===
Lin survivor finds solace in studies
The surviving daughter of the Lin family murdered at North Epping has turned to her studies for comfort.
Aussie took part in terror plot
MELBOURNE man Shane Kent pleaded guilty to being involved in preparing a terrorist act.
Bashed cop speaks out
A female police officer who suffered serious injuries when bashed and robbed in Sydney has spoken about her ordeal.
RBA warns of housing bubble risk
AUSTRALIA risks a property bubble, thanks to cheap loans and few new homes, warns RBA.
Stray dog adopts cubs at zoo in Hefei, China
A PLUCKY stray dog has saved the lives of a tiger cub and lion triplets who were abandoned by their mothers at a Chinese zoo.
Australians face $1000 tax hike
THE price tag for Kevin Rudd's revamped health system could be a tax hike of more than $1000 a year for average income earners.
'Bashed' dad charged over footy brawl
A MAN who alleged he was bashed senseless by three men at his son's football game has been charged over the brawl.
Staff sacked as college goes bust
STUDENTS have had their courses halted and face the loss of thousands of dollars after their college went into administration.
Why women's looks are improving
MEN have got it so good - women are becoming more attractive in an evolutionary "beauty race".
Missing baby, toddler found in bin
A BABY and a toddler have been found in an industrial rubbish bin, thirteen hours after their mother reported them missing.
Man gets life for Bush kill plot
A US national has been sentenced to life in prison for joining an al-Qaeda plot to assassinate then-president George W. Bush.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Sarah's Next Step!
As Palin officially steps down from her post, is this her curtain call or move back into the national spotlight?
===
The Healthcare Plan
With recess around the corner, can the White House still find a way to get their vote on healthcare?
===
What's the Damage?
Obama backlash over his potshot at Cambridge police! How badly will his comments hurt his image?
===
Tainted Message?
What happened to the promise of hope and change? Michelle Malkin lets loose!
===
Note From Boston
We are in Boston -- actually Cambridge. We are interviewing people about "Gates-gate." We just talked to someone who spoke to the arresting officer within two hours of the arrest. We asked what did the officer say happened since that was soon after and before the entire incident essentially blew up. You will hear what we were told (we taped the interview of course) when you watch tonight's On The Record at 10pm.
=== Comments ===
Climate changes as alarmists exposed
Piers Akerman
CLAIMS by global warming disciples to the scientific high ground took a huge knock when the celebrated “hockey stick” depiction of rising temperatures and CO2 were shown to be phoney. - Climate changes and to blame man is absurd. It is indisputable that there is lots of carbon dioxide from industry .. but plant food is good. The anti industry crowd have even claimed that spring comes early (from the extra food?) and that that is proof of global warming. I note that although spring comes early .. it remains colder for longer these days. - ed.
===
NO SUBSTITUTE FOR CUBIC INCHES
Tim Blair
US magazine Car & Driver – now under new editorship – detects a marketing trend:
Engine downsizing may sound ideal. Reduce displacement while adding a turbo or two and direct injection to put power and torque on par with—or above—ratings of larger, naturally aspirated engines. Manufacturers then make dramatic claims such as: “the power of a V-8 with the fuel economy of a V-6.” This is where the “donkey show” comes in, because after numerous tests of vehicles so equipped, we have yet to uncover a compelling real-world fuel-economy payoff. Ford is the latest suspect, spewing much hype regarding its version of this technology, called EcoBoost,
Right on cue, Ford Australia announces that it will build a turbo four-cylinder Falcon – power of a six, economy of a four:
The company claims the new turbocharged 2.0-litre direct-injection four-cylinder petrol engine will deliver six-cylinder performance with the fuel consumption and emissions of a small car. It claims the four-cylinder will use 15 to 20 per cent less fuel than V6 alternatives.
Wanna buy one? You already have:
The Federal Government will contribute $42 million to the program [also funding other Ford vehicles] through its Green Car Innovation Fund. An undisclosed contribution has also been made by the Victoria Government.
Again, check the data on these economy/power claims. Australian taxpayers may have ponied up those millions for nothing.
===
ELECTRICITY FOUGHT
Tim Blair
A NSW business faces legal action over its production of plant food:
Australia is about to see its first legal challenge to carbon emissions from a coal-fired power plant, after a Land and Environment Court case was initiated yesterday against Macquarie Generation, a NSW Government-owned utility.
An environmental group that opposed the development of the Anvil Hill coal mine in the Hunter Valley is now targeting Bayswater power station in the Upper Hunter, one of the largest single producers of greenhouse gases in the state …
The court case is being brought by Peter Gray and Naomi Hodgson, members of a group called Rising Tide.
They’re a serious bunch, have no doubt. Previously, Rising Tide has challenged the entire planet:
Despite miserable weather, over 70 citizens took to the water in Newcastle Harbour on World Environment Day 2006 (5th June) to occupy and protest the world
On that occasion, the world won.
UPDATE. It’s unlikely that the Peter Gray mentioned above is this Peter Gray:
===
LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Tim Blair
Indians know the difference between terrorists and gunmen. The New York Times (among other newspapers) doesn’t.
===
WE NEED THE FOOD BECAUSE IT’S FOOD AND STUFF
Tim Blair
===
BBC: BACKS BAD CANDIDATES
Tim Blair
Daniel Hannan notes a telling move from the BBC:
Several weeks ago, the BBC decided to start running stories about how well the Green Party would do at the Norwich North by-election. It is far from clear whether programme editors thought that this would happen anyway, or whether they hoped to make it happen. After all, what minority candidates most crave is airtime: to be treated as mainstream, and so to anticipate the “wasted vote” argument.
The BBC obliged. Lord, how it obliged.
Read on for further details. But how did the Greens perform? They came a lowly fifth, not even managing to reach 10 per cent of the vote – despite a 26.7 per cent swing against Labour.
===
IN A WAY, WE ARE ALL BEEFS
Tim Blair
“I knew Beefs, but I was not Beef.” An interview with Achewood’s Chris Onstad.
===
Statement of claim
Andrew Bolt
From a Hizb ut-Tahrir rally in Gaza. Interesting color that they’ve shaded Spain, the Balkans and even China.
===
What’s Botox for the goose…
Andrew Bolt
As the Drudge Report puts it:
DON’T GO THERE: DEMS EYE 10% TAX ON BOTOX, COSMETIC SURGERY
===
Institutionalise the superstitious instead
Andrew Bolt
Superstitions institutionalised:
Pagan police officers in Britain have been given the right to take eight days off work a year to celebrate “religious holidays” including Hallowe’en and the summer solstice.
===
Indoctrinating the teachers first
Andrew Bolt
The teachers’ union starts the great indoctrination from the top. First the teachers, and then ...:
Meredith Peace, AEU vice president secondary, will be delivering her first presentation in August following training with environmental activist Al Gore as part of his famous international Climate Project.
===
It was a cheat, not a promise derailed
Andrew Bolt
It sounds like criticism from the Sydney Morning Herald, but it still sounds too much like an excuse:
BEFORE the last election, Kevin Rudd said if the states had not come to the party on health by the middle of this year, he would seek a mandate at the next election for a Commonwealth takeover. Like Rudd’s other big election promises, it was based on an overly ambitious timetable and made while there was revenue aplenty.
Since then the national broadband network has blown out to something that will not be built in the main until after the next election, if at all. The emissions trading scheme has also been pushed back.
Yesterday, after receiving the report from National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, Rudd reset the deadline for his health ultimatum to early next year.
Rudd’s promise of a quick referendum on a federal takeover of hospitals was sheer, undeliverable fantasy from the very start, and for reasons that had nothing to do with revenue.
It should have been criticised at the time as mere spin - or plain deceit - and not forgiven now as just another good promise derailed by the financial crisis.
UPDATE
Of course, Rudd can do anything if allowed to spend even more of the billions we no longer have:
THE price tag for Kevin Rudd’s revamped health system could be a tax rise of more than $1000 a year for average income earners. That is how much the Medicare levy would have to rise to fund the $5.7 billion a year the Prime Minister’s reforms will add to the nation’s health bills.
And another $7.3 billion in one-off building and equipment costs will be needed to pay for the new hospitals and medical centres to deliver improved health care.
UPDATE 2
The Daily Telegraph, which backed Rudd at the election, isn’t so impressed now:
BACK in October 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told the Parliament: ”The Government has no intention to bring in other taxes.”
But now Rudd stands before us proposing a tax increase - in the form of a radically reshaped health system - costing some $16 billion.
===
Sensitive author broods
Andrew Bolt
Someone sensitive is counting and resenting every word said against his genius:
TODAY, you might have read an essay that I published in the national press that looks beyond the immediate response to the global recession towards the challenges of economic recovery. I’ve noticed that some don’t particularly appreciate it when I write long essays.
After the publication of my last essay in The Monthly six months ago, I’m informed that one national newspaper published more than 50 separate articles attacking it in one way or another. I’m also informed that’s about 60,000 words the newspaper in question devoted to my mediocre prose.
Add some more words of criticism about Kevin Rudd’s latest essay, this time from Michael Stutchbury, who matches Rudd’s rhetoric against his delivery.
The shorter version from Ross Gittins, the Left-leaning Fairfax columnist:
It’s spin...
===
Hospitals for administrators
Andrew Bolt
Jeremy Sammut says the real problem with health funding is that too little of it goes on healing the sick:
Since 1983 the state health bureaucracies that are responsible for allocating funding, planning services and rationing public hospital care have cut the number of public hospital beds by one-third: from 74,000 beds to just over 54,000. This is a 60 per cent cut, taking population growth into account, from 4.8 public acute beds for every 1000 Australians to 2.5 beds…
The problem is not that hospitals are underfunded. Over the past decade, real expenditure on public hospitals increased by 64 per cent to top $27 billion in 2006-07. The real problem is that not enough of the money gets through to the frontlines. Between 1996 and 2006 the number of acute public hospital beds fell by 18 per cent per 1000. But between 2001 and 2006, the number of administrators increased by 69 per cent.
===
Africa’s Afghanistan
Andrew Bolt
Another front opened:
RADICAL Islamists yesterday torched a police headquarters, a church and a Customs office in northern Nigeria, as the death toll in weekend religious clashes climbed to 150… The Nigerian Taliban emerged in 2004 when it set up a base—dubbed Afghanistan—in Kanamma village in Yobe, on the border with Niger, from where it attacked police outposts and killed police officers.
Its membership is mainly drawn from university dropouts.
It seems again that it’s ideology rather than oppression that’s driving these people to kill.
===
Two million dollars per house
Andrew Bolt
Not only are the houses not yet built, each costs the price of the grandest mansion:
NORTHERN Territory Aboriginal Affairs Minister Alison Anerson has threatened to quit the Labor party in protest over the Rudd government’s “appalling” handling of a $700million remote housing package that she labelled a “big farce”.
Ms Anderson, an Aboriginal Labor MP from central Australia, challenged her federal counterpart Jenny Macklin to “start keeping an eye on her money” after it was revealed as few as 300 houses may be built in the $672m Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program.
At $2 million a house, and with huge delays, we must conclude:
1. Building welfare ghettoes in the far outback is a money-eating extravagence, even ignoring the often toxic results.
2. Government money is involved.
===
Reality Check Redux
Best of O'Reilly setting the record straight!
===
How Did Marilyn Monroe Really Die?
This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," July 24, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Now Michael Jackson passed away just weeks ago and already there's a swarm of controversy surrounding his death. Was it suicide? Was it accidental? Was it intentional? Or was it something much worse? Was it murder?
Now nearly 50 years after the fact, these are the exact same questions that the world is still asking of another American legend, one who also left us all too soon and all too strangely.
Our Conspiracy Theory Month continues tonight as we take a look at the facts, the myths and the mystery surrounding the death of Marilyn Monroe.
No comments:
Post a Comment