Friday, November 21, 2008

Headlines Friday 21st November

How politics works. Or doesn’t
Andrew Bolt

Obama voters interviewed. How politics is personal, and how bias affects cognition. Or affects reportage.
===
Nixon proves it: she did mislead
Andrew Bolt
Perhaps Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon doesn’t realise it, but she’s just confirmed she did in fact mislead us about the crime rate among African refugees from Sudan and Somalia.

Here is what I wrote on Wednesday, claiming Nixon had (no doubt accidentally) fed us false figures last year, in claiming African refugees, especially the Sudanese, were no more likely to offend than anyone else. And here is Christine Nixon’s reply, in today’s Herald Sun:
Andrew Bolt’s claims in today’s paper misrepresent me and make claims that I with misled the community. I strongly refute this and would like to set the record straight. ...
===
Don’t bother lawyers with cold facts
Andrew Bolt
When it comes to global warming, at least, Lawyers Weekly Online seems remarkably cavalier about such things as evidence - particularly since it’s preaching to a profession supposedly addicted to the stuff:

JUST IN CASE the message hasn’t actually registered yet, let’s paraphrase former US President Bill Clinton – or more precisely, his election strategist: “It’s the ecology, stupid.”

It seems almost impossible that, whatever the debate about the causes of global warming, some people simply refuse to believe that any appreciable change outside normal climatic cycles is actually happening: some even say we are headed for a period of global cooling – which may indeed be a consequence of the increasing atmospheric murkiness caused by warming, but which encourages a way of thinking that fails to address our need to do something about the warming phase if we’d like to see life on Earth remain more or less as it is now.

I’m not sure how much more evidence we need other than the rapid disappearance of the Arctic ice cap. Perhaps the cause of that is not global warming, but the torrents of hot air on the issue produced by politicians around the world in hundreds of forums seemingly devoted to who can do the best imitation of the goofy gophers, Mac and Tosh: “After you.” “No, no, I insist: after you.”
Beautiful Sunset
===
Defendent Pilgered
Andrew Bolt
News from Sydney’s the “terror trial’’:

...among the so-called extremist material found during a police raid on Mr Hasan’s home was an article by journalist John Pilger...
===
Nixon confirms what she denies
Andrew Bolt
CHRISTINE Nixon yesterday confirmed it. She did mislead us on crime rates of African refugees.

It’s actually four times worse than she’d claimed.

But the Chief Commissioner admitted this only accidentally, after misleading you again in the Herald Sun with more fudged statistics.

Just before last year’s federal election, Nixon embarrassed the Howard government’s immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, by contradicting his warnings that the crime rates among Somali and Sudanese refugees were high.

Not so, said Nixon: “Those Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in the crime statistics.”
===
Cooling on warming
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s excuse for forcing Australia to slash its puny emissions - hurting our growth without cutting temperatures - is that it will inspire the countries that count do the same.

Really? Try telling that to APEC leaders this weekend:

Climate change is fading as a priority in the Pacific Rim as the gloomy state of the global economy takes precedence, a survey of opinion leaders showed Wednesday.
===
Swan draws the line on deficits
Andrew Bolt
Mark his words - no deficit:

THE Rudd Government believes it can get through the next year without being forced into deficit…
===
Tick, tick, tick
Andrew Bolt
Will there be any world leader around after George Bush to say “stop” - and mean the “or else”?:

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.
===
Chary Norman
Andrew Bolt
I know the point he’s struggling to make, but I wouldn’t put it quite like that:

THE retail king Gerry Harvey may have a personal fortune of about $1.6 billion but the Harvey Norman founder thinks donating to charity is “just wasted”.

Asked in a new book about the role he and Harvey Norman play in the community, Mr Harvey said giving money to people who “are not putting anything back into the community” is like ”helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason”. - a bit like supporting the US auto industry - ed.
===
What if they love being cruel?
Andrew Bolt
It may explain the limitiations of the “big hugs” approach to dealing with the anti-social:

BULLIES enjoy seeing people in pain in the same way others get a thrill out of gambling or taking drugs, new brain scan research shows.

No comments: