KEVIN Rudd is delusional if he thinks Australia can lead the world or act as a bridge between the US and China, according to Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corporation.
First responders describe carnage and chaos that took place in deadly Fort Hood shooting that turned the sun-drenched military base into a war zone on U.S. soil.
Prayers Before Rampage
Fellow worshipers describe Fort Hood shooting suspect as devoted to his Muslim faith and opposed to deploying to Afghanistan, partly on religious grounds
'Anguished' Dems Balk at Health Bill
Some moderate Dems who reluctantly voted for energy bill are now wringing hands over health care vote
Fans have walked out of Britney Spears' first Australian performance of The Circus, upset by her miming and stage performance
Severe storm cuts off thousands
WILD weather has cut off thousands of residents in parts of New South Wales.
Monster croc attacked tourist boat
TOUR operators face a safety probe after a 5m croc bit a boat railing, sending tourists running.
Pay firefighters not to be drunk - union
A UNION is claiming a climate change allowance and also for its firefighter members to stay sober.
Among the 13 dead in shooting at Texas base were a man who left job for military, a newlywed who served in Iraq and a woman who vowed to take on bin Laden after 9/11.
Army Grieves After Fort Hood
Chief of staff calls massacre 'kick in the gut,' as FBI probes Army psychiatrist suspected in attack
ACORN Office Raided in New Orleans
Investigators seize computers, hard drives from activist group connected to embezzlement, fraud allegations
'They Left Me to Rot'
Man suspected of opening fire, killing 1 and injuring 5, at Orlando office that had laid him off
Show Slammed for Fox Stab
After 'Sesame Street' gets backlash for its parody of Fox News, the children's show's ombudsman says the program probably shouldn't have gone there
=== Journalists Corner ===
The Fort Hood Massacre!
What sparked the deadly attacks on the Texas military base?
As the investigation unfolds, get complete coverage of all the late breaking details.
===
Guest: Daniel Hannan
Going green, but at what cost? Would a global climate change agreement hold America's businesses hostage?
===
Americans Held Hostage in Iran!
November 4th, 1979 - 52 Americans are condemned to 444 days of hell. The decision-makers, power players, and hostages speak out!
===
A Planned Parenthood Dir. Quits!
What set this off? She shares her shocking story. Plus, Chuck Norris kicks it with Huckabee!
=== Comments ===
Why Is Vermont so Lenient on Child Predators?
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," November 5, 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!
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Factor Investigation" segment tonight: As you may know, Vermont has rejected Jessica's Law, which gives mandatory prison sentences to child molesters. The state did that because it believes in restorative justice, where the child rapist and other heinous criminals must be healed, not punished to a great degree.
Now, we believe that philosophy puts Vermont's children in grave danger. We began our reporting on the Green Mountain State in January 2006 when Judge Edward Cashman sentenced this man [Mark Hulett], who sexually abused a 6-year-old girl for years, to 60 days in prison.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EDWARD CASHMAN, VERMONT JUDGE: So you wake me up on a Sunday morning when I'm getting my newspaper, and you want to put me on TV in my sweat suit?
JESSE WATTERS, "FACTOR" PRODUCER: Well, people — people want some answers.
CASHMAN: Well, I understand that, and I understand their concerns, and I would very much like to respond to what's going on. It's very difficult for a judge to have to remain silent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: He doesn't have to remain silent. That was total BS, and after a few weeks Cashman was forced to give the predator three years in prison. He had to go in, rip up his original sentence and up it, but that was still way too lenient. And shortly after that, Cashman quit the bench.
The Vermont media and legislature largely supported Judge Cashman, which prompted "Factor" producer Jesse Watters to visit Vermont House Judiciary Chairman Bill Lippert.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE WATTERS, "FACTOR" PRODUCER: Why aren't you protecting the children against child rapists? Instead, you're passing bills to protect transsexual rights.
BILL LIPPERT, VERMONT HOUSE JUDICIARY CHAIRMAN: You're disgusting. You people don't even begin to know what the truth is. Yesterday we passed a strong bill against sexual predators. If you'd start with getting your facts straight for once, it would be a refreshing change.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: Another BS statement. There was no change when it came to child predators.
Thirty-seven-year-old Andrew James pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 4-year-old boy. James got a suspended sentence — suspended sentence — from Vermont Judge David Howard.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Hey, Judge? Jesse Watters with the Fox News channel. How are you doing? Can I talk to you for a second?
DAVID HOWARD, VERMONT JUDGE: No.
WATTERS: That guy who sexually assaulted a 4-year-old. You didn't give him any jail time. Can you explain that, sir? Don't you think you owe us an explanation? What, you don't believe in punishment? Judge, don't you think you owe us an explanation?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: It just makes me angry, and once again, some in the Vermont media ignored allowing a child molester to walk free. The guy just walked free. So Jesse caught up with Bennington Banner editor James Therrien.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Should a guy who molested 4-year-old boy walk off scot-free? Is that the position of your paper, to let something like that slide, just decide it's some sort — wouldn't the people of Bennington want to know that this guy's running around?
JAMES THERRIEN, EDITOR, BENNINGTON BANNER: So pathetic. Really is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: Yes, you're pathetic, pal. And guess what? Andrew James has now violated his probation. Some kind of drug beef. So maybe he'll finally be put in prison where he belongs. But still, still, the Rutland Vermont Herald refuses to acknowledge that Vermont has a problem. Jesse caught up with editorial page editor David Moats, who has consistently attacked our reporting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: So why do you keep sympathizing with Judge Cashman? What about Judge David Howard, who gave probation to a guy who sexually assaulted a 4-year-old?
DAVID MOATS, EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR, RUTLAND VERMONT HERALD: I don't even know the case you're talking about.
WATTERS: Judge David Howard. You attacked Bill O'Reilly for that.
MOATS: I don't even remember the details of the case you're talking about.
WATTERS: Sir, with all due respect, you continually attack "The O'Reilly Factor." Your paper ran an op-ed that accused Bill of being a bigot and a homophobe for pushing Jessica's Law.
MOATS: We run all kinds of op-eds. They say lots of different things. People have their points of view. I'm going to go in here, because I have to buy some stuff, so I'll see you later.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: Bottom line: The state of Vermont remains the most lenient place in the nation for child predators, and the predators know it. The question is why?
Joining us now from Boston, attorney and child advocate Wendy Murphy. OK, now you've been with us on — you know, we've been doing this for three years up in Vermont. Things aren't getting any better up there. I mean, they passed some wishy-washy law. But as we've seen, this guy who got probation now violated his probation, and they had to haul him back in. So why do you think this is going on in Vermont?
WENDY MURPHY, ATTORNEY & CHILD ADVOCATE: You know, I think, frankly, the answer is pretty simple. All the branches of government responsible for primarily protecting the people, especially children, are run by myopic ideologues, and you know, they march like lemmings. It's a big problem called group think. No one thinks for themselves, so nobody's willing to stand up and say, "We can't keep doing this, guys." These predators are moving to Vermont in droves, because they know they're going to get away with raping kids.
O'REILLY: Are the predators moving there?
MURPHY: Absolutely. And you know how I know? I mean, I've been working in this field for 20 years, and the way that I know this is sex offenders talk to each other, and then it comes out at conferences and it comes out at things that I give lectures at and so forth. And they say to each other, "Where should we move that we can be free from these terrible, you know, Jessica's Laws people?" And they say Vermont, first, Massachusetts. Florida has its share of problems. We keep hearing about little girls down there. You know, and it...
O'REILLY: Florida's tough. If you get caught — if you get caught in Florida, you're going away for life, OK.
MURPHY: Only because of what happened to poor Jessie Lunsford, that they had such a tragedy. Vermont is going to have that happen to them.
O'REILLY: They already have. They already have. They already had a girl murdered up there.
MURPHY: I agree. I don't know what else...
O'REILLY: Look, you saw the pinhead press people. You saw the guy from the Rutland paper. I mean, "I don't really remember." That was a huge case. It was huge, all right? And that guy, his paper attacked us, you know, like, what right do you have about coming up here? Well, we want to protect the kids, sir.
MURPHY: Well, I'll tell you something. Thank God for "The Factor," because but for what you did and calling attention to Cashman and all the other crazy people up there that have allowed some of these crimes to occur. The media is supposed to hold the government accountable when it falls down on the job. That was you, "The Factor," holding Vermont officials accountable. But you know who's supposed to do it? Newspaper editors. They're not supposed to pick a side, be ideological, line up like the lemmings and let them keep doing things wrong. What's the media's job? It's to make sure power doesn't get lopsided and become corrupt.
O'REILLY: And they're supposed to be watchdogs and protecting the defenseless, the children.
MURPHY: Especially for the defenseless, especially for the kids.
O'REILLY: Wendy, thanks very much. Nice to see you again.
===
HE’S ON TO US
Tim Blair
At the official Copenhagen website, this headline:
Australian PM warns of fossil conspiracy
===
CHICK CHICK BOOM
Tim Blair
Fort Hood gunman and 7-Eleven trauma victim Nidal Malik Hasan was reportedly brought down by female cop Sgt. Kimberly Munley:
[Lt. Gen. Bob] Cone said Munley shot the gunman four times despite being shot herself.Having been ventilated, Hasan is now on a ventilator. Interestingly, at his previous job ...
Officials said Munley was in stable condition.
Cone said, “It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer.”
Cone also said he was inspired by a woman who helped carry a wounded victim and used her blouse as a tourniquet, then later realized she’d been shot in the hip.
Hasan would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers, which became an issue during Christmas season when employees often took group photos. Co-workers would find a solo photo of Hasan and post it on the bulletin board without his permission.So Hasan Solo didn’t like being photographed with women. Treacher responds: “Congrats on being shot by one, loser.”
===
RUDD GOES WILD
Tim Blair
The Prime Minister wigs out:
Kevin Rudd has launched a blistering attack on climate change sceptics and deniers in Australia and abroad, accusing them of a systematic campaign to sabotage global talks in Copenhagen and of being contemptuous towards the interests of …Wait for it:
… the world’s children.Sensational! We’re governed by a cartoon panic lady:
===
YOUTHS USED
Tim Blair
This site occasionally highlights the car-burning antics of so-called “youths” in urban Europe. These “youths” – many of them, ahem, Presbyterian – appear to have certain locals on their side, after a fashion:
Stockholm-area police arrested nine left-wing activists on Wednesday in connection with a string of disturbances in the southern suburb of Fittja in Botkyrka.Stockholm cops thereafter traced the woman to a leftist cell prone to turning up at moments of tension between immigrants and authorities, apparently in order to increase those tensions. The “youths” are being used.
For several nights earlier in the week, Fittja Centrum was plagued by several car fires and other acts of vandalism. Police who responded to the violence were then met with a barrage of stones when arriving on the scene.
But when police responded to calls about continued unrest in the predominantly immigrant area on Wednesday night, they recognized a 20-year-old woman who is wanted on suspicion of rioting from an earlier case.
===
THEN AND NOW
Tim Blair
The ABC’s Lateline in 2001, after asylum seekers had refused for a week to leave their ship:
Asylum seekers debacle continuesThe ABC’s Lateline in 2009, after asylum seekers have refused for several weeks to leave their ship:
Patience the approach with asylum seekers unmoved
===
LATE BILL
Tim Blair
Great timing from creepy anti-comic Bill Maher:
[Barack Obama is] calm … I like it that he’s calm … they said that when he first got inaugurated, what he did was just sit and do nothing for 10 minutes. You know, like Bush used to do when the country was under attack.If only Christopher Hitchens had been hosting Maher’s appearance instead of David Letterman. This went to air in the US on the evening of November 5, the day Obama calmly blathered like an idiot – a frighteningly insensitive idiot – following the murders at Fort Hood:
Reader Gajim comments: “I was listening to the radio as the events unfolded. The news organizations were up front about the lack of hard facts. Then the station breathlessly cut to the President as he took to the podium to address the nation. After 20 seconds, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I turned the radio off, feeling sick to my core. My President was a complete ass.”
===
COLD WAR WON
Tim Blair
Despairing Time magazine reports:
Russia doesn’t seem to care two bits about global warming, and it’s not hard to see why. Most Russians would probably be happy if the country was a little warmer ...This led to Russia totally screwing our Next Top Model friends in New Zealand, and still having plenty of delicious carbon credits left over. Meanwhile, in the US:
To say that Russia is hesitant about tackling climate change is putting it mildly. The last time the world tried to get the country’s cooperation on the issue was in 1997, during negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol … Because Russia is the world’s third largest source of emissions after the U.S. and China, the accord would have failed without it. So the treaty was written in a way that would allow Russia to keep polluting as much as it wanted and grant the country billions of dollars in emissions allowances to sell to other countries that needed to meet their Kyoto commitments.
As a U.N. official who participated in the talks put it, “Russia got the sweetest deal: free money, no restrictions.”
Climate change has slipped so far down on the agenda that at least one key committee chairman has suggested it might have to wait until after the 2010 elections.
===
HOW ODD
Tim Blair
Reuters includes this item from Nairobi in its “oddly enough” category, although it should be filed under brutish and sad:
Sacdiyo Sheeq used to love listening to Bollywood movie songs on her mobile telephone.The Shabaabbies have also “banned movies, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer.” Apart from that, pretty much anything goes.
But since hardline al Shabaab insurgents seized the southern Somali port of Kismayu, the 25-year-old’s life has changed.
“Al Shabaab wants our ringtones to be only a Muslim cleric reading the Hadith or Koranic verse,” she told Reuters.
UPDATE. Further al Shabaab antics:
Islamists in southern Somalia have stoned a man to death for adultery but spared his pregnant girlfriend until she gives birth.They’ll kill her afterwards.
===
UT’S UP
Tim Blair
We have the next installment of New Zealand’s Next Top Model: “Ulivin girls, but we ken only keep tin of thum. I suspect we might get un a but of a screp over this, so shell we try and keep it suvul?”
===
HE CAUGHT IT BY LISTENING
Tim Blair
“A link to PTSD?” wonders the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Thursday’s deadly rampage raises a red flag over the issue of combat stress …Except that Major Nidal Malik Hasan never saw a single minute of combat; any stress he suffered was pre-traumatic. The Guardian has another diagnosis:
The most common disorder linked to combat stress is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can develop after exposure to one or more traumatic events that threatened or caused great physical harm.
Hasan did not fit the classic pattern of a stressed soldier. But someone listening day after day to troops describing the tension and carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan could end up as damaged as those facing combat at first hand.There you have it. Poor Hasan, who shot a teenage girl in the back, was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder by proxy.
===
Save not the planet but this boy
Andrew Bolt
No joking now. This manifestation of the global warming faith has every hallmark of a cult. The ABC was grossly irresponsible to promote this young man’s pay-us-$160-billion-fast and encourage something that could get him seriously hurt.
If someone with influence over him or his family is reading this, please step in. I’m not saying this is another case of ”climate change delusion”, but I see here a man in the grip of an irrational, religious rapture, seemingly convinced that the world’s fate really does lie on his plate.
And a note to the ABC: you can see how admiring publicity of the kind you gave him floods him with an almost orgasmic sense of power and destiny. You helped to create this.
===
Big blog
Andrew Bolt
I don’t enter competitions, preferring to stand or fall by the readers’ response. So this is the only time I’ll note something that reader TonyfromOz, from PA Pundits International, urges me to mention:
I feel sure that you are already aware of this, but I’ll still point it out to you anyway.
Here’s the link to the 2009 Weblog Awards. Scroll down towards the bottom, and the last seven entries list the awards for the different sized blogs.
The top one there is the Best Major Blog, and there are 100 on that list with, as you may have guessed Adriana on top with her Huffington Post. The Blog at number 100 is DVICE with a Technorati Authority rating of 760.
I have included here this link to your Blog and its details…
The green number at right is the Technorati Authority that rates the size of your Blog. Your number there is 650, and as you can see, it is up 13 points from the last reporting check. The number at the top left of your entry is the position of your Blog in the overall scheme of things, and as you can see there your number is 715 and is also up as the arrow indicates. What is worth noticing is the total number of Blogs being recorded there, that number at the top, above the green title bar, 853,799. I might suggest yours would be the largest rating Australian Blog. This places you in the grouping directly below the top Group, (those of The Major Blogs) and in the category ‘Best Very Large Blog’ and that sector counts in the top 2.5% of all Blogs.
===
Woman shoots chauvinist
Andrew Bolt
Tim Blair likes the symmetry:
Fort Hood gunman and 7-Eleven trauma victim Nidal Malik Hasan was reportedly brought down by female cop Sgt. Kimberly Munley… Interestingly, at his previous job ... Hasan would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers, which became an issue during Christmas season when employees often took group photos.I yesterday wrote in astonishment at the desperate attempts of the media to avoid even mentioning the most relevant fact about Hasan that could explain his motive in killing 13 American soldiers. But surely the prize for not mentioning the M word goes to this entry:Dr Robin Kerner, an attending psychologist who specializes in disaster anxiety at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, said it’s not uncommon for individuals who work with traumatized patients to suffer the effects of ”compassion fatigue.”
===
Medal handed out
Andrew Bolt
Just to make it worse, not only did Barack Obama preface his response to the Fort Worth shootings with a “shout out”, he even gave credit where it wasn’t due:
Please, everybody, have a seat. Let me first of all just thank Ken and the entire Department of the Interior staff for organizing just an extraordinary conference.Notes Mike Bates:
I want to thank my Cabinet members and senior administration officials who participated today. I hear that Dr. Joe Medicine Crow (ph) was around, and so I want to give a shout out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner. It’s good to see you.
Ah, the dangers of giving shout outs without a teleprompter. Crow is not a Medal of Honor recipient.No, that’s just given to being who fought in the armed services, but what would Obama know about shooty business?
===
Is this for all victims, or just those with a union?
Andrew Bolt
My deep sympathy of the victims, but do other people killed in workplace accidents or on the roads get this kind of government bailout, too - and so much money?
THE federal and NSW governments have agreed to loan up to $320 million to a compensation fund for James Hardie asbestos victims.Yes, I hear the the claims that James Hardie will repay this at some stage - no, really. But at what stage does Kevin Rudd figure he’s spent enough, and must now save?
===
What did cruel Americans do to make a poor Muslim snap?
Andrew Bolt
SBS, our taxpayer-funded multicultural station, reports tonight on the Muslim soldier who killed 13 of his American colleagues, while shouting “God is great”. The reporter says investigators are still searching for a motive, and presenter Lee Lin Chin adds:
And later in the program we’ll be examing some of the problems faced by Muslim soldiers in the US military.Yes, “by”. Not ”from”.
UPDATE
It’s a meme of the Left. It’s 13 non-Muslims that are actually dead, but it’s Muslims who are the victims who deserve our sympathy:
Shooting raises fears for Muslims in US armyIsn’t the right word not “for” but “of”?
UPDATE 2
A former classmate adds that the shooter equated the war on terror with a “war on Islam”. But, says Chris Matthews even as he shows the clip, “it’s unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting”.
Exactly what proof would convince Matthews? The return of the Hidden Imam?
===
Rudd’s rant
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd goes feral, rebutting global warming sceptics and his critics not with facts but the most extraordinary abuse and wild claims:
Mr Rudd capped a week dominated by debate on the government’s handling of asylum seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking with a vicious political attack over an issue on which he had recently said little.I’m crushed. Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce is apparently “the fear-monger in chief”. And still Rudd rants on:
It had been about seven months since the prime minister - elected on a platform of action on climate change - last delivered a major speech on the topic....
“The do-nothing climate change sceptics are still alive and well in the coalition,” Mr Rudd said....
“The argument that we must not act until others do is an argument that has been used by political cowards since time immemorial both of the left and the right. They are reckless gamblers who are betting all our futures on their arrogant assumption that their intuitions should triumph over the evidence.
“You are betting our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our economy and our future on an intuition on a gut feeling; on a political prejudice you have about science.”
He said all were ‘’quite literally holding the world to ransom’’Oh, holding people to ransom? Like this, Prime Minister?
At this stage we’re only making one guarantee and that’s that we’ll stop fasting if our demands are met. And our demands are for world leaders to commit to stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 350 parts per million and to commit to providing at least $160 billion per year to the developing worldOr this?
NEXT month Kevin Rudd flies to Copenhagen to help seal a United Nations deal to cut the world’s emissions… So here’s the question: is Rudd really going to approve a draft treaty that could force Australia to hand over an astonishing $7 billion a year to a new and unelected global authority?But let’s review the lowlights of his amazing rant. (Note: the study on sea level rises which first led this post has been bumped to the bottom.)
First, of course, panicky Rudd sees a conspiracy:
The tentacles of the climate change skeptics reach deep into the ranks of the Liberal Party and, once you add the National Party, its plan, the skeptics and the deniers are a major force… The legion of climate change skeptics are active across the world...Hey, we’re a “major force” now? I thought we were tiny in number and isolated?
The clock is ticking for the planet, but the climate change skeptics simply do not care. The vested interests at work are simply too great.You mean someone’s paying me to be a sceptic? And every doubting scientist is just corrupt, selling out the planet for dollars?
This man’s insane. But on he goes, making a fool of himself:
And the most recent IPCC scientific conclusion in 2007 was that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and the “increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” This is the conclusion of 4,000 scientists appointed by governments from virtually every country in the world, and the term “very likely” is defined in the scientific conclusion of this report as being 90 per cent probable.But, but, but ... so even the believers have 10 per cent doubt? Are sceptical? Oh, and Prime Minister, your 4000 figure is a gross exaggeration. In fact, as John McLean discovered, there are just 2900 IPCC scientists, of whom only 60 have specifically endorsed the claim that humans are heating the planet to dangerous levels. Other IPCC scientists say there’s no proof of this at all.
Rudd boasts:
the Government had built wide support for action on climate through a carbon pollution reduction scheme.Really? But what Rudd doesn’t say is how he built this “support” - by bribing business with offers of free permits and compensation, and by having the CSIRO censor a report that said his scheme was a crock. And if the support is so “wide”, why this panic?
Rudd tells us to dismiss warnings that his emissions trading scheme (ETS) will cost billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. We must just trust:
Treasury modellingTreasury modelling, eh? The modelling of a Treasury that did not predict the financial crisis, and then did not predict the sudden recovery. The Treasury modelling that presumes we’ll be saved by green technology that does not exist, and that within months is found to be so dodgy that it this week led to this:
Treasury costings ... found that instead of between $11 billion and $20bn in excess revenue that was anticipated by the Coalition to pay for its proposed changes, the ETS will deliver just $2.5bn over 10 years.Rudd scoffs:
Enter the “world government” conspiracy theorists.But, Prime Minister, look at the very treaty whose draft you’ve been negotiating - and tell me again that it wasn’t drawn up by fruitloops dreaming of having some power over the world ... and its billions. Check this clause, for instance:
Financial resources of the Convention Adaptation Fund"] [may] [shall] include: (a) [Assessed contributions [of at least 0.7% of the annual GDP of developed country parties]And this, about a new UN board’s proposed power to:
impose financial penalties, at a minimum of 10 times the market price of carbon, for any emissions in excessAnd to impose “penalties and fines on non-compliance of developed country parties” such as Australia for not honoring:
commitment’s to ... provide support in the form of financial resources, technology transfer and capacity building.And never let it me said that this Christian Prime Minister is too prissy to use the foulest of smears, using even the Holocaust dead to befoul scientists and commentators who simply disagree with him on the evidence or on the worth of the colossal green taxes he now proposes:
Like the arguments from climate change deniers...And Rudd claims that I, the father of three, am so vicious that I would rather spite him than save my children:
And by doing so, these do-nothing climate change skeptics are prepared to destroy our children’s future.In fact, people like me - who point out that Rudd’s scheme will not work, even if there were proof that the world is heating dangerously and man is to blame - are a menace to children everywhere:
This brigade of do-nothing climate change skeptics are dangerous because if they succeed, then it is all of us who will suffer. Our children. And our grandchildren.Oh, sorry. You think I’ve got tickets on myself in assuming that Rudd is singling out me as a corrupt, cynical, unscientific, Holocaust-denying, conspiratorial menace even to my own children? Actually, Rudd four times in his speech names me as a member of this inner circle of evil. For instance:
Malcolm, Barnaby, Andrew, Janet – stop gambling with our future.I can’t tell you just how nasty, dishonest, ill-informed and hysterical Rudd’s speech is. But Roger Pielke Jr, a leading professor of environmental science can.
Pielke is alarmed by Rudd’s hysterical tone:
In Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has given the most chilling speech with respect to open policy debate that I have ever heard from a leader of a democratic country. The focus of his speech is on “climate change deniers.” Who are these people? They include people who are skeptical of climate change science, but remarkably, they also include people who believe that climate change is real and a problem, but disagree with the Prime Minister’s preferred policy approach....Incidentally, with Rudd so damning of sceptics, who in his Government or the CSIRO would dare doubt?
Can witch trials and pogroms be far behind? What bothers me about the speech is not so much the criticism of people who reject mainstream science. Fine, criticism of them as rolling the dice on a minority view is fair and appropriate. What bothers me is the explicit equation of people who question a policy’s effectiveness or desirability with the idea of being a “denier” and thus being “dangerous.” Rudd is openly conflating views on science with views on politics.
UPDATE (Note, this update has been bumped from the top of this post)
Meanwhile the world keeps calming behaving in a way Rudd didn’t predict. So who ya gonna trust - the warmists’ models or your lying eyes?
SEA levels on Australia’s eastern seaboard are rising at less than a third of the rate that the NSW government is predicting as it overhauls the state’s planning laws and bans thousands of landowners from developing coastal sites.UPDATE 2
The Rees government this week warned that coastal waters would rise 40cm on 1990 levels by 2050, with potentially disastrous effects.
Even yesterday Kevin Rudd warned in a speech to the Lowy Institute that 700,000 homes and businesses, valued at up to $150 billion, were at risk from the surging tide.
However, if current sea-level rises continue, it would not be until about 2200 - another 191 years - before the east coast experienced the kind of increases that have been flagged.
According to the most recent report by the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Tidal Centre, issued in June, there has been an average yearly increase of 1.9mm in the combined net rate of relative sea level at Port Kembla, south of Sydney, since the station was installed in 1991. ...
By comparison, the NSW government’s projections - based on global modelling by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as CSIRO regional analysis - equate to a future rise of about 6.6mm a year.
The latest satellite measurements of global temperature in October are in, showing the planet still hasn’t resumed the warming that stopped in 2001.
Lucia of The Blackboard plots the trends of the main temperature measurements. The trend taken from 2000 is of warming - but if you start from 2001, the trend is down.
UPDATE 3
Marc Morano rebuts Rudd’s rant, point by point.
UPDATE 4
I blame global warming:
A HUGE iceberg has been spotted off Macquarie Island, halfway between Antarctica and Australia, where icebergs are rarely seen.
===
Bit late, and broke
Andrew Bolt
Now that she has time to think - and now that the money’s all gone - Michelle Grattan finally concludes that maybe Kevin Rudd did indeed spend too much on too little:
NOW that the worst of the economic crisis is over, the Government’s policy is coming under more intense scrutiny. No longer can Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan rely on near automatic acceptance of their prescriptions, just because there is general panic about how bad things are or could get. The policy debate is opening up...Actually, Michelle, some of us did open up this debate when the battle most needed fighting, but others were then less open to such doubts.
Pack wisdom often isn’t. Now, can extend this lesson to the pack’s endorsement of Rudd’s even more disastrous emissions trading scheme, also being sold to us on the hurry-hurry-no-time-to-think sly?
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Iran tells Obama to shove his peace
Andrew Bolt
Let’s see if Barack Obama’s new policy to “reach out” and “engage” with Iran’s Islamist regime with ”a new emphasis on respect” is working. Starting from the top:
The UN’s nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.Strange. So Iran is now even closer than many feared to getting a nuclear bomb - and means to send it to, say, Israel. And let’s look at other news these past few days:
The very existence of the technology, known as a “two-point implosion” device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as “breathtaking” and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.
IT’S BEEN five weeks since the Obama administration announced that Iran had agreed to ship most of its enriched uranium out of the country in exchange for fuel rods for a research reactor—a deal that promised to delay Tehran’s nuclear program by a year or so. But there have been no shipments...Instead:
Hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough over Iran’s nuclear programme were dwindling tonight after Tehran demanded changes to a uranium exchange deal that European diplomats described as “unacceptable”.... The uranium deal, agreed in principle in Geneva at the beginning of the month, involved Iran shipping out most of its enriched uranium and, in return, being provided about a year later with fuel rods for its research reactor in Tehran.Oops. Sorry, there has been one shipment:
Israel has intercepted the biggest ever arms shipment it has ever seized after commandos boarded a Lebanese-bound vessel off Cyprus. Officials claimed the seizure provided the most tangible evidence yet of large-scale Iranian military support for Hizbollah, the Lebanese-based Shia guerrilla movement which fought a war with Israel in 2006.And in case Obama needed telling:
Iran’s Supreme Leader, spurning what he described as several personal overtures from US President Barack Obama, has warned that negotiating with the US was ‘’naive and perverted‘’ and said Iranian politicians should not be ‘’deceived’’ into starting such talks.Get the idea Iran thinks Obama is weak, and easily to be defied?
Still, this is the kind of failure that gave Obama his Nobel Peace Prize.
UPDATE
Oh, the media outrage - and Kevin Rudd’s, too - when John Howard two years ago warned that terrorists would rather like Obama to be president:
I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for (an) Obama victory...UPDATE
Reader Tim illustrates the difference at the top, but I think a policeman’s uniform still flatters Obama..
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Murdoch disses Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Hmm, seems the boss has gone cold on Kevin Rudd - and nothing I’ve heard elsewhere contradicts the impression given in this interview:
KEVIN Rudd is delusional if he thinks Australia can lead the world or act as a bridge between the US and China.Odd, no reports of Rudd meeting Murdoch on the News Corp chief’s latest visit. But two years ago:
He’s very intelligent, he’s very interesting, but he’s kidding himself with the G20 - the grouping of the top 20 countries in the world, according to Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corporation, the Herald Sun reports.
“(President) Obama actually wants to cut the even more exclusive G8 to a G4 - and really, to a G2; just the US and China,” Mr Murdoch said in a wide-ranging interview yesterday.
“If Rudd thinks we can set an example for the rest of the world with a cap-and-trade system on greenhouse gas emissions - the ETS - all it would do is push up the cost of living in Australia and the rest of the world will laugh,” he said…
Mr Murdoch said many difficulties had arisen from Mr Rudd making so much in the election campaign about his knowledge of China. It probably led the Chinese to expect too much from him, he said. “But I think he was right to disillusion them,” he added immediately.
And any idea that Australia could be a bridge between China and the US, that’s “certainly delusional”.
Mr Murdoch has told The Weekend Australian that Mr Rudd is wasting time on spats with the media. Following public spats between Mr Rudd and editors at News Limited newspapers, including The Weekend Australian, Mr Murdoch has hit back.
“He’s oversensitive and too sensitive for his own good,” Mr Murdoch told said.
Mr Rudd met for a one-hour private meeting with Mr Murdoch at the News Corporation’s New York headquarters but the meeting was extended when the pair decided to have dinner together at a local restaurant.UPDATE
Channel Seven reported that when asked if Mr Rudd would make a good prime minister, Mr Murdoch replied “Oh, I’m sure.”
Even Laurie Oakes seems to be cutting Rudd loose:
A COUPLE of days ago, I found myself shouting at the radio: “For God’s sake, answer the bloody question!"…
Kevin Rudd was being interviewed - one of the 14 or so radio and TV appearances in his much-publicised media blitz on the asylum-seeker issue. And he had nothing to tell us. No answers. Just platitudes, slogans and spin.
The Prime Minister’s minders would have done better to keep him locked up in The Lodge and away from the phone. What is the point of a media blitz when you have nothing to say?
All Rudd achieved was to deepen the suspicion in the minds of voters that he hasn’t got a clue about how to deal with the problem. He resembled a headless chook running around in circles.
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Fleeing an Indian call centre instead
Andrew Bolt
But, but, but didn’t Kevin Rudd say such Tamils were actually fleeing the civil war?
ALEX, the well-spoken leader of a boatload of asylum-seekers held in Indonesia on their way to Australia, is a known people-smuggler previously deported from Canada, according to the Sri Lankan government.The people left in the hometowns of some Sri Lankan asylum seekers hardly seem to living in fear of persecution and “executions”, as the Greens so recklessly claimed. The only examples given in this report of police arrests back there are of people caught trying to hitch a ride with people smugglers.
“Alex” emerged as the spokesman for 255 Sri Lankans whose boat was detained last month and which remains moored at the port of Merak in western Java.
The bearded Tamil ... said he picked up his American accent while working at a call centre.... But according to Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry, he is Kulaendrarajah Sanjeev, a 28-year-old people-smuggler who worked out of a base in India.
UPDATE
The ABC’s Lateline in 2001 is scathing when John Howard could get asylum seekers off a boat after one week:
Asylum seekers debacle continuesThe ABC’s Lateline in 2009 is understanding when Kevin Ridd can not get asylum seekers off a boat after three weeks:
Patience the approach with asylum seekers unmoved
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Obama will lose any hunger for slowing growth
Andrew Bolt
Forget any hope of Barack Obama getting through his proposed global warming taxes. This week’s election defeats in Virginia and New Jersey mean he’s barely likely to get much of his $1 trillion health care package through the Senate. And then there’s the little matter of this grim news:
The unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983—and is likely to go higher.
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