Headlines Monday 9th March 2009

Near miss tipped: Hamish now likely to hold its path out to sea
Forecasters are tipping severe tropical Cyclone Hamish to weaken to a category three cyclone by Monday afternoon and hold its path out to sea....
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Stewart's future in doubt over sex assault claim
NRL player Brett Stewart is expected to return to training with premiers Manly on Monday but his future remains clouded following the allegation that he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl....
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Rudd red-faced after swearing slip-up
Our usually robotic Prime Minister has had a surprising and embarrassing slip up during an television interview....
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Hughes leads charge as Australia dominates Proteas
Phillip Hughes has become the youngest player to score twin centuries in a Test, guiding Australia to a massive 506-run advantage after three days of the second Test against South Africa....
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India belts 392 to beat Kiwis in one-day spectacular
Sachin Tendulkar made a majestic 163 as India defeated New Zealand on Sunday in a match that featured 31 sixes - the most ever in a one-day international....
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Job ads dry up, traditionally strong February weak
A fall in online job advertisements in blue collar sectors put a dent in the traditionally strong February jobs market, according to recruitment firm Olivier Group....
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Mr Pitt goes to Washington: Brad charms House Speaker
First of all, no, Brad Pitt is not short. Yes, he's handsome enough to stand out in any crowd. And, sorry, Angie wasn't with him....
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Rihanna will testify if called: lawyer
Rihanna's lawyer says the singer will testify against Chris Brown if called as a witness in her boyfriend's assault case....
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Iraq Homicide Bomber Targets Police, Killing 28 - Obama's Plans at Work
BAGHDAD — A homicide bomber struck police lined up at the entrance of the main police academy in Baghdad on Sunday, killing 28 people and wounding 57, sources tell FOX News.

The blast — the second major attack to hit Iraqis in three days — was a bloody reminder of the ability of insurgents to defy security improvements and stage dramatic attacks as the U.S. begins to draw down its forces. The U.S. military was expected to announce the withdrawal of two more brigades on Sunday.
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Top 10 Reasons to Go to Church
1. It’s a way to get a healthy glow without makeup.

2. Elvis started out in a church choir … so can you.

3. Goodness and mercy will follow you all the rest of your life–which are better than the IRS or FBI.

4. In this economy, it might be good to be hooked up with Someone who can turn water into wine.

5. You can walk down an aisle and approach an altar without having to gain a mother-in-law.

6. The Biblical admonition to “greet one another with a holy kiss” boosts your social life.

7. Hard Times? Kids getting on your nerves? Free coffee and child care at church!

8. The sound of money dropping is the offering, not your stocks.

9. Robes, candles, music…and it’s less expensive than a spa.

10. With April 15 coming, remember, Man does not live by Turbotax alone.

Bill Shuler is the pastor of the Capital Life Church in Arlington, Virginia.
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Obama speaking without a teleprompter
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Don’t Be Fooled, Obama Plans to Raise Everyone’s Taxes
James P Pinkerton
“Stuff the beast!”

That’s Slate.com blogger Mickey Kaus’ pithy summary of a strong argument made by another blogger, Ross Douthat of The Atlantic.com, analyzing the Obama administration’s fiscal strategy.

Douthat’s argument is that the Obamans intend to create so many new federal entitlement programs–health care (most obviously), but also elements of the “stimulus” package, plus “green energy,” etc.–that taxes will have to go up, eventually, big time. For his part, Douthat labels this strategy, “The Pursuit of Social Democracy”–as in, the pursuit of the politico-economic policies of Western Europe, which most American liberals yearn to bring to the United States.

Raise federal spending now and higher taxes for everyone will have to follow. And voila! we’ll get social democracy.

But as Kaus puts it, “stuff the beast” is the polar opposite of David Stockman’s “starve the beast” idea of a quarter century ago. Back in the early 80s, Stockman, the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan, argued for cutting taxes now, because, eventually, spending would have to come down, tugged downward by the gravity of deficit-phobia. The “starve the beast” strategy didn’t work perfectly, because spending never really came down, but over time, thanks to Reaganomics, overall economic growth accelerated and the budget came into balance by the late 90s. And of course, economic growth is much more important than the deficit.
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GOUGH II
Tim Blair
Paul Sheehan predicts a Whitlamesque course for the current PM:
It is going to be fascinating to see how long Kevin Rudd, the greatest illusionist ever to become prime minister of Australia, can maintain this illusion of omnipresent leadership created by his energy, his ubiquity and his hypocrisy. Underline hypocrisy.

Rudd is on course to become the next Gough Whitlam, but Whitlam without the wit. Like Whitlam, he may win a second election before the electorate wakes up. At least Comrade Whitlam was stuck with a claque of criminals in his ministry - Al Grassby, Jim Cairns, Rex Connor - whereas Rudd has no such impediment …

This is the man who has offered no structural relief to the great job-creating engine of the economy - small business. And this is the man who panicked at the first sign of danger and sprayed the entire $20 billion budget surplus he inherited up against a wall.
Rudd will likely win a second election, thanks to Liberal incompetence (I think he means journalist incompetentce - ed), but you’d imagine he’ll struggle beyond that. Speaking of spraying billions against a wall, Doug Ross charts the Dow reaction to Obamanomics.

(Via Saint)

UPDATE. Newsweek‘s Raina Kelley, who happens to be black, urges journalists to grow a pair when it comes to discussing the current President:
Dear fellow journalists (especially the ones on TV): can I offer you a bit of unsolicited advice? Be brave. Listening to you talk (and talk and talk) around the subject of Barack Obama and race has been downright painful. Yes, our new president is black, and most of you are white, and judging by the way you excruciatingly measure every word you say about him, it’s pretty clear that you are worried that you’ll inadvertently say something insensitive and you’ll wind up being accused of racism and it will ruin your career. I understand your fear. But seriously, it makes for some pretty painful watching.
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WATCH WHAT YOU SAY
Tim Blair
Christopher Hitchens on Islamic exceptionalism:
Islam affirms itself as the last and final revelation of God’s word, the consummation of all the mere glimpses of the truth vouchsafed to all the foregoing faiths, available by way of the unimprovable, immaculate text of “the recitation”, or Koran.

If there sometimes seems to be something implicitly absolutist or even totalitarian in such claims, it may result not from a fundamentalist reading of the holy book but from the religion itself.

And it is the so-called mainstream Muslims, grouped in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, who are now demanding through the UN that Islam not only be allowed to make such absolutist claims, but that it be officially shielded from any criticism as a result.
Hitchens’s review of this UN bid is memorable; do read on. His conclusion:
The thought buried in this awful, wooden prose is as ugly as the language in which it is expressed: watch what you say, because our declared intention is to criminalise opinions that differ with the one true faith. Let nobody say that they have not been warned.
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Rudd swears by the mob
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd manages to speak without swearing in most public places. But let him loose in a Channel Seven show for the cash-strapped masses, and he’s suddenly swearing like he imagines they do, too:

“People are going to run a huge scare campaign about government debt and government borrowing - people have to understand that, because there’s going to be the usual political s--- storm, sorry, political storm over that,” the PM said.

Last night wasn’t the first time Rudd has sworn like he’s just one of the boys. Here’s a reminder of he’s I’m-like-you talk to the troops in Afghanistan last year:


From the PM who brought us hits such as “conceptual synthesis” and “natural complementarity”, his new releases include ”you really know your s--- “ and “you are bloody good”.

Mr Rudd used phrases he thought would resonate with Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan. In a moment reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s ill-advised adaptation of a southern accent while addressing a civil rights group, Mr Rudd started dropping his g’s and upped the slang.

And before that was his:

… self-described “pit-bull” impersonation adopted when on the phone to the US President.

This is man eerily desperate to please, and with no core of his own. Would Menzies drop his g’s and swear to be at one with the mob? Would Howard? Even Keating had standards, and swore only at the cultured.

UPDATE

Remember when - before the election, of course - Rudd seemed as prudish about bad language as John Howard?

Labor leader Kevin Rudd today demanded the resignation from the ALP of (Dean) Mighell, the Victorian secretary of the ETU, after he was caught out crudely bragging about winning pay rises for workers by threatening strike action…

”I find Mr Mighell’s remarks to be obscene at every level and therefore unacceptable,” Mr Rudd told Sky News.

But as Peter Garrett famously said:

‘once we get in we’ll just change it all’
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Bash the boss, and never mind the jobs
Andrew Bolt
Bloody-minded unions are so blinded by far-Left politics that they seem determined to cost the jobs of Pacific Brands’ remaining 5000 workers, too:

PACIFIC Brands has cancelled its shows at the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival amid howls of outrage over its huge job cuts.

Fashion week organisers announced last night the company had pulled its two free Pop-Up shows, which were to feature its landmark underwear brands.

Unionists had threatened to protest at the Pacific Brands shows dressed as rats…

Textiles, Clothing and Footwear Union national secretary Michele O’Neil said going ahead with the shows would have added insult to injury to workers facing job losses.

That suicidal politicking by a militant union that has helped drive business overseas is backed by other unions that seem more keen to bash bosses than save jobs:


Irate union members are calling for a boycott of Pacific Brands clothing, and are planning a blockade to stop the company shipping its manufacturing equipment off shore.

(Transport Workers Union Secretary Tony) Sheldon said he’s arranging for people to dress as rats to protest against Pacific Brand’s CEO Sue Morphet.

As for the workers themselves:

Pacific Brands workers have urged the public to reject a boycott of the company’s products, saying it would threaten the livelihood of employees...
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ACTU argues for Costello
Andrew Bolt

The latest ACTU ad even shows a picture of Peter Costello to remind workers of the good times:

The ACTU launched yesterday a television ad campaign, reminiscent of the one used to help get Labor elected in 2007, that suggests the Liberals want to keep the unpopular WorkChoices laws.

The response is simple: is your job safer under Kevin Rudd than it was under Howard and Costello?

A Galaxy Poll, conducted exclusively for The Sunday Mail, shows 59 per cent of voters are worried they or someone in their household could be unemployed in 2009.

And former union official Grace Collier warns bosses:

Our surplus has been spent, unemployment is rising, we teeter on the cusp of recession and yet the Rudd Government is about to make life even harder for the vast bulk of our business community.

Since March 2006 the Howard government’s reforms have treated businesses employing less than 100 staff like responsible entities. For the first time in ages, businesspeople were able to dismiss employees who they could no longer employ without fear of being sued and consequently having to pay huge amounts of go-away money just to avoid a ghastly legal process…

Under Rudd’s new laws, I predict we will see the small and medium business sector slugged with a go-away money bill of well over $120 million a year. In 2009, this is a cost businesses can ill afford.

Which, of course, means bosses will be slower to hire than we need.
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The wrong gunmen
Andrew Bolt
So much for the gun buy-back, which seems to have removed guns only from the lawful:

GUNS now outnumber people in some areas of NSW as the latest Firearms Registry figures show alarming local spikes in weapon numbers, including in Sydney’s crime hotspot suburbs.
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Nothing better to do than sweet-talk Bhutan?
Andrew Bolt
What a bizarre misallocation of time and money is Kevin Rudd’s desperate campaign for a temporary seat on the UN Security Council:

The newly credentialled ambassador to the Holy See is already in Mr Rudd’s good books. In December, (Tim) Fischer travelled deep into the Himalayas to the tiny, mountain-locked kingdom of Bhutan to seek support for the UN Security Council bid.

And this, of course, is a fundamental misuse of the Governor General, even if she herself does not know her own place:

Soon it will be Governor-General Quentin Bryce’s turn in a nine-country swing through southern and east Africa including Addis Ababa, the headquarters of the African Union.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith tries to make excuses:

The Governor-General is going to Africa because that is underlining a very important policy of the Australian Government, which is the need to much more comprehensively engage Africa. A regrettable fact of Australian foreign policy history Barrie in my view is that we have neglected a continent of nearly one-billion people and we have to engage for very good economic, political, foreign policy and strategic reasons. And there is a lot that we have in common with Africa that we can take advantage of.

Really? There is in fact only one continent that Australia has less in common with and less to gain from, and that’s Antarctica.

But Rudd must have his UN ambitions flattered, even if that means tripling our “aid” for Africa:

Australia’s overall development and cooperation budget for Africa was being increased from the current 0,32% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 0,5% of GDP between now and 2015. If the Australian government simply maintained the proportion of its current aid outlays to Africa, the growth in aid to Africa would be from just over the current A$100-million a year to A$250-million a year by 2015.

“But the government intends to do more than that,” (High Commissioner to South Africa Philip) Green said, adding that the Australian government was “taking a greater interest in Africa”.

UPDATE

A far-too-gentle public rebuke from Coalition foreign affairs spokesman Julie Bishop, but enough to make clear to the Governor-General that she is playing partisan politics and should back off immediately:

THE Governor-General risks becoming mired in the Rudd Government’s politically controversial bid for Australia to win a seat on the UN Security Council, the Opposition has declared…

“However the mission the Governor-General is undertaking as part of Australia’s campaign to win a seat on the Security Council may become politically contentious,” she said.
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The real plastic turkey
Andrew Bolt
Yes, how they’d mock Bush as an ignoramus, a bumpkin and a secret totalitarian for telling Europeans this:

I have never understood multiparty democracy. It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy.

Or for mangling names like this:

One working lunch later with EU leaders, Clinton raised more eyebrows when she referred to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who stood beside her, as “High Representative Solano.” She also dubbed European Commission External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner as “Benito.”

But, yes, it’s still Hillary we’re discussing, so she’s spared the vicious mockery heaped on the more savvy Bush.
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Sweet Sweden goes anti-semitic
Andrew Bolt
Add mass immigration to Sweden’s far left, and you get a country not safe for Jews:

Dozens of anti-Israel activists clashed with police Saturday as they tried to storm a closed arena where Sweden and Israel were playing a Davis Cup tennis match.

Which follows:

Sweden’s tie against Israel on Friday will go ahead in silence before just a handful of journalists and officials… (S)pectators will be banned from the venue in Malmo for fear of anti-Israel protests… Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city, has a left-leaning local government and a large Muslim minority. Despite an earlier police report saying that they could deal with any potential protests or other security issues, local leaders narrowly voted to ban spectators.
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Rudd should lose a seat, not seek one
Andrew Bolt
Greg Sheridan is right - going to another bash-Israel hatefest of the United Nations is proof that Kevin Rudd’s quixotic dreams of a UN Security Council seat come at too high a price:

Well, excuse me, but what on earth is Australia doing attending a conference that could be marred by anti-Semitism? ...The only explanation is Canberra fears it will earn hostility from Arab League and African nations if it denounces Durban II. Then they may not vote for us in the Security Council election. If that is the case, we have already paid too high a price for our UN Security Council seat bid.

And Sheridan is right to wonder what on earth the Governor General is doing playing political footsies with Rudd on this:


Now Quentin Bryce is off on a seven-nation tour of Africa; nine if you count the stop-overs.... This is a spectacular misallocation of resources and represents a misunderstanding, at the top, of the Governor-General’s role. Governors-general should only travel overseas to funerals, to ceremonial occasions and sometimes to comfort afflicted Australians.

This campaign of Rudd’s is so misguided a priority, such a betrayal of Israel, such a waste of money, and such a breach of the role of the Governor General that it says all you need to know about the man’s complete lack of judgment.