Democrats say that the angry "mobs" they've encountered at town hall meetings in recent weeks represent only a small group of distrustful, anti-government constituents. But recent polls show a majority of Americans now oppose President Obama's calls for a nationalized health care plan.
Women's boxing set for 2012 London Olympics
WOMEN boxers are set to pack a punch at the 2012 London Olympics with a crucial International Olympic Committee vote tonight expected to usher in the controversial sport.
Rudd moves to soften terrorism laws
SOFTER anti-terrorism laws considered barely a week after police raided a cell of suspects.
Young pilot calm as she crashed
AIR traffic controllers saw no alarm signs from doomed flight.
City street renaming plan 'racist'
A RACE row is brewing in a quiet city cul-de-sac named Punjab Place, as its residents petition to change the street's name.
Just one sip is too much for teens
PARENTS who let their teens have the occasional sip of champagne or wine are setting them on a path to binge drinking.
Pop star 'banned' from sideshow rides
SHE may have been the biggest star at a humble show but Katy Perry wasn't allowed on its rides.
Tax to drive up funeral costs
GRIEVING families will be hit with a $3.5 million death tax under legislation changes being considered by a state.
Mass exodus of NSW police
POLICE are quitting by the hundreds and more are expected to join the exodus over the State Government's bungled wage dispute.
Playground bomb kills two schoolboys
TWO schoolboys were killed and their brother was badly injured when a bomb exploded in a Pakistan village playground.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Obama's Healthcare Offensive!
With the president's plan in critical condition, how bad is the diagnosis for the Dems?
Stay tuned to FOX News Channel for the latest!
=== Comments ===
Rudd’s new Dark Age falls on Australia
Piers Akerman
The Rudd Labor government will emphatically set Australian on course to a new Dark Age with its nation-destroying emissions trading scheme.
===
Is American Technology Killing Our Military People in Iraq and Afghanistan?
By Bill O'Reilly
Roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), are the most deadly weapons the terrorists have on the battlefield.
In Iraq, more than 2,000 Americans have been killed by IEDs, more than 21,000 injured, many maimed for life. In Afghanistan, 252 have been killed by roadside bombs, more than 1,600 wounded.
It is heartbreaking to visit soldiers and Marines rehabbing their injuries, brave young Americans struggling to put their bodies and lives back together. This is the price of protecting Americans from those who would harm us. This is the result of terrorists who use technology to kill and maim.
Click here to watch Bill's "Talking Points"!
Sources tell "The Factor" that there is a federal investigation underway to find out if any American company sold components for roadside bombs to nefarious people. In May of 2008, and again in October '08, coalition forces discovered unexploded roadside bombs in Iraq and handed them over to the FBI bureau in Baghdad. The FBI discovered that radio frequency modules inside the bombs were part of a shipment made by a U.S. company to Corezing International, a business in Singapore with direct ties to Iran. The bombs, designed to penetrate armor, contained Maxstream XT09-SINA 900 MHz radio frequency modules, which can be used to explode the bombs by remote control.
According to authorities, these modules are still being used today to kill Americans. The FBI will not comment, and "The Factor" believes the investigation may be classified, because information is very hard to come by.
The former chairman of Maxstream, Brad Walters, told "The Factor" the modules are excellent bomb material and that his company legally sold more than a million of them to other companies for a variety of uses. "The Factor" has been told, but cannot confirm, that the General Electric corporation is under suspicion in the case.
You may recall that GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt denied doing business with Iran to "Factor" producer Jesse Watters but a few weeks later admitted GE's dealings with the mullahs to Michael Eisner on a CNBC program. GE's official position is that they stopped taking orders from Iran in 2005, but any American company could ship stuff to a middleman, like Corezing International.
Tuesday, "The Factor" sent a list of questions to GE asking if the company does or did business with Corezing International and what the nature of that business is. GE spokesperson Gary Sheffer said by e-mail: "We do no business with Corezing International and have no record of ever having done so."
To be clear, "The Factor" is not accusing anyone of anything. We are just reporting what we believe to be true. But if any American company did send material to Corezing — again, a major Iranian partner — they must be investigated to the fullest extent. The lives and suffering of our brave military are at stake here.
===
GAIABALL
Tim Blair
Fans brace for the Australian Football League’s upcoming Green Round:
As a reminder to ‘be green’, the centre circles at AFL grounds during this week’s matches will feature the three-arrow recycling logo. AFL umpires will wear green uniforms and goal umpires will use green flags.
Green umpire uniforms on a green playing surface. Can’t see any potential problems there.
Each of the games during the round will incorporate Green Round activities, including a ‘Green Menu’ in the function dining rooms of the Hawthorn v Adelaide clash at the MCG on Friday. All food on the menu will be sourced within a 100 mile radius of the venue.
From where do they usually source their food? Horsham? St Petersburg? The Mekong Delta? In the spirit of a 100-mile barrier, shouldn’t Adelaide be required to forfeit?
Spectators for Richmond v Collingwood on Saturday and Melbourne v Fremantle on Sunday are encouraged to ride their bikes to the MCG.
Fremantle fans better start riding now. This “Green Round” concept apparently came about because the game is under threat:
The issue of climate change affects us all, the game we all know and love is being severely impacted by climate change and sadly it is grass roots football that is copping the worst of it.
Evidence, please? Are players being eaten by polar bears? And if it’s true that climate change is destroying football, is it not time we reverted to local competitions requiring no interstate travel? Why, Victoria Park even has its own railway station.
(Via Infidel Tiger, who emails: “I’m doing my bit to help the AFL go green – winging my way 3000km to the G to watch the Tiges vs. Pies. I’ll offset it by sequestering as much CO2 as I can from Melbourne’s beer supply. What a joke.")
UPDATE. Senator Nick Minchin attempts to right Wong, among others.
===
DON’T DO AS INDIRA NAIDOO
Tim Blair
Former SBS newsreader Indira Naidoo, appearing on tonight’s Q & A, is now described as a climate change activist. Yet only a few years ago she was getting around Sydney in a 5.3 litre V12 Jaguar XJS …
===
GOLF CLUBBED
Tim Blair
The Venezuelan president plans to close two golf courses:
“Let’s leave this clear,” Mr Chávez said during a live broadcast. “Golf is a bourgeois sport.”
Seven courses have already been closed by Chavez. Compared to radio stations, they’re getting off lightly.
===
DEATHS OBSERVED
Tim Blair
Parliament was subdued yesterday following news that nine Australians had been killed in a plane crash on their way to Kokoda. Crikey editor Jonathan Green didn’t share that mood, however:
were all govt MP’s coached on striking a suitably grief struck tone? a fine piece of ensemble work. wonderfully sustained.
As Parliamentary discussion moved on to other subjects, Green – displaying his usual sensitivity – saw another chance for mockery:
an interjection! have these people no heart! don’t they realise Aussie Pilgrims have died this day?
“Aussie Pilgrims”! Ha. Let’s laugh along with Jonathan. And then:
this remains a government in mourning. it’s as if prince albert had just dropped off the twig.
He’s all class, this bloke:
so if we get nine killed in a multi car pile up on the princes highway this evening will all government slump into collective despair?
Well, it’s only nine dead Australians. No big deal. Stand by for another apology.
===
PRESIDENT MEETS THE PEOPLE
Tim Blair
President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats are bringing America together during a series of completely unscripted and plant-free town hall meetings. Let’s listen in on a typically unifying exchange:
OBAMA: … and … uh … that’s how … um … that’s … damn it, Rahm, you’re standing right in front of the thing! … Okay. Got a clear line of sight now. And that’s how the right-wing smear machine tries to take me down, talking about how I’m dependent on my tele … [waits for screen to load] … prompter. Now, how about we hear some questions from you good people.
CROWD: [General clamour: “Me!” “No, pick me!” “Me, me, me!” “Lord, let me walk again!"]
OBAMA: The young blonde-haired girl in the twenty-third row there, seven seats from the aisle, wearing the blue and white dress. You look like you have an important question to … [waits for screen to load] … ask.
GIRL: Thank you Mister Pwesident!
OBAMA: You’re welcome, Tammy.
GIRL: Mister Pwesident, my name is Tammy Wilkerson and I’m vewwy worried about the destwuction of democwacy in our country. There were people outside the town hall tonight with signs calling you a cu … a cun … [waits for screen to load] … a cunning political tactician whose town hall meetings are mere window dwessing for a health policy even you don’t understand. What’s that about, Mister Pwesident?
OBAMA: Oh, ha ha ha ha ha ha Tammy! Ha ha ha ha ha! Isn’t she just so adorable and spontaneous? Ha ha ha ha!
GIRL: The answer to your qwestion, Tammy … oops.
OBAMA: The answer to your question, Tammy, is that some people don’t understand why we’re trying to help them. They think they can look after themselves better than we can. Just imagine that, Tammy.
GIRL: You’re going to hell.
OBAMA: What?
GIRL: [Waits for screen to load] You’re going to … help my gwandpa, aren’t you Mister Pwesident? He’s all sick with acute wenal failure. Please wescue him. He’s not a wegistered Wepublican or anything like that.
OBAMA: You know, Tammy, before your question tonight, I probably would have left him to die. But now I won’t. You have my word on it.
CROWD: [Wild applause]
OBAMA: And you can tell your “gwandma” we’ll look after her, too, sweetie. You tell her that.
CROWD: [Deep sighs of warm appreciation]
GIRL: With wespect, sir, I am 18 years old. My speech defect should not be a subject of widicule, especially during discussion of …
BROADCAST TERMINATED
UPDATE. Life ‘n’ death laffs with His Obamaness.
UPDATE II. Now, this is the way to run a town hall meeting!
===
FORCE OF INJUSTICE
Tim Blair
Guess the author and subject:
I have been writing about it for years. But it’s only now, when I’m caught in the middle of it, that the full force of this injustice hits me. Like everyone else here I feel powerless, unstrung as I watch disaster unfolding in slow motion.
Is it:
• An Iranian dissident on arrests in Tehran?
• A newly-discovered final chapter from Anne Frank’s diary?
• An Australian journalist watching the final 30 minutes of Balibo?
• Peter Roebuck on day two of the Fourth Test?
The answer is in comments.
===
HE PROMISED CHANGE …
Tim Blair
… and change he delivers. Jim Treacher has more on the smartest president evar.
===
SO TAKE THE BUS
Tim Blair
Senator Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) delivers the quote of the week:
“Climate change is very real. Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I’m flying.”
===
Yale’s shariah press
Andrew Bolt
Yale University, through sheer fear, decides to follow the rulings of the most censorious Muslim fanatics rather than defend the spirit of free inquiry that was once a glory of Western civilisation:
So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí.
The book’s author, Jytte Klausen, a Danish-born professor of politics at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass., reluctantly accepted Yale University Press’s decision not to publish the cartoons. But she was disturbed by the withdrawal of the other representations of Muhammad. All of those images are widely available, Ms. Klausen said by telephone, adding that “Muslim friends, leaders and activists thought that the incident was misunderstood, so the cartoons needed to be reprinted so we could have a discussion about it.”
===
It should have been defeated because it’s insane
Andrew Bolt
Good decision, for bad reasons:
The Government’s contentious emissions trading laws have been voted down as expected in the Senate.
UPDATE
A terrific speech against Rudd’s scheme by Senator Nick Minchin, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, who truly does think it’s insane:
Not only is the timing of this legislative initiative to be condemned, so too should the very name given to this package of legislation be condemned by this parliament… For no more than base political purposes, the government has called its emissions trading scheme a ‘carbon pollution reduction scheme’. This is of course the perpetuation of a cruel hoax on the Australian people, childishly simplistic and misleading. The scheme proposed does not deal with carbon. It purports to deal with something quite separate—carbon dioxide emissions—and the scheme does not deal with pollution.
Whatever the climatic role of human induced emissions of CO2, CO2 is not by any stretch of the imagination a pollutant. CO2 is, as we know, a clear, odourless, colourless gas vital to life on earth… Indeed the Rudd government knows it too. Its own environment department’s website has a link to the official Australian National Pollutant Inventory, which lists 93 pollutants. Surprise, surprise, carbon dioxide is not listed among them....
It is also typical of this deceitful and spin-driven government to so cynically misrepresent the nature of carbon dioxide. Of course this whole extraordinary scheme, which would do so much damage to Australia, is based on the as yet unproven assertion that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are the main driver of global warming… The Rudd government arrogantly refuses to acknowledge that there remains a very lively scientific debate about the extent of and the main causes of climate change, with thousands of highly reputable scientists around the world of the view that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are not and cannot be the main driver of the small degree of global warming that occurred in the last 30 years of the 20th century…
Australia contributes a little over one per cent of the planet’s CO2 emissions. If we were to completely shut down the Australian economy tomorrow, Australia’s
CO2 emissions would be fully replaced by China within nine months. It is indisputably the case that nothing Australia does on its own can have any impact whatsoever on the earth’s climate. The deceit perpetrated by climate change fanatics that an Australian ETS will save the Barrier Reef is utterly contemptible…
The cruel joke is that all those thousands of jobs to be destroyed by Labor’s CPRS will be in vain, because this scheme will make absolutely no difference to the global climate
At least a quarter of Rudd’s front bench will know every word of this to be true, and yet they do not speak. One day, when this insanity has finally blown itself out, they will have to account - to themselves as much as to the rest of us - for their failure to defend not just reason but the best interests of their country.
===
Someone sure thinks the mat is out
Andrew Bolt
Yet another:
A boat with 77 people on board has been intercepted in the Indian Ocean north of Christmas Island… It is the 18th boat to be intercepted in Australian waters this year.
===
Dropping the green ball
Andrew Bolt
Andrew Demetriou and the rest of his Labor-leaning AFL board have organised a ”green round” in the very week that Kevin Rudd has demanded the Senate pass his emissions trading scheme, and even got Rudd to launch it:
As a reminder to ‘be green’, the centre circles at AFL grounds during this week’s matches will feature the three-arrow recycling logo. AFL umpires will wear green uniforms and goal umpires will use green flags… Each of the games during the round will incorporate Green Round activities, including a ‘Green Menu’ in the function dining rooms of the Hawthorn v Adelaide clash at the MCG on Friday. All food on the menu will be sourced within a 100 mile radius of the venue.
Wearing green shirts and eating “local” will save the world from frying to hell?
If Demetriou really wanted to make a difference to emissions - and not just to Labor’s vote - he might in fact cut emissions by:
Banning interstate teams from flying
Rescheduling the night matches so the lights don’t have to be switched on.
Asking fans to stay at home rather than train or drive in.
But, no, it’s foods imported from further than 100kms that Demetriou has in his sights. Oh, and he wants fans to cycle in, not drive. Which suggests that Demetriou, if he’s serious, has only limited use for some of the lavish extras at his yeti-footprint of a mansion:
AFL supremo Andrew Demetriou has splashed out more than $7 million on a Toorak mansion complete with lap pool, wine cellar and five-car garage.
The pool, no doubt, is no longer heated (think of the planet!). And the cars in the garage are all growing cobwebs, I’m sure. As for the wines in the cellar, they must surely be limited to vineyards on Mornington Peninsula, the Yarra Valley and the Bellarine Peninsula. Nothing South Australian or from the Hunter Valley. And no longer will you find a drop of Cypriot wine in the house, for fear of the harm it will do to the planet.
Demetriou, a father of four carbon dioxide emitters, will no doubt consider himself lucky that only now do we realise the damage being done by importing things:
Mr Demetriou, the son of Cypriot immigrants, made his fortune in the dental import business.
More on that gassy business:
It’s based in northern Italy. We’ve got a factory in Brazil, one in India now. Exports to about 70 countries.
But not during the “green round”, of course. Buy local!
But should Demetriou now stop these imports, too:
This board of directors includes Demetriou, wife Symone and couple Mirabai Winford and Sanjay Gill, who founded Purebaby, a brand for babies and toddlers that sources garments made of organic cotton in Indian factories that eschew sweatshop conditions.
All up, I’d suggest that Demetriou actually has a carbon footprint far, far bigger than that of almost every fan he’s asked to cycle to the football this weekend. If he really thought our planet faced doom from our gases, you might expect he’d suit his actions to his catastrophic beliefs.
===
Which planet is Carr on?
Andrew Bolt
Was Science Minister Senator Kim Carr trying to contact Kevin Rudd, or is he on a different planet himself?
Today he launched a bizarre scheme encouraging citizens to send messages into outer space with the hope of discovering other beings. And, by logging on to a website, hundreds have already sent missives to Gliese 581d, the only know planet that - since it resembles Earth – could support life.
Some have asked aliens to help find lost socks, while others invited non-earthlings from planet Gliese 581d over for a cup of tea.
In what is believed to be the world’s first attempt to make contact with the planet, Mr Carr himself got the ball rolling.
‘Hello from Australia on the planet we call Earth,’ he wrote.
I’d have hoped our Science Minister had something better to do with his time. Like find an explanation for the fact that while man’s emissions have grown, the world’s temperature has fallen. Or is finding aliens easier?
===
Witch is why we’re hurting
Andrew Bolt
As I say, we’re on a retreat from reason:
THE Victorian Ombudsman has criticised a left-leaning inner-city council for spending $620,000 of ratepayers’ money on a self-styled “white witch” to assist with “change management”.
Port Phillip Council’s ad hoc but costly arrangement with pranic healing and astrology devotee Caroline Shahbaz was savaged in a report by the Ombudsman tabled in the Victorian parliament yesterday...It has also emerged that the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has used Ms Shahbaz as a consultant, as have the Victorian Department of Planning, Parks Victoria, Melbourne Water and the Reserve Bank.
If you were wondering what kind of irrational, superstition-raddled brains left us with water supplies critically low, forests dangerously overloaded with fuel, housing land too scarce, and useless wind farms scarring the coastline to fight a warming that actually stopped a decade ago, now you know. It’s the kind of minds that took a witch for their guru.
===
Start counting the UN’s scary millions
Andrew Bolt
Two years ago a British judge reprimanded Al Gore for falsely claiming he knew of global warming refugees. Undeterred, United Nations officials take Gore’s scare and amp it up:
“Climate change will displace 25-50 million people by next year. The situation will be the worst in the poorer countries,” says Koko Warner of the UN University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security.
At least 25 million - and as many as 50 million - global warming refugees within the next 16 months? From zero to at least a million a month until December next year? Is the UN really pinning its reputation on this prediction?
I’m predicting that by the end of next year the number of global warming refugees will be closer to one - Ms Koko Warner, to be specific, who will deserve the boot from her UN University position for such ludicrous scare-mongering.
(Via The ShadowLands, who suspects that “by 2010” Warner actually means we’ll have these refugees by next January.)
UPDATE
The UN’s map suggests even Australians from Albany, Kangaroo Island, Tiwi Island and King Island could be among those refugees.
UPDATE 2
Since hurricane and typhoon activity is actually decreasing, not increasing, does that mean - by Koko Warner’s arithmetic - that global warming is actually preventing, rather than causing, “climate change refugees”?
UPDATE 3
UN chief hysteric Ban Ki Moon flew to South Korea to warn of the apocalyptic consequences of belching out more gases of the kind that he just blew out the back of his jet:
Climate change, as all previous speakers have already stated, is the fundamental threat to humankind… The damage to national economies will be enormous. The human suffering will be incalculable… We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.
Just four months? Which, of course, means that if no world-wide deal to truly slash emissions has been reached by December, it will be too late to save the planet anyway, and we may just as well party until the end of the world.
Right? So put it in your diary. By December, we must see millions of climate change refugees and a UN-brokered deal to save the planet. If we don’t see either, there’s no point in any more panic. By then we’ll know the UN’s warnings are false, or the UN’s solution is too late.
UPDATE
The Climate Institute can’t wait for the UN predictions to come true. And I mean literally can’t wait until next year:
Environmental problems caused and exacerbated by climate change are currently responsible for an estimated 50 million refugees worldwide...
Where are these 50 million, then?
UPDATE 2
Reader Victoria 3220 traces the the UN’s claim of 50 million climate refugees by next year to its laughable source:
A fact in 2009 is based on a probability in 2001, which was based on a 1995 ‘first-cut’ estimate, which is based on a 1993 unsupported assumption (roughly estimated). Ah, science at its best.
Read on for her astonishing account of how this preposterous claim was made without any attempt to actually count the people allegedly fleeing global warming:
===
Climate alarmist of the month
Andrew Bolt
The prize goes to Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow:
Climate change is very real. Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I’m flying.
UPDATE
What would you trust more as a measure of turbulence up there? Stabenow’s bouncing buttocks at high altitude, or this study showing no increase in storms and hurricanes:
A NOAA-led team of scientists has found that the apparent increase in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes since the late 19th and early 20th centuries is likely attributable to improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques that better detect short-lived storms.
UPDATE 2
Stabenow takes Barack Obama on yet another gassy flight so he can see for himself the effect of global warming on her trembling instrumentation.
UPDATE 3
More trembling should be detected at this terrifying news:
Freshmen Mark Udall of Colorado and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire will be joining the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the 111th Congress, along with Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Evan Bayh of Indiana.
Such a woman now helps decide America’s energy future?
===
No sceptics at The Age
Andrew Bolt
Hugh Morgan launches climatologist Dr Garth Paltridge’s new book, The Climate Caper, and wonders why some reporters are suddenly struck deaf, dumb and blind:
IT’S a privilege to be asked to launch this important book. My mind goes back to the launching of Bill Kininmonth’s book Climate Change: A Natural Hazard in 2004 by John Zillman. That launch was written up in The Age by Melissa Fyfe, then The Age’s environmental reporter. Although she was actually in attendance, her report suggested otherwise. More recently we had Ian Plimer’s launch at the Windsor, with more than 300 people in attendance. The Age did not report on that event. In Perth, Dennis Jensen launched David Archibald’s Solar Cycle 24. That well-attended event did get a brief run in the Perth media. Now we have The Climate Caper and I’ll lay odds on that The Age will not report on this event. I mention those books because they have been written by four Australian scientists who have been, or still are, at the top of their professions. All four are global warming sceptics, in the sense that they see anthropogenic emissions of CO2 as having very little, if any, impact on the world’s climate.
Cut & Paste notes:
Morgan was right. No report on The Climate Caper in The Age yesterday. Just a report trying to discredit an eminent international scientist and sceptic…
===
Wong’s seas aren’t so scary, either
Andrew Bolt
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong last month brushed aside objections that the atmosphere was not warming, as she’d claimed, but had in fact cooled since 2001, against the predictions of warming alarmists.
Actually, she now said, the true measure of climate change was in the warming seas:
(I)n terms of a single indicator of global warming, change in ocean heat content is most appropriate.
As I said at the time, one problem with her claim was that the seas also seem to have been cooling lately. And now comes a new peer-reviewed paper from Physics Letters which rejects alarmists claims that the oceans are storing lots of heat that will eventually be released to further warm the globe. In fact, it says, the climate models seem to exaggerate this risk, too:
We determine Earth’s radiation imbalance by analyzing three recent independent observational ocean heat content determinations for the period 1950 to 2008 and compare the results with direct measurements by satellites. A large annual term is found in both the implied radiation imbalance and the direct measurements. Its magnitude and phase confirm earlier observations that delivery of the energy to the ocean is rapid, thus eliminating the possibility of long time constants associated with the bulk of the heat transferred. Longer-term averages of the observed imbalance are not only many-fold smaller than theoretically derived values, but also oscillate in sign. These facts are not found among the theoretical predictions.
Three distinct time intervals of alternating positive and negative imbalance are found: 1960 to the mid 1970s, the mid 1970s to 2000 and 2001 to present. The respective mean values of radiation imbalance are ?0.15, +0.15, and ?0.2 to ?0.3. These observations are consistent with the occurrence of climate shifts at 1960, the mid-1970s, and early 2001 identified by Swanson and Tsonis.
Again we must ask Wong: what is your evidence that man’s gases are warming the planet, when the evidence now is that the planet has been cooling for the past eight years, even when our gases are increasing?
True, we may be pushed by an El Nino into a (very small) warming trend very soon, but the big break in the warming until now is a puzzle.
===
Silt of the earth
Andrew Bolt
If true, who’d cry at the punishment?
TWO powerful unions face potential financial ruin following a bitter industrial dispute at the West Gate Bridge that court documents allege included numerous death threats, a life-threatening car chase and attacks on property…
Among the exchanges recorded in the Australian Building and Construction Commission’s statement of claim (to the Federal Court) were mobile phone calls to a ‘’scab’’ labour hire worker on the project during an April 1 car chase. The calls, it is alleged, were from the phones of workers who had been earlier fired from another labour hire firm used on the project, Civil Pacific.
‘’You’re f---ed. We know where you live. We are going to kill you and your family,’’ said one caller during the chase...Two chasing cars eventually cut in front of the Land Cruiser (with non-union workers) causing a collision, the statement says, bringing the traffic to a stop…
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union knew of and authorised the chase, the commission alleges, or had ‘’refrained’’ from stopping it. The union said yesterday that it would vigorously defend all claims against it and its members.
The ...Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the CFMEU ... are accused of about 90 breaches of the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, and the unions could be liable for millions in fines, with an April estimate of at least $7 million.
===
Suicide N-bombers
Andrew Bolt
Think Iraq was a worry?
TERRORISTS have attacked three of Pakistan’s military nuclear facilities in the past two years and there is a serious danger that they will gain access to the country’s atomic arsenal, according to a journal published by the US Military Academy at West Point....
The most serious attack was a strike by two suicide bombers on the Wah cantonment ordnance complex, thought to be one of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons assembly plants, about 32km northwest of Islamabad, in August last year. The incident, which claimed 70 lives, was widely reported but little mention was made of the nuclear risk.
===
At a million dollars each, you’d expect less poverty
Andrew Bolt
How much longer can we justify the insane cost of building and maintaining welfare ghettos in the remote bush, far from real jobs?
THE paralysis engulfing Aboriginal housing in the Northern Territory has spread to Western Australia, with the Barnett government admitting a $496million federal injection will not fix the crisis....
WA Treasurer and Housing Minister Troy Buswell—who revealed in December that 2400 houses in the state needed upgrades or replacing at a cost of $500m—said the challenge was daunting. Figures obtained by The Australian show that just five new remote homes and 27 refurbishments were completed in the first half of this year, at a cost of more than $6m.
Between $500,000 and $1 million for each new welfare house? To think how much more good that money could do for Aborigines, spent wisely. In fact, a family could live off a very generous income of up to $50,000 a year (in addition to the dole and other welfare payments) if you simply invested just that housing money and gave them the interest. They could then sort out themselves where they lived and in what - and take responsibility for that choice.
===
Hopey-changey thing missing
Andrew Bolt
Believe the polls or believe this even better measure:
Anti-Obama memorabilia—from T-shirts to bumper stickers to buttons—is increasingly emerging in the marketplace as the president’s economic and health care policies polarize supporters and detractors…
“It really started peaking about a month ago,” said Amy Maniatis, vice president of marketing at the online seller Cafepress.com. “...Whereas we had the campaign of Obama centered around hope, and it was a very optimistic message, now they’re asking: ‘How’s that hopey-changey thing going?’ “
The Cafepress.com store, a cultural barometer of sorts for political and social expression, offers about 3 million Obama products, she said, but now is up to about 1 million that are “anti-Obama-oriented,” reflecting a “significant shift in the last couple of months than what was the trend a year ago.”
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