Headlines Monday 27th October

Stop pandering to addicts with taxpayers’ funds
Piers Akerman
The Daily Telegraph’s shocking disclosure that complicit doctors are assisting drug addicts obtain a taxpayer-subsidised heroin substitute for injection at the NSW State Labor government’s protected shooting gallery is a further argument for closure of the facility and a re-direction of the State’s resources.
The black market in oxycodone, a prescription pain killer subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and the Repatriation Pharmacuetical Benefits Scheme, is fuelled by greedy doctors and accelerated by the encouragement drug addicts receive from the welcoming staff at the government’s King Cross facility. -Evidence can be a tricky thing for some people. Della Bosca has said on 2GB that he cannot do anything about NSW health because everyone he might order into action is already doing something, and so anything Della Bosca does is counter productive. I think that a fine argument for Reese to consider not having a health minister. But where is the evidence?
Hamidur Rahman died in ‘02, and the coroner called it an accident. The coroner was not aware of information held back by the department of education. Della Bosca was asked to intervene to protect the officer reporting the incident and instead chose to refer that officer to a named abuser. But then because the death was already ruled an accident, what is the problem?
I have known drug users who shared the view that harm minimisation is effective until they found that they couldn’t stop without actual help. The government has their names .. - ed.
===
A hole lot of warming lessons
Andrew Bolt
Another fiercely-defended scientific consensus is questioned - billions of dollars later:

A University of Waterloo scientist says that cosmic rays are a key cause for expanding the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole — and predicts the largest ozone hole will occur in one or two weeks.

Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy who studies ozone depletion, said that it was generally accepted for more than two decades that the Earth’s ozone layer is depleted by chlorine atoms produced by sunlight-induced destruction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere. But more and more evidence now points to a new theory that the cosmic rays (energy particles that originate in space) play a major role.

Lu is predicting an even bigger hole than the one NASA measured just two years ago:

NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists report this year’s ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth.

This may surprise you, because - as CNN notes - the man-made gases we primarily blamed for the ozone hole were phased out a long time ago:

Those gases originate from man-made products like chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which were phased out under a global agreement two decades ago but continue to linger in the atmosphere.

And here is something even odder. Now that we’ve agreed that our wicked gases were mostly to blame, and spent all the money to cut them out, the panic over the ozone hole above us has vanished - even though that hole is getting bigger almost by the year.

Shouldn’t we panic even more now, or was that past panic just a tool? And did it panic us into doing stuff that was actually a bit dumb? Scientists now debate that very point.
===
When skin argues against faith
Andrew Bolt
At some stage it must occur to some global warming alarmists that they are protesting about something that hasn’t happened for 10 years now
===
Dam predictions
Andrew Bolt
===
LONG LIVE TRADE
Tim Blair
India’s Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar endorses McCain, for excellent reasons:
McCain is one of the few American politicians in either party with the courage and conviction to stand up to protectionist populism. By contrast, Obama embodies protectionism.
===
TAKE A STAND
Tim Blair
Jim Treacher has two words (or more, if you’re Joe Biden) for his fellow liberty-minded Americans: “Stop. Whining.” And here’s some advice from Mark Steyn:
You can, as Reagan and Thatcher did, stand up. Or, like Obama voting “present,” you can stand down.
===
PETER WALLSTEN, HAND OVER THAT TAPE
Tim Blair
The Los Angeles Times claims to have newsworthy videotape of a Presidential candidate.
===
MAYBE HE THOUGHT THE FOX GUY WOULD BOMB HIM
Tim Blair
Victor Davis Hanson observes strangeness in Chicago:
There was a strange scene when the Fox reporter caught up to Bill Ayers and stuck a microphone in his face as he went up the sidewalk of his rather impressive home: Ayers, with a bright red star on his T-shirt, shoos away the reporter with the apparent mumble “this is private property” before the police arrive. How strange that an advocate for communalism and an erstwhile attacker of police stations reverts to the notion of property rights and police to protect him from an intrusive reporter. Right out of Thucydides Book III and the strife on Corfu, when the historian warns that those who destroy the protocols of civilization may well one day wish to rely on them.
===
VT&C BEATS NYT
Tim Blair
Let Obama have his precious New York Times endorsement. It’ll be a climate-changed day in hell before he gets any support from Vacuum Technology & Coating:
Electing Barack Obama to the presidency would have catastrophic consequences to our country, and our freedom, far beyond the consequences to our economy.
===
BULB MAN HAS VAST POWER RESERVES
Tim Blair
A directive from central climate command:
Peter Garrett has called on Australians to “learn to love” wind farms, warning that too many alternative energy proposals have been rejected because of opposition from “not in my back yard” activists.
===
P-P-P-PAY ATTENTION TO C-C-C-CLI …
Tim Blair
The colder it gets, the more they protest:
Student volunteers from colleges around New York State braved freezing cold temperatures on their bikes Wednesday to send a message to state and federal political candidates: pay attention to climate change.
Watch ‘em shiver (all four of them; this was news?). The chick in the full-length woollen gloves holding a “stop global warming” sign is especially convincing.
===
Beware the new faith
Andrew Bolt

===
Rudd betrays Bush - then steals his credit
Andrew Bolt
Did Rudd not only betray a President’s confidence, but steal George Bush’s credit?

Let’s have another look at this leak which Kevin Rudd clearly had placed in The Australian on Saturday to make himself look like a real player:

KEVIN Rudd was entertaining guests in the loungeroom at Kirribilli House in Sydney when an aide told him George W. Bush was on the telephone.
===
Er, Cathy Freeman is Aboriginal, Gabriella
Andrew Bolt
I was so struck by Gabriella Coslovich’s ill-informed burbling about The First Australians, that I missed her even more ill-formed burbling in the same Age article about a government document
===
In need of some lesson’s
Andrew Bolt
In the week that a draft national curriculum recommends teachers once more teach the formal rules of grammar and punctuation, a state school teacher emails his colleague’s
===
Media hears an exciting echo
Andrew Bolt
Mark Steyn exposes the engine driving the hype of a Barack Obama win:

According to newspaper reports, polls show that most people believe newspaper reports claiming that most people believe polls showing that most people have read newspaper reports agreeing that polls show he’s going to win.
===
An ad Al Gore could have made
Andrew Bolt
===
A hole lot of warming lessons
Andrew Bolt
Another fiercely-defended scientific consensus is questioned - billions of dollars later:

A University of Waterloo scientist says that cosmic rays are a key cause for expanding the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole — and predicts the largest ozone hole will occur in one or two weeks.
===
Even Caravaggio was no Henson
Andrew Bolt
David Marr mocks moves to scrap the “Henson defence” - the legal leeway given to artists to paint children nude
===
A Scientologist bleeds
Andrew Bolt
Paul Sheehan runs an eye over the balance sheets of James Packer, whose late father was once our richest man:

Since James Packer took control of the family corporate empire, he made a huge bet on the future of the empire. Like father like son.
===
Rudd panicked, investors suffered
Andrew Bolt
Professor Milind Sathye compares the Rudd Government’s rushed decision to issue a free, unlimited guarantee on bank deposits - a decision that triggered a devastating run on other institutions - with the calmer decisions made overseas, and concludes:

It seems that with the stock market tumble on October 11, panic buttons got pushed. Granted the markets needed a boost, but the Government could have moved in stages rather than taking hasty action with resultant adverse effects.