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RMMB's birthday today. I still remember that first one. Many happy returns.
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2Day ask rape victim for sex confession
2DayFM breakfast crew The Kyle and Jackie O show were left red-faced today after a lie-detector quiz about a 14-year-old’s drug and sex habits revealed that she was raped at age 12. - My mother did something similar, but far worse than this. It wasn't until I met God that I could forgive her. But she still doesn't get what she did was wrong. It was appalling to have talkback callers supporting Kyle for his 'bravery.' That such things happen is a condemnation of the silence with which I had to work in. Perhaps it would have been better if I told the world, so that others may learn from the lesson. - ed.
Lin family plead for info about murders
Devastated relatives of the murdered Lin family have made an emotional public plea for information, saying the smallest clue could help solve the gruesome killings.
Bodies found, may be missing Koreans
Police have discovered two bodies which could belong to the Korean backpackers, missing for six days in the Griffith area.
Deadlier than Black Saturday: Vics told
Victorians have been warned that the upcoming fire season could be worse than the deadly Black Saturday bushfires which left 173 people dead in their wake.
Mentally ill man held by police, dies
A large, struggling, mentally ill man died of a heart condition after he was handcuffed by police......
Stripper accused of bucks' night rape
A bucks night reveller was completely naked and on his hands and knees when he allegedly was raped......
Bomb threat clears CBD Building
Police insist a bomb threat that caused the evacuation of an entire CBD building was necessary....
People smuggler faces trial after deaths
An Indonesian man accused of a mass people smuggling operation is facing trial for allegedly......
Lost Brisbane dog found in Melbourne nine years later
A FLEA-bitten dog rescued from a squalid Melbourne backyard is to be reunited with her overjoyed Brisbane owner - nine years after she disappeared. And 17-year-old Chloe Rushby, who was only eight when her best mate disappeared, can't wait to have Muffy back in her arms.
Two speed cameras net $7 million in a year
STATE'S nastiest speed trap has caught out 71,288 motorists and raised millions for Government.
Big Macs to be sold at children's hospital
FAST food giant forced to overhaul hospital menu, but Big Macs, chips and soft drink remain. - good -ed.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Note: ON THE RECORD at 10pm
Tonight -- ON THE RECORD at 10pm - we have a special guest California Governor Schwarzenegger. As you know, California, like all of the states, has fallen on hard times but perhaps harder times than most states. Governor Schwarzenegger just signed a new budget and while you may think it has nothing to do with you, it does. California has the 8th largest economy in the world -- and your state trades with California. And guess what? The Governor has to make the same decisions your governor does: how do you decide what to cut? We asked him and he told us how he makes those decisions. Does he wish he could run for President? Who does he admire in the Republican party? He answers those questions and so much more...so don't miss this rare occasion to hear from the Governor of California!
===
Arnold's locked & loaded in a fight for California!
So how does he dig out of debt, put a dent in unemployment and deal with the democrats' tax and spend policies?
The governor lets loose!
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Guest: Governor Jindal
Will government-run healthcare rob Americans of their insurance? Bobby Jindal reacts!
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Handcuffing Police?
Did Obama's comments about Cambridge cops hurt American law enforcement?
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Fed-Up!
Why some states say the Government has overstepped its bounds and how they're fighting back!
=== Comments ===
INSULATION NATION
Tim Blair
Do not fear the cleanliness of tomorrow, advises Kevin Rudd:
‘‘The climate change sceptics constantly scaremonger about the possible loss of jobs through the transition to a lower carbon economy,” he said.
‘‘But they constantly fail to talk about the new clean energy jobs of the future, which will arise from the introduction of the carbon pollution reduction scheme, the renewable energy target and energy efficiency measures in the future.’’
Well, let’s talk about these new clean energy jobs of the future, then. There’s a “10,000-member national Green Jobs Corps”, which will provide six months of training to the long-term unemployed so they can … do what, exactly? And Rudd plans to train 4000 insulation installers, which should take about one minute for each of them:
And don’t forget the “6000 jobs from environmental sustainability programs in priority local economies”. I have no idea what this means.
===
SMALL CHANGE
Tim Blair
He’s a serious guy:
Three months ago, President Barack Obama ordered his cabinet secretaries to find $100 million in budget cuts for the current fiscal year to emphasize the point that he, too, was serious about belt-tightening.
Bravo!
They responded with $102 million.
Hooray!
That is 0.006% of the estimated federal deficit.
===
VILE KYLE
Tim Blair
Michelle Cazzulino mops the floor with Kyle Sandilands and giggling Kyle enabler Jackie O. Sandilands’ weak response to the controversy:
To tell you the truth I was floundering around, signalling to the producers and Jackie – down the camera – indicating that we had to get it off air.It sounds as though Sandilands is pleading … inexperience. When you put a 14-year-old girl in a situation where she’s being asked if she’s had sex, you deserve all the trouble you get.
I didn’t realise I had said “Have you had any other experiences?” …
As for what I said, it wasn’t intended to hurt. If people have found it appalling or offensive I’m sorry for them that feel that way, but I would ask people to put themselves into the situation where someone says to you during a live radio show that they have been raped.
===
FRIES WITH THAT?
Tim Blair
Academics acadoomed:
Melbourne University will slash 220 full-time academic and administrative staff because its financial position has taken a battering in the economic crisis.
But not quite the battering suffered elsewhere:
Only a year ago, Harvard had a $36.9 billion endowment, the largest in academia. Now that endowment has imploded, and the university faces the worst financial crisis in its 373-year history. Could the same lethal mix of uncurbed expansion, colossal debt, arrogance, and mismanagement that ravaged Wall Street bring down America’s most famous university?
And people thought this economic disaster was a bad thing …
===
DAUGHTER PROTECTION CRIMINALISED
Tim Blair
New justice in New Zealand:
A Blenheim father has been convicted and fined $1000 for assaulting a man who wanted to have sex with his 13-year-old daughter.
Read on. The father only beat up the guy after first approaching police ("they said they were not able to assist at that stage"), a government youth care agency and a church, all of whom accomplished nothing. Finally, the 23-year-old lecher (who is referred to throughout the linked report as “the victim") wore a few Dad-delivered punches.
And the girl’s father gets fined $1000.
===
Labor’s pay to play
Andrew Bolt
What else will Labor sell them?
AT 8am today, the Labor Party will sweep aside a velvet rope at the Sydney Convention Centre and beckon in an exclusive coterie of ticket holders.
Together, these 100 business leaders paying $7500 each will pour almost $1 million into ALP coffers in exchange for some face time with government ministers on the sidelines of the party’s national conference.
The ALP’s cash-for-access program could provide a real-time case study for the Crime and Misconduct Commission as it looks into this pay-per-view style of political fundraising.
===
Give those sacked workers a few green collars
Andrew Bolt
Never mind the thousands of jobs Kevin Rudd will kill in mining and manufacturing with his insane mega-taxing emissions trading scheme. He’s announced at the Labor conference today that he’ll make up the loss - well, some of it:
The climate change sceptics constantly scaremonger about the possible loss of jobs through the transition to a lower carbon economy. But they constantly fail to talk about the new clean energy jobs of the future which will arise from the introduction of the carbon pollution reduction scheme, the renewable energy target and energy efficiency measures in the future.
So what are those jobs, and how much will they earn us?
Um, well, first of all they’ll actually cost us money instead:
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has unveiled a $100 million plan to create 50,000 green jobs and training opportunities.
Hmm. That’s not a promising start. But, OK, maybe these “green jobs” will still turn out to be real jobs, after a while, involving the making of real things, right?
Wrong:
The plan will consist of the creation of a 10,000-member national Green Jobs Corps, where long-term young jobless will take part in six months of training and work experience.
So not real jobs, then, but just a bit of training for the jobless. So what else has Rudd got?
Labor plans that 30,000 apprentices will be trained with green skills, while there will be an additional 4,000 training places for insulation installers.
So apprentices will get some “green skills”, whatever they are, but not the extra green jobs to go with them - so this promise doesn’t count, either. But, yes, there may indeed be 4000 more training places for roofing insulation installers - who need a day or so of instruction on how to lay the free pink batts the government will hand out for a short while. But still there’s no long-term, real jobs in this $100 million Rudd is now promising.
Anything else?
There will also be another 6,000 jobs from environmental sustainability programs in priority local economies.
Huh? What exactly are these jobs, and why do they sound like ones that will actually cost taxpayers, not earn their own way?
So let’s rewrite Rudd’s promise to remove the spin and deceit:
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has unveiled a $100 million plan to create 6000 green jobs, mostly needing future taxpayer support, plus a little green training.
And this is supposed to offset the effects of his job-killing ETS, like this one:
The CPRS scheme will shed 23,510 jobs in the minerals sector by 2020 and more than 66,000 by 2030. These are direct jobs. All minerals sectors will be affected… No state, or the Northern Territory, will be spared… :
And this, as estimated by the Energy Supply Association:
However, even with a 5 per cent reduction in 2000 level emissions at 2020, a number of power stations will need to close while others will need to substantially reduce their production to meet this target.
Think Rudd’s “green jobs” will balance that kind of economic devastation?
===
But he did speak so very well
Andrew Bolt
And still Obama’s ratings fall.
Moral: you may elect a symbol, but you must live with his performance.
===
30 million died, but on the other hand…
Andrew Bolt
Karon Snowdon, reporting for the ABC’s Rear Vision, presents a potted history of China:
Influenced by the Soviet model, collectivisation and social reforms followed. While Mao’s Great Leap Forward was meant to catapult China into the big league of heavy industry, it had mixed results.
“Mixed results”? Is that the ABC’s shorthand for the brutal imposition of the mad whims of a Communist psychopath which lead to the deaths of millions? Jasper Becker’s book on this obscentity puts it rather better:
In 1984 American demographers uncovered evidence that at least 30 million people had starved to death in China between 1958 and 1962.... Based on hundreds of interviews and unpublished documents, (Becker’s book) describes how Mao Zedong created a man-made famine throughout China. Mao’s Great Leap Forward was the greatest example of Utopian engineering ever attempted. Instead, even in the richest regions, peasants died in their millions while the rest became gaunt skeletons. Through graphic eyewitness accounts, the author describes a catalogue of terror, cannibalism, slavery, torture and imprisonment that took place on a massive scale during the great famine in which 10 million people were arrested and sent to death camps while a further 10 million fled their homes. He goes on to explain how the darkest secret of Mao’s rule was kept hidden and why evidence of what happened was disbelieved for so long.
More people died in this catastrophe than in the Second World War or in the concentration camps of Hitler or Stalin.
Here’s how that suffering looks when translated into bland statistics:
Would the ABC also declare that Adolf Hitler’s leadership in Germany had merely “mixed results”?
===
Gore wrong yet again
Andrew Bolt
Al Gore goes the big scare in Melbourne:
Former US vice-president Al Gore has told a Melbourne breakfast that climate change is both the most dangerous threat and the greatest opportunity that civilisation has faced…
“It is difficult to ignore that the cyclones are getting stronger, that the fires are getting bigger, that the sea level is rising, that the refugees are beginning to move from places they have long called home.”
Of course, we know that fires are not getting bigger, the sea level has not risen in three years and that a judge has called false Gore’s claim that refugees are fleeing rising seas. Now we know that cyclone energy in Gore’s part of the world (and not just there) is not rising, either:
Why do people still believe the word of a man who repeatedly says things he must or should know are false?
UPDATE
Tim Flannery in 2008:
The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.
Adelaide in 2009:
JULY is Adelaide’s wettest month in four years, with more than 100mm of rain recorded by yesterday.
Adelaide’s dam levels:
69 per cent
At what stage does your record of predictions become so bad that you can be considered a fraud?
===
Chinese regime honored - and emulated
Andrew Bolt
The stifling of a protest is an even better way to honor China’s despotism:
A GROUP of Chinese residents was prevented from speaking at Hurstville Council’s last meeting against its plan to hold a film festival to mark the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
The group of 14 stood silently in the public gallery after they were told that the council would not change its procedures to let them speak…
The council and the Chinese Consulate-General are to hold the New China Film Festival from September 25 to October 5. The council has agreed to pay $8400 of ratepayers’ money for the event, including a $5000 VIP cocktail reception for 100 guests…
Outside the meeting, (group spokesman Alfred) Sinn said: “In Australia we can vote, have freedom of belief and live without fear. In China, there is no law under the Chinese Communist Party. That is why we, the ratepayers, do not want to pay $8500 of our money to celebrate 60 years of Chinese communist dictatorship.’’
===
Introduction made
Andrew Bolt
A barrister presents his client to the court:
Mr Higham ... described the facts as unique, involving a working mother ...
Here’s what the job of a working mum can allegedly lead to these days.
===
No more than we’ve wished on ourselves
Andrew Bolt
If we are as racist as we insist, why should we be surprised, or even disappointed that others shy from us?
THE Indian student market is showing early signs of collapse, with the recruitment body IDP Education Australia reporting an 80 per cent fall in appointments by students at its 14 Indian offices..
The Indian market is the sector’s biggest growth area but is under threat amid the fall-out from a spate of assaults on Indian students and revelations that students are being exploited by unscrupulous private colleges and fraudulent agents.
The madness of it is that two of the most high-profile assaults of Indians here were committed by other Indians, but by then we’d too poisoned our reputation for such hair-splitting to count.
UPDATE
Our real problem is a new level of mindless, vindictive violence - Tarantino-style - that many alarmed Australians feel is not punished enough:
A 10-year jail term given to the ringleader of a gang who kicked a man to death for fun has sparked a wave of public anger. The Director of Public Prosecutions is reviewing the sentence given to John Caratozzolo for the murder of Dr Zhongjun Cao.
Whether racism or some other sick motive inspired the member of one cultural minority to kick to death a member of another is not really important. It’s the violence that’s the real issue, and what we do to stamp it out.
UPDATE 2
Even Jill Singer is astonished by the vilification:
Then, of course, we had the Four Corners broadcast this week, essentially a beat-up that led to the Indian media branding Australians a bunch of racists led by an equally shocking and racist Prime Minister.
The report ... showed an undercover journalist exposing a dodgy agent who was selling students fake work experience documents. The reporter was threatened and assaulted two days before the story was broadcast - an incident that was also used to smear our industry’s reputation in India.
Does this really expose us as racist? ... The facts are the agent in question is Indian, the students who pay for the fakes are Indian and the person who assaulted the Indian journalist is also Indian, and threatened her in Hindi.
===
Let them first predict the past
Andrew Bolt
Britain’s Guardian salivates over predictions the world will heat up fast over the next five years:
New estimate based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is expected to silence global warming scepticsBut Britain’s Met Office, also warming alarmists, has predicted that kind of overheated thing before, and ... oh dear:
The world faces record-breaking temperatures as the sun’s activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted for the next five years, according to a study.
(T)he Met Office is issuing a revised forecast for more unsettled weather well into the month. It is a far cry from the “barbecue summer” it predicted back in April…Odd, that each time the Met Office has got it wrong, it’s guessed that the summer will be hotter than it turns out. Is there something in its models that biased to warm?
The Met Office also says temperatures have been around or above normal, and that the end of August might be better again… (But) it did indeed stress at the time of the summer forecast in April that the odds of a scorching summer were 65%. It explains that it coined the phrase “barbecue summer” to help journalists’ headlines…
The real problem for the Met Office is that this is the third summer in a row where its forecast has failed. In 2007, the Met Office chirped: “The summer is yet again likely to be warmer than normal. There are no indications of a particularly wet summer.”
We got downpours and floods in the wettest summer for England and Wales since 1912. Temperatures were below average.
In April 2008, the Met Office forecast: “Summer temperatures are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average.” That did not prepare people for one of the wettest summers on record with high winds and low sunshine…
Chief meteorologist Ewan ... McCallum admitted in a news conference in April that seasonal forecasting was still in its infancy - a cross between climate change prediction and tomorrow’s weather forecast.
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Why spoil a good rumor?
Andrew Bolt
Age reporter Sushi Das now reports on the rumors she plans to later report on if they turn out to be true:
THERE’S a private training college for international students in Melbourne whose chief executive is reputed to be illiterate.... If I can confirm details of the shambolic practices this person is allegedly overseeing, I’ll be blowing the lid on that college...
Once upon a time, reporters didn’t file between getting a tip and checking if it was true.
UPDATE
Another Age reporter files a profile of anti-nuclear hysteric Helen Caldicott for the Business pages that contains lines in the Q&A that should have actually made her back slowly out of the room, never dropping her eyes for a moment from Caldicott’s burning ones:
Biggest achievement?
Helping to end the Cold War
And:
In Australia, she played a big role in forcing the French atmospheric nuclear tests underground, after writing a letter to a newspaper...
===
Once Again, Federal Government Does Not Protect Us
By Bill O'Reilly
Here's the front-page headline in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday: "Traders Blamed for Oil Spike."
The government now admits that greedy speculators artificially drove up the price of oil, hurting all Americans and lighting the fuse for the intense recession. The speculators drove the price of oil from $55 a barrel to $145. Along the way, the oil companies raised their prices to us in concert with that.
There was no supply and demand issue. There was no refining issue. It was all a big con. The government agency overseeing the commodities market allowed it to happen, and then denied it happened, but Tuesday admitted it happened.
You may remember that I was the first broadcast journalist to report this story, back in April 2006:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: Many of us can expect to pay $3 a gallon for gasoline this summer, thanks to some speculators who are bidding up the price of oil and to the oil companies who love that kind of speculation so they can raise prices accordingly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Subsequently, I did a number of reports on the oil corruption because it was hurting all of us. I knew it was a bad situation, but I never thought it would ignite a worldwide recession.
You also may remember that just about every financial journalist told me I was nuts. So did most politicians. Now, I'm not gloating. I am proud that for 13 years, "The Factor" has looked out for you and has been right 95 percent of the time.
But the bigger question is the federal government. It simply cannot or will not control corruption. Look, we are all suffering now, partially because billions of dollars were taken out of the economy and put in the pockets of the oil companies and the speculators. That led directly to the economic collapse.
President Bush apparently had no clue. Now President Obama wants the government to run the financial system and the health care industry. In my opinion, that will lead to disaster for this country. Quite simply, the federal government cannot run the economy, health care or assure your personal happiness.
If President Obama continues down the big government road of social engineering, you will see massive, massive corruption. We might also see the USA go into bankruptcy and the dollar crash. Already some speculators are betting against the dollar, which is troubling because all of our savings and earnings are based on a viable American dollar.
The federal government's primary job is to protect us from bad people, whether they are terrorists, corrupt speculators or health care charlatans. This oil speculation deal should be an enormous wake-up call for all of us.
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