Headlines Saturday 28th February 2009

Fitzgibbon blames 'incompetent' Defence Force
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has accused his own department of incompetence and says they have altered information to cover up mistakes and protect personnel. - Of course, the department is not at fault for Fitzgibbon facing parliament unprepared after many months. - ed.
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Obama declares August 2010 Iraq pullout
Six years after the US invasion of Iraq, President Barack Obama announced he will pull out most troops and end combat operations by the end of August 2010. - by pullout, Obama means leaving 50k troops behind - ed.
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Woman swaps kids for cockatoo
Police a have arrested a woman who allegedly traded two young children in her care for a bird and a bit of cash.
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Pacific to reconsider job cuts
Clothing company Pacific Brands will consider a federal government request to rethink its decision to cut 1,850 local manufacturing jobs.
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Budget airline to introduce toilet tax
Forget about paying for airline food and drink, one budget carrier is considering charging passengers to use the toilet.
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50 in another brawl at Rosemeadow
Two police officers have been injured while trying to break up another brawl in the notorious Rosemeadow estate in Sydney's south-west.
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Man dies after downing bottle of Viagra in 12-hour threesome
Ita Buttrose's nephew arrested in multimillion dollar drug raid
Man shot dead by police after domestic dispute
Pools being investigated after 201 people fall sick
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OLD TIME RELIGION
Tim Blair
If my local Anglican church had this guy, I’d be there every Sunday:

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TAKE IT FROM RAY
Tim Blair
Negative don’t sell.
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This hysteria will pass
Andrew Bolt
From an interview with brilliant young Israeli physicist Nir Shaviv:

In what state do you expect the struggle over global warming to be a decade or more from now?

“This struggle will fade away. In the past, we were afraid of the Y2K bug that was going to paralyze the world, we were afraid of the tail gases of a comet that was supposed to strike the earth - none of this happened. In the last 10 years, the earth’s temperature has not risen. Over the last century, it has risen 0.75 degrees. Less than a degree. My guess is that even if we double the amount of carbon dioxide by 2100, the temperature will only rise by one degree, and we needn’t be afraid of that.”
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Green slum
Andrew Bolt
The Sydney Morning Herald finds an Australian family that could be the poster children for its Earth Hour campaign:

A striking feature of the Delaneys’ lifestyle is their small environmental footprint. They use very little electricity, create only a small amount of waste and rely exclusively on public transport.

How sweet. And how has this family managed to produce this striking feat of eco-living?

For 13 years they have lived in the shanty towns of the Indian capital, New Delhi… The family home, in a neighbourhood called Janta Mazdoor Colony, is about the size of a typical Australian bedroom. They have no running water, no TV, no fridge and no washing machine. Two mattresses, used to sleep on at night, double as a “lounge” during the day. Meals are eaten sitting on the floor and they share with neighbours a squat toilet in a small bathroom. (O)pen drains still run along the slum’s maze of narrow alley ways and empty into a putrid canal not far from the Delaneys’ front door…

To help the family cope, Cathy got a small solar panel worth about $100 for her 40th birthday that powers a lamp during the blackouts.

Greens would applaud. Behold their future.

UPDATE

The NSW Government does its bit, with plans to force people to use less of the stuff that makes life easier:

The State Government also outlined a plan to force electricity retailers to cut 4 per cent of their electricity sales a year within five years by working with customers to introduce energy efficiencies.

I suspect this bunch of stumblebums will actually achieve its target simply by just driving the state into the dirt.
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Defence Minister declares war - on our army
Andrew Bolt
I don’t think this is smart way for a bumbling Defence Minister to do his job better:

THE Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, has described his department as at times incompetent and says it “nuances” information to cover up mistakes and protect personnel…

“Have I seen incompetence? Absolutely yes. Have I seen attempts to nuance information to cover for mistakes? Yes. Have I seen nuanced information in an attempt to produce outcomes that are more favourable to those who are responsible for the issue? Yes."…

Responding to the comments, the Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, defended his organisation’s integrity.

“I work for the minister, my job is to serve the minister who represents the government of the day. I will do that as professionally as I possibly can. I will never mislead him, I will never ever lead him astray, I will never cover up anything, and I will give him the advice that he seeks. Now will I always give perfect advice? Probably not.”

If Fitzgibbon thinks getting accurate information from Defence is like drawing hens’ teeth, he might reconsider Labor’s hysterical claims that the Howard Government must have, should have, known that what Defence told it about “children overboard” was not true.
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Don’t blame workers for middle-class terrorism
Andrew Bolt
No, this is not a movement of the downtrodden poor, suddenly crushed by the financial meltdown:

While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars—symbols of German wealth and power.

Check the rest of the article. These car-burnings are almost certainly political terrorism by the green Left instead. And, I’d bet, done more by the university-educated offspring of the pampered middle-class than by horny-handed sons of toil:

Berlin has a history of political protest, with anarchist demonstrators regularly clashing with police on the streets of Kreuzberg during May 1 marches. Kreuzberg, which abutted the Berlin Wall, is represented in parliament by the Green Party’s Hans-Christian Stroebele, a former lawyer who defended members of the Baader-Meinhof gang in court.

Likewise, arson attacks on cars are not new: a Web site, “Burning Cars,” was set up to track the incidents in May 2007, one month before a summit in the northern German resort of Heiligendamm of the Group of Eight industrialized nations.,,

“I wouldn’t advise someone to park their Porsche on the street” in Kreuzberg, Berlin police commissioner Dieter Glietsch told the Taz newspaper in June last year.

Check the dates on the map of the Burning Cars site. Most predate any economic downturn.
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It’s now 19 months - and 50,000 left over
Andrew Bolt
You mean you actually believed Barack Obama when he said US troops would be out of Iraq within 16 months of becoming President?

Q. Following that up, what is your schedule for withdrawing forces from Iraq? How fast would these withdrawals be carried out? What time frame?

A. [W]e believe that you can get one to two brigades out a month. At that pace, the forces would be out in approximately 16 months from the time that we began.

More fool you:
Amid complaints from has own party that he’s moving too slowly to end the war in Iraq, President Barack Obama will announce Friday that U.S. combat troops will be withdrawn by Aug. 31, 2010, but that as many as 50,000 Marines and soldiers would remain until the end of 2011.

It’s not as though you weren’t warned that Obama’s promise came with so many strings it was meaningless. Or that there’s plenty of other things he says that are not matched by what he does. But I guess it’s the way he says them,
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Too bloated to fly
Andrew Bolt
Burt Rutan once told a group of us how to make a space vehicle so beautiful and cheap that private citizens could use it for joy rides.

Get private enterprise - not NASA - to build it.

Now confirmation of the Rutan rule:

While NASA lost a $285-million US satellite this week, a Canadian microsatellite that does the same job is chugging along happily in orbit –at 1/1,000th the cost.
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Grovelling to Gillard
Andrew Bolt
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is spending $14.7 billion on new school facilities. Sure, it’s your own money she’s spending, but Gillard wants schools to grovel to her - and her party - if they want a cent of it.

Here is what she formally demands “as a minimum” the schools do to say thank you to her. No estimate of the substantial cost these absurd thank-yous - the most ridiculous of which I’ve highlighted - is given:

To receive funding under BER, there is a requirement to recognise and acknowledge the Commonwealth’s contribution. As a minimum, schools must adhere to the procedures and
requirements set out in these Guidelines.

Recognition ceremonies: Schools receiving funding under the Primary Schools for the 21st Century and the Science and Language Centres for 21st Century Secondary Schools elements of BER must hold recognition ceremonies as part of their conditions of funding:

1. the Deputy Prime Minister must be invited to all opening ceremonies;

2. a convenient date for the ceremony for all parties should be chosen. Schools are required to choose three dates to allow greater flexibility for the Deputy Prime Minister or representative to attend;…

5. provide the Deputy Prime Minister with at least two months notice of any openings and public events relating to the projects;

6. hold an official opening or ceremony within three months of the completion of the project, unless otherwise agreed by the Deputy Prime Minister; and

7. make provision in the official proceedings for the Deputy Prime Minister or representative to speak.

Publicity: Schools should acknowledge the Commonwealth’s assistance in publicity issued by the school regarding its BER funded project such as newsletters, web sites, articles in the local media, school outdoor signs and any other form of advertising available to the school.

Plaques: Schools will be required to affix a plaque, to be supplied by the Commonwealth, to all completed projects. This includes, but is not limited to, new buildings and substantially refurbished buildings…

Schools will be required to affix a roadside sign, to be supplied by the Commonwealth, in front of the school for projects being funded under the Primary Schools for the 21st Century and Science and Language Centres for 21st Century Secondary Schools.
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ABC finds neo-Luddite
Andrew Bolt
It’s a sign of how completely we’ve lost our senses under Kevin “blame neo-liberalism” Rudd that a guest on ABC TV’s Q&A can seriously praise Luddites:

JONATHAN BIGGINS: ...I think that whole notion of looking at economies, what I don’t quite understand, we’re trying to re-stimulate the economy to get the economy back to the point that got the economy in the bad position it was in the first place, and that doesn’t make any sense to me. The other thing, and you can tie it in, you know, the Luddites can’t have got it right, really, didn’t they? I mean they predicted 200 years ago…

(AUDIENCE GROANS)

JONATHAN BIGGINS: No, excuse me, let me finish, if I may. The Luddites in a - in a sort of curious way, I mean ok, sure, we’ve got free trade, we’ve got the benefits of the industrialised society, that’s all very well and good, but there’s this other little sort of thing hanging over our heads, despite what the denialist may say, called global warming etc,...

Reason is in retreat. It may even be near defeat.
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Bill’s strange hatred of the rich
Andrew Bolt
The ludicrous hate-campaign waged by the Rudd Government and the unions against Pacific Brands is a stunt to deflect public anger from Labor. They are whipping up resentment of CEO Sue Morphett, claiming she callously doubled her salary to $1.86 million while virtually cackling over the sacking of honest workers.

A “corporate crime‘’, sneered ACTU president Sharon Burrow, now being quietly advised on defamation law.

In fact, Morphett’s increase came after she was promoted to boss, and her salary is now half that of her predecessor. Second, there is no proof that offering uncompetitive salaries to CEOs improves company performance. Third, if Morphett was paid $17,000 instead, not one fewer worker would have been sacked. And fourth, Morphett hopes that sacking 1850 workers will at least save the jobs of the other 8000 workers at her troubled company.

But there’s a fifth reason to by sickened by the cynicism. Just look at the kind of politicians ranting loudest about greedy CEOs. Here, for instance, is parliamentary secretary Bill Shorten, the former union boss, claiming that banking executives “steal” their severance payouts and thundering:

So let’s all understand, we all want to rein in excessive wages.

How bracing to hear Bill Shorten sermonising against the rich. This is the same man who married the stockbroker daughter of a multi-millionaire investor and former oil man Julian Beale. Who for years had as his donor, mentor and patron the billionaire Dick Pratt, owner of Raheen, where Shorten married. Who serves now under perhaps Australia’s richest ever prime minister, Kevin Rudd. Whose partner is now the daughter of the best-paid Governor General in our history, Quentin Bryce, whose salary Labor bumped up to around seven times the average wage.

Spare us the homilies about the wicked rich, Bill. If they were that bad, why are you so very much in their company?

UPDATE

The campaign is getting more hysterical:

UNIONS will block Pacific Brands from shipping taxpayer-funded machinery to China amid growing anger at the textile giant’s sackings… Treasurer Wayne Swan said he was “sickened” by the pay rises and threatened to cap the pay of corporate fat cats who put their interests ahead of Australian workers.
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Bet you my house against alligators in the Thames
Andrew Bolt
Hands up anyone who seriously believes this scenario - given serious treatment by a newspaper - is remotely likely within 100, let alone 50, years:

ALLIGATORS bask off the English coast, the Sahara desert stretches into Europe and 10 per cent of humans are left.

Science fiction? No, this is the doomsday prediction if global temperatures make a predicted rise of 4C in the next 100 years. Some fear it could happen by 2050…

Climate experts told New Scientist they were optimistic that humans would survive but .... (n)ational borders would have to be knocked down and humans would become mostly vegetarian with most animals being eaten to extinction… The number of humans could drop to a billion or fewer.

This kind of panting eco-porn is precisely what most discredits global warming alarmism. And, yes, you were right - James Lovelock is indeed involved.
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Too much even for Ridout and co.
Andrew Bolt
When even Heather Ridout’s bunch are now screaming for a delay in Kevin Rudd’s huge new tax to “stop” global warming, it’s clear it’s in deep, deep trouble:

Plans to start emissions trading next year are in trouble after a powerful business group withdrew its support. The Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) has called for the scheme to be delayed until 2012 because of the economic crisis. This caps off a horror stretch for the federal government’s scheme. The Ai Group’s policy change is significant because it had previously been quite supportive of the government’s plans.
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Bottom reached
Andrew Bolt
“Natural living” advocates unveil their latest planet-saving invention - the reusable toilet wipe.

Surely it’s time global warming believers marked their houses with some sign, a green pentacle or something, as a warning to visitors to enter at their own risk.
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Gassing on is healthy
Andrew Bolt
Humans evolved when carbon dixoide levels were much higher than now, so what’s the panic?

Dr. William Happer, currently a professor of Physics at Princeton University, was once fired by (Al) Gore at the Department of Energy in 1993 for disagreeing with the vice president on the effects of ozone to humans and plant life, also disagrees with Gore’s claim that manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) increases the temperature of the earth and is a threat to mankind…

“Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene [geologic epoch] – 280 [parts per million (ppm)] – that’s unheard of,” Happer said. “Most of the time, it’s at least 1,000 [ppm] and it’s been quite higher than that.”

Happer said that when CO2 levels were higher – much higher than they are now, the laws of nature still managed to function as we understand them today.

“The earth was just fine in those times,” Happer said. “You know, we evolved as a species in those times, when CO2 levels were three or four times what they are now. And, the oceans were fine, plants grew, animals grew fine. So it’s baffling to me that, you know, we’re so frightened of getting nowhere close to where we started.”