Headlines Tuesday 17th March 2009

Ninth Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan
A ninth Australian soldier has died in Afghanistan after a firefight with 20 Taliban insurgents on Monday....
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Human remains found after croc attack
Human remains have been discovered in a flooded creek, following a crocodile attack on an 11-year-old girl in rural Darwin. ..
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Police fear for sisters missing since Saturday
Police hold grave fears for the safety of two young sisters who went missing from a Hunter Valley fast-food restaurant on Saturday afternoon. ..
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Family suing KFC after daughter crippled by salmonella
The parents of an 11-year-old girl are suing a branch of KFC for $10 million, after their daughter was crippled and brain damaged by salmonella poisoning.... - How much would Hamidur Rahman's parents sue for? - ed.
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Fritzl pleads guilty to raping daughter
Josef Fritzl has admitted imprisoning his daughter in an underground bunker for 24 years and forcing her to bear seven children....
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The belly button proves it: Pauline Hanson's navel challenge
Pauline Hanson has offered to reveal her belly button to prove naked pictures published yesterday are not her, despite Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen insisting they are real.... - a vote for Pauline is a vote for the ALP, which is why this is so important for certain press members. - ed
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Punters can now place bets on Good Friday
Punters will be allowed to have a bet on the one day of the year traditionally wager-free....
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Australia "needs distressed debt market"
Australia would benefit from the creation of a distressed debt market as it would allow financial institutions to on-sell bad debts and free up money to keep lending to customers, a new report says....
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Cops called to Lohan, Ronson fight
Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson's latest fight became so violent police were called. ..
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Storm may help break up oil slick along Qld coast
A big storm which swept through southeast Queensland overnight might have given a helping hand to the cleanup of the massive oil spill along the coastine. - will the natural disaster save Bligh from electoral death? - ed
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Joe Biden drops the f-bomb
Audio has emerged of US Vice President Joe Biden dropping the f-bomb last Friday, unaware his microphone was still on.
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Alcopops legislation teeters on brink of failure
Crossbench senators have called the Rudd Government's bluff, announcing plans to block the alcopops tax if their demands aren't met.
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Why we must make drunkeness a crime
Sydney's city turned into a violent "zoo" after the Mardi Gras, and alcohol is to blame, according to Alan Jones.
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How about some actual migrant number slashing?
The serious economic news today is focusing on a so-called ‘slashing’ of migrant numbers. Chris Smith - there is nothing wrong with accepting migrants. The problems come when the ALP manipulates immigration for political ends, and sometimes for their personal gratification. - ed.
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Derelict TAFE silent witness to inept ALP
Piers Akerman
ONLY dyed-in-the-wool, rusted-on True Believers could still have faith in the NSW Labor Government which still has two years of its fixed four-year term to run. - Since the ALP came to office in ‘95, TAFE has cost more for each student and done less. It offers fewer courses and finds itself unable to accept people into courses for any of many reasons, mainly due to underfunding by the state.
I know of many people who are missing out on TAFE courses because they are too far away from the institution that runs it or because they are not needy enough. One friend of mine who would be an excellent social worker missed out on entering a course recently because his Job Network provider couldn’t give him a high enough priority .. he hadn’t been unemployed for long enough.
The ALP is a receptacle for union fees, including the education unions. Those unions have abrogated responsibility to their members and to the cause of education.
It may be nice to have a government that views everything as a pork barrel. But, as the tragic case of Hamidur Rahman illustrates there is no upside. Even Hurlstone AHS may be sold for cash if the government can engineer a reason. - ed.
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REAL REILLY
Tim Blair
Readers may remember Ward Reilly, a prominent member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War who turned out not to be a Vietnam veteran at all. Rather, Reilly – enlisted with the First Infantry Division from 1971 until 1974 – spent his Vietnam War years fighting the ‘Cong across the bullet-strewn tropical deltas of Augsburg, Germany.

Further claims about Reilly’s service are now made.

UPDATE. Finally, just two months ago and more than thirty years since he left the army, Ward is able to fire a shot in anger:
As an infantry veteran, I will PROUDLY be throwing combat boots at Bush and Cheney as a going away present to them on January 19th. They have shamed our nation, and they should both rot in prison for their crimes against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and our Constitution!
There is no record of Reilly completing this mission.
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WATER SAVED
Tim Blair
Adelaide surgeon Dr Paul Cowie champions a new environmentalist cause:
We will save many litres of water if more men were circumcised because there would be less fiddling in the shower to keep it clean.
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DON’T POKE THEM - IT’S A FORM OF TORTURE
Tim Blair
Mark Steyn: “Instead of ‘enemy combatants’, how about ‘future Facebook friends’?”
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PEACEFUL COASTAL LIVING
Tim Blair
Daily life in Gaza. Looks nice. Too bad about Hamas.
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PERFECT TITLE
Tim Blair
Primitive joy at the launch of climate change movie The Age of Stupid:
Pete Postlethwaite, who stars in the film as an archivist in 2050 looking back at the opportunities mankind had to stop climate change, will arrive in a solar-powered car …

A sustainably-made “green” carpet will replace the traditional luxurious red carpet. The projector will be powered by batteries charged from solar panels and the tent will be lit by gas from London landfill sites, and heated with stoves using “eco-logs” made from recycled free London newspapers, and possibly also horse manure.
Do enjoy further comments from The Age of Stupid star Postlethwaite, who previously raged over the downfall of coal:
I remember Pete Postlethwaite fondly as the Colliery Band Leader in “Brassed Off”. I particularly remember the scene as he refuses to accept the award in the Albert Hall. He speaks passionately about how Mrs. Thatcher would stop at nothing to destroy the Coal Industry …
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The “bad” war was the “good” one. And vice versa
Andrew Bolt
A ninth Australian soldier is killed in Afghanistan. Casualities are rising, and it’s Afghanistan, not Iraq, that is most likely to be our new Vietnam. - Rudd must prosecute the war better or remove himself from it. - ed.
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Do these officials need more power or less?
Andrew Bolt
Not the news the Rudd Government needs when it’s trying to force through laws that give unions even greater rights to bully employers:

A SENIOR Victorian union official has been accused of assaulting an inspector of the Australian Building and Construction Commission as debate intensified yesterday over the future of the controversial body set up by the Howard government to curb union thuggery…

Sources allege (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union assistant state secretary John) Setka headbutted a building commission inspector at a Carlton building site last Friday. The commission has referred the matter to police, saying two of its inspectors visited the site and were confronted by two union officials…

“It is alleged that CFMEU officials subjected the ABCC inspectors to verbal and physical abuse including threats, spitting and a headbutt,” the commission said in a statement… The union dismissed the allegations as “rubbish”, saying they were part of a campaign by the ABCC to justify its existence.

UPDATE

The CFMEU will soon be allowed to bring its negotiating skills to even more work sites:

But critics of Labor’s legislation say Ms Gillard has expanded workplace access rights for unions considerably by allowing them to enter sites which have non-union enterprise agreements and no union members.
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Your eyes must be racist
Andrew Bolt
The thought police want you to stop believing what is in fact the case:

A NATIONAL inquiry will examine the racism and exclusion faced by Africans, amid fears that media stereotypes, such as the portrayal of African youths as violent gang members, are fuelling discrimination.

Racism is no doubt a problem, but not the main one here. That “stereotype” of African gangs is in fact a fear fed by the fact that African refugees are between four and eight times more likely to be involved in crime, and often violent crime.

A more useful solution to this fear would not be to demonise it, but to remove the cause - the high rate of crime among African youths. After all, no one is calling for national inquiries into racism against the more law-abiding Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai and Sri Lankan immigrants.

But note that this Age report does not give a single indication that crime rates among African refugees are high. That would be a Bad Thought, you see.
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Labor kills our gardens for good
Andrew Bolt
As I wrote last year, even the Brumby Government’s $3.1 billion desalination plant won’t give this growing city enough water:

Existing plans for the city to be off water restrictions by mid-2012 following the introduction of desalinated water are set to be shelved…

The revised plan, which runs from this financial year until mid 2013, will result in a stricter level of restriction imposed in every year except one — the 2010-11 financial year. That year will include the next state election in November 2010.

The Garden State is brown because green zealots in Labor will not build a dam. Labor has turned gardens into a luxury. It will only let you grow flowers just before you vote.
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Feeling good by sacking miners
Andrew Bolt
All these jobs gone for a symbolic gesture that won’t stop a warming that in fact halted a decade ago:

MINING company Xstrata has threatened to axe 1000 coalmining jobs if the Federal Government goes ahead with its emissions trading scheme.

Xstrata says if Labor’s trading scheme was implemented in its current form, it will close four mines in NSW and scrap plans to invest $7 billion in new coalmining operations in NSW and Queensland that would create 4000 jobs....

The Age understands aluminum company Alcoa has also told the Opposition it will close its Geelong and Portland mills and fire 800 workers if the emissions trading scheme proceeds.


THE mayors of three of our biggest mining cities are now warning that Kevin Rudd’s carbon emissions trading will smash jobs:
The mayors of the traditional Labor strongholds of Newcastle, Gladstone and Mount Isa have called for the emissions trading scheme to be put off.

UPDATE

Economist Geoff Carmody, not a declared sceptic:

We need to face facts. Kyoto has failed. ... It’s much harder to sell a policy that puts a new tax on exports and a negative tariff on imports. And so it should be. It’s dumb. Yet that’s what the CPRS requires of Australia.
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How many houses did the wind farms save?
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann says the bushfires should make the choice clear for warming believers:

A STATE-OF-THE-ART fire engine or a windmill on a hill? What would you want if you lived in a town threatened by future bushfires?…

For there, in very real microcosm, is the question posed—that should be posed—for the nation overall. Do we spend our money on useless ‘feel-good’ measures to ‘prevent’ climate change, or on dealing with its consequences?
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What cut in immigration?
Andrew Bolt
The Rudd Government on Sunday announced a big cut in immigration to save jobs - a “slash” of places that sure impressed the papers:

Immigration Minister Chris Evans has announced a cut of 18,500 places in the skilled migration program this financial year. ‘’The Rudd Government will cut the 2008-09 permanent skilled migration program by 14 per cent to protect local jobs...”

But wait. To “protect local jobs” the Government has actually still left immigration at record levels during a recession - and despite bungling state governments running out of power, water, public transport and land for housing.

Here are the immigration figures by category:

2007-08:
Family – 49,870
Skilled – 108,540

Total – 158,630

2008-09 (as originally announced):

Family – 56,500

Skilled – 133,500

Total – 190,300

Even after this week’s “cut” of 18,500 places, the total immigration intake for 2008-09 will be 171,800. Add also some 13,000 refugee/humanitarian immigrants and we’ll still be taking in 185,000 permanent immigrants this year, not including New Zealanders.

Why so astonishingly many?
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Cold facts
Andrew Bolt
The hottest day in Melbourne since the 1851 record was enough to have warming alarmists such as the ABC’s Jon Faine prattling about global warming. If that’s their proof, what do they now make of this news from Canada:

So far this month, at least 14 major weather stations in Alberta have recorded their lowest-ever March temperatures. I’m not talking about daily records; I mean they’ve recorded the lowest temperatures they’ve ever seen in the entire month of March since temperatures began being recorded in Alberta in the 1880s.

This past Tuesday, Edmonton International Airport reported an overnight low of -41.5 C, smashing the previous March low of -29.4 C set in 1975
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Wave goodbye to brazen Bryce
Andrew Bolt
Mike O’Connor waves off Activist General Quentin Bryce:

What, you may wonder, is the G-G of Australia (and her staff) doing heading off to Africa in five-star luxury, spending taxpayers’ money by the truckload at a time when back home the dole queues lengthen by the day?

Taking a well-earned rest, the better to recover from the exhaustion of constantly smiling for the cameras? Heavens no. Bryce is going hunting, not for big game but to bag votes for Australia’s bid to secure a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council …

She has, in other words, been sent on a political mission by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, swanning through Mauritius, the Seychelles, Mozambique, Namibia, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania and Botswana, her lackeys waving the Australian flag to bemused passersby as her safari rumbles onwards. The G-G, of course, is not averse to travel, having already blessed France, Singapore, Malta, East Timor, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates with her presence.
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Why is Hewson still talking?
Andrew Bolt
Paul Sheehan, like me, is astonished that John Hewson has the hide to be giving advice on business or politics to anyone, let alone Peter Costello:

After leaving for the corporate world, he created a resume littered with disputation. Last week there was more bad news about the collapse of Elderslie Finance Corporation, where Hewson was chairman before matters slid out of control, leaving 4000 investors behind.

Before that, Hewson departed from the board of Pulse Health Group in a shake-up. Before that, he quit as chairman of Natural Fuel amid a boardroom battle. Before that, he lost a bitter boardroom struggle for control of Sports & Entertainment Limited. Before that, he departed Belle Property amid a dispute. Before that, he resigned as chairman of Network Entertainment prior to the company’s collapse. Before that, as dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, he had a spectacular falling out with the university. Before that, he helped lead a Macquarie venture in Singapore, which collapsed. Before that, CBD Online, where Hewson had been chairman, failed.

When it comes to authority in the worlds of business and politics, Hewson is a dead man talking. Only one field would treat this resume as a qualification for authority - the media - and so it was that Hewson provided the most lurid example, thus far, of the self-generated, self-feeding media speculation around Costello for the past month.
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Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Fires Up
By Bill O'Reilly
Writing in The Wall Street Journal Friday, Scott Rasmussen — perhaps the most accurate pollster in America — reported that President Obama's job approval rating has now slipped below that of President Bush back in March 2001.

Now, this is to be expected. Mr. Obama inherited a terrible economic mess that will take years to correct. But Americans are not a patient people, and the president is very aggressively spending tax money. So we the people want to see results — fast.

There is no question that until the economy begins improving, the president's poll numbers will be under pressure. But now we learn that a vast left-wing conspiracy is firing up to help him.

According to excellent reporting by Politico.com — perhaps the best political Web site in the world — organized hard-left zealots join together in a daily morning conference call to discuss the day's events, coordinate briefings to the liberal media and design punishment for anyone criticizing President Obama or left-wing doctrine in general.

The group is hosted by the Center for American Progress, led by John Podesta, a former Clinton adviser. The calls are often highlighted by a variety of people including Jennifer Palmieri, another CAP official, and former CNN reporter Jacki Schechner, now a Labor spokesperson.

According to Politico, the call begins at 8:45 a.m. and is called to order by Tara McGuinness, a veteran liberal activist. Politico quotes Ms. Schechner — again, a former CNN reporter — as saying the group goes after those with whom they disagree:

"There's a coordination in terms of exposing people who are trying to come out against reform. They've all got backgrounds and histories and pasts, and it's not taking long to unearth that and to unleash that, because we're all working together."

"The Factor" has learned that the intimidation cabal, entities receiving information, includes Media Matters, elements at NBC News and at The New York Times. So you can see the vast left-wing conspiracy, armed with unlimited funds and unlimited hatred, are gunning for anyone they deem a threat.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a threat to America, and the Obama administration would be wise to avoid this crew. If the new administration gets involved in this, it would be like the Nixon dirty tricks squad.
"Talking Points" is disgusted by the rank hatred on display in the political arena. We have hammered The New York Times and NBC for their lack of standards and their corruption. Now we learn that the hatred is being well-coordinated. This is obviously a serious situation that we will continue to investigate.

And that's "The Memo."