MALCOLM Turnbull's credibility has hit a new low with revelations he lobbied for an ALP seat. - However, it occurred as Mr Turnbull took on prominence in the Head of State debate regarding Republicanism. Hawke asked Mr Turnbull, not the other way around, and it shows the desperation of the ALP that they bring this up now. - ed.
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. - still no word on who will get the chalice from Rudd - ed.
Tebbutt denies NSW leadership plot
NSW Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt has denied speculation she is plotting an all-female leadership spill with planning minister Kristina Keneally. - still no word on who will get the chalice from Rudd - ed.
O'Farrell slams Rees over Aussie flag
Barry O'Farrell has shot down suggestions by NSW Premier Nathan Rees that the Australian flag should be 'freshened up'.
NSW prosecutors gun it up at conference
The state's senior prosecutor is facing questions over a $110,000 conference where 23 staff were treated to a gala dinner and had machine gun lessons.
'Too early' to determine WA spill impact
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has been called in to manage the clean-up of an oil and gas spill in the Timor Sea off a remote tip of WA.
Drug dog sniffs out $840,000 of meth
A man has been charged with possessing $840,000 of methamphetamine at Sydney Airport after drug dog Reba sniffed out a sports bag in the domestic terminal.
Family of kidnapped Aussie fight on
The families of kidnapped Brisbane photographer Nigel Brennan and freelance Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout say they will continue doing everything possible to secure their earliest release.- except get help from the Rudd government. Maybe he sould have been kidnapped in China? - ed.
China launches lead poisoning probe
Two environmental officials are under investigation after more than 1,300 children were poisoned by......
Wife killer hunts for lonely hearts online
A NOTORIOUS killer, who murdered his wife, uses social networking to find female friends.
Homeless make $50,000 a year begging
THE job's monotonous but begging pays well, with the homeless earning up to $50,000 a year from good Samaritans.
Fat posties told they need to shape up
FAT postal workers will be pulled off the road by Australia Post because they "slow mail delivery".
Australia chasing 546 for fifth Test victory
FoxSports: Australia's openers have survive day three of the fifth Ashes Test at The Oval but are still 466 runs away from victory. - just as well they selected two good batting bowlers in Clark and Johnson and not Hauritz - ed.
Booze banned at GPS rugby matches
TWO of Australia's leading private schools ban fans from drinking alcohol at rugby matches.
Emma Booth, Underbelly's star signing
AUSTRALIAN actress Emma Booth will swap Hollywood for Sydney's Kings Cross with confirmation she will star in the next series of Underbelly.
=== Comments ===
So much for Rudd’s rapport with China
Piers Akerman
THERE is no denying that the Rudd government has exposed itself as a diplomatic dunce in its dealings with China _ and it has only itself to blame. - I like Chinese peoples but despise the mainland government. I make no secret of that. Tricksy Rudd, in chasing a precious UN seat has failed his due diligence. That his failure has gone largely unexamined is not Rudd’s fault. That Rudd has not behaved well with his freedom is his fault. Rudd should never have gone to China to tell Chinese students that Tibet belongs to China. Rudd should never have been allowed to have no policy and so confuse China over the possible acquisition of assets. Rudd should never have allowed his party to be - ed
As another leader elected on a platform of change is finding out, expectation management is the biggest problem when one promises the world and delivers very little. The 24hr news cycle is protecting KRudd from deep analysis, when the taxes and interest rates start to rise the populace will realise what a dudd we have.DD Ball replied to Overflow
Overflow of Diamantina
Tim replied to Overflow
Don’t count on it. My number one rule is - ALWAYS BET ON STUPID. Keating was voted back in even though the recession he caused was making voters lives miserable. Rudd will enjoy the same treatment.
As for Rudd’s relationship with China? He is their bitch ...they will not listen to him ...his job is to follow orders. As half of his family is in China’s employ the chinks figure they don’t need to help him out.
Tim got that right. The conservatives have to fight very hard to get through the spin. It is very easy for a conservative to get press coverage. All they have to do is turn on their own, or sound as if they have. However, the press hide those ALP figures who raise doubts about their direction. This makes it very hard for the average voter to know how bad Rudd is (or Keating was).
It is a little different in the US where the leftwing bias of the press is still monolithic but challenged by a more balanced Fox. Also their congress has the more liberal Republicans voting stupidly while occasionally a moderate Democrat gets it right. Obama has a problem that Clinton didn’t have .. Congress is owned by the Dems and they have been making dumb errors for some three years now .. bringing on the worst of the GFC and constipating good legislation. It may well be that Obama is a one term wonder, but the Republicans will need to make a compelling case and that will mean some form of redemption for Bush policy .. he got a lot right. Australia would be wise to recognize how good Mr Howard’s policies are too. In regards to Mr Howard’s policies, I must say that Mr Turnbull is far better than some have given him credit.
===
BIDEN HIS TIME
Tim Blair
What with all the difficulties facing the US at present, no wonder Joe Biden is working so damn hard.
===
JOKE CONSIDERED
Tim Blair
“Humour,” warns the Age, “is being used to undermine Australia’s reputation in the region.” Josh Gordon reports:
You know you are in real trouble when you become the butt of jokes on the internet.
Take this one doing the rounds in India: A Muslim was seated next to an Australian on a flight from London to Melbourne and when drink orders were taken, the Aussie asked for a rum and Coke, which was placed before him.
The attendant then asked the Muslim if he would like a drink. He replied in disgust, ‘’I’d rather be savagely raped by a dozen whores than let liquor touch my lips.’’
The Aussie handed back his drink and said: ‘’Me too. I didn’t know we had a choice.’’
Reads to me more like a joke about Islamic puritanism. But worrier Gordon writes: “I did chuckle momentarily before considering what such jokes say about us. There are many, and a common theme is that Australians (often Melburnians) are stupid and morally vacuous. And we drink too much.”
===
IDES OF MARCH, WEEDS OF AUGUST
Tim Blair
Tough times for US President Barack “Wee Weed” Obama:
The biggest problem for President Obama in today’s ABC News/Washington Post poll is this: only 49 percent of Americans are confident that he’ll “make the right decisions for the country’s future” – down from 60 percent in April.
Voters still like Obama. His overall job approval is steady at 57 percent. But they’re screaming “listen to us” and “slow down.” And they’re worried he’s getting in over his head.
The Wee Weed is in deep do-do, despite every possible advantage. Don Surber has more.
===
HOT TRENDS IN SCRATCHING POSTS
Tim Blair
Not satire. Genuine.
===
MONEY FOR MISTAKES
Tim Blair
Britain’s Met Office, beloved by Englanders, predicted no particularly wet summer in 2007, only for England to suffer its rainiest summer since 1766. The Met predicted a mild last winter, only for fountains to be frozen solid. And as for their latest prediction:
Despite predicting Britain would bask in a “barbecue summer”, the Met Office admitted the sweltering weather had already peaked and yesterday was the last of it …
The “barbecue summer” prediction was made in April by the Met Office and hundreds of thousands of people subsequently decided to stay in Britain for their summer holidays … But after what can only be described as a soggy summer, many have been left cursing the meteorologists, who have been forced to defend their science and their bonuses.
Bonuses? These bozos get bonuses? Oh, yes indeed:
The Met Office was revealed to have paid more than £1million in annual bonuses to staff for meeting targets, including the accuracy of forecasts.
Note, by the way, that all of the Met’s mistaken forecasts – no rain, mild winters, blisteringly hot summers – fit a warming pattern. Nature defies them. Let’s see how this 2007 call works out:
A [Met] study forecasts that global warming will set in with a vengeance after 2009 …
===
EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED
Tim Blair
Never stand in the way of a good old-fashioned stoning:
Indian villagers went on the rampage on Friday as police tried to enforce a ban on a bizarre annual stone-pelting ritual which often leaves people dead or injured, a local official said.
Predictably:
Officers trying to uphold the ban in two villages in an impoverished central region of the country were subjected to a hail of stones themselves and were forced to withdraw.
And tradition is upheld:
The angry mob then got their way and the ritual went ahead as usual, causing at least two serious injuries.
It’s sort of like an Easter egg hunt, except with more intracerebellar haemorrhaging.
===
GLUBIAK SHOCKED
Tim Blair
“Owen Glubiak took a tour of the new Dallas Cowboys playing facility,” reports the EETimes. “Upon questioning his tour guide about energy usage at the new stadium, the guide’s answers shocked and stunned him.” Poor Owen! Read his terrifying tour tale, if you dare:
I recently just got back from a family wedding in Dallas, Texas. During our stay, we toured around the new Dallas Cowboy’s stadium as my cousin has always been a big fan. The stadium is set to hold 80,000 people with the ability to expand to a 100,000. The structure is beyond big and resembles the alien aircraft in the 1996 film “Independence Day”.
Owen lives in Vermont. Big things scare him.
We took a guided tour of the facility which needless to say was jaw-dropping and not in a good way. There seemed to be only one goal of this stadium: to break records. Largest this, the most number of that, tallest this, it was flat out disgusting at the enormity of resources that were wasted to make this structure.
Not to mention the waste of Owen’s education. He apparently graduated with top academic honors but can’t write a simple sentence.
During the tour, I raised the question, “How much are the utility bills?” The tour guide giggled and said “I’ll get to that in a minute”. About 5 minutes later he pulled together the large group to announce what seemed like an accomplishment in his eyes. “The stadium averages roughly $200,000 in monthly utility bills,” he claims. My brain went wild with figures as I tried to translate that into energy terms.
Tip: use a calculator. It helps prevent brain wildness.
The bottom line is this stadium is just a symbol of excess … The name of the game for this structure was decadence and extravagance and environmental performance was seen as a barricade to both of those.
I wonder what Owen thought of Emperor Obama’s nomination temple. His brain now fully enwildened, Glubiak moves beyond Dallas to question sport in general:
The professional sports industry is increasingly becoming more and more unsustainable even beyond environmental sustainability.
Of course, in the tradition of environmental reporting, this means that everything is doomed:
With every new elaborate and excessive structure that is built, the subsequent rising costs of the average ticket price and an evening at the game because of this new structure, and every black mark (such as the steroid scandal), the professional sporting landscape becomes more ridiculous and more unsustainable and eventually it could implode on itself and take the billions of fans and young athletes who love these sports down with it.
===
All the tribe must be white
Andrew Bolt
Danie Mellor said he was entitled to win Australia’s richest art prize for Aborigines this month because he was an Aboriginal.
So what made this ginger-haired academic and son of an American an Aborigine? Answer: because Mellor’s part-Irish mother was in fact of the a Mamu/Ngadjonji tribe, and thus so was he.
Here is Doreen Mellor (right) of the Mamu/Ngadjonji tribe:
UPDATE
Reader numbers in comments below points out that this is what the Mamu and Ngadonji actually looked like, just by way of contrast:
===
Barbarians at the gates - or through them
Andrew Bolt
Another Perth brawl, this time within metres of the Children’s Court. Neil (in blue) intervened to save the unconscious man, and writes:
I moved to Perth (from Glasgow, Scotland) five years ago, looking for a better quality of life. I didn’t expect to see this level of violence in Perth, especially in broad daylight.
My colleague Mike Sheahan, the football guru, went to Melbourne’s Crown Casino and was likewise astonished and dismayed:
My partner Judy and I were leaving Crown just before 10pm, out of the entrance I will use a dozen times in the next six weeks on the way to the Palladium Room for football functions, including the Brownlow Medal count.
Moments after a man having a smoke outside the sliding glass doors called “Go Pies” to me, a brawl broke out in the foyer between six men, apparently a group of four and a couple of mates. The quartet seemed to turn on the two young men after one of the aggressors was heard to say: “You looking at me?” ...
The four thugs hoed into the other two, arms swinging like windmills in a northerly. It was nothing less than a frenzied attack. They simply assaulted the pair, one thug wielding a dinner fork and, according to another stunned witness, another carrying a dinner knife.
What sickened Sheahan was not just how unprovoked and violent the assault was, but how casually the thugs then walked off, and how little was done to catch them. I note that Sheahan underplayed the racial angle, which I thought was actually relevant in helping to explain the utter contempt for the “other”.
UPDATE
More today on that contempt for the law or any other form of authority:
A POLICE officer has suffered a fractured jaw and eye socket after he was allegedly hit from behind during an incident in Melbourne’s CBD. Police said the attack occurred after a group of men surrounded two plain clothes police officers on licensing duty in Little Bourke St about 12.20am today…
The attack comes after the Sunday Herald Sun revealed police are under orders to patrol Melbourne’s streets in groups of at least three because gangs of thugs have made it too dangerous for them to work in pairs. Melbourne police division chief Supt Stephen Leane said police were no longer patrolling in pairs because of the dangers posed by groups of young thugs, often called together by mobile phone, who confronted officers.
===
Daddy knows best
Andrew Bolt
I certainly do not favor smacking, either, yet in judging who’d know best what kind of parenting works....
New Zealanders voted overwhelmingly to overturn a law that prohibits parents from hitting children, according to the results of a nationwide referendum released Friday, but the government says the law is working and won’t be changed.
The referendum may have had a low turnout, but the rejection was overwhelming:
New Zealanders voted by 88 per cent that a smack should not be a criminal offence.
===
The world has big ears
Andrew Bolt
Another reminder - this time in the Sydney Morning Herald - that the world is now wired, and nowhere is too far to hear:
An article titled “Karzai too weak to fix Afghanistan” appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, August 22.
It was written by Hamish McDonald, a Sydney Morning Herald journalist based in Sydney.
He is not the Hamish MacDonald who is the Australian journalist working for Al-Jazeera in Kabul.
Another reminder, too, on the other hand, that many places are still too near to tell the frank truth. But we already knew that from the journalists who covered Saddam’s Iraq.
===
Libya’s hero, Britain’s shame
Andrew Bolt
The man on the right is a former Libyan intelligence agent who has been convicted of blowing up a jet over Lockerbie and murdering 270 civilians. The man on the left is the Libyan dictator, Muammar al-Gaddafi, celebrating his agent’s early release from jail by the Scottish Government.
Think there’s something profoundly significant and troubling about that picture - something that might affect your future safety, too?
You’d be right.
Scotland says the decision to release Abdel Baset al Megrahi after just eight years was made purely on “compassionate” grounds, since the convicted murderer is dying. Gaddafi’s son says the truth is simply that the British wanted more oil money:
The claim was made by Seif al Islam (right), the son of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, in a television interview filmed as Abdelbaset al Megrahi was flown home.
“In all commercial contracts, for oil and gas with Britain, (Megrahi) was always on the negotiating table,” he said. ”All British interests were linked to the release of Abdelbaset al Megrahi.”
Britain denies this, yet the mere fact that Gaddafi’s son makes the claim - sure to be believed by many - simply underlines how recklessly stupid was the decision to free a man who will now be an inspiration to enemies of the West, and a symbol of both the West’s evil and its weakness.
===
If only the Opposition didn’t hold Rudd back
Andrew Bolt
True, I’ve been critical of the Liberals, too. But the relentless obsession of the media with their failings is mad, and gives Kevin Rudd the worst and easiest possible excuse for a mid-term government - that however hopeless he is, the other mob would have been worse. What stuff-up couldn’t be defended by that low standard?
Take today’s papers. You’d swear it was actually the Liberals who were in power, and in need of a good kicking for their manic spin, their new taxes, their broken promises, their wild spending, their empty promises, their bother with China. You’d also swear, incidentally, that Rudd’s office has been busy seeding some minds:
Laurie Oakes:
JOHN Howard famously exploited the people-smuggling issue in the 2001 election campaign with the dramatic proclamation, “We will decide who comes to this country”. In contrast, Howard’s Liberal heirs now seem to believe that a foreign government - a Communist government at that - should dictate who visits Australia.
Lenore Taylor:
But elsewhere the “bilateral” consensus about how to handle Australia’s relationship with China appeared to be breaking down. The Coalition, which earlier in the year accused Kevin Rudd of being so close to China he was acting like its “roving ambassador”, now says the Prime Minister has been unduly antagonistic and has unnecessarily upset the Chinese. By this analysis the present diplomatic problems are caused not just by a confluence of events largely outside the government’s control—such as Rio Tinto pulling out of the Chinalco deal, China’s frustration at its inability to control iron ore prices, the Stern Hu case and the timing of Kadeer’s visit—but by the government’s, and specifically Rudd’s, actions.
Shaun Carney:
Now, with the Coalition out of office, it is the Liberal Party’s turn to make these sort of mistakes. Why it has worked so assiduously and so fruitlessly to attack Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s approach towards China is anyone’s guess.
Peter Van Onselen:
THE Coalition doesn’t seem able to agree on anything at the moment. The public disagreements over the renewable energy legislation and the concept of an emissions trading scheme are only the beginning of differences of opinion. - Still no discussion by Bolt as to who the next ALP leader will be, despite the urgent need for transition. - ed.
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