Kevin Rudd takes another poll hit
The Prime Minister's popularity has taken a hit in another opinion poll in the wake of the budget, but Kevin Rudd says he isn't worried.
Obama holds crucial talks with Netanyahu
US President Barack Obama on Monday held crucial talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which highlighted divisions on confronting Iran and the notion of a Palestinian state.
Bellamy: I hope Johns isn't lost to the game
Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy said he hoped sacked Storm assistant coach Matthew Johns returns to the game in some form. - His job is done, he distracted from the budget. I don't think the ALP care what happens to him next. Maybe Bellamy's wish will come true, and Johns will return to the game .. in the form of a salmon. - ed.
Ideal time for first home buyers: HIA
Lower interest rates and flat house prices have created the ideal situation for first home buyers to enter the property market, a leading housing group says.
John Mayer begs to be kissed by women
31-year-old singer John Mayer - who recently split from Jennifer Aniston - persuaded dozens of beauties to leave red lipstick marks on his face during a night out in Los Angeles so the paparazzi would think he had several new girlfriends.
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California: The Dysfunctional State
California is a mess. If you live there, get out of there! (Just kidding as to the second part about getting out of there ... but it is a mess ...)
I am reading the LA Times and know that tomorrow's vote in California is an important one. I don’t have a command enough of the issues (they are complicated) to know how I would vote on each initiative…but I can sure tell from what I am reading that the state is in horrible (catastrophic) shape. [...]
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Hannity vs. Ventura!
Squaring off over terror interrogation tactics and not pulling any punches!
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Labor the big loser in Green chaos theory
Piers Akerman
IF A Brazilian butterfly’s tiny wing beat can generate a tropical hurricane, the Greens weekend win in the West Australian state by-election for the seat of Fremantle should generate a cyclone in Canberra. - While it has been a concern of mine that the ALP will call an early election .. and win .. now it is a concern of mine that they won’t call an early election at all. For some reason, ALP seem to feel early elections are clever. However, the timing of an election is less of an issue than the electorate’s mood related to fiscal policy. So it doesn’t matter if the ALP go early or wait it out, they have to address issues.
Julia Irwin seemed stunned a few years ago when she asked why I had come to her electoral office. She wasn’t my local federal member. I pointed out I did not trust the machinations of the ALP and this was a defense policy for myself. She pointed out she couldn’t do anything for me. I pointed out she only had to listen to my story .. so if I was killed or smeared I would have someone who could guard ALP interests, and testify as to what I was revealing to the public, and also hold me accountable so that I didn’t inflate my issues beyond their natural boundaries.
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MEN NEEDED
Tim Blair
Don Surber on Maureen Dowd’s plagiarism:
This does answer the title to her book, “Are Men Necessary?” Yes. Someone has to write her columns …
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GREEN OR NOT GREEN
Tim Blair
Jeremy Clarkson addresses the issue of green absolutism:
On Wednesday I spent most of the morning demanding to see the manager of a restaurant in which each individual sugar lump was wrapped in its own plastic sleeping bag. “Why,” I wailed, “do you buy sugar this way?” Using plastic to wrap sugar just means more litter and ultimately less diesel for my Range Rover.
And there’s the problem. Because these days the rules state that you are either completely green or you are not green at all. The whole movement has been hijacked by lunatics who want everyone to live in crofts and Facebook trees.
Do read on. The solution to this problem, I’ve found, is to not care at all about environmentalism.
UPDATE. A victory for the resistance:
Manly Council’s hopes of enforcing its first ever plastic bag-free zone have been dashed after the developers of Totem Shopping Centre successfully appealed the restriction.
Shoppers will still be offered plastic bags and be able to use plastic drink and food containers after Commissioner Graham Brown ruled in favour of Stockland and Abigroup in The Land and Environment Court yesterday.
We will yet win the Plastic Wars. Onwards!
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THERE WERE THESE TWO WOGS FIGHTING
Tim Blair
A witness describes a Sydney shooting. She also does accents.
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IDEA WEAVED
Tim Blair
If you’re going to plagiarise someone, why would you plagiarise Josh Marshall? Her choice of author aside, Maureen Dowd’s excuse is fascinating:
i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent—and I assumed spontaneous—way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.
Way to weave, Modo. Looks more like a word-for-word lift.
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More angel than demon
Andrew Bolt
Tom Hanks seems a very nice man.
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Maldives rising, not drowning
Andrew Bolt
New research confirms that 60 Scary Minutes missed the real story with the Maldives in trying to beat the warming drum. Much of the land is actually rising, not sinking:
But some recent data challenge the widespread belief that the islands are destined to disappear…
Paul Kench of the University of Auckland in New Zealand… suggests the islands might move onto their reefs and build vertically, offsetting the potential threat of sea level rises. His research _ published together with other scientists from Australia, New Zealand and the Maldives _ shows some islands have rebuilt themselves as much as 1.6 feet (49 centimeters) higher…
“It’s quite convincing work and seems to be quite widely accepted by the scientific community,” said Andrew Cooper, a professor of coastal studies at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. “...I think the question of the Maldives being completely wiped out may be overstated.”
Following the devastating 2004 Asian tsunami, many scientists assumed the Maldives would be damaged. But Kench and his colleagues not only found little evidence of island erosion, but also that the tsunami had washed sediment ashore, making some islands taller than they were before the catastrophe....
Sea levels worldwide have been steadily rising, except in a handful of places, including the Maldives. But in the last 50 years, some data from satellite pictures and tide measurements suggest sea levels in the Maldives have dropped by as much as 12 inches (30 centimeters).
“That was definitely unexpected,” said Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona.
Overpeck, incidentally, is the expert that the ABC’s Robyn ”100 metres” Williams blames for persuading him the seas will drown our cities.
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So we might get cooler instead?
Andrew Bolt
No kidding:
THE accuracy of Australian climate forecasting could fall unless the Bureau of Meteorology is given more funding for super computers, researchers say. The bureau has warned that its long-term climate forecast capability may have peaked and could even have started to decline.
You mean, the bureau might be seeing warming in an Antarctic that’s actually cooling? Or predict dry when it actually floods?
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Labor edges to integration
Andrew Bolt
Integration, not separation, is the only hope. So this is a small but significant step back from the brink:
THOUSANDS of Aborigines living on their remote Northern Territory homelands will be forced to move to larger communities to receive key government services in a radical shake-up of indigenous policy. The NT Government is set to announce that 20 communities will be developed into regional economic hubs with a wide range of government services such as housing, schools and clinics.
But about 580 smaller communities will be deprived of many government services, threatening the fruits of what became known in the 1970s as the homelands movement when thousands of Aboriginal people moved back to their ancestral lands…
It will bring the Northern Territory into line with the Federal Government, which announced in March that only selected larger communities would benefit from initial funding in a 10-year program to build 4200 houses in remote indigenous communities across Australia…
A report prepared by the NT’s Department of Chief Minister last year acknowledged that homelands might provide an “acceptable and positive trade-off of lifestyle” for Aboriginal adults but said it was important that government “ensures that children have access to adequate services, especially education”.
But the dangers of this step can’t be dodged:
One of the communities selected to be a regional hub is Wadeye, 250 kilometres south-east of Darwin, where in the past youth gangs have fought running battles in the streets.
These larger hubs could well turn into welfare ghettoes like Wadeye, offering children little more future than do the tiny “homeland communities” - and almost as few jobs. Even goldplating the taps at Wadeye would make no difference unless there is prideful work there, and no welfare for those who refuse it.
So this reform is just a small step towards what’s needed, but still nowhere near home.
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IMF: tell Rudd he’s dreamin’
Andrew Bolt
You’ll be amazed, of course, to hear that the Rudd Government’s Budget was built on false hope:
THE International Monetary Fund has undercut the Rudd Government’s plan for returning the budget to surplus by predicting that the economy will recover far more slowly than Treasury forecasts.
IMF staff estimates suggest the economy will struggle to reach 3per cent growth as it recovers from the recession. Last week’s budget forecast that a vigorous economic recovery of up to 4.5 per cent annual growth would return next year’s $57.6 deficit to surplus within six years…
The federal Opposition claims a 3 per cent recovery profile could see the budget’s $188billion net public debt projection blow out to about $250 billion.
But Kevin Rudd won’t feel as much pain from criticism of his debt as he would from criticism for trying to cut it. The size of the deficit is actually a measure of the pain being deferred, and a responsible Opposition only suffers by being the party promising to hurt voters - especially in a country where nyah-nyah press gallery reporters taunt the Opposition to explain every cut they’d make, without demanding the Government make them, too. And so do democracies let populists lead them into strife.
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Iraq booms
Andrew Bolt
Looking for a great place to invest when so many other markets have gone sour? Then check out the Iraqi stock exchange index up to February.
The ride for March was a bit bumpier, but the ISX index ended still higher. And in May it’s set a record.
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God must be a right-on sociologist
Andrew Bolt
Can a doctrine which produces a hymn so bloodless, so devoid of humor or pulse, have much to add to our knowledge of how we live - or should? Here’s the opening verse of the hymn sung at the opening of the Anglican Communion’s meeting in Jamaica two weeks ago:
Lord of our diversity,
unite us all, we pray;
welcome us to fellowship
in your inclusive way.
It’s the kind of pious baaing that would make me be the “I’m not” guy:
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Can someone write Dowd an excuse?
Andrew Bolt
If only someone could also give Maureen Dowd an excuse she could plagiarise, too:
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in an email to Huffington Post, admits that a paragraph in her Sunday column was lifted from Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall’s blog last Thursday.
Dowd claims that she never read his blog last week but was told the line by a friend of hers....
i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent—and I assumed spontaneous—way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.
Dowd’s frankly unbelievable excuse relies not only on her friend having a photographic memory of something she’s read, but of Dowd having an equally astonishing word-for-word recall of the words her friend passed on. Because here is what Dowd wrote:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
And here is what Marshall wrote:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
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Oink, oink
Andrew Bolt
The expenses scandal engulfing Britain’s politicians - and which may lead to the first sacking of a Speaker in more than 300 years - ranges from the outrageous to the preposterous. Here’s a list that say it all - the 20 most bizarre expenses claims:
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The Left and the inner totalitarian
Andrew Bolt
No senior official of George Bush would have dared call a woman a dog, even had they wanted to. No, leave that to Leftist Dave Axelrod, senior advisor to Barack Obama, who mocked Miss California for having views on gay marriage which are, er, exactly the same as his boss’s.
MEANWHILE, Minette Marrin notes not just the hypocrisy of a Leftist columnist, but her typical totalitarian itch:
The Guardian published a column by Zoe Williams … (who) was discussing the fact that many parents who would prefer to send their children to private schools – she calls them privateers – are obliged by the economic slump to send them to state schools. Her view is that the children of such privateers should be forced to the bottom of the waiting lists for state primary schools…
She writes like an old-fashioned class warrior who believes children must be punished for the class guilt of their parents, and if that sounds vindictive, she admits she means it to. “Ha! Good,” she exclaims unselfconsciously.
Perhaps this is an opportune moment to point out that Williams was privately educated at the expensive and selective Godolphin and Latymer school in west London, which no doubt helped her to get a place at Oxford and a job at The Guardian; should she, too, be punished for the class crimes of her parents in educating her privately? Which queue should Williams be shoved to the back of to atone for her inherited class guilt?
What horrifies me more than her general approach is the totalitarian detail in which she indulges her class hatred. Her list of exclusion for privateers’ children is precisely graded. To the bottom she dispatches those who have been recently removed from private schools; “above them but below everybody else” should be children with siblings at private schools; and somewhere near them should be children whose parents’ first choice was a faith school.
It reminded me at once of the careful protocols of Nazi selection systems, or the elaborate plans put forward by Stalinists and Maoists…
“There are other questions”, Williams goes on, apparently ignorant of similar interrogations during the worst of 20th-century totalitarianism, that “an admissions process could use to whittle out privateers. Do they have a 4x4? Can parents provide a letter from any local left-wing organisation attesting to their commitment to open-access state education? Did they go to any meetings? . . . come on, you lefties . . . what happened to your sharp elbows?” I rest my case. .. What is one to make of the suggestion that “local left-wing organisations” should stand in judgment on parents and their thoughts?
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Urban warming records are cooked
Andrew Bolt
John Christy, an IPCC lead author, confirms the findings of Anthony Watts that surface temperature measurements have exaggerated temperature rises:
First (problem) is the placement of the temperature stations. They’re placed in convenient locations that might be in a parking lot or near a house and thus get extra heating from these human structures. Over time, there’s been the development of areas into farms or buildings or parking lots. Also, a number of these weather stations have become electronic, and many of them were moved to a place where there is electricity, which is usually right outside a building. As a result, there’s a natural warming tendency, especially in the nighttime temperatures, that has been misinterpreted as greenhouse warming.
As for the “solutions” to global warming…
The problem is that the solutions being offered don’t provide any detectable relief from this so-called catastrophe. Congress is now discussing an 80% reduction in U.S. greenhouse emissions by 2050. That’s basically the equivalent of building 1,000 new nuclear power plants all operating by 2020. Now I’m all in favor of nuclear energy, but that would affect the global temperature by only seven-hundredths of a degree by 2050 and fifteen hundredths by 2100. We wouldn’t even notice it.
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Rudd spends billions without explaining why
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s latest plans to spend $22 billion on infrastructure is like his $43 billion broadplan plan, also produced without any sign of a cost-benefit analysis:
Infrastructure Australia, the arms-length body headed by Labor’s handpicked business favourite, Rod Eddington, “chose” an initial “A” list of 10 projects in the budget for immediate go-ahead.
But there’s a remarkable omission in all of this. Neither in the budget papers, nor in the National Infrastructure Priorities list published by the Government, nor on the Infrastructure Australia website is there any supporting cost benefit analysis of any of the chosen projects. None… Which really means the Government plans to spend $22 billion of taxpayers’ money without any explanation as to the viability of that spending.
One day soon we’ll wonder how such huge spending decisions - including the $22 billion cash handouts - were made with such little thought and with even less effect. What will Rudd’s apologists and ministers say then?
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Dams are our saviour
Andrew Bolt
Having big dams has saved Melbourne in this dry spell:
Melbourne Water declined to talk on the record about the impact of an El Nino but issued a statement saying that ”one of the reasons Melbourne has been able to make it through the climate variability over the past decade is because we have such a large storage capacity. Even with reservoirs at 27 per cent we still have about 480 billion litres of water in storage, which is significant.”
So, using the same logic, why isn’t this Government increasing that storage by building another big, cheap dam to match the growth in Melbourne’s population since we built the last one, 25 year ago? If dams have worked in the past, why wouldn’t they work in the future?
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General Electric, NBC News and President Obama
By Bill O'Reilly
As you may know, NBC News has emerged as the most pro-Obama TV news operation in the country. Its cable news operation openly shills for the president and did so during the election. And when some CNBC financial commentators began criticizing Mr. Obama, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and NBC President Jeff Zucker went over to CNBC in person to deal with the situation. GE owns NBC.
Since that time, very little criticism of the president has been heard on CNBC. Perhaps it's just a coincidence.
On April 23, I reported that GE is heavily investing in green technology, and if the carbon tax is passed GE will try to get billions of dollars in contracts in the cap and trade program. Because GE is in big trouble — already receiving $139 billion in federal insurance to shore up its financial arm — it is now going full-tilt to get more federal dollars.
According to reporting by Andrew Wilkow, a Sirius radio host, GE is banking on government-ordered computerized health records. If that passes, GE's technology could be used, earning the company billions.
To make that happen, GE has appointed former Senator Tom Daschle to its health advisory board. Daschle, you may remember, was President Obama's choice as secretary of Health and Human Services until a tax scandal derailed him. But there is no question Daschle has big time connections to the Obama White House. We asked the senator for an interview. So far, he's ducking us.
So obviously there is a huge conflict of interest here. NBC News is in the tank for Obama, even as its parent company is trying to secure billions from the feds. And if you don't believe me, listen to Obama adviser Kareem Dale:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAREEM DALE, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO OBAMA: At the White House, as we always like to say, we love MSNBC.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
A fascinating footnote: Neither NBC News nor GE is hiding any of this. In a public relations video, the cards are laid on the table:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jeff Immelt himself was very committed to a broader set of issues affecting energy policy, greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, etc. Ecomagination is a business imperative for GE.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
So it is no accident that NBC News is promoting government run health care, as well as President Obama's policies in general.
Now if this were any other industry, there would be a federal investigation. But the press is largely above the law. There is no oversight on the press at all. We can do pretty much what we want to do.
Summing up: A major American news operation is giving favorable coverage to a president while its parent company stands to profit dramatically if Mr. Obama's agenda succeeds. Corrupt? You make the call.
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Keyes Arrested for Notre Dame Protest
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," May 17, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Joining me now is former presidential candidate Alan Keyes who has been at the forefront of this debate since Notre Dame announced its plans to honor President Barack Obama. Ambassador Keyes was actually scheduled to join us on Friday night's show, but he was arrested on campus during a protest — by the way, his second arrest. And Ambassador Keyes, thanks for being with us.
ALAN KEYES, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Glad to be with you, Sean. Thank you.
HANNITY: All right. So twice, you used the term earlier when speaking with Ainsley about "prostituting itself." Explain.
KEYES: Well, I think it was clearly an effort today to try to establish some kind of moral legitimacy for Obama despite the fact that he takes an extremist stand on child-killing that marks him as the focal point of evil with respect to this heinous destruction of innocent life in our world today.
And for the university to honor him in the way that it has basically degrades and debases its claim to be a Catholic institution, sets a scandalous, bad example in word and deed for its students, for the Catholic community, for the world.
And by the way, the Vatican has spoken on this. Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, who is a very high official — I think the highest appointed American at the Vatican — was at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. And he made an unequivocal statement in which he condemned the invitation and the degree and said what was happening at Notre Dame was the gravest scandal, meaning to say they were luring people into sin.
HANNITY: Ambassador, he got a fairly warm reception today by many although he was interrupted as we pointed out many times. If we look back at the last election, 54 percent of Catholics, according to exit polls, voted for President Barack Obama.
Now, not only does he support abortion — remember, while he was in the State Senate, you know, the infant — the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act which would literally guarantee medical care for aborted fetuses that lived. He was an outspoken critic of it.
KEYES: Well, that's right. That's why I referred to child-killing, because I think that the idea that he is for abortion is true. But it extends further than that and really represents the fact that we're talking about the murder of children.
He has also said that the one vote in the U.S. Senate he was most ashamed of was to vote to look into Terri Schiavo's situation. His conscience is so seared on this issue that he didn't want to get account of the facts that involved the unalienable right to life. So I think that is why it is so at odds with Catholic moral principles.
HANNITY: What do you make of the warm reception by many inside the Joyce Center? What do you make of the 54 percent of Catholics that voted for Barack Obama in spite of his position on embryonic stem cells and abortion?
KEYES: Well, I think the results at Notre Dame is just clear evidence that Fr. Jenkins and the board, the fellows, basically created an environment in which Catholic education is not taking place.
Because the idea that you can establish moral right and wrong by some sort of calculus balance between good and evil is an anathema to the teachings of the Catholic Church. The idea of good is related to God.
And Obama turns away from God's fundamental law of love on the respect for life. So he cuts off the very notion of law connected with God's love at its root. That means he's turned away from God and you can't pretend that he should ...
HANNITY: Ambassador —
KEYES: ... be honored for it, being learned in the law.
HANNITY: What does this mean for you in your view of your church? For example, the Catholic Church has been through one scandal we have discussed a lot, and I have been very critical of their handling of it. What does this mean for you as a Catholic? Does this make you question their moral strength?
For example, the Vatican — would you have preferred the pope speak out on this? He had the local bishops take a stand —
KEYES: Now, first of all, let's be clear. The pope is a head of state. It's very rare for one head of state to call another evil.
I think what he did was send the highest ranking American to give a clear and unequivocal objective statement about the conditions at Notre Dame that the fellows and the board had caused grave scandal, which means an injury to good morals, that is widely and publicly clear and that therefore causes a widespread bad effect in the community.
You couldn't say anything more clear than Archbishop Burke did and the fact that media people are trying to ignore this and say the Vatican was silent, shows how deeply important it was in point of fact, because it contradicts the idea that the Vatican just looked the other way on this. It certainly did not.
I am disappointed that having made the assessment Bishop D'Arcy didn't move forward to perform his obligation when faced with such a scandal, which is investigate and to assess just penalties that will either prevent the scandal or make sure it doesn't happen in the future.
And I and others are going to pursue a canonical lawsuit against Jenkins and the university for their violations of the cannon law ...
HANNITY: Yes.
KEYES: ... particularly with respect to maltreatment of people like myself. And we're going to see whether we can get justice within the framework of the church.
HANNITY: We saw Norma McCorvey arrested. You were arrested twice here. Some issues were raised about the method of protesting. That was dolls in baby carriages with fake blood put on them. Do you think that's the most effective means of communicating your point?
KEYES: Well, in terms of making it clear what actually happens in a child killing, I think it was very clear and it's necessary. In the days when people campaigned against slavery or against lynching, they showed pictures of people who have been lynched. They showed the terrible beatings that people received and the effects.
You've got to confront people with the actual evil, not sanitize it — that's step number one. But even so, the illustration was quiet. We were praying the rosary when we went through the second time, it was a procession in honor of Our Lady.
And there was absolutely no reproach that could be brought against the manner in which these Christian people were trying to bear witness that would help to heal the lie that the board and the president and the fellows were perpetrating upon the community and the world.
HANNITY: All right. Ambassador, always good to see you. And by the way, glad you are out of jail. I would have helped bail you out, by the way, if you needed the money. I was there for you.
KEYES: Well, thank you, Sean.
HANNITY: Alright. Thanks for being with us.
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Pentagon Briefings No Longer Quote the Bible
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration. - Obama despises Christians. - ed.
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