Headlines Sunday 9th November

Can Rudd stem the rise of fortress America
Piers Akerman
Without wishing to be too harsh on Barack Obama’s self-satisfied supporters, there are valid reasons Australians must watch this pilgrim’s progress with concern.

In particular, it would be valuable for those who swooned in front of their flat-screen televisions and partisan blog sites to consider the economic situation Obama inherits, particularly the fall-out from the sub-prime crisis, and the make-up of the Democratic Party-controlled Senate and House of Representatives.

Add to those factors the term “Smoot-Hawley’’, and the equation becomes quite unattractive.
Let me explain. No matter what the economically illiterate Kevin Rudd might say, the global financial crisis was not triggered by ``extreme capitalism’’.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

It was set in play by the creeping socialist tendencies of Obama’s Democratic colleagues, who encouraged US mortgage funds to issue loans to individuals who clearly did not have the meansto service their debts.

Some of these mortgages became known as NINJA loans - No Income, No Job, No Assets - which is a clear assessment of the recipients’ credit-worthiness.

They were issued to people who could not afford them under the doctrine of fairness that Obama is committed to continue.

The doctrine of fairness that precipitated the economic slide.

The US, with around 900,000 people pushed on to the jobless lists this year, is in serious straits.
Obama’s election was, in part, a reaction to this situation, but the tide had been running against the Republicans for years.

Which brings in the second part of the sum: Democratic Party control of both Houses of Congress.

For most of his second term, George W. Bush has borne the ire of foot-stamping throngs of outraged celebrities and their hangers-on over US policies, even though he did not have control of the legislature.

That was in the hands of those the self-same star-studded crowd had supported, and it was firmly cemented in their hands after the mid-term election two years ago, when the Democrats won the seats they needed to give them control of the House and Senate for the first time since 1994.

The Democrats captured so much power in the November, 2006 election that it was the first time in US history no Republican won a House, Senate or governorship that had previously been held by a Democrat. Not only did the Democrats sweep in, but those who did included representatives who are considered far more to the left than the colleagues they joined.
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Stolen or rejected?
Andrew Bolt
The ABC’s AM program thinks it’s finally found an Aboriginal child who was stolen:

ELIZABETH JACKSON: It’s almost nine months since members of the Stolen Generations gathered at Parliament House to hear the Prime Minister say the word they’d longed to hear; sorry. Compensation is now an issue for many of those removed from their Aboriginal families.
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Why only .1 per cent of our films make money
Andrew Bolt
Insights into your film industry, financed with your tax dollars:

The years 1991-96 saw the release of six of the only 10 films [out of 1079 projects] to recoup their [Film Finance Corporation] investment: Green Card, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Muriel’s Wedding, Shine, Sirens and Strictly Ballroom. (The other four were Napoleon, The Wog Boy, Rabbit-Proof Fence and Wolf Creek.)…

Former FFC chief Brian Rosen(’s) ... time at the FFC was significant for his lambasting of the predictable, non-commercial fare being submitted for government funding, peaking with his lament earlier this year of “small films that appeal to about 100,000 people ... about lesbians, drugs and whatever else"…
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Turnbull turns on “odd” Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Malcolm Turnbull steps up his attack on Kevin Rudd, making an issue of his personality for the first time:

MALCOLM Turnbull has launched an extraordinary personal attack against Kevin Rudd calling the Prime Minister ‘’odd” and lacking manners.
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Save these children
Andrew Bolt
Caroline Overington visits the home of one of the people the NSW Government pays to be a foster parent to children in desperate need of care and love:

At Padstow in southwest Sydney, The Australian visited a rubbish-strewn house with the remains of meals, including a large chunk of half-eaten meat, resting on furniture. The foster carer - a woman aged 25 - said she had taken 50 children over the years, including “respite” children on the weekends…
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Rudd the starstruck
Andrew Bolt
Paul Daley is awestruck by how much Kevin Rudd is starstruck:

He is hooked on celebrity. Not in the narcissistic way so many other famous people are, whereby they have to move among celebrity because they believe that’s the place that they, too, belong…

Not our Prime Minister. He looks like he can’t believe his luck, in a dry-mouthed and sweaty-palmed sort of way, that the prime ministership affords him entree to all these famous figures. It’s as if he has a sense of otherness from fame, even though he too is famous by dint of his position. Perhaps this explains why he’s so fabulously indiscreet.
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Democracy for sale
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s spin:
You don’t want democracy for sale… I think you get to a stage in a democracy when it goes to this point, and you’ve got to say, oops, I think this has actually gone too far. Let’s bring it back when it comes to reigning in campaign finance.

Kevin Rudd’s substance:
KEVIN RUDD will cash in on his first anniversary as Prime Minister by hosting a Labor fund-raiser likely to be one of the largest and most lucrative in Australian political history.... Hundreds of lobbyists, business figures and true believers have been sent invitations offering the chance to secure a 10-seat table, with a federal minister in attendance, for $15,000. Tables with no minister are going for $5000. Sources say that, assuming most Labor ministers attend, and the convention centre’s Bayside Grand Hall is filled to capacity with 1550 guests, the event could gross more than $1 million...
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Blacks vs gays
Andrew Bolt
Tricky. Whose side does a bumper-sticker Leftist automatically take in the passing in California last Tuesday of a law to ban gaw marriage?
(A)n overwhelming number – 70 percent – of black voters in California ... voted for Proposition 8 and helped secure its passage, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.
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Not reporting but Baracking
Andrew Bolt
Now that the election has been won, the Washington Post’s ombudsman admits, yes, the paper’s coverage was indeed unfair:

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts…
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Bombers pay
Andrew Bolt
They’re gone:

THREE Bali bombers have been executed by firing squad on their prison island in Indonesia, according to television station TV One.
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Labour thrashed in New Zealand
Andrew Bolt
Labour is defeated in New Zealand after nine years. It’s a thrashing 46 per cent to 34. The economic decline under Helen Clark seems to have been too unmistakable at the end.

Another good result: Winston Peters is out.

Clark is giving a concession speech that sounds defiant, almost as if she won, with the crowd cheering and clapping her on. Grace is sure missing, as is humility and any McCain-style appeal to bi-partisanship, with Clark saying she hopes all her work doesn’t “go up in flames on the bonfire created by the Right-wing of politics”. Not a single good wish is paid to the Nationals or its leader, other than a congratulations for their win.

The commentators on Sky News NZ (UPDATE - actually commentators on a feed from TV3) must either have cloth ears or Labour Party membership. They repeatedly declare the speech “magnificent” and “gracious”.