A PRISON cell chess game between an accused murderer and a pedophile may lead to the discovery of Daniel Morcombe.
Embattled Rees rounds on rivals
NSW could have a new Premier by the end of next week with revelations Nathan Rees may bring the leadership crisis to a head as early as next Friday.
Kids mixing deadly sports cocktail
CHILDREN are taking a cocktail of drugs and high-caffeine drinks before junior sports matches.
Aussie women could fight on the front line
PHYSICAL strength - not gender - could soon determine who does what in the Australian military.
Hazel Hawke in care as health worsens
AFTER being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, former "first lady" is now in high-level care.
Dad refuses to pay prostitute child support
MARRIED man says prostitute breached Trade Practices Act by becoming pregnant with his baby.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Cartoonists Color Their Contempt for Lockerbie Release
The early release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi from Scottish prison on "humanitarian grounds" has elicited strong reactions both in the United States and the United Kingdom. FOXNews.com surveyed editorial cartoonists on both sides of the Atlantic to get a sampling of their reactions to the freeing of the only man ever convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people.
The Miami Herald
Miami Herald cartoonist Jim Morin said he found Scotland's decision to release Pan Am bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi "quite shocking."
"This one was a little personal for me because 35 kids were killed in that plane who attended ... the Syracuse University arts program abroad in London and I had attended that same program," Morin told FOXNews.com.
"I just find it to be outrageous" that Scotland released Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing that killed 270 people.
"I understand how they feel about it, I understand that they have a compassionate system," he said. "I think that they maybe should have consulted with the victims' families and listened to them before making the decision."
Chicago Tribune
Cartoonist Dave Granlund said he was perplexed by Scotland's decision to release convicted bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, and "still trying to figure out what was going through the minds of the people in the prison system."
Granlund wondered whether people in similar situations -- including the accused terrorists housed in the naval prison at Guantanamo Bay -- would now be trying to get out early through compassionate release.
Granlund said he would have understood an early release for someone who had done a long stretch in prison, but al-Megrahi "has only been in prison for a very short while
"Murder is murder, and even in this country where we say 'life without parole' or 'life in prison,' it doesn't really mean that all the time," he said.
The Scotsman
"This is an absolute catastrophe for the Scottish National Party, the Scottish government," said Iain Green, cartoonist for The Scotsman.
"There were images of the Scottish flag flying at the Tripoli airport, and it was a very awkward and embarrassing situation for Scotland to be in."
Edinburgh Evening News
"I'm basically trying to point out that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have already met Qaddafi (and they forged) the so-called Deal in the Desert," said cartoonist Frank Boyle, referring to the 2007 reconciliation pact between the U.K. and Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi.
"They're enjoying the fact that Scottish government have taken all the flak for this but they set up the deal."
The Houston Chronicle
Nick Anderson, cartoonist for the Houston Chronicle, said that he was "stunned to hear the news that someone who was convicted of killing 270 people would be eligible for 'compassionate release.'"
Anderson, who opposes the death penalty, said he expected al-Megrahi to spend the rest of his life in prison for his "heinous crime," but said the concept of life in prison is "undermined when a system releases criminals prematurely."
"I tried to think of an image to match my sense of outrage," he told FOXNews.com.
The North Jersey Record
Jimmy Margulies, the cartoonist for The North Jersey Record, said he couldn't believe Scotland was "talking about showing compassion for this person convicted of the bombing, considering how many lives were lost in this terrible tragedy."
Margulies said it was crazy to grant an early release to someone who spent so little time in prison.
"The amount of time that he actually spent behind bars was relatively brief, not even a decade, so showing any sort of mercy for this sort of person just seems to me like rubbing salt in the wounds of these families who lost heir loved ones," he said.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Randy Bish, cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, told FOXNews.com that his cartoon was a kind of memorial for a local Pennsylvanian who was killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
"There was a girl who was on that flight, one of the three from the area, so I guess that cartoon hit a little closer to home," Bish said.
"What the cartoon says is that the bomber was given he chance to go home to die and these people, they were never given that."
===
Murders - kidnappings - brutal gang violence
South American drug lords are turning OUR cities into deadly battlegrounds!
===
Health Care Horror Stories!
Doctor shortages, waiting lists, reduced benefits, is this your future? How Obama's dream plan could be your nightmare!
===
Guest: Vincent Curatola
Why the "Sopranos" star thinks the current plan on Capitol Hill won't work for America!
===
The Govt's "Death Book"
Does it really target our nation's vets and encourage them to pull the plug? It's the explosive truth!
=== Comments ===
SO LONG, CINDY
Tim Blair
The anti-war movement’s favourite mother gets her marching orders:
In an appearance August 18 on WLS radio in Chicago, ABC News anchor Charles Gibson was asked about anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan’s plans to travel to Martha’s Vineyard next week, where she will protest the Iraq and Afghanistan wars while President Obama is vacationing there. Gibson, whose newscast and network featured Sheehan when she led anti-war protests outside President Bush’s Texas ranch in 2005, answered, “Enough already.”
That’s a remarkably different stance from the one Gibson took four years ago.
Read on. It’s as though, with Obama in office, they have no further use for her.
===
FORGOTTEN SONGS OF THE 1980s
Tim Blair
Camper Van Beethoven, Eye of Fatima:
Sweet bass line, and these lyrics work: “No one ever conquered Wyoming, from the left or from the right.”
===
CORPSEVETTE
Tim Blair
The Great Car Cull of 2009 is over, and not before time:
The guy pouring death juice into that Corvette has a fine career ahead of him in an Obamafied health system.
===
Faltering Obama may soon get the opposition he needs
Andrew Bolt
Peggy Noonan says Barack Obama’s problem is too much power - for the Democrats, at least:
A final factor contributed to the mess of the health-care debate, and the White House might ponder it. Looking back, what a lucky man President Clinton was to have—to help bring about after his own health-care fiasco—a Congress controlled by the opposite party. What a great and historic team Mr. Clinton and Newt Gingrich were, a popular Democratic president and a determined GOP leader with a solid majority. Welfare reform, a balanced budget, and a sense the public could have that not much crazy would happen and some serious progress might be made. If Mr. Clinton pressed too hard, Mr. Gingrich would push back. If Mr. Gingrich pressed too hard Mr. Clinton pushed back. Two gifted, often perplexing and always controversial Boomers who didn’t even like each other, and yet you look back now and realize: Good things happened there.
Right now Mr. Obama’s gift is his curse, a Congress dominated by his party. While the country worries about the economy and two wars, the Democrats of Congress are preoccupied with the idea that this is their moment, now is their time, health care now...
Poll analyst Charlie Cook says this “problem” may soon change, as Obama wilts under accusations of creating “death panels” and angry Americans brawl at town hall meetings:
For those of you not addicted to the 1:00pm EDT daily release of Gallup’s three-night moving average tracking poll, President Obama’s job approval rating in both their August 16-18 and August 17-19 averages was just 51 percent, the lowest level of his presidency… The 51% job approval rating is identical to two other polls released in recent days conducted by NBC News and the Pew Research Center…
These data confirm anecdotal evidence, and our own view, that the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low. Many veteran Congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats.
UPDATE
Not the best soundbite in the circs:
US President Barack Obama would be fine with serving only one term if he achieved some of his most audacious goals, like his embattled health care overhaul, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
UPDATE 2
It’s no Joker to mock the poor President:
A Chicago student is at the centre of a censorship storm after a now famous image he created of US President Barack Obama as the Joker from The Dark Knight was removed from Flickr.
If only Flickr had been half so protective of Bush.
===
Sliming our past - as we repeat it
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd said sorry - and “never again”:
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country… To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry....
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
We must “never, never” again take Aboriginal children from their parents? Then explain today’s news:
WELFARE workers have swooped on the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge in northwest NSW, removing more than 40 Aboriginal children from decrepit homes in shanty towns. Those removed included a four-day-old baby who had barely learned to suckle when taken from his mother’s breast, while she was still in the local hospital, recovering from giving birth.
Aboriginal women, stunned by the removals, say it amounts to a ”modern-day Stolen Generation”, but the most recent statistics on child removals show Aboriginal children are being taken from their parents in numbers much greater than the Stolen Generations… Nationwide, Aboriginal children comprise just 4.4 per cent of all children, and yet make up 24 per cent of all children in care.
The choice is this. Either we are still imposing the racist policies Rudd condemned only last year, or we’re just rescuing even more of the children who truly did need rescuing by the officials Rudd so recklessly accused last year of “injustice”.
I’d say this simply confims there was no “stolen generations”. After all, no one can name even 10 of the up to 100,000 children we allegedly stole to - as Professor Robert Manne put it - ”help keep White Australia pure” in what to Aborigines was a “Holocaust”. Not 10.
===
What’s overheated is the reporter
Andrew Bolt
Seth Borenstein of AP beat the Big Panic drum this week:
The world’s oceans this summer are the warmest on record. The National Climatic Data Center, the government agency that keeps weather records, says the average global ocean temperature in July was 62.6 degrees. That’s the hottest since record-keeping began in 1880. The previous record was set in 1998.
Um, false:
The false claim got a big run. The correction ...?
UPDATE
One of the country’s leading warming experts is furious about this in comments below. But guess where his fury is directed?
===
Why should Frank be nice to rude nuts?
Andrew Bolt
I don’t admire Barney Frank’s politics or political legacy. But I think the criticism of the way he dealt with this heckler is unjustified. I wish only that I had the front and wit to so say what needs saying in such a circumstance. Ditto with the criticism of Frank over this:
===
Breach birth
Andrew Bolt
A baby is now just unwanted goods, delivered in a breach of a trade contract and to be sent back to the warehouse?
A MAN who fathered a baby with a prostitute has taken legal action to stop the woman seeking child support payments from him for the child’s upbringing.
The married man argues the child is potentially a breach of the Trade Practices Act as there was an implied term of “contract” between clients and sex workers that women would take measures to avoid pregnancy.
Thank profusely the magistrate who - unlike the father, sadly - sees not a product before him but a baby:
The magistrate ruled the circumstances of the conception made no difference to the child’s entitlements under the Child Support Scheme and ordered the man to keep paying support for the child.
===
End of a beautiful friendship
Andrew Bolt
Anti-war hysteric Cindy Sheehan was useful when she campaigned against George Bush, but now that’s she’s campaigning against Barack Obama on precisely the same issue ... well, the media says “enough”.
UPDATE
How the ABC’s Charlie Gibson lost interest in Sheehan. Lost a lot of interest.
===
Could there possibly be a pattern?
Andrew Bolt
The Rudd Government has added al-Shabaab to its list of proscribed terrorist organisations, which to the trained eye suggests a certain patterm:
Abu Sayyaf Group
Al Qa’ida
Al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI) (formerly listed as Al-Zarqawi and TQJBR)
Al-Qa’ida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)
Al-Shabaab
Ansar al-Islam (formerly known as Ansar al-Sunna)
Asbat al-Ansar (AAA)
Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades
Hizballah External Security Organisation
Islamic Army of Aden (IAA)
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)
Jamiat ul-Ansar (formerly known as Harakat Ul-Mujahideen)
Jemaah Islamiyah
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ)
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Recognising a certainly commonality in recent crimes, the Government has reluctantly announced it’s introducing racial profiling of those entering Australia:
INTERNATIONAL crime gangs infiltrating capital cities to run fraud or pickpocket stings have prompted a crackdown on visa applications. Immigration Minister Chris Evans said his department had increased “safeguard profiles” for Bulgarian and Romanian online visa applications, leading to more manual checks of applicants fitting profiles of interest.
More seriously, the problem with screening for extremists and jihad-bait is that the second generation of immigrants tend to be more radical than the first. This has profound implications for immigration policy - implications generally thought too rude to publicly discuss or concede.
===
President Obama Goes Into Preacher Mode on Health Care
By Bill O'Reilly
The battle continues between the Obama administration and those Americans who oppose big government health care. This week the president made an appeal to religious people, saying it is a moral obligation to provide health care to those who do not have it and criticizing those who oppose his plan:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There's been a lot of misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness. These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation, and that is that we look out for one another.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
"Talking Points" somewhat agrees with the president. Americans should look out for each other, but there are smart ways to do that and not so smart ways.
President Obama's health care vision is confusing. It also may bankrupt the nation. That does not sound smart to me. The American people do not want to invest trillions of dollars in a big government program that is confusing. That would be insane. If President Obama could articulate exactly how the trillion-dollar investment would help all Americans, I believe he might succeed in his quest to make health care more accessible to all.
Americans are a generous people. We give more money to the poor than any other country on Earth. But if you harm the fundamental economy of the nation, you are hurting far more people than you are helping, and that is what the president does not seem to understand.
It is a fact that since the president has been in office, the United States has spent more money than at any other time in history, and now he wants another trillion-dollar entitlement. The president says in the long-run it will all be cost efficient, but the Congressional Budget Office says that's baloney. So Americans are rightly skeptical.
On Thursday, a Pew study states that just 49 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party. That is down from 62 percent last winter.
The bottom line: Wild government spending has many Americans very concerned.
Once again, "Talking Points" does not oppose improving the nation's health care system, but it can be done in a smart way with strict federal oversight on insurance companies, more competition and tax breaks for folks and employers who buy health insurance.
The far left doesn't want to hear it because those loons want income redistribution and see government-run health care as a way to do that. But clear-thinking Americans understand this whole deal is screwed up. The country needs a fresh start on health care.
No comments:
Post a Comment