THE number of mobile phone users accessing the popular social networking websites Twitter and Facebook has exploded.
Paedophile sold toys to children
CHARITY shocked to learn Dennis Ferguson was selling its merchandise on the street.
Sex bribe offer ruined me, says ex-detective
HE blew a whistle nobody wanted to hear and now former major crime squad detective Daryl Venables is paying a heavy personal price for trying to close down an illegal brothel. Mr Venables, 50, was working as a council compliance officer in February when he was offered a $10,000 bribe by the owner of a "massage parlour" in Wagga Wagga. "The owner said he would pay me the money and provide me with free sex from his workers," Mr Venables said. A retired detective sergeant, Mr Venables reported the bribe to police and planned a sting operation to catch the brothel operator "red-handed." When he was given $500 cash in an envelope on his next visit to the parlour he took the package to police and detectives filmed it being opened. Instead of congratulating Mr Venables on his "bust", council management gave him a disciplinary warning, prompting him to quit.
Union man wants my seat, says MP
RETIRING Labor MP Julia Irwin has hinted that the leader of a major union may be gunning for her safe western Sydney electorate. She suggested Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes, an advocate of nuclear power, may be planning a parliamentary career.
Shooters' MP at centre of gun threat
SECURITY crackdown after protester tells politician he "deserves to be shot".
Bargain basement for rooms with a view
TRAVELLERS are paying 2003 prices for hotel rooms around the world thanks to the GFC.
Women pressured to be a 'yummy mummy'
COMPARING themselves to celebrities, mums look to lose weight quickly after giving birth.
Swayze's greatest role was as a husband
PATRICK Swayze's co-stars and friends pay tribute to "the cowboy with a tender heart".
Another policewoman cries foul
ANOTHER police officer has alleged harassment from within her own command, which she claims was so bad her baby was born prematurely.
Doctors milking Medicare birth rebates
OBSTETRICIANS double their to take advantage of taxpayer-funded Medicare Safety Net and earn more than $1m a year.
=== Journalists Corner ===
CONGRESS! STOP IT!
I like it when people apologize ... and we should accept and move on ... which brings me to the US Congress' ridiculous activity this afternoon. They are going to spend time (waste!) debating and voting on a resolution against Rep Joe Wilson for his boorish conduct yelling out "you lie" at President Obama. Yes, Rep. Wilson showed [...]
===
Guest: Joseph Grano
Inflations, recessions and the '87 crash. Wall Street legend Joseph Grano on Obama's economic strategy.
===
Wild, Wild "West"
After Kanye shot his mouth off at the VMAs, Miller reacts to the rapper's latest awards show outburst!
===
A Political Potboiler!
He helped oust the Honduran president! Now, Roberto Micheletti on recovering from the turbulent aftermath.
=== Comments ===
INTERESTING TAKE
Tim Blair
The excuses just keep coming.
===
A PERTHER PREDICTS
Tim Blair
The BBC:
Australian of the year 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery, once predicted that Perth in Western Australia could become the world’s first ghost metropolis, its population forced to abandon the city due to lack of water.
Reality:
A long spell of winter rain in Perth’s catchment areas has lifted the city’s dams to their highest level in almost a decade.
===
OBSERVE THE CIGARETTE PREPARATION TECHNIQUE
Tim Blair
Hunter S. Thompson – not a frequent TV presence, even at the height of his fame – discusses royalty payments, among other things:
===
COPENHAGEN UPDATE. Dangerous unilateralism from America:
Tim Blair
Europe has clashed with the US Obama administration over climate change in a potentially damaging split that comes ahead of crucial political negotiations on a new global deal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions …
The dispute between the US and Europe is over the way national carbon reduction targets would be counted. Europe has been pushing to retain structures and systems set up under the Kyoto protocol, the existing global treaty on climate change. US negotiators have told European counterparts that the Obama administration intends to sweep away almost all of the Kyoto architecture and replace it with a system of its own design.
Australia should stand up to this global bully and withdraw from any Copenhagen talks.
===
TWO THROWS UP
Tim Blair
Australian film director Jonathan Auf Der Heide’s latest feature draws surprising reviews:
“The vomiting thing was a real surprise to me – we had two people vomit in New Zealand, and a couple of people have fainted during the first killing scene,” Auf Der Heide told AAP.
===
FUTURE GLIMPSED
Tim Blair
At the 24-second mark, an Italian interviewer quietly vows to join a gym.
UPDATE. Further on Michael Moore, from Lori Roman:
True confession time for this conservative factory girl from Flint, Michigan—over 30 years ago my radical hippy brother inspired the career of Michael Moore, a radical greasy-haired goofball from my home town.
There I said it. After many years of shame and penance I can now admit the ugly truth about that great pretender—the self-proclaimed champion of regular folks who peddles Marxism in his regular folk costume.
Actually, I think you’ll find that it’s an XXXL folk costume.
===
REPUTATION IMPACTED
Tim Blair
Tragic news from Reuters:
A poverty-rights group that has drawn the ire of conservatives suffered another setback in Washington on Monday when the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to deny it access to federal housing funds.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which helps poor people fight foreclosures and fix tax problems, has received more than $53 million in U.S. funds since 1994, but conservatives’ charges of widespread fraud have begun to impact its reputation in the capital.
They’re talking about ACORN, of course, whose dread acronym doesn’t appear until 182 words into the Reuters’ piece. It wasn’t just conservative charges of fraud that brought ACORN down; it was Andrew Breitbart’s evidence:
===
KEITH FLOYD
Tim Blair
Chef Keith Floyd has died at 65. He went out in style.
UPDATE. Floyd’s final review, by the Independent‘s Brian Viner, is sadly unpleasant:
One well-known roisterer, Keith Allen, went in search of another, the former TV chef Keith Floyd, finding him in a village near Avignon looking terrible, at least one decade and possibly two older than his 65 years.
There is already plenty of evidence to suggest that Floyd is not a particularly nice man, and plenty more emerged here, but his unflagging capacity to drink, smoke and swear to excess – including a liberal sprinkling of the c-word, which has officially lost its status as the last TV taboo – was seemingly enough to convince Allen that he was “one of the most honest and genuine people I’ve ever met”. Now, I don’t mean to sound pious. I’ve even been known to enjoy a spot of carousing myself. But there was nothing honest or genuine in the gruesome spectacle of Floyd getting steadily more hammered, more melancholy and more abusive at a lunch with his daughter Poppy, from whom he had been estranged for 10 years. It was car-crash television.
His final years were by most accounts not easy. Measure Floyd’s accomplishments instead by the joy he brought during his prime.
===
SOBER WARMIES
Tim Blair
The BBC’s Richard Black reports:
Among the emails that arrive in my inbox regularly on climate change, one sentiment expressed regularly is that the language of climate catastrophism is getting shriller and shriller as the arguments for the phenomenon collapse.
It’s one that I disagree with.
I think the language of catastrophism, chaos, doom - whatever you like to call it - has actually sobered up, in the UK at least, having peaked about three or four years ago …
Peak stupid is over? Not in Australia it isn’t.
===
Assessing the Protesters
By Bill O'Reilly
In Washington D.C. on Saturday, about 75,000 protesters gathered, loudly criticizing the policies of President Obama. Organizers say the crowd was mostly "fiscal conservatives" who object to Mr. Obama's rapid expansion of the federal government.
As always in a crowd of that size, there were different degrees of protest. More militant folks compared the president to Hitler, to the Mafia, to Muslim Marxists. A few of the signs were vicious, like a reference to Ted Kennedy's death, and one counter-protester even ran into some trouble:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(BOOING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get him out of there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
The very liberal NBC News locked in on the far right:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm tired of the communism that's in Washington, D.C.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are losing our country. We think the Muslims are moving in and taking over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Now, with the media branding protesters as kooks and racists, what are we supposed to think? If you're not there it is impossible to know exactly who the demonstrators are. So we have to rely on polling to accurately assess how the American people view President Obama.
The latest Rasmussen poll says 51 percent of Americans now have a favorable view of Obamacare, while 46 percent oppose it. That's a small improvement since the president's speech last Wednesday. But 38 percent strongly oppose Obamacare, while just 28 percent strongly favor it, and this is where the militancy sets in. The committed opposition is much larger than the committed support.
However, about half of the country is not crazy, as NBC News would you have believe:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's put up on that screen again the Joe Wilson sort of picture of him reaching out. You look at the image of the Republican Party: all white males with short haircuts. They look sort of angry. No women, no minorities, and it looks like they've sort of become unhinged.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
That's just insulting and stupid.
But what about the "unhinged"? Well, I think they should rethink their presentation. Carrying signs equating Obama to Hitler puts you in the loon category and does your cause no good at all. Hearts and minds are won by reasonable discourse based on facts.
The fact of the matter here is that President Obama believes that a huge federal government can bring relief and prosperity to the American people, but many Americans do not believe that. They think big government will harm them and screw things up so badly everyone will suffer, not just those without health insurance.
And so the battle continues, and "The Factor" is right in the middle of it bringing you the facts.
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