A PAEDOPHILE lives in Sydney's East Ryde*. He doesn't have a facial tic or a stutter. He doesn't look like the sex offender from central casting. And his name is not Dennis Ferguson. He is one of tens of thousands of paedophiles, living in the suburbs, who don't walk around with big signs on their foreheads.
Towns perish to save the Murray
THE great water buyback that is saving our most majestic river system is killing hundreds of Outback towns.
Julia Gillard no Paul Keating, biographer says
DEPUTY Prime Minister Julia Gillard is no Paul Keating, harbouring dark intentions of toppling the boss and grabbing the top job, says her biographer Jacqueline Kent.
Wild teen party at bikie club
POLICE had to break up a wild teenage party at a bikie clubhouse at the weekend after finding children as young as 13 drunk.
Woman 'raped on RSL courtesy bus'
A WOMAN was allegedly raped twice and "mauled" by a club's courtesy-bus driver, who warned her: "Now I know where you live".
Airport staff in cocaine bust - AFP
AIRLINE catering employees allegedly smuggled more than $1.5m of cocaine into Australia.
Woman swept to death off sea cliff
A FRANTIC rescue mission was launched on Clovelly Beach last night when a woman was swept off rocks to her death at about 6.30pm.
Taliban chief warns victory is near
THE Taliban leader in hiding for eight years, says victory is near and Afghanistan will be a "graveyard" for foreign troops. - at last, now the diplomat Rudd is talking to Taliban. -ed.
'My boys gave away $100,000'
"DIVINE" teenage brothers find $100,000 in bags while fishing and decide to hand it in to police. What would you have done?
More money goes on mobile than petrol
AUSSIES are spending up on their phones and homes and cutting back on the car. - will Rudd now spend millions on himself setting up Mpbile Watch? - ed
No property plunge looming - experts
IF you're worried by talk of a looming drop in house prices, here's some good news. - people will pay money for it, if they buy it .. - ed
'Come near my daughter, I will belt you'
A DAD who thought his daughter was bullied online threatened to "belt the s---" out of other girl.
Tony Blair thinks Gordon Brown's a quitter, not a fighter
TONY Blair and Peter Mandelson have given up hope of Gordon Brown winning the British general election and believe he may throw in the towel to avoid humiliation by David Cameron.
Free public transport 'would raise money'
FREE public transport in the Melbourne CBD would boost state coffers, say backers of a plan to scrap tickets in the city.
Cops 'embarrassed' by nude lap of bus
COPS "commandeer" a police bus for a buck's party before doing a naked lap at a red light.
Year 1, 2 students 'sexually assaulted' girls
SHOCKING sex assault allegations against Year 1 and Year 2 boys have caused worried parents to pull children out of a Brisbane primary school.
=== Comments ===
Labor’s women MP record an illusion
Piers Akerman
IT should not have escaped notice that in a week marked by an over-the-top outburst of confected Labor derision over its treatment of women, the Liberal Party selected a female, Kelly O’Dwyer, to stand for the blue ribbon Melbourne seat of Higgins to be vacated by former treasurer Peter Costello.
I’m disappointed that you didn’t note the passing of Virginia Chadwick, a former Liberal Party minister and the first female president of the NSW Legislative Council. She was a trailblazer for women in politics.As regards style, I bet it passes the notice of the press that Rudd could have made the same points to his mp’s without swearing when he addressed some of his luvverlies on the issue of postage. A decent man could have made the same point,and a better man could have. As regards Gillard, she isn’t an incompetent woman, but when you read about her own comments on her choice of sexual partners you might wonder, and how she acquires them, but the fact she is an incompetent politician who seems to promote corruption with obfuscation is what earns her the label. - ed.
In regards to your article the lack of promoting women has been endemic in both the parties and to tar Labor solely with this brush is disgenerous. Both parties have recognised that the promotion of women to senior positions is fraught with political danger with men marking women politicians hard and women marking them even harder.
It has taken a immensely strong woman in Julia Gillard to change voters perception. The Liberal ladies would be best to use Julia’s parlimentary style as an example on how to suceed as a female in politics.
Joey of Mt Colah
===
RAW KEV
Tim Blair
EXCLUSIVE: Kevin Rudd’s uncensored Copenhagen speech.
===
MIDNIGHT SPOIL
Tim Blair
Inspired by the band itself, Jim Treacher rewrites the Oils:
The time has come
To say dumb’s dumb
To stop this crap
Our ears are numb
The time has come
A joke’s a joke
Now we’re onto you
So shut it, bloke
Sing along!
===
LET THE MEN DECIDE
Tim Blair
Robert Fisk, the famous verb, advises teaching and education and caring as ways to improve the Middle East:
We always arrive with our tanks and our helicopters and our armoured personnel carriers and our soldiers instead of arriving with our teachers, our educators, our doctors and our social carers … we always come with soldiers, we always come to impose the society we believe these people should have.
Observe, from 1.30:
But seven mere minutes later, during the same interview, Fisk tells teachy doctor-style carers to get the hell out:
We still feel that we are the superior people, that we must teach the other people how to live their lives. But, you see, if you have an NGO, for example, go into an Afghan village and announce that there must be equality of education between men and women, the men will see this as an attack on their society, their culture and their religion.
At the end of the day, they are the ones who are going to have to come to this decision. And, if the delay takes another century, we westerners have to put up with that.
Leaving aside Fisk’s rapid self-Fisking, consider the views expressed here by a leftist icon. For a start, it isn’t we in the west who have to put up with inequality of education. It’s women in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, whom Fisk thinks should be condemned for at least the next one hundred years to live by decisions taken by male village elders.
One wonders if Fisk would take the same view of a household in London wherein a father forbade education to his daughters. And what of a culture (the United States) that resists the intrusion of someone attacking their society (Fisk) who believes that a former elected leader (George W. Bush) was rubbish and should have been thrown out? In the case of non-Middle Eastern countries, Fisk evidently feels himself a “superior person” who “must teach the other people how to live their lives”.
Incidentally, Bobby, if we capitalists want to maintain our freedom, you socialists have to put up with that.
===
BIGNESS ENSMALLENED
Tim Blair
Using ridership data from the Washington DC Metrorail service, LGF’s Charles Johnson seeks a reliable means of judging attendance at September 12’s anti-Obama rally:
September 12, 2009: Metrorail: 437,624
Comparable Metrorail Ridership 1 Year Ago: 362,773
As Charles notes:
The difference between these two figures is — 74,851.
Oddly enough, this almost exactly matches the unofficial estimate given by a Washington DC Fire Department spokesman, who estimated the crowd at 60,000 to 70,000 people.
Two things: first, that unofficial estimate was apparently made at 9.43am, some hours prior to the rally’s peak. And second, comparing September 12, 2008, to September 12, 2009, won’t yield reliable information – because the first date fell on a working day (Friday), while the second was a Saturday. The Heritage Foundation’s Mark Kelly digs further into DC’s rail stats:
For a fair comparison, we looked at the Saturday after Labor Day in 2008, which is when September 12 fell in 2009. On September 12, 2009, 437,624 rode metro rail. By comparison, on the Saturday after Labor Day in 2008, 202,528 rode. The difference is 235,096.
Considering various other factors, Kelly arrives at a tentative estimate of 313,000 to 433,000 – much lower than the extreme high-end figures (two million) Johnson dismisses, but far more believable than 70,000, which anyone who’s both familiar with Washington and spent considerable time at sports events among 70,000+ crowds (me) knows is ridiculously inaccurate.
UPDATE. Andrew Sulivan in today’s Australian:
After months of simmering right-wing dissent against the Obama administration and a protest march by about 70,000 conservatives in Washington …
===
OPINION DIVIDED
Tim Blair
Readers fail to reach consensus over a crucial academic question:
• If it was my younger brother......yes, in a second.
• If I knocked my brother down, I don’t know if I’d urinate on him, but I might set him on fire.
• It really, really depends upon how much bigger, fitter and older one’s brother might be.
• If he supported Collingwood, why not?
• What if to urinate in his mouth was the reason you knocked him down? I mean, you can’t do it while he’s standing up.
• No. Of course I would not … Because, if I did, he’d just wait until I was sleeping then he’d sneak into my house and stab me in the neck with a butcher knife.
• No, I think one or the other should be enough by itself.
The original question is here.
===
NEW LOOK TIMES
Tim Blair
A curious choice of words from the New York Times:
The story of the spectacular rise and fall of John Edwards, with its sordid can’t-look-away dimensions, is moving slowly but deliberately to its conclusion here in North Carolina.
Can’t look away, you say? Yet the mainstream press looked away for months. The Times was especially away-lookish:
The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.
You get the feeling the NYT would’ve looked away even if Rielle Hunter spawned her Edwards co-production right in the middle of 43rd Street. Shamed into belated coverage, the paper now reports:
Mr. Edwards is moving toward an abrupt reversal in his public posture; associates said in interviews that he is considering declaring that he is the father of Ms. Hunter’s 19-month-old daughter, something that he once flatly asserted in a television interview was not possible.
Abrupt reversals are all the rage these days.
===
INDY BINNED?
Tim Blair
Doom looms for a lefty leaflet:
Independent News & Media could close its flagship title The Independent by Christmas, according to the Irish publisher’s second biggest shareholder.
Denis O’Brien told the Global Irish Economic Forum yesterday: “There’s no point in us, as a company, subsidising a newspaper that really nobody wants to read. It’s not a relevant newspaper any more and this newspaper’s going to be closed by Christmas.”
Apparently O’Brien has lost around £438m on his investment in the paper, which might be out-lived by poley bears. Readers at Harry’s Place don’t seem too depressed.
UPDATE. The Independent recently dropped circulation by 16 per cent, down to daily average sales of fewer than 200,000 – or about 6.5 per cent of the top-selling Sun‘s total.
===
THEY THINK HE’S A JOCKEY
Tim Blair
It’s the most confused protest since Jenny McCracken drove 550 kilometres to complain about global warming:
Climate change protesters have dumped a pile of horse manure at the home of Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson in a protest about vehicle emissions.
Six women stood by the dung in the drive of his home in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, with a sign that read: “This is what you’re landing us in.”
They might have had a point if Clarkson regularly agitated for a return to pre-motorised transport on his program Top Saddle. As things stand, however, all these women have done is remind Oxfordshire residents how British streets must have reeked before cars were invented.
UPDATE (via J.F. Beck). Writing in 1971, Joel A. Tarr on pre-car city life:
The faithful, friendly horse was charged with creating the very problems today attributed to the automobile: air contaminants harmful to health, noxious odors, and noise. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in fact, writers in popular and scientific periodicals were decrying the pollution of the public streets and demanding “the banishment of the horse from American cities” in vigorous terms. The presence of 120,000 horses in New York City, wrote one 1908 authority for example, is “an economic burden, an affront to cleanliness, and a terrible tax upon human life.” The solution to the problem, agreed the critics, was the adoption of the “horseless carriage” …
In 1880 New York City removed fifteen thousand dead horses from its streets, and as late as 1912 Chicago carted away nearly ten thousand ...
Cash for carcasses! And eventually everyone got paid.
UPDATE II. In other British media news, the Sky cricket coverage just showed Australian cricket selector Merv Hughes in the stands with a newspaper. Startled commentator Ian Botham: “It looks as though he’s trying to read a broadsheet.”
===
KINDNESS EBBS
Tim Blair
“Virginia has been kind to Democrats as of late,” reports Fred Barnes. But perhaps not for much longer:
The Democratic tide is ebbing in Virginia. In January Mr. Obama’s approval rating was 62%, according to a Survey USA. By August it had fallen to 42%. This has important political implications both in Virginia and nationally.
In six weeks, Virginia will elect a governor, and Republican Bob McDonnell, a former state attorney general, leads Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, a state senator with a moderate-to-liberal record, in every poll by a small margin. A recent poll by the nonpartisan Clarus Research Group gives him a five-point lead.
A Republican victory here would signal that Mr. Obama may now be a liability for other Democrats running for office …
It would also signal … raaaaacism! Sad that Virginia went all racist in just seven months. This is usually the sort of thing you expect from West Virginia.
UPDATE. Racism – and disabilityism – spreads to New York:
National Democratic Party leaders have asked Gov. David Paterson to consider withdrawing from the 2010 governor’s race, according to two senior New York Democratic advisers …
The New York Times, which originally reported the request on its Web site, said that it was President Barack Obama who asked Paterson to withdraw.
Sez the Jammie Wearing Fool: “Just imagine if a white president asked a black governor to step aside. Why, that would be raaaaacist! … It will be interesting to see if Obama asks his buddy Deval Patrick, the governor of Taxachusetts with about the same miserable rating as David Paterson, to step aside.” Patrick is the only other black US governor.
UPDATE II. The NY Post:
Sources said the White House and national Democrats, fearful about Paterson’s performance, low poll numbers and increasing lack of support, had decided to suggest he not run again, accelerating a timetable for their plans after the governor went on a rant claiming his poll problems are thanks to a racist media—in which he invoked Obama’s name.
For a post-racial society, there’s a lot of race happening.
UPDATE III. James Taranto observes another racism outbreak:
Fewer than 1 in 4 Black Caucus members voted to stop spending taxpayers’ money on an organization that has been caught on video at least five times offering advice on how to practice slavery.
UPDATE IV. Time‘s Amy Sullivan:
It’s highly unusual for a president to step in and tell a governor who is not facing something like a crippling scandal or imminent indictment that his time is up. And when it’s the first black president telling one of only two black governors to clear the way for someone else ... that definitely falls into the category of Stories You Never Expected To Read.
The line Sullivan wasn’t brave enough to use: “To clear the way for someone white.”
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