Headlines Monday 17th November

Still waiting for defeat
Andrew Bolt
Remember how, only last year, there were still journalists, academics and senior politicians of the Left claiming Iraq was lost? Now democratic Iraq announces it will stand on its own feet in just three years:

Iraq’s cabinet defied fiery opposition from Shia hardliners last night to approve a wide-ranging military pact that includes a timetable for the withdrawal of all US troops by the end of 2011.
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Not trash, but still not good
Andrew Bolt
Chris Sarra regrets blaming ”white trash” workers for some of the dysfunction in Aboriginal communities:

Dr Sarra, executive director of the Indigenous Education Leadership Institute at the Queensland University of Technology, yesterday retreated from his choice of words, saying he would never use the term again. “If I had my time again I would use the term lazy and incompetent,” he said.
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Warm to Rudd, but too cool on his threat
Andrew Bolt
I’m not the only observer to suspect the Busincss Council of Australia is getting far too cosy with Kevin Rudd, and is selling out some of its members:

Senior National Party senator Ron Boswell took the unusual step this week of writing to the BCA’s chief executive Katie Lahey to put the Coalition’s case.

The former Nationals Senate leader wrote: “Yesterday in the Senate, (Climate Change Minister Penny) Wong once again used BCA support for a 2010 start date as vindication for government policy and criticism of the Coalition stance.

“The Government uses the BCA and therefore its members as a crutch to support their very flawed (carbon pollution reduction scheme). Every day new evidence emerges from companies who will be hit hard by an Australian ETS. They speak up one by one while the BCA itself remains tentative, which gives comfort to the Rudd Government to maintain the status quo.

“If business is too intimidated to roundly condemn what they know to be wrong, then business will get an intimidating outcome in return."…

Boswell thinks the BCA’s support for the ETS is being driven by the group’s financial sector members. “I am conscious,” he told Lahey, “that there are many BCA members in the financial market who will profit from an emissions trading system...”
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Global warming, or just central heating?
Andrew Bolt
Great detective work from meteorologist Anthony Watts into the suspect Russian weather stations which have recorded a lot of the “global warming” over the past few decades. Oddly enough, many of the stations are in towns criss-crossed by heating pipes, and they tend to record most of the warming in winter:

If Russian weather stations are located in cities that have this district heating plan, and a good percentage of the pipes are uninsulated, how much of the waste heat from the pipes ends up creating a local micro-climate of warmth?
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Rahm can’t recognise dad
Andrew Bolt
Deplorable, of course, yet strangely comforting to friends of Israel:
Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago congressman named to serve as President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, has had to apologize to Arab-Americans for remarks made by his father to an Israeli reporter.

“Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he?” the elder Mr. Emanuel is quoted as saying. ”What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”

Then again, Emanuel’s response suggests he isn’t above white lies, or even worse ones:
From the fullness of my heart, I personally apologize on behalf of my family and me. These are not the values upon which I was raised or those of my family.
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Rudd blasts refusal to deny leak
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd has refused in Parliament at least three times to deny direct allegations that he leaked (and lied about) details of his private conversation with George Bush:

Rudd faced two days of questioning in parliament and refused repeatedly to deny that he or his staff had leaked the content of the telephone conversation, which reportedly occurred on a night when Rudd was having dinner with The Australian’s editor.
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Warming emperors shiver without clothes
Andrew Bolt
Once again theories of global warming smack into the fact of cooling:

Thousands have taken part in marches around Australia calling for action to stop climate warming… A colourful crowd showed up in Martin Place, despite the grey skies.

Well, part of a crowd showed up. Tim Blair notes such a cooling of support that the crowd this year was in fact down by 90 per cent - to just 2000.
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Calming voice
Andrew Bolt
John Howard is rightly dismissive of Kevin Rudd’s self-serving alarmism:

“The first thing we should do is stop comparing what we now face with the Great Depression,” he said in the interview to be aired in Australia this morning on Sky News.

“I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation but I think it’s unnerving to the average citizen to be constantly told we’re in the worst situation since the Great Depression - not because it isn’t bad, but because there is no comparison between the circumstances we now face and the circumstances in the Great Depression."…