Alarming trend from surveys of soldiers shows morale of those fighting the Taliban is on the decline.
NASA Finds Water on the Moon
Agency's $79M LCROSS probe discovers 'significant amount' of water at lunar south pole
Turnbull slams 'fast-tracked deal'
OCEANIC Viking debacle one of Australia's most humiliating episodes, Opposition says.
Paedophile caught by wife in chat room
A man has been convicted of child sex offences in Wales after his wife exposed him as a paedophile by pretending to be a teenage girl on a chat room.
Who Shot Hasan? Stories Change
Witnesses now claim that Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, not Sgt. Kimberly Munley, took down the Ft. Hood gunman
Pakistan Connection With Hasan?
Congressman says sources confirm Fort Hood suspect made wire transfers to or accepted them from Pakistan
Act of War or Criminal Act?
Obama administration's decision to try self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, 4 alleged accomplices in NYC federal court sparks heated debate
App-arently 'Offensive'
Apple deems caricatures of leaders in Congress 'objectionable' in application created by conservative filmmaker
Toddler twins set for marathon surgery
SURGEONS prepare for delicate, 15-hour operation to separate twin toddlers joined at the head.
Balloon boy's parents plead guilty to hoax
THE drama which captivated the world for hours has a down-to-earth conclusion in a drab court.
'Lots of love, despite attempted murder'
A WOMAN who poisoned three men's puddings left notes apologising for trying to kill them.
It's the golden age of the small screen
IF you added up how many gadgets you have at home would the answer shock you?
'Shocking conditions' in childcare centres
ANIMAL faeces in play areas, floors in danger of collapse and loose wires found in centre visits.
Spinster willed millions to animals
IT was stray cats and dogs she loved, so in the end Daina Silins gave them her $3 million estate. The lonely spinster had no one else in her life.
September 11 accused face NY trial
ALLEGED masterminds to face trial just blocks from site of twin towers, angering survivors.
AFP under fire over child rape evidence
SCATHING judgement for AFP after innocent man spends two years in jail for child rape.
Protest crashes Rees' ALP speech
ANTI-coal power station protestors have crashed NSW Premier Nathan Rees' address to the NSW Labor conference in Sydney.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Laura Bush opens up on life after the White House and her plan of action for the Bush Policy Institute.
The former first lady sits down with Greta!
===
Beck's Back!
Glenn speaks out on the Fort Hood tragedy. Plus, how fear of a fatwa changed the 2012 blockbuster!
===
Health Care for the Holidays?
Dems are trying to stuff your stocking with their new plan. So how bad could you get ... scrooged this Christmas?
===
Guest: Paula Deen
On the road from Atlanta with the queen of hospitality, Paula Deen!
=== Comments ===
Why the Media Has Not Covered the Fort Hood Massacre Accurately
By Bill O'Reilly
A new study by the Culture and Media Institute, a conservative group, says the following: 85 percent of network evening news stories on Fort Hood did not mention the word "terror." In fact, in 48 reports, ABC, CBS and NBC referenced terrorism just seven times. Only 29 percent of the evening news reports even mentioned Major Hasan was a Muslim. Of those mentions, 50 percent defended Islam. And before the president's speech at Fort Hood, 93 percent of the network evening news stories ignored any discussion about a terror connection. But after the president said that extremist views were involved, all three networks began to report a possible connection to terrorism.
So you can see that apparently the American media is still under the sway of the White House and not accurately portraying things as they really are.
In TIME magazine this week, editor at large Nancy Gibbs leads the coverage with an article entitled: The Fort Hood Killer: Terrified or Terrorist?
With all due respect, I don't care if Hasan was terrified and I know he is a terrorist. The TIME article discusses the pressure of Iraq and Afghanistan, but you can't be blaming American foreign policy for the actions of a terrorist killer like Hasan. It simply doesn't add up.
NPR, a usually liberal outlet, has been a sane voice in evaluating Hasan, who was charged in a military court Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder. National Public Radio reports that Hasan's supervisors at the Walter Reed hospital in Washington had reprimanded him for telling a patient, "Islam can save your soul."
Also, The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Hasan may have wired money to Pakistan, but that is still not confirmed.
What is confirmed is that Hasan was involved with Islamic terror elements. But the media still — still — does not want to acknowledge the truth. That's downright dangerous because people are dying all over the world, the victims of terrorism generated by fanatical Muslims.
It is time the American media wised up, got honest and told the folks exactly the danger we all face.
===
The vested interests Rudd warned of
Andrew Bolt
Perhaps it’s time to expose some of the “vested interests” that Kevin Rudd rages are ”invariably” polluting the global warming debate.
Let’s start with Professor David Karoly, who sure seems richly rewarded for being Melbourne’s leading warming alarmist.
Question: would Karoly attract so much funding, so much flattering media attention and so many nice trips overseas if he were a sceptic?
UPDATE
A brilliant nomination just in from Climate Change Minister Penny Wong:
Protecting Australia’s much-loved coastline from climate change is the aim of a new council to be established by the federal government. The Coast and Climate Change Council, headed by Tim Flannery, was officially announced by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong in Sydney on Saturday...Flannery is not an expert in coastal geography, oceanography, urban planning or government. He’s got the job purely on the basis of being an alarmist who has warned, for instance, that Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide could all be out of drinking water by ... well, this year or earlier thanks to global warming.
Talk about jobs for the alarmist boys. But wait until Wong gets the first report from Flannery warning to prepare for monster sea rises eight storeys high. That will mean the evacuation of much of Sydney and Melbourne. Oh, and Flannery warns that Perth will have to be abandoned, too.
And this man is now in charge of your protection. So why only now do you feel scared?
===
Rudd barbecued
Andrew Bolt
Who do you trust to have told the truth - Rotary or Rudd?
THE Prime Minister has been left with smoke in his eyes over the withdrawal of a press release promising barbecues for Indian students, moments before yesterday’s press conference in Delhi over criminal attacks in Australia.It’s a trivial example, yet telling, and I repeat: Kevin Rudd leads the most deceitful government in my memory.
The release unveiled a new program - to be run by Rotary Australia - in which Indian students would be invited for barbecues with Australian families as a gesture of inclusion....
Just before Mr Rudd was due to speak in Delhi on Thursday night over the attacks, a press release was distributed announcing the barbecue proposal, entitled: “Home for Dinner: Australian Families Offering Hospitality to Indian Students.’’ The document was then quickly withdrawn.
Speaking on 3AW yesterday morning, Mr Rudd said the program was a Rotary initiative. ‘’We’re just backing them in,’’ Mr Rudd said. ‘’As I understand it, they’re going to be putting all that out later today.’’
But no announcement was made, while Rotary president Frank Pezzimenti said the idea came from Mr Rudd’s office.
‘’The PM had the simple idea of inviting Indians to Australian households to show that we’re nice people. [His office] said to us, ‘What do you think?’ ‘’
‘’Someone suggested a barbecue and I said, ‘No, no, most Indians are vegetarian.’ I wrote to their office yesterday, but it must have been too late.’’
===
Tanner’s four population blues
Andrew Bolt
Spot the four mistakes in Tanner’s speech:
Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has scoffed at the suggestion that Australia is overpopulated, saying other countries would laugh if Australians mounted that argument as an excuse for clamping down on immigration....Mistake one: We don’t decide on something so important as our population density on the basis of whether other countries might “laugh”.
“...Bangladesh is roughly twice the physical size of Tasmania but home to about seven times the population of Australia."…
In the next few months the Federal Government will release the latest Intergenerational Report. It will forecast that Australia’s population will grow by 65 per cent in the next 40 years, hitting 35 million by 2049.
Mr Tanner says that figure is a projection, not a target, and it is impossible to predict with any certainty just what the population will be in 40 years’ time.
Mistake two: We don’t decide on something so important as our population density by using Bangladesh as our model.
Mistake three: The relevant question isn’t the population density in our deserts, but in our cities - where most immigrants will actually settle.
Mistake four: 35 million may be a projection, but it is not impossible at all to predict that we will reach that number in even less than 40 years while this government continues to grow our popluation by 440,000 a year. Just do the maths.
Fact is, the Government has ramped up immigration precisely at a time when our politicians are refusing to build the power stations, dams, train lines and freeways - or even release the housing land - that these millions more people will need. And that’s without even considering the looming cultural tensions or the basic aesthetic objection to having so many more people in your face.
===
Racist before, but not now
Andrew Bolt
So why only now - and too late- is it suddenly not right shout “racist”?
(British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown staged a major Labour U-turn over immigration yesterday by insisting it was ‘not racist’ to discuss the issue.
In his first speech on the subject for two years, the Prime Minister said he had ‘never agreed with the lazy elitism that dismisses immigration as an issue, or portrays anyone who has concerns about immigration as a racist’.
===
This blog can’t be counted
Andrew Bolt
The warming extemists at Real Climate have declared me a non-person.
===
The answer they seek: Rudd’s only principle is power
Andrew Bolt
Annabel Crabb is puzzled:
When orthodoxy demanded it, (Kevin Rudd) was an economic conservative. When global financial exigencies encouraged it, he became a big spender. In the past month, we have witnessed manifestations in which the PM is by turns a hardline border protectionist and a humane friend to refugees.Paul Kelly, among growing others, is also wondering now if he has a clue about Rudd:
A public proponent of the “calm, methodical” approach to policy debate, who last Friday night capped off a week of such measured exhortations with a foaming, quasi-Biblical attack on climate change sceptics, whom he accused of conspiring to “destroy our children’s future”.
A leader who was able to trumpet, on Thursday, his “vast … comprehensive micro-economic reform agenda”, having smartly abandoned one element of it, the mooted abolition of parallel import restrictions in the publishing industry, just 24 hours earlier…
Footy scarves cause him to break out into a hive of Ockerisms; the merest flash of Australian Defence Force camouflage in an audience is sufficient to roughen his vowels, and elicit the occasional expletive… “You guys really know your shit,” he enthused to a heat-packing posse of Australian troops in Kandahar last December. But seed the audience with enough think-tankers ....and you’ve bought yourself tickets to a jargon fight…
After nearly two years of Rudd as Prime Minister, close observers find themselves in an unusual position; the more we see of him, the less we know about him for sure… Rudd’s colleagues are as much in the dark about his true motives and beliefs as anyone else…
“It’s weird,” says one MP. “Yes, he doesn’t use the extraordinary amount of petrol he has in the tank to drive things, like change the dynamics of the refugee issue. But I don’t know if anyone actually knows what he really believes on this stuff...”
The real issue with Rudd is not his strength but his weakness. The weakness is concealed by control and activity. The mistake in judging his government is to confuse control with real authority.The truth has actually been obvious for years to those prepared to see it: Rudd is actually a deeply insecure man whose highest political principle is power. That makes him so effective - but also so brittle, so dangerous, so unprincipled and so prone to lie.
Rudd is an activist but not an innovator. His political control delivers compliant policy amid seamless interest group appeasement beloved by state Labor governments. Rudd talks of evidence-based policy but always delivers highly political outcomes. The gap between his rhetoric and his deeds is widening…
A growing list of respected figures has openly questioned, directly or indirectly, Rudd’s policy courage: Garnaut, former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Allan Fels, Access Economics principal Chris Richardson, Productivity Commission chairman Gary Banks. None is a Coalition stooge. Each has an integral role in the policy debate. Such doubts reflects a growing sentiment.
This also explains what has Kelly particularly surprised - why Rudd will hail some great cause or plan to wild applause, only to drop it later. The applause, Paul, is always the real goal.
===
They may be rushing to their deaths
Andrew Bolt
I’ve warned before against the foolish determination to learn the wrong lessons from the Black Saturday disaster - in particular, against the cries for an end to the ”leave early or stay” policy. But the signs are that we’re instead primed for fresh tragedy:
PEOPLE in Victoria’s fire danger zones could be trapped in road gridlock this summer. VicRoads data paints an alarming picture for evacuees.Please, when will this royal commission into Black Saturday finally (but too late for this fire season) discuss what so many previous inquiries have agreed really helps to save lives - fuel reduction burns?
An analysis for the Dandenongs is similar for the Great Ocean Road, with a sole escape route for many coastal towns listed as high-risk. The assessment shows only 900 cars an hour can leave the Dandenongs, which has a hilltop population of 15,000…
In high-risk townships the Herald Sun visited this week, the traditional adherence to “stay and defend” policies has shifted since Black Saturday. Personal safety was nominated as the highest priority.
While this evacuation trend has been welcomed by authorities, they caution that if people leave their escape till high-danger periods, it could be disastrous. The problem was highlighted on February 23 when nervous residents fled a blaze in the Upwey area and caused a 4km traffic jam.
Residents were stuck on the way to Ferntree Gully, with flames at the roadside.
===
This isn’t tough, but stupid
Andrew Bolt
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull and his immigration spokesman, Sharman Stone, surely can’t be serious with their new plan to give boat people no help if they do land here and are found to be refugees:
SHARMAN STONE: Well they are allowed to work in our country. And like other people who work then you seek residence in the private rental market or wherever you can find accommodation…Really? Does Stone really promise that a Liberal Government will not pay a cent to asylum seekers on these new “Safe Haven” visas, and would just let them live on the streets or starve? I don’t believe, it, and nor, actually, does Stone. Here she is in another interview:
STEVE PRICE: So they’ll be excluded from government housing?
SHARMAN STONE: They would be no more eligible for government housing than any others. We’ll of course be developing these policies further but what we are saying is that you’re only in Australia temporarily…
STEVE PRICE: Yes so that means you don’t, that means you won’t qualify for welfare benefits, you won’t qualify for the dole and you won’t qualify for government housing. Is that what you’re saying?
SHARMAN STONE: That’s what I’m saying. You will not qualify for welfare. You will be allowed to work.
You will not qualify for welfare. If you are not able to work, and some may not, of course, due to ill health or age or whatever, then there would be a government allowance to make sure, of course, that you don’t starve.So there won’t be welfare, but there will. And, really, does Stone really believe we’d stand by and let even asylum seekers here - including the able bodied - go without a cent to feed themselves or their children? To be forced, if they can’t find work, to live instead by begging or stealing?
She’s insulting our intelligence. And our humanity.
There are ways to be tough, but this is not one of them.
===
Palin’s lesson: have pride in your side
Andrew Bolt
No Republican politician is as electrifying as Sarah Palin. None can draw a crowd as she does. Few communicate as effectively. In her new book Going Rogue - already a blockbuster before its release - she describes the decision of John McCain’s campaign staff not just to muzzle her, but then to offer her first interview to a struggling TV host who was bound to loathe her, and then showed she did indeed:
From the beginning, Nicolle [Wallace] pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News. The campaign’s general strategy involved coming out with a network anchor, someone they felt had treated John well on the trail thus far. My suggestion was that we be consistent with that strategy and start talking to outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal. I really didn’t have a say in which press I was going to talk to, but for some reason Nicolle seemed compelled to get me on the Katie bandwagon.This was the result:
“Katie really likes you,” she said to me one day. “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom. She has teenage daughter like you. She just relates to you,” Nicolle said. “believe me, I know her very well. I’ve worked with her.” Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn’t have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House’s homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn’t do it. I didn’t know if that was Nicolle’s call.
Nicolle went on to explain that Katie really needed a career boost. “She just has such low self-esteem,” Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time. “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.”
I was thinking, And this has to do with John McCain’s campaign how?
McCain and his staff strike me as having the same weakness as Malcolm Turnbull - a craving for the affirmation of an elite who for cultural or ideological reasons are actually your sworn enemy. A craving for approval from people who demand the surrender of all your party’s principles - and even then would damn you as weak. McCain seemed to disdain the very media that would support him, and the base that had made him their candidate.
===
An army without a strategy is one without morale
Andrew Bolt
For months Barack Obama has dithered over what to do in Afghanistan, and the army now measures a slide in the morale of the troops:
The new Afghanistan survey found that individual soldier morale was about the same as previous studies, but that ”unit morale rates ... were significantly lower than in 2005 or 2007...”
===
No “special deal”? Rudd lies
Andrew Bolt
The Tamil boat people have won:
After a month of careful negotiations, about 16 of 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers have left the Oceanic Viking and are now being transported by ferry to a port in Tanjung Pinang.They’ve got a great deal:
The Federal Government has promised them their asylum claims will take no longer than three months to be processed. After that, they could expect to be resettled in Australia if their asylum claims are supported by the UNHCR… The Government offered quick resettlement and other benefits such as English language classes and financial assistance if the asylum seekers left the Oceanic Viking and go to the detention centre on the Indonesian Island of Bintan.I doubt this is all they were offered, if my witness heard right.
Which makes a liar of Kevin Rudd:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has denied that the 78 asylum seekers refusing to leave the Oceanic Viking are receiving special treatment from the Government....And a fool of Immigration Minister Chris Evans, as he tries desperately to avoid exposing Rudd’s lies - only to fail. You need extended excerpts to appreciate just how ludicrous and humiliating are Evans’ attempt to cover for Rudd’s lies:
Speaking from India, Mr Rudd denied the deal meant the group would be processed quicker than those being held at Christmas Island. “This is consistent with the overall approach we adopt to processing of individuals at any centre around the world,” he told Fairfax Radio…
“Any assumption that any individual so processed will automatically end up in Australia is wrong,” he said.
(Sky News’ DAVID) SPEERS: Alright, but the offer that has been made to them by the Australian Government as the Prime Minister confirmed today is that they will be resettled within six to twelve weeks. Now that’s not just processed but resettled were Kevin Rudd’s words, so have you, has the Government discussed with other countries where they might be resettled or is the reality that Australia will take the bulk?So so sum up Evans’ admissions: the People on the Oceanic Viking are getting a deal of just six to 12 weeks resettlement that is not being offered to other asylum seekers in Indonesia, and which beats the 90-day timeframe for simply processing the asylum applications of those in Christmas Island. And he and Rudd have the sheer effrontery to calim this is no “special deal”.
EVANS: Look the reality is that we’ve got the normal UNHCR resettlement processes. They will be assessed as to whether or not they’re refugees. Once that happens the UNHCR then if you like recommends them or refers them to settlement countries. We have traditionally taken the bulk out of Indonesia ...
SPEERS: But people who are found to be refugees in Indonesia aren’t often resettled in a twelve-week, so to make this guarantee, to make this offer, there must be some sort of surety that either Australia or other countries are going to take them that quickly.
EVANS: Sure, look we’ve had discussions with other countries but we’ve been negotiating with the UNHCR and Indonesia. What we did is we put in writing, we codified what we think the arrangements that we could deliver on were…
SPEERS: So if Canada or New Zealand or other countries can’t be found within twelve weeks, if they come off the boat, Australia presumably will take them to meet that guarantee?
EVANS: Well as I say to you it will depend in part on who the UNHCR wants to refer people to… All we’ve done is lay out for them what the timeframes will be.
SPEERS: But you say the normal processes are applying here and you’re obviously keen to play down suggestions this is a special deal, but you know that people in detention in Indonesia don’t get processed usually that fast, and people who are found to be refugees aren’t resettled that fast. This is special treatment isn’t it?
EVANS: No, what we’ve done is since we came into government we’ve actually been working with the Indonesians to deal with their protracted caseload....
SPEERS: Are you extending this offer to other asylum seekers in Indonesia? There’s another sixty or seventy-odd in the Tanjung Pinang detention centre. Are they being told they’ve got the same process here or is this just for those on board the Oceanic Viking?
EVANS: No they’ve been going through the UNHCR processes and assessment of those people inside that detention centre, and the UNHCR may or may not refer them to us or other countries depending on those assessments. The timelines are not firm in any of this…
SPEERS: Clearly the key here is enticing them to get off the boat with the offer of resettling them within 12 weeks and that is not something...that is not a timeframe you’re offering others in detention in Indonesia.
EVANS:
Well we have 90 day timeframe for processing on Christmas Island. We don’t always meet it...
These people can’t even lie competently.
===
Selling your house? It could be a green crime
Andrew Bolt
Queensland’s flailing government has now made it a crime to sell your house without first doing a big green audit:
QUEENSLANDERS selling their homes will soon have to complete a 56-point questionnaire detailing the property’s environmental credentials....What an extraodinary and utterly pointless intrusion into the lives of the public. A totalitarian instinct runs through the green faith.
Before being able to offer a property for sale, home owners must fill out a form describing its energy and water efficiency, including whether or not it has solar power, a gas cooktop, insulation, water-saving shower heads, or a rain water tank.
4BC.s Michael Smith has the Government’s bizarre form here. Questions being asked of householders - who include people with poor English, pensioners and battlers - include these:
Approximate kg of greenhouseTo answer misleadingly is a crime, as is to sell your house without filling in this form.
gas emissions from annual
household electricity use
= A x 1.04…
A2 From the entry (as per the above) there is level access (i.e. no greater than 10mm) throughout main living areas (kitchen, a living room
and at least one bedroom, bathroom and toilet)…
W4 ___ out of ___ shower heads are minimum 3-star WELS>> (or AAA rated)
rated (max 9 L/min) or
___ out of ___ shower heads are minimum 4-star WELS>> (max 7.5 L/min)
Smith says he’s never had such a furious reaction from listeners on talkback or on his blog. Wait until what else is planned for them under Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme.
No comments:
Post a Comment