Headlines Friday 24th October

Read this while you can
Andrew Bolt
The Rudd Government plans to censor the Internet. If this report is indeed true, I’m worried:

Internet providers and the government’s own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent. - no doubt a skill obtained from the Chinese Government. - ed.
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ABC on warming: it’s doom or devastation
Andrew Bolt
Lateline last night interviewed three scientists and a UN official about global warming. Showing his famed concern for balance, host Tony Jones presents a range of views from this:

PROF. ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS, MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY: A lot of people like myself, and I believe many, many scientists now, who are frantically, hysterically worried.

To this:

PROF. DAVID KAROLY, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: The only way that I could see the climate system in 50 years time or 100 years time being cooler than at present is if the earth got hit by an asteroid and basically human civilisation was destroyed.
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Fitting the media narrative
Andrew Bolt
How can Joe Biden make so many stupid - and dangerously stupid - statements without the media piling on as they do with the saner Sarah Palin?

Kirsten Powers explains:

Part of the problem is their “Obama love,” but we’re also seeing the media elite’s belief - prejudice - that anyone with an R behind their name is dumb. So, if they say something dumb, they must be dumb. A Democrat, like Biden, can make wildly inaccurate or outrageous comments and they are ignored because the TV and press insiders feel they “know who he really is.”
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We are detaining our leader
Andrew Bolt
UN secretary-general candidate Kevin Rudd sure loves to hobnob with the powerful overseas. And he rings them so often about events he can’t control, that he had no time to ring his own Reserve Bank Governor about events he could - and which he then stuffed up in his rush.

Now he faces another such clash:

(T)he Prime Minister has found his diary crowded: Washington, November 15, G20; Canberra, November 17, Council of Australian Governments; Lima, November 22-23, APEC. Rudd’s international agenda is clashing with his domestic reform one.

How does he resolve this clash? Simple! Put off the domestic meetings:

Yesterday his officials were busy trying to reschedule the COAG meeting — which has been built up as a crucial occasion for advancing the Government’s program on vital issues, including health and education — and work out the logistics of making Washington and Lima two trips or one...
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Rudd sends investors to Centrelink
Andrew Bolt
The Rudd Government has so mucked up its unlimited bank guarantee that customers of non-guaranteed funds now have to go to Centrelink for a handout:

(I)t emerged fund managers Perpetual and AXA had frozen redemptions in $4.1 billion of investors’ funds, as a rash of investors attempted to withdraw their money. Perpetual and AXA have followed Challenger Howard, the country’s biggest mortgage fund, which froze $2.8 billion of redemptions earlier this week.

The latest freezes take total suspended property and mortgage funds to $20 billion…

(Treasurer Wayne) Swan said Perpetual customers who were dependent on access to funds should contact Centrelink to see if temporary help was available.
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Even Croatian police can read
Andrew Bolt
IT’S that ugly Schapelle Corby phenomenon again. But this time it’s Croatia’s turn to be damned as brutal and bungling.

This time, following the death of Britt Lapthorne in Dubrovnik, it’s the turn of Croatian police to be accused of lacking “common decency”, and being “unco-operative”, “bizarre” and nothing more than “traffic cops”.

This time it’s the turn of a Croatian judge to be ridiculed, having Australian reporters hound him at his home and mock him as unfeeling.

And, also on cue, it’s the Australian Federal Police’s turn yet again to be spat at for not charging to the rescue of an Australian in peril overseas, pushing aside the stupid foreigners as if we sahibs ruled the world.
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Repeat after the teacher
Andrew Bolt
ANOTHER week, and another student tells me of a teacher who’s turned preacher instead.

This student, a very honest boy, tells me he was asked on Tuesday to give a summary on global warming.

Naturally, he included one plain fact: the planet hadn’t warmed since 1998, according to satellite measurements.

Check with Britain’s Hadley Centre. Or with Dr Roy Spencer, US head of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

No, no, no, said the teacher, brought in by the school to give a few lessons on learning techniques. You mustn’t believe such a thing. That was just put out by that Andrew Bolt, and, ha!, he was in a room of his own.

“Really?” replied my son.
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Drought ended by committee
Andrew Bolt
The Rudd Government’s hand-picked Drought Policy Review Expert Social Panel seems stuffed with people who read George Orwell’s 1984 as good advice, and not a warning:

GOVERNMENT experts say the word “drought” is making farmers feel bad and want people to use the word “dryness” instead.
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Hogan was as useless as Luhrmann
Andrew Bolt

John Richardson, a former assistant general manager of the Australian Tourist Commission, says I’m right to say that the new Baz Luhrmann tourism ads won’t work.

But he says I’m wrong to say the famous Paul Hogan ads ever did.
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Entrapped in the forest
Andrew Bolt
Looks bad, from this carefully cropped angle, and the language (warning!) is even worse.