In his final address to the United Nations, US President George W Bush has explained how faith "sustained" him during his difficult presidency, while declaring his country was "protecting Muslims" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Faith has sustained me through the challenges and the joys of my presidency and faith will guide me through the rest of my days.US President George W Bush
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Rees facing party revolt over controversial mini-budget
Tuesday's mini-budget has now come under the attack of Labor backbenchers, who are reportedly threatening a party-room revolt.
We knew about it when we read it in the newspaper Alan, and I didn’t know it was done by the budget committee until last week in caucus…Member for Blacktown Paul Gibson
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Won’t work, isn’t needed, will hurt
Andrew Bolt
A plan by Kevin Rudd that cannot actually stop a warming that may have stopped already is making some of his colleagues very nervous:
PREMIERS are in revolt over Kevin Rudd’s plans for an emissions trading scheme…
The premiers of South Australia and Tasmania have written to the Prime Minister raising specific concerns about the design of the scheme, its impact on major industries and expressing fears that the ETS will spark major losses of jobs and revenue.
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The East is red ink
Andrew Bolt
And that’s even presuming you can believe the Chinese figures:
CHINA’s industrial production last month grew at its weakest rate in seven years, adding to fears the economic giant is slowing much faster than expected.
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We’re drowning in Sydney Harbor
Andrew Bolt
NICE bridge. Shame about the city. In fact, Sydney is sliding from a joke to a disaster, and it’s taking the rest of us with it.
Not since Joan Kirner in Victoria have we seen a state led as catastrophically as is NSW, and Sydney is just the tawdry measure of its astonishing decline.
Correction: NSW Labor makes Kirner’s lot look a model of propriety. At least her ministers, numbers men, hacks and faction heavies, were honest - and fully clothed - as they drove Victoria into the ground.
They weren’t murdering each other, dancing half-naked in Parliament, molesting boys, sleeping with developers bearing gifts or walking over the bodies of men shot just 90 minutes earlier.
Sure, we in Melbourne may gloat, now that Sydney’s refugees will help us to become the country’s biggest city by 2054, at least according to the Bureau of Statistics.
But what should wipe the smirk off our faces is the fact that NSW now threatens to drag the whole country into a recession.
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Race to lower crimes stats
Andrew Bolt
I AM sorry. I may have misled you about the Sudanese gangs I defended last year.
Back then, I denounced the hate-merchants demonising Sudanese here as misfits, too prone to violence.
True, one gang of boys had just bashed a policeman, but I gave you police statistics showing the crime rate among Sudanese immigrants was no higher than for the rowdy rest of us.
But days later, gangs of African youths fought each other in the Highpoint shopping centre. And Indian taxi drivers kept getting robbed by African men.
Just this week, Sudanese gangs in Adelaide attacked each other in a clash so deadly that one youth was killed and another near death.
But those police statistics tell us there’s no problem among the Sudanese. Which makes an article like this unfair and unhelpful.
Yet, I started to sniff something when Police Commissioner Christine Nixon banned police from using the word “gangs” to describe, well, gangs.
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Blabber 1 and B2
Andrew Bolt
WHEN Kevin Rudd meets Barack Obama for a private chat, who will leak first?
We already know our Prime Minister tends to blab about which famous person last told him a private thing.
He’s blabbed about what he overheard US President George Bush privately tell Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the Beijing Games.
He’s blabbed about what Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao privately told him about the financial crisis.
And he’s blabbed about what Bush told him about the G20. Or, rather, what he now admits Bush didn’t tell, because it turns out his leak to The Australian - that Bush was so dumb he didn’t know what the G20 was - was a self-serving fabrication.
But now it turns out that the US President-elect is a blabber, too.
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Get the Government off my hose
Andrew Bolt
Here’s Victoria’s choice - for the Government to find more water or for the Government to get more control over our lives:
Water Minister Tim Holding confirmed yesterday that the Government was considering targets under a new water savings campaign… The plan is expected to be similar to a Queensland campaign known as Target 170, which requires southeast Queenslanders to limit their water use to 170 litres a person a day…
If a household continues to exceed the required levels, an explanation is required. An outdoor water use ban can be imposed if the usage is not justified.
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New Versailles for UN’s new emperors
Andrew Bolt
What’s Spanish for “oink, oink”?
The new Room of Human Rights and the Alliance of Civilisations, a spectacular cave dripping with multicoloured stalactites and described as the Sistine Chapel of the 21st century, was created by the artist Miquel Barcelo and is to be inaugurated on Tuesday by Spain’s King and Queen.
But the early plaudits for this vast space swiftly became cries of outrage as news emerged that the Spanish government was contributing €8m (£5.3m) from the public purse, including €500,000 lifted from the aid budget for developing countries.
The Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, declined to specify the final cost. “Only fools confuse value and price. This project is a new way of doing diplomacy and foreign policy,” he said...
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Thanks a lot of banning
Andrew Bolt
Can the Federal Government guarantee Internet speeds won’t fall and that no legitimate sites are accidently caught up?
AUSTRALIA’S mandatory net filter is being primed to block 10,000 websites as part of a blacklist of unspecified “unwanted content”.
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Calling “cut” on our films
Andrew Bolt
What was once dismissed as the carping of conservatives is at last accepted as a self-evident truth by even our film bosses. The latest:
In an extraordinary attack, the new president of the Screen Producers Association of Australia, Antony Ginnane, said yesterday our films were “in the main, dark depressing bleak pieces that are the cultural equivalent of ethnic cleansing”.
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Jones’ debate promise just more hot air
Andrew Bolt
Lateline’s Tony Jones has already shown that he’s prepared to cover all sides of the global warming debate - from we’ll-fry to we’ll-die. Last night, though, he promised something special:
And before we enter the debate, a new questions first directly to Ross Garnaut.
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Bush will outlast his critics
Andrew Bolt
Greg Sheridan rightly gives George W. Bush high marks:
Bush was an immensely successful president in Asia. When Bush was first elected there was great fear of a conflict between the US and China. Instead, Bush from the start pursued a steady, productive and stable relationship with China… He had a much better China relationship than Bill Clinton did.
Similarly, the US-India nuclear deal, which symbolises the entire new strategic relationship with India, compares in historical import with Richard Nixon’s opening to China. Likewise with Japan. Bush encouraged Tokyo to become an independent strategic partner within the framework of the US alliance. This removes the crippling psychological burden of strategic client status for Japan and, by making the US-Japan alliance militarily reciprocal, enormously strengthens the US position in North Asia.... More generally, Bush was always ready to take Australian interests into account…
Much of history’s judgment of Bush will turn on Iraq and Afghanistan. This column, in what is certainly a minority position, believes the Iraq operation was the right thing to do on the basis of the information available and Bush was courageous to do it. More recently, Bush defied all his advisers to implement the troop surge that turned Iraq from a catastrophe to a chance of success.
This President, infinitely more complex than his reviews would suggest, will have a better place in history than most of his critics.
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