Sunday, August 30, 2009

Headlines Sunday 30th August 2009

10 years:E Timor celebrates Independence
Australia's Governor-General has travelled to East Timor as the country celebrates 10 years of Independence. - ALP opposed this ten years ago. - ed.

Obama pays tribute to Ted Kennedy
Obama paid tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy at a funeral service in Boston today.

Northern Territory man claims his cat can swear

A MAN claims his pet cat is a bit too brainy for his own good and can speak English - a total of seven different words so far, including the F-word.

NSW asks: How many have you slept with?
The NSW government is asking people how many sexual partners they've had as part of a new campaign to get people to use condoms, get tested for STIs and seek treatment if needed.

Gov to apologise to abused, neglected
A formal apology will be made to hundreds of thousands of Australians who were abused and neglected as children. - but not to me - ed.

Schoolboy beaten to death during recess
JAI Morcom, 15, allegedly stepped in to stop a schoolyard fight over a lunch table. It cost him his life.

'Stop my daughter getting pregnant again'
SHE'S had at least six children, all to different fathers. One, police believe, has been murdered. Now her mum begs "no more babies".

Eight fires rage in southern NSW
The Rural Fire Service is currently battling eight fires across southern NSW.

Letters naming Lin killers are false
Two anonymous letters purpotedly naming the killers of the Lin family have been proven false....

Vietnam vets begin journey home
The bodies of two Australian servicemen missing in action in Vietnam have begun their final journey...... - home to the ALP government which spurned them. - ed.

Rates rise would be 'insanity'
ECONOMISTS say Reserve Bank should wait until next year before considering raising the cash rate.

Seven dead in trailer park massacre
POLICE have discovered bodies of seven people reportedly shot to death in a trailer park in the US.
=== Comments ===
Right to a future free of UN meddling
Piers Akerman
AUSTRALIANS should be grateful to United Nations special rapporteur on indigenous human rights James Anaya for the totally unrealistic picture he has painted of Australia’s Aborigines. - I think it a mistake for Anaya to have drawn his conclusions from watching “Australia” and “Rabbit Proof Fence”. Or possibly he read extensively from Wikipedia.
On the issue of Wikipedia, I note that an anonymous person tried to edit Tripodi’s reference from this ..
His early career was marked by a series of public allegations. In October 2000, he was accused of sexually assaulting an Australian Democrats staffer at a Parliament House, Sydney New South Wales Parliament House function the month before. The complainant made an initial statement to the NSW Police, but withdrew it the following day. It was later alleged that one of the police officers who investigated the original complaint was a member of Tripodi’s branch of the ALP. An investigation found no evidence of inappropriate action by the police officer.
and
In 2001, the manager of a committee chaired by Tripodi took out an apprehended violence order (AVO) against the MP after he publicly opposed a development application by her husband for a tavern opposite a primary school in Tripodi’s electorate.
The AVO was withdrawn shortly afterward, and it was subsequently revealed that a number of similar AVO applications had been lodged against others who opposed her husband’s business interests.
Both incidents are periodically raised in parliament by the Opposition.
Tripodi was also accused of branch stacking. In 1996, it was reported that he paid almost $7000 in cash to the ALP head office to fund a “branch stack”
with this
and from 1995 to 2001 Mr Tripodi rather than focussing on political machinations, decided that the State’s finances and infrastructure are of paramount importance.
---
The UN is less answerable to Australians than Wikipedia. The UN is more clearly influenced by left wingers. The appalling abuses of Rwanda were never a lesson to those they warned regarding UN excess.
Thank you, Piers, for highlighting another ALP magic show in which Rudd shrieks he has to ‘do something.’ Anaya is a highly paid pawn of the corrupt. - ed
===
SHE DIED SO THAT THE FOOD ALLERGEN LABELING AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT COULD LIVE
Tim Blair
Mark Steyn assembles a Mary Jo Kopechne death panel:
• Joan Vennochi wrote in the Boston Globe: “Like all figures in history — and like those in the Bible, for that matter — Kennedy came with flaws. Moses had a temper. Peter betrayed Jesus. Kennedy had Chappaquiddick, a moment of tremendous moral collapse.”
Moses, Peter, Jesus ... but no mention of Kopechne. Next:
• Ted Sorensen put it in Time magazine: “Both a plane crash in Massachusetts in 1964 and the ugly automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 almost cost him his life.”
Again, Kopechne isn’t mentioned. As for the accident almost costing Kennedy’s life … he was healthy enough shortly after it to swim 500 feet back to his hotel.
• As Teddy’s biographer Adam Clymer wrote, Edward Kennedy’s “achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne.”
Why might that be? Perhaps her name isn’t mentioned very often. By the way, more people remember this description of Clymer than remember his name. And the finest Kopechne execution of them all:
• At the Huffington Post, Melissa Lafsky mused on what Mary Jo “would have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history . . . Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.”
Via CL. In other tragedy news, Iowahawk farewells Norman V. “Norm” Snitker, whose vast achievements were overshadowed by the mysterious 1981 death of 24-year-old Rhonda Lee Reinke:
On Christmas morning, Snitker phoned the La Crosse sherriff’s department to report that, “oh yeah, I think Rhonda fell in the curd tank at the old dairy plant on Highway KR. Hurry please, help help.”

When deputies arrived with emergency graters, they discovered Reinke’s lifeless body entombed in a 2000-pound cheese wheel.
Read on for further analysis of Cheddarquidick and the Snitker curse.
===
SEAR IT INTO YOUR MEMORIES
Tim Blair
One year after the world learned not to clean lawnmowers in bedrooms while smoking, another life-extending breakthrough: don’t check fuel levels by using a cigarette lighter.
===
EGG SQUASHED
Tim Blair
Actress and filmmaker Rachel Ward watches a junior rugby game, and is put in mind of local film funding:
I went to my son’s rugby match last weekend. I saw myself and the recent crop of Australian filmmakers embodied in some small whippersnapper, who cradling the ball like a fragile egg, dared to duck and dive around snarling overgrown beasts on the field, almost making it to the try line, only to be laid flat by a succession of spoilsports who, one after the other, threw themselves on the lad, squashing the precious egg and all hopes of a rare victory.
Several readers have taken issue with Ward’s metaphor, but it’s actually perfect. Australian filmmakers are losers who will only triumph if the competition stands aside. Works for me. By the way, I hope that none of the “snarling overgrown beasts” opposing the egg boy were of Islander background, because, hey, that would be inappropriate.

UPDATE. Michael Coulter: “Why on earth do we even want an Australian film industry?”

UPDATE II. Dave Carter:
It is a revealing insight into the Australian film industry that Rachel Ward can watch a football match and think of film funding while elsewhere a creative person might look at a football match and think of a film idea.
===
HEEL THYSELF
Tim Blair
Lawyer Shana Peete:
“As awful as it sounds, I think juries want to see ladies in heels.”
Not just juries:

UPDATE. Speaking of Sarah Palin, whose heels are displayed above, here’s Ron Rosenbaum:
As a liberal myself, I was amazed by the obtuseness of the liberal reaction to Sarah Palin’s “death panels” quote. They fell into a trap because all too many were blinded by their class-conscious, snobbish disdain for Palin, who, whatever else you think of her, is one cagey operator …

They couldn’t believe that Sarah Palin was capable of something as canny as that deadly “death panels” phrase. They couldn’t see that it was a metaphoric shorthand for something real. Instead they thought she was too dumb, that she meant it literally … “Death panels” was a Lenny Bruce black-humored kind of line and she proved herself far hipper than the terminally square liberals who didn’t get it.
They’re not so good at this “nuance” thing.

UPDATE II. Palin’s doing OK, but another former US politician struggles:
Ticket sales for Bill Clinton’s speech Saturday at the CNE have been much slower than expected, forcing organizers to reconfigure the stadium layout and offer fairgoers $5 tickets at the door.

About 7,000 advance tickets are sold for the 4 p.m. event, a far cry from the 25,000 people expected when it was announced two weeks ago
===
$20m spent wisely is the big adventure for tourism
By Tim Blair
AUSTRALIA needs a new tourism theme. According to trade minister Simon Crean, we've got to have "a better way to define our identity".
Who knew that identity definition was such a crucial factor with potential tourists? Then again, I could be wrong:
Wolfgang Tourist: "I'm kind of leaning towards summer in Monaco this year."
===
ZIONISTS BULLIED
Tim Blair
Best-selling author Antony Loewenstein reports:
The bullying of the Zionist lobby is legendary and largely unreported by the Western media.
He probably means bullying by the big scary Zionists, but who knows. The boy’s been on a roll lately.
===
GIVE IT TIME
Tim Blair
Personally, I don’t have a problem with the whole minotaur program:

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

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