Battlers spared bankruptcy shame
THOUSANDS of battlers will be saved from the pain of forced bankruptcy, under new laws. - it isn't shame that worries me about bankruptcy - ed.
Ambos 'on grog run' ignore patient
A MAN having a seizure had to wait for an ambulance while a paramedic went to the pub to pick up alcohol for an office party.
Schapelle Corby 'clinically insane'
A psychiatrist has diagnosed Schapelle Corby “clinically insane” after spending a week in her jail cell.
Telcos' poor service driving Aussies mad
Despite a campaign to improve customer service, telephone companies are still driving Australians crazy, with one telco named as the nation's worst offender.
Troubled Sydney hospital facility closed
Dodgy building work has forced the closure of parts of a troubled Sydney hospital for the next 14 weeks.
Seven-year-old hit by P-plate driver
A seven-year-old boy is fighting for life after being hit by a car being driven by a female P-plater in Sydney's north.
Accused model killer found dead
A reality TV contestant wanted over the brutal murder of his former wife has been found dead.
Malaysia delays caning model
Malaysian authorities have abruptly postponed the caning of a model for drinking beer until after......
Security trainer admits rorting system
Security guard trainer Dru Hyland bragged to a friend that he'd made $150,000 in just five months......
Shoppers pinch basic groceries
RETAILERS say their businesses are being treated like charities with tough economic times fuelling a spike in grocery theft.
Mobile phone giant to launch mini laptop
NOKIA, the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, to launch its first mini laptop, the Booklet 3G
===Journalists Corner ===
With unprecedented influence ... unlimited control and the power to make sweeping changes --
Glenn reveals the truth behind their policies and their shocking plans for your future!
===
Presidential R & R
Jesse Watters hits Obama's vacation hot spot to see what's cooking!
===
U.S. Marine Speaks at Town Hall!
He goes nuclear on Democrats over health care -- He shares his side of the story with Sean!
===
Obama's Plan
Is public outrage over health care the real reason for his sick poll numbers?
=== Comments ===
British toadies insult the ghosts of Lockerbie
Piers Akerman
NOT since the pre-World War II grovelling by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to German dictator Adolf Hitler has there been a display of grotesque obsequiousness as the British Government’s decision to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi. - This is not the sole example of how Brown has let down his people, creating a circumstance of unfairness. The left wing seem to claim to own equity arguments. The vast conspiracy theories involving Jewish bankers supported with mythical allusions to allegedly historical events. The vast expenditures of public money on mates, so that effective public policy is diminished to ineffective praxis. The meddling with schooling so that accountability is reduced and propaganda promoted. Grandstanding on social liberties from voting age through drinking age.
In Australia, we have the ridiculous circumstance of dams not being built but white elephant projects like desalination being promoted in place. The costs to the public being a thousand times greater.
Compassionate people may well recall the releasing of the killers of toddler James Bolger to the public when permanent institutional care was available.
At the end of the day, the release of this killer is no different to Obama’s release of GITMO detainees. - ed.
===
ASSURANCES GIVEN
Tim Blair
Today’s award for picture selection goes to the Times Online photo editor.
===
HAIL DIVERSITY
Tim Blair
Eight hundred diverse views somehow yield a single opinion:
The largest-ever youth climate change conference, organized by UNEP and drawing some 800 young people, wrapped up in Daejeon, in the Republic of Korea, today, with participants pledging plow ahead with efforts to ensure that global warming remains an international priority, with just over three months remaining until negotiations on a possible new pact end in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“The young people of the world are the generation that will inherit the transformational decisions governments need to take in less than 110 days time,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director …
“This statement is the fruit of a diversity of views and voices from young people of different ages and cultures,” said Mr. Steiner.
UPDATE. David Penberthy feels the heat:
Anyone who thinks climate change is rubbish should be here in brisbane today. Middle of winter and it feels like adelaide in January
Then again, just twelve months ago:
The weather experts have confirmed what Brisbane people suspected - the city has just shivered through its coldest August in at least eight years.
===
Obama will just do it with a nicer smile
Andrew Bolt
Will Hollywood and media Left maintain their rage, now that Barack Obama is doing what they flayed Bush for?
The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to ensure they are not tortured, administration officials said on Monday.
UPDATE
James Morrow, of the United States Studies Centre, is not surprised Obama’s support is on the serious slide:
None of this was unpredictable. Barack Obama came into office with barely any real experience as a legislator (having voted “present” nearly 130 times during his short tenure as an Illinois State Senator), so it is no wonder that his signature pieces of legislation - the cap-and-tax energy bill and ObamaCare - have hit the wall. And with so many key positions unfilled (just 43 per cent of key policy-making positions have made it through the Senate...) it is no wonder the messages out of the White House have been so vague and programs such as Cash-For-Clunkers so poorly administered.
Had he been more conservative (in the strategic, rather than political, sense), not decided to run so hard so fast, and got his team in place and his messages straight, Barack Obama may have been able to achieve more of his stated goal to fundamentally re-make American society....At this point, though, it is not too soon to say that, if things don’t turn around soon for him, Barack Obama is on his way to becoming a one-term president…
I think Morrow may have underplayed one of the factors in Obama’s troubles, as we see with his health care woes and his disastrous intervention in race politics last month: Obama, the most Left-wing President, in decades, may have done better had he been more conservative in the political sense as well.
===
Happy birthday, Yasser
Andrew Bolt
The Age wishes a deeply corrupt, Jew-hating terrorist a very happy birthday:
===
Too white to win
Andrew Bolt
Others blame the selectors for not picking a specialist spinner for the final test. Or blame nothing more than fate for not blessing us with another Warne and McGrath. But the Sydney Morning Herald suggests another reason for Australian cricket’s failure to shine:
THERE is something obviously white about the Australian cricket team - and it’s not just their kit. While England and South Africa have long tapped into rich pools of ethnic talent, fielding players with names such as Shafayat, Hussein and Ntini, the Australian team remains as solidly Anglo as in the days of Bradman and Miller.
We should be more like England, tapping into its “rich pools of ethnic talent”?
Here is the English team which won the Ashes in the fifth Test: Andrew Strauss (c), Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood, Jonathan Trott, Matt Prior, Andrew Flintoff, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, James Anderson, Steve Harmison.
UPDATE
John Passant, of the Socialist Alliance, is delighted that their capitalists beat our capitalists:
The defeat of the Australia’s cricketers in the Ashes series is a small step forward for the ideas of class struggle in Australia. It shows that the products of Australian capitalism, in this case its cricket team, are not invincible. The braggadocio, the swagger, the nationalist and often racist superiority may disappear for a little while from Australian cricket culture and have ramifications for some sections of Australian society.
===
Climate of greed
Andrew Bolt
Getting on that gravy train:
Ministers from 10 African countries are meeting in Ethiopia to try to agree a common position on climate change, months before a crucial UN meeting. They are expected to renew demands for billions of dollars in compensation for Africa because of damage caused by global warming.
Will we get a deduction for the gases emitted in producing African aid?
===
Some people need to be taught manners
Andrew Bolt
The barbarians are winning:
Assaults in Melbourne rose by 8.7 per cent in the year to July, to 2711 per 100,000 people; in Yarra by 4.3 per cent to 1183, in Port Phillip by 12.5 per cent to 941 and in Stonnington by almost 17 per cent to 749, according to police.
===
Too black to sack
Andrew Bolt
Get the idea that racism is now an excuse and a haven for the stupid?
A SMILING young woman ... declined to say what the charges against her were or to allow her name to be used, but told me that she was (undergoing lengthy arbitration on her possible removal as a teacher) because “I’m a smart black woman”.
I asked the woman for her reaction to the following statement: “If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances to improve but still does not improve, there’s no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.”
“That sounds like (New York City schools boss) Joel Klein and his accountability bullshit,” she responded. “We can tell if we’re doing our jobs. We love these children.” After I told her that this was taken from a speech that President (Barack) Obama made last March, she replied, “Obama wouldn’t say that if he knew the real story.”
===
Obama Compares Himself to FDR and JFK
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," August 21, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!
MIKE HUCKABEE, GUEST HOST: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight: In another new attempt of damage control over the health care mess, the president is now comparing himself to FDR and JFK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: FDR was called a socialist when he passed Social Security. JFK and Lyndon Johnson, they were both accused of a government takeover of health care when they passed Medicare. This is the process that we go through because, understandably, the American people have a long tradition of being suspicious of government until the government actually does something that helps them, and then they don't want anybody messing with whatever gets set up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUCKABEE: Joining us now from San Francisco is Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian and author of the book, "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America."
Dr. Brinkley, thank you so much for joining us. Let me ask you, a big mistake on the part of the president to sort of invoke the memories of FDR and JFK and compare himself?
Click here to watch the segment!
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, it's never a mistake for a Democratic president to raise the specter of FDR and Kennedy for his base. I think the Lyndon Johnson comments gets more to the crux of the difficulty the president's having.
As you know, the Great Society is what Ronald Reagan warned against. In fact, I edited "Reagan's Diaries," and he wrote one passage that said I voted four times for FDR and the New Deal, but I'm trying to roll back the Great Society. Medicaid and Medicare came through Lyndon Johnson, but so did a lot of other government programs that people, particularly conservatives, have been trying to role back some of the wealthier state programs. So there's a suspicion on the American people that's been really part of entire history, but we've — since 1980 in the Reagan revolution, of too much government.
And so I think the problem this summer for President Obama is that he's pushing health care after all that economic stimulus money, and there's kind of a woe factor going on, saying this might be too much, too fast, too expensive.
HUCKABEE: How come Democrats never compare themselves, let's say to Jimmy Carter and bring up other Democratic presidents from the past?
BRINKLEY: Well, you know, Carter's somebody who's, as they say, they used the White House as a steppingstone for his ex-presidency. Lyndon Johnson, I actually taped part of a documentary on LBJ, because his 100th birthday was this past August, and the Democratic Convention didn't want to show anything to tribute LBJ, because of Vietnam. You know, he's seen as sort of a quasi pariah in some ways. But you know, Johnson did a lot with the civil rights acts of '64 and '65, and Medicaid and Medicare.
But since 1980, it's been the rage of Reagan. From `80 until 2008, it has been a rollback of government, a more conservative feel in the country. And Barack Obama's trying to stoke a progressive movement, and he's trying — catching the same problem that Bill Clinton did after he tried pushing health care through that first year, meaning he eventually had — you had the Gingrich revolution. And then Bill Clinton had to do triangulation to kind of do some rollbacks of federal programs.
HUCKABEE: There was a clear difference. When FDR was president, the country was in an absolute turmoil and public confidence was down. The interesting thing is most people are happy with their health insurance. They'd love to see some reforms and improvements, but they don't want the government taking it over. This is a very different kind of situation, isn't it?
BRINKLEY: Well, different times. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt was enduring the Great Depression and was doing whatever they could to try to keep the country afloat. Certainly, President Obama's correct. Social Security was controversial. People didn't know whether it was going to work or not. Now post people believe that it's been a success. Medicaid and Medicare's the same. And that gets to the point that President Obama's trying to make that I know a lot of people are afraid to make this plunge into a — my health care program were a public auction, but people were afraid in the past. And it's the argument he needs to make in a lot of ways. But I think the difficulties facing government is going to get that there has been since 1988, a fear of too much government. And in the last few months, we've seen a lot of it. So he's got a very tough fight ahead for him this fall.
HUCKABEE: Doctor, thank you very much.
No comments:
Post a Comment