Friday, April 10, 2009

Headlines Friday 10th April 2009

Easter Friday

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Motorists get new tool to dob in high Easter petrol prices
Motorists in New South Wales are bring urged to dob in petrol stations they suspect are gouging travellers over the Easter Break .. at a new NRMA website.

Woman hit by car, NSW road toll to two
A woman has died after being hit by a car while crossing the road in Newcastle, bringing the NSW Easter road toll to two.

Teacher makes bail over Knox sex scandal
The fourth Knox teacher charged with child sex offences has made bail in a Sydney court following his extradition from Melbourne.

Nine sacks News Director Ian Cook
The turmoil at the Channel Nine Television Network continues tonight, with the sacking of a senior executive - the head of news.

Italy earthquake death toll rises to 283
The death toll from Italy's worst quake in three decades reached 283, including 20 children and teens, police said.

Decision to send more troops to Afghanistan made ‘within weeks’
A decision about whether to send more Australian troops to Afghanistan will be made within weeks.

Bandits smash way into Sydney bank
US economy showing recovery: RBA member
Boat crash accused released on bail
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INTERNATIONAL LAMPOON
Tim Blair
An Australian TV interview with P.J. O’Rourke, soon arriving here.
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Where’s Kevin?
Andrew Bolt
Unemployment soars to 5.7 per cent, proving that Kevin Rudd’s $10.4 billion stimulus package did not create the jobs he’d promised.

So who to announce this depressing, politically embarrasing news? Rudd ... or, wait, how about potential rival Julia Gillard instead?

UPDATE

Michaell Grattan spots another dirty job for Julia:

The fight between the Defence Minister and his department is seriously bad news; the controversy surrounding Fitzgibbon and his undeclared trips, paid for by a Chinese-born businesswoman, has been an embarrassment.

Rudd handled this in a way that is strange for a PM: he left Gillard to get the apology from Fitzgibbon… Can anyone imagine Howard or Hawke not speaking personally with a senior cabinet minister about such an imbroglio?
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Greens cause warming
Andrew Bolt
A new NASA study blames not carbon dioxide but green laws for causing most of the Arctic warming:

Though greenhouse gases are invariably at the center of discussions about global climate change, new NASA research suggests that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.

Emitted by natural and human sources, aerosols can directly influence climate by reflecting or absorbing the sun’s radiation. The small particles also affect climate indirectly by seeding clouds and changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity.

A new study, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, used a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols… Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades.
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Could you live on $32 a day?
Andrew Bolt
With more willing workers losing their jobs, this will indeed be a problem that can only be fixed by the money Rudd’s already spent:

Ministers keep telling us that Australia is the best place to be in this crisis. But that’s certainly not true if you’re unemployed. The Government pays you a breadline wage of just $32 a day, and then only if you’ve virtually exhausted your savings.
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Dying to give a natural birth
Andrew Bolt
I DO not want to make Janet Fraser’s grief any worse. But some things must be said to warn other women and spare them such a loss.

Fraser is perhaps Australia’s most ferocious advocate of home births.

In fact, as national convenor of Joyous Birth, she demands not just births free of hospitals, but births free of drugs and evil doctors, too.

Her spiel mixes militant feminism and a green age’s worship of Earth Mother: “In a woman-hating society obsessed with the control and regulation of women’s bodies, choosing to birth at home makes a crucial statement of withdrawal from patriarchy.”
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The “good” war looks like the Vietnam one
Andrew Bolt
TEN of our soldiers already dead, and two more wounded last weekend. Afghanistan - not Iraq - is most likely to be our new Vietnam.

Iraq was claimed by many to be the bad, unwinnable war, and Afghanistan the good one.

But Iraq, after just six years, is all but over. Just nine coalition soldiers were killed in accidents or hostile action in January - the lowest monthly total since the war started in 2003.

Only 43 coalition soldiers died there in the first three months of this year, again the lowest three-month total yet.

Better still, fewer Iraqi civilians died in January than in any month before. In fact, the civilian death toll from violence has fallen to about eight for every 100,000 Iraqis, according to Iraqi figures collated by StrategyPage.

Compare that to a rate of violent death under Saddam of up to 20 (excluding war dead). Or to South Africa’s 50. Or Russia’s 20.
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Economist discovers Rudd’s debts must be repaid
Andrew Bolt
No Labor politician, that is:

(John) Quiggin canvasses what no politician is yet prepared to acknowledge: that the consequences of bigger government is higher taxation. Given the future need to reduce government debt, as well as fund a sustained increase in public spending, he estimates that taxation’s total share of national income is likely to rise from 30 per cent to 35 per cent.

Astonished, I am. But the tragedy is that Quiggin truly is saying something that few people have either considered or admitted.

UPDATE

Kevin Rudd is still astonishingly lucky in his press coverage. See how Michelle Grattan rebels against drawing the logical, utterly damning conclusion about Rudd when “even those very close to Rudd are finding him wearing and short on emotional intelligence”:

The Government has been forced to abort its election plan for a (broadband) scheme that would have cost $10-12 billion because, it says, the global crisis meant none of the tenders delivered value for money…

The logical course would have been for the Government to say, we’ll now consider our options. The Government, however, never wants to allow negative headlines if it can avoid them. So it put a very thick sugar coating on the situation, announcing a $43-billion plan, which it compares to the Snowy Hydro. But it has had to simultaneously set up a study into how to implement the scheme. It did look as though things were being done in an odd order, a gamble that may work out, but could force further adjustment, inviting charges of ad hockery.


Excuse me?

This “did look as though things were being done in an odd order”?

This is “a gamble that may work out”?

This merely “inviting charges of ad hockery”?

For God’s sake, the man has with little discussion just bet $43 billion - more than $2000 from every man, woman and child - on a grand scheme that experts say won’t work and for which he has not even commissioned a business plan. And this is waved away as a gamble that may well work out? Something that is merely “inviting” the criticism that Grattan refuses to mount against something so reckless, so ill-considered and so potentially ruinous?

If the Liberals advanced such a wild scheme on just a trust-me basis, would Grattan wave that through, too?
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But would he appoint a Jewish woman to Riyadh?
Andrew Bolt
The president who bows to the Saudi King has trouble treating America’s friends with the same cringing respect. Now this:

The Vatican has quietly rejected at least three of President Obama’s candidates to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See because they support abortion...
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Stereotyping is bad
Andrew Bolt
But who’s to blame when you can guess the rest:

BRITISH police acted to stop a “major terrorist plot” by arresting 12 ...
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What cold? What measurements?
Andrew Bolt
Three scientists - all global warming believers - went to the Arctic to measure how bad the warming was.

First problem was that they were nearly frozen to death by a cold they didn’t expect. The next problem is that they may not be measuring anything at all.
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Bolt reprimanded
Andrew Bolt
From the Herald Sun’s weekly summary of readers’ complaints:

I’m disgusted by the line ‘Save the planet! Kill a pensioner!’. If we don’t save the planet, there won’t be anyone let alone pensioners left!

Is that an endorsement or denunciation of the line?
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It’s the cures that will kill us
Andrew Bolt
It’s not global warming that scares me, but the “cures” and the madmen who propose them:

The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
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We either wreck the economy, or do nothing
Andrew Bolt
Here’s just a partial list of the times Kevin Rudd has used his standard defence of his actions: that we either Do Something, or do nothing. What strikes me is how often his Doing Something involves Doing Something Stupid.

UPDATE

Even old Marxist Kenneth Davidson of The Age, counting all the noughts of Rudd’s Do Something broadban plan, now asks:

KEVIN Rudd is a political genius, but can the nation afford him as Prime Minister?

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Money gone and now jobs, too
Andrew Bolt
If the Rudd Government’s stimulus packages are working so well, why this?:

THE jobless rate hit 5.7 per cent in March, the highest level in more than five years, as 38,900 full-time workers lost their jobs.

Will Kevin Rudd now admit that his first $10.4 billion handout last December failed to do what he’d promised?

The 75,000 jobs the government said would be created by its first economic stimulus package will flow this year, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.

Will Treasurer Wayne Swan also admit the $10.4 billion stimulus package failed to do what he promised?:

The Economic Security Strategy is expected to add half to one percentage point to GDP growth and create up to 75,000 additional jobs over the coming year.

Rudd is spending billions we don’t have on fixes that don’t work.
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Obama: First a bow, now a crawl
Andrew Bolt
First there was this:

Now there is this:
Obama pointedly addressed the entire Muslim world when he spoke to the Turkish parliament… He emphasized his “deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world, including my own country.”

It’s nice to be nice. But Robert Spencer is puzzled:

Undeniably the Islamic faith has done a great deal to shape the world – a statement that makes no value judgment about exactly how it has shaped the world. It has formed the dominant culture in what is known as the Islamic world for centuries. But what on earth could Obama mean when he says that Islam has also “done so much” to shape his own country?

Unless he considers himself an Indonesian, Obama’s statement was extraordinarily strange. After all, how has the Islamic faith shaped the United States? Were there Muslims along Paul Revere’s ride, or standing next to Patrick Henry when he proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death”? Were there Muslims among the framers or signers of the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men – not just Muslims, as Islamic law would have it – are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Were there Muslims among those who drafted the Constitution and vigorously debated its provisions, or among those who enumerated the Bill of Rights, which guarantees – again in contradiction to the tenets of Islamic law – that there should be no established national religion, and that the freedom of speech should not be infringed?

UPDATE

The White House denies that this is a bow:

“It wasn’t a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah,” said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But wait. Queen Elizabeth is even shorter than King Abdullah:

Yet when Obama gave the Queen of democratic Britain the same two-handed shake that he gave the King of autocratic Saudi Arabia, he managed to do so without bowing almost to the floor:

Conclusion: Not only is Obama literally kowtowing to Muslim tyrants, his staff are lying about it.
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Freaking over the climate is so yesterday
Andrew Bolt
Vanity Fair, always alert to fashion, has scrapped its annual green issue:

For the past three years, the monthly glossy has made much of dedicating its May issue to the environment: from Leonardo DiCaprio posing on an iceberg to last year’s open letter from Robert Kennedy Jnr to the next president calling for action on global warming. This year, the incipient tradition has been quietly dropped.
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Loss of Confidence in American Leadership
By Bill O'Reilly
First the stats. According to the latest FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll, just 38 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing; 52 percent disapprove. The rest don't know.

Also, in a recent Rasmussen Poll, just 23 percent of Americans believe the press is telling the truth about the economy.

So what we have here is the folks saying they cannot trust those in power. Very bad for America.

While President Obama's popularity remains high, it is just a matter of time before the president sees his approval rating fall, because his own party, the Democrats, is having a tough time.

Even in liberal precincts like Harvard University, disenchantment is setting in. A few days ago, Congressman Barney Frank spoke at the Kennedy School of Government and was challenged by a student who asked him exactly what I asked Frank: What is your responsibility in the economic decline:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MASS.: What is it you think I should have done beginning in January 31 of 2007, which was when I became chairman, that I didn't do?

JOEL POLLAK, HARVARD LAW STUDENT: Well, first of all, you pushed a stimulus bill through the Congress that included several provisions that you later attacked as profoundly wasteful and so on.

FRANK: Who did? Not me. You're talking about the subprime crisis. You're talking about a bill in 2008 or...

POLLAK: And in 2008, in October, you accused critics of a stimulus plan of being racist and so on.

FRANK: Excuse me.

POLLAK: I'm still waiting for a very...

FRANK: And I'm waiting for you to tell me what you think I should have done. I didn't...

POLLAK: No, you're a public representative. I'm a student. I'm asking you how...

FRANK: Oh, which allows you to say things that you don't back up.

POLLAK: I didn't accuse you of anything. I'm asking you how much responsibility...

FRANK: Sure.

POLLAK: ...if any, you can say none, that's fine.

FRANK: I think you're being disingenuous if you say you didn't make an accusation. You're saying it happened on my watch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

So here's the problem. Barney Frank and most other politicians simply will not take any responsibility when things go bad, and the folks are sick of it. We still don't know who was responsible when Iraq went south.

Look, governing is a tough business. Mistakes will be made. But when our leaders fail to admit their misjudgments and blame the other party, it gets nauseating. I mean, are you not tired of hearing the Obama crew blame the Bush crew for everything that is going wrong now?

The truth is that Barney Frank made big mistakes. So did Senator Chris Dodd, President George Bush, former SEC boss Chris Cox and many other big shots in Washington. Just the other day, President Obama made a mistake with his greeting of the Saudi king.

But we rarely hear any straight talk about this stuff. It's always evasion, spin, blame the other guy.

That is why Americans are losing faith in both political parties. The folks are simply getting fed up with excuse-making, incompetence, media corruption and crazy ideology at the expense of the public good.

The kid at Harvard was right to challenge Barney Frank, just as I did. All of us should begin challenging those with power over us. Only then will the nonsense diminish.
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JOHN ZIEGLER: A New Low Point for the Media: Couric Wins Award for Palin Interview
By John Ziegler
Documentary Filmmaker

On April 15th, the “prestigious” (and apparently now openly liberal) USC Annenberg School for Communication will be presenting CBS “Evening News” anchor Katie Couric with the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Journalism.

Now, for there to even be such a thing as an prize for “Excellence in Television Journalism,” in an age where a desperate thirst for ratings has caused most TV “news” to become little more than glorified infotainment, is a bit like passing out awards for fiscal responsibility to members of Congress. But for Katie Couric, the poster child of news as “infotainment,” to be the recipient of such an “honor” is like giving John Murtha or Barney Frank a trophy for frugal spending in Congress.

But what makes this situation so particularly galling is the specific reason why Couric is being honored for her “excellence in journalism.” Couric is being presented with the award for “Special Achievement for National Impact on the 2008 Campaign.”

What was it that Couric did that was so “special”? The judges singled her out solely for “her extraordinary, persistent and detailed multi-part interviews with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.”

Of course, there is no disputing the fact that the perception created by Couric’s interview and the ensuing media and entertainment coverage of it clearly had an enormous impact on the 2008 presidential election. But is this the kind of “achievement” that journalism is supposed to be honoring? (If it is, shouldn’t the award really go to Tina Fey?) And is there any doubt that if Couric asked Palin the exact same questions and she had been viewed as performing well (or if one of her softball interviews with Barack Obama had brought down his candidacy) that there would be no awards for her from USC or anyone else of note?

It is obvious that Couric is being rewarded for the political result of her interview –the shooting down of a conservative superstar just in time to save the Obama campaign. It’s not about the “journalism” at all. But even that truth is not the most outrageous aspect of this absurdity. What’s even more absurd is that not only shouldn’t Couric be getting rewarded for her Palin interview, if we lived in a world where journalistic standards still mattered at all, she would have been roundly condemned for it.

How do I know this? Because I have devoted most of the last eight months of my life to telling the real story behind the media coverage of the 2008 election with my documentary “Media Malpractice…How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted.” The focal point of my film is the exclusive interview I did with Governor Palin from her home in Wasilla where she reveals more than enough evidence to completely discredit Couric’s USC award.

Even though my Palin interview has gotten a ridiculous amount of media coverage, nearly every TV “journalist” has somehow missed the most important revelation regarding the Couric-Palin showdown. That dealt with how Couric’s agenda -driven obsession with trapping the governor on the abortion issue convinced Palin that she was in enemy territory and that nothing Couric asked was to be trusted or taken on face value.
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PATRICK DORINSON: Cowboy Wisdom — 5 Rules Obama Needs Right Now
By Patrick Dorinson
Political Commentator

Welcome home, Mr. President. You sure had a long trip. I hope your cold is much better and you get a chance to rest over the Easter Weekend.

There are folks that are a lot smarter than I am, or at least the media thinks they are, who are giving your trip a full political and policy proctologic examination.

They are all over television and talk radio either praising or damning the things you did or didn’t do while you were away. Frankly, it feels like watching ESPN after the Super Bowl as experts analyze each move as if it was a life or death situation.

I’m not going to grade you or criticize your trip. I just want to give you some Old West cowboy advice as you move forward. Here are five things I would suggest:

1. Never Drop Your Gun to Hug a Grizzly Bear.

I think it’s great you want to talk to our enemies. If they want to parley, why not? Just make sure they know your holster is full of more than just leather and that if pushed too far you will draw. You don’t need to threaten or act tough. Real cowboys never do that. Their actions do their talking.

2. Never Be too Quick to Criticize Yourself. It’s Not Fair to All Your Friends and Relatives who are Dyin’ to Do It for You.

In this case the friends and relatives are our allies who for the last eight years have done nothing but criticize. Funny thing is while they are criticizing they don’t seem to mind us doing all the global dirty work of going after their enemies as well as ours.

And there sure seemed to me to be a whole lot of apologizing on this trip for one thing or another. I think you will find that most Americans don’t think we have a lot to apologize for — especially to the Europeans. I think in June when you visit Normandy for the 65th Anniversary of the D-Day landings and see the rows upon rows of marble crosses and Stars of David it will become more apparent to you.

Do we have flaws? You bet. Mistakes? You bet. But I think on balance we have been a force for good however imperfect.

3. Too Much Debt Doubles the Weight of Your Horse and Puts Another In Control of the Reins.

Now that you are back home and get to sleep in your own bed, you might want to think about all the money you want to spend on your agenda and going into debt bailing out everyone who shows up at the teller’s window of the U.S. Treasury. I know you promised the voters that you were going to do all this stuff and that you could multi-task but you are the adult and you need to tell the rest of us that we just can’t do all this right now and pare back your agenda.

Some will say we can’t wait that all this must be done right now. Well, why not make a down payment on your agenda and make payments we can afford rather than putting nothing down and making your monthly payments on a credit card. We know how that ends.

If you don’t, those holding our debt (like the Chinese) will have control of the reins.

4. Don’t Go In if You Don’t Know the Way Out.

I read a lot of military history and for my money Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. I know we all want to get Usama bin Laden and string him up, but what makes us think we will fare any better in the long run than the British did in the 19th Century or the Russians in the 20th Century? Besides, when the going gets tough — as it most surely will — I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the Europeans will skedaddle with their tails between their legs faster than you can say NATO.

Going in is the easy part. Getting out is a whole other breed of cat.

5. If You’re Riding Ahead of the Herd, Take a Look Back Every Now and Then to Make Sure It’s Still There.

And that doesn’t mean endless polling. I’ve been hearing that your political folks are constantly polling everything you do and say. Don’t listen to them and don’t read the polls. If you are as smart as everyone says you are and you think you understand the American people, don’t take their pulse every five minutes.

Your job as trail boss of this outfit we call America is to lead the herd to the next watering hole, into the tall grass and keep it safe. You can’t do that if you worry about the significance of every tumbleweed that rolls by.

If you do your job right the herd will be there. If not they will scatter and it will be up to the next trail boss to round them up and start all over.

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