolt
Oprah Winfrey won’t have Sarah Palin onto her show, even though she’s red meat for the Oprah audience. This footage of Oprah at Barack Obama’s convention helps to explain why.