Monday, December 07, 2009

Headlines Monday 7th December 2009


Defense secretary says U.S. hasn't had intel on Usama bin Laden in years, but National Security Adviser Jim Jones speculates he is in North Waziristan and freely crossing the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.


Kevin Rudd appears as a weary 63-year-old in a series of ads scattered throughout Copenhagen airport welcoming world leaders for the COP15 climate change summit

Abbott's climate challenge to PM
TONY Abbott calls on Kevin Rudd for a public debate as world leaders arrive in Copenhagen.

Workers take pay cuts to stay employed
A TIGHT job market has forced more people to accept lower-paying jobs, survey finds.

Race to Save Health Care
President heads to Capitol Hill for rare caucus meeting appearance as Dems try to resolve differences

Iran Cuts Internet Before Protests
Authorities slow, choke off Web connections to stop opposition communication of student protesters

D'Oh-Bama Administration Faux Pas
In wake of 'Gate-crasher gate,' take a look at the more memorable flubs of the Obama administration


An Olympic medallist and former swim team captain has blown the lid on what he calls a "child sex abuse cover-up" at the highest levels of Australian swimming / Daily Telegraph

Telstra calls on customers for help
TELCO is asking its 10 million account holders for advice on how to fix its woeful customer service.

Two die as Sydney festivities get violent

FESTIVE season revellers brawled, glassed and stabbed their way through a violent weekend in Sydney leaving two people dead and several injured.

Man injects sleeping wife with HIV
AN HIV-positive man has confessed to injecting his blood into his sleeping wife.


Obama's national security adviser says the U.S. won't pull all its forces out of Afghanistan in 2011, calling the president's withdrawal timetable 'a ramp' and 'not a cliff.'

Celebrities on cruelty charge for eating rat
TWO stars of a British reality TV show have been charged with animal cruelty by NSW police.

U.S. Slashes Bailout Cost
Obama administration cuts estimate by $200B, a move that could pave the way for the debut of a new jobs program

Bipartisan Health Effort? Not Exactly
Senate Republicans say Obama, Democrats are engaging in shady backroom dealings to get health care bill passed

Christmas Axed From Climate Summit
United Nations says religious event has no place at climate conference, cancels tree decorations
=== Comments ===
Is America Losing Power in the World?
By Bill O'Reilly
Is America losing power in the world? That is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo." There was some good news today with unemployment dropping a little bit. But generally speaking, the economy remains weak and the dollar is in big trouble all around the world.

As we reported last night, the massive spending by Presidents Bush and Obama has severely weakened America. We simply owe too much money. In addition, U.S. foreign policy is dubious, to say the least. Our enemies are openly defying us. So how did it all happen?

There's no question the Iraq War badly damaged the country, because we've spent more than $700 billion on it. And the war severely burdened the military. Yes, we eventually prevailed, but the toll it took on the nation was dramatic. The distraction of Iraq may be one reason why the Bush administration didn't stop the irresponsible business practices that led to this hellacious recession.

So the one-two punch of Iraq and the terrible economy has put America on the defensive. Enter President Obama, who has accelerated government spending to a record degree. Whether that's necessary is debatable. What's not debatable is it's got to stop before the USA goes bankrupt and the dollar collapses completely.

Overseas, some of our enemies perceive Mr. Obama as being weak. That may not be fair, but the perception is there. When a back water like Iran can defy the world's sole superpower, us, you know things are not good.

Now, I believe most Americans understand the country's in trouble and rather drastic measures will be needed to turn things around. First, the incredible government spending has got to stop, as I said. Second, we have to fight smarter in Afghanistan and other places. We just can't keep spending trillions of dollars chasing an unlimited supply of Muslim terrorists around. And third, the president must demand sacrifice from all of us. All these new entitlements are economic suicide. And that includes the health care fiasco and the global warming madness.

Now, polls show the Democrats may lose big next November, even though the country's decline began under a Republican administration. But so far, Mr. Obama has added to that decline and doesn't seem inclined to stop the power erosion. In the end, it will come down to we, the people, demanding that our politicians concentrate on making us strong again. I think we'll do that. I hope we'll do that.
===
A GLOBAL WARMING SCIENTIST WALKS INTO A BAR
Tim Blair
One of Lyle’s best:
As one hot guy to one hot chick,
I gotta show you something slick:
It is a chart, made by my staff,
Where sex is plotted on a graph.

Right here, the hotness of our date
Is indexed to the planet’s fate,
And this tumescent hockey stick?
It means we’d better do it quick.

Hey babe, don’t cop an attitude,
This stuff has all been peer-reviewed;
My data proves, without a doubt,
That me and you, we should make out.

What’s that you say? You gotta go?
Well, that just shows how much you know,
‘Cuz you don’t mean what you just said,
You mean you wanna stay, instead.

Yeah, I commit immoral acts
On unsuspecting quotes and facts,
So how’s about you let me do
The same disgusting things to you?
Other epic Lylescapes are scattered throughout various comment zones.
===
IT’S ON
Tim Blair
The Providence St Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, throws down a dance challenge for Australian hospitals:

===
REVKINGATE II
Tim Blair
Walls shake. The ground trembles. Dogs howl. The New York Times‘ public editor prepares to hand down judgment on Andrew Revkin:
I read all the messages involving Revkin …
You did? But they’re private!
… and I did not see anything to keep him off the story. If anything, there was an indication that the scientists whom some readers accused Revkin of being too cozy with were wary of his independence. One, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, warned a colleague, Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia, to be careful what he shared with “Andy” because, “He’s not as predictable as we’d like.”
If anything should have alerted the NYT to the power of this story, it’s that their own pet warmy was considered too unpredictable by CRU’s climate cops. Reading this, Revkin seems as predictably humourless as any carbon zombie. Further from the public editor:
Revkin and [science columnist John] Tierney both told me that, after that broad understanding among scientists, there is sharp debate over how fast the earth is warming, how much human activity is contributing and how severe the impact will be.
It’s nice that this pair told their public editor. How about telling their readers?
“Our coverage, looked at in toto, has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the potential for both overstatement and understatement,” Revkin said.
Here’s more than a century of overstatement for you, Andy. On the plus side, you can show it to Michael Mann as evidence of your newspaper’s predictability.
===
It’s not working for you, Malcolm. Is for Tony, though
Andrew Bolt
The treachery:
MALCOLM Turnbull has attacked new Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s climate change stance in his first electorate newsletter since he lost the leadership.
But check out the readers reactions underneath that item.

UPDATE

Tony Abbott’s vindication grows more emphatic. The Liberals’ Kelly O’Dwyer has increased her lead over the Greens in the latest counting, getting a substantial swing to the Liberals - with strong postal votes expected to widen her margin even more.

Peter Costello’s two-party preferred vote at the last election: 57.04 per cent.

Kelly O’Dwyer’s two-party preferred vote now: 59.57 per cent
===
RIGHT TONE
Tim Blair
Tony Abbott began well, and he’s still hitting the right notes. Paul Kelly:
After being elected Liberal leader by surprise, Abbott spent the rest of week throwing political grenades – supporting individual workplace contracts, backing a nuclear power debate and killing the emissions trading scheme – while his colleagues held their breath wondering how the public would react …

Labor has been rocked by these events. It takes solace in one big idea: that Abbott is an extremist and ultimately unelectable. Yet Labor’s control of the political agenda is under threat as Abbott generates a surge across talkback radio.
The surge is also happening elsewhere, as Abbott notes:
“On talkback radio and in cyberspace, this campaign against the ETS really developed a head of steam and started to be reflected back to people like me who are less connected to the blogosphere and don’t spend all that much time listening to the radio.”
Further from Kelly:
On boat people, he will campaign as a dedicated border protectionist.

On Aboriginal deprivation, he champions Noel Pearson’s philosophy and will attack any Rudd retreat to the rights agenda.
Again, all good. Abbott is reading the carbon game cleverly:
‘’If the Americans have an ETS, then it will become part of world trade and it will be hard for Australia to avoid it. But until they have one, we really don’t need one and shouldn’t have one. And I think the Americans will be quite reluctant … perhaps even more susceptible than our parliament is to grassroots campaigns. So I don’t think we should expect an American ETS any time soon.’’
Women are said to dislike Abbott, but that hasn’t turned up in early polling. In fact, he’s got at least one prominent female supporter:
Am totally pumped about Tony Abbott.... now it gets exciting.Someone with great ideas and great solutions.. Just read Battlelines.
Then there were the shocking (to Greens) results in Saturday’s by-elections. So far, so good. And if Kevin Rudd wants to avoid Abbott’s warming debate challenge, well, he can always debate a Rudd impersonator:

===
AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR
Tim Blair
Kenneth Bulgin successfully challenges a speeding fine:
It sets a precedent that could open the floodgates for all motorists …

Staging a defence against speeding fines is usually a costly exercise as the defendant is forced to hire experts to prove his case.

However, this ruling means motorists may now not have to because Mr Bulgin has done that for them.
Well done, sir.
===
STUPID DATA-CHANGING IGNORANT FRAUDS
Tim Blair
Al Gore turns up in LA for a private dinner with climate scientists Leonardo DiCaprio and Diane Keaton. Subsequently:
This would be a good time to find that umbrella you haven’t used for a while ... not the little one for those little rains. Bust out the big boy …

Forecasters say a network of 29 catch basins in the foothill areas of Los Angeles County will be tested to their limits if the rains fall as heavy as is expected.
Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner visited Sydney a couple of weeks ago with wife Cheryl. We caught up for a few drinks, during which the Gore Effect was subject to expert analysis. The science, our table agreed, is settled. But still Gore gets no respect, complains Karen Fish:
Al Gore and all environmentalists are now being called stupid data changing ignorant frauds, and global warming and climate change a hoax.

How could this be happening?
Fish’s explanation:

The root problem with the names Climate Change, Global Warming and Environmental is that these words are too narrow for the problems they describe and more importantly, people do not understand these words. “Environmental” sounds like a mental enviro. This is why the climategate people are so ready to pillory us over the climategate scandal.

They think that we are mentally ill.

===
PRIME MINISTALKER
Tim Blair
1: Kevin Rudd plans to meet Barack Obama at the conclusion of climate talks in Copenhagen.

2: Barack Obama announces that he’ll attend the Copenhagen opening instead.

3: Kevin Rudd reschedules so that he, too, can be there at the opening.

4: Barack Obama changes his mind and will now attend the final day of talks.

5: Take a wild guess:

Kevin Rudd has shelved plans for an early dash to Copenhagen after US President Barack Obama said he was not going until the late stages of the climate change conference …

Mr Rudd, who had the RAAF on standby for a snap trip to Denmark, will now attend the late stages of the conference.

===
Climategate: More man-made warming in New Zealand
Andrew Bolt
An update on how New Zealand’s recent warming may indeed be man-made, thanks to “adjustments” by scientists to produce this iconic graph:

When in fact the raw data showed no such warming spike:

The spike was produced by adjustments made by an IPCC co-author who once worked with the Climatic Research Unit now at the centre of the Climategate scandal.

NIWA responded by saying those adjustments were made to account for changes in the siting of the measuring stations, but it released the reasoning for only one of those station adjustments:
NIWA’s analysis of measured temperatures uses internationally accepted techniques, including making adjustments for changes such as movement of measurement sites. For example, in Wellington, early temperature measurements were made near sea level, but in 1928 the measurement site was moved from Thorndon (3 metres above sea level) to Kelburn (125 m above sea level). The Kelburn site is on average 0.8°C cooler than Thorndon, because of the extra height above sea level.
That did not answer questions about the accuracy of the allowances made for that resiting.

But now Anthony Watts checks the site of the newer Kelburn monitoring station and discovers just what may also have contributed to its detection of recent warming. Yes, it’s man-made - but it’s the man-made asphalt and tourist buses right next door:

===
Rudd’s red carpet getting crowded
Andrew Bolt
And yet another:
A BOAT carrying a group of suspected asylum seekers has been intercepted off the coast of Western Australia - the 52nd this year… It’s believed 38 passengers and two crew were on board when the border protection officers boarded the boat.
Last year just seven boats arrived, with just 161 asylum seekers.

In fact, twice as many boats have arrived this year alone than did in the previous seven years combined.
===
Obama just can’t give Rudd the slip
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s chasing of Barack Obama has become truly farcical. Observe…

First Rudd wasn’t going to go to the Copenhagen summit unless it was at the end, to be with Barack Obama::
At this stage, Australia will be represented by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, but the prime minister may join US President Barack Obama on the sidelines as a new global pact is signed off.
But Obama then announced he would be at the summit at the start instead::
An official in his administration confirmed today that he would attend the summit on December 9.
So Rudd decided he might change his flights to coincide with Obama’s:
Kevin Rudd is considering an unscheduled dash to Denmark next week in the opening days of the Copenhagen climate change conference …
But within hours Obama said he’d changed his mind and go at the end of the summit:
US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has delivered a boost to UN climate talks in Copenhagen, agreeing to delay his visit until the end of the meeting, when the drive for a global warming pact will climax.
Which - as I predicted - has now prompted yet another rethink by Rudd, the world’s greatest autograph hunter:
Mr Rudd, who had the RAAF on standby for a snap trip to Denmark, will now attend the late stages of the conference.===
===
Climategate: UN warming boss admits emails look “very bad”
Andrew Bolt
The real denialism. The UN’s top global warming official both admits the Climategate scientists emails looks “very bad” and needs investigation, yet somehow retains complete confidence in the science this cabal produced:
The U.N.’s top climate official on Sunday conceded that hacked e-mails from climate scientists had damaged the image of global warming research but said evidence of a warming Earth is solid…

”This correspondence looks very bad,” de Boer said. “But I think both the university is looking into this (and) I believe there is a police investigation going on whether the e-mails were leaked or stolen.”

De Boer noted that the head of the U.N.’s expert panel on climate change, Rajendra Pachauri, had also announced that he would investigate the matter.
UPDATE

Meanwhile mainstream newspapers betray their fundamental principles by preferring group think to scepticism:
IN AN unprecedented initiative, 56 major newspapers in 45 countries are today publishing a shared editorial calling on politicians and negotiators gathering in Copenhagen to strike an ambitious deal on combating climate change.
Never have you had a clear example of the herd thinking that most imperils the mainstream media.
===
Climategate: those scientists sure get around
Andrew Bolt
Myron Ebell says Barack Obama’s chief science advisor has unwittingly confirmed just how serious Climategate is - and how far its tentacles reach:
When the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing on the state of climate science on December 2, ... the first witness, President Obama’s science adviser, Dr. John P. Holdren, was ready to respond.

Instead of summarizing his written testimony in his oral remarks, Holdren read a prepared statement on Climategate. He said that the controversy involved a “small group of scientists” and was primarily about one temperature dataset....

But when asked about some of his own extreme statements and predictions, Holdren replied that scientific research had moved on from the latest UN assessment report in 2007. The most up-to-date scientific research was contained in a report written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists and released last summer. Holdren mentioned and referred to this report, Copenhagen Diagnosis, several times during the course of the hearing.

I remember when Copenhagen Diagnosis came out because nearly every major paper ran a story on it. Global warming is happening even faster than predicted, the impacts are even worse than feared, and that sort of thing… So I asked my CEI colleague Julie Walsh to compare the list of authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis with the scientists involved in Climategate.

I’m sure it will come as a shock that the two groups largely overlap. The “small group of scientists” up to their necks in Climategate include 12 of the 26 esteemed scientists who wrote the Copenhagen Diagnosis. Who would have ever guessed that forty-six percent of the authors of Copenhagen Diagnosis belong to the Climategate gang? Small world, isn’t it?
The Wegman Report three years ago had also warned of a small “clique” of climate scientists - just 43, Wegman counted - which operated to manufacture a consensus. The evidence is clear that an astonishingly small group of scientists - a number of whom faked data, destroyed evidence needed for checking, silenced sceptics and colluded in exaggerations - has corrupted the entire basis of global warming theory, and dominated the proceedings of the IPCC. It’s on the basis of their work that warmists now demand we remake our entire economies, choke growth, spend trillions and change the way we live.

An exhaustive inquiry, with the very active involvement of sceptics and neutral outsiders, needs now to check every scrap of the warmist theory.
===
Copenhagen: limos, private jets and an orgy of celebrities
Andrew Bolt
The Copenhagen summit of global warmists is now a huge threat to the planet:
On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the “summit to save the world”, which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

“We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention,” she says…
Glenn Reynolds:

I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.
===
TEN THOUSAND TALKERS
Tim Blair
Dylan does Copenhagen:
The United Nations has adopted one of his songs, A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall, as its unofficial anthem for the talks.
Way to go, UN! Your unofficial carbon panic songster is a spokesman for gigantic Cadillac SUVs:

Nobody tell gleeful Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke, who thinks the UN is really on to something:
“Let me just quote some lines and see if any sound familiar,” he says.

“‘I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests; I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans; I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.’

“What about this don’t we recognise? All of those images and the pictures those words conjure, they’re as familiar as a cable news report four minutes ago!”
Depends on what cable news you watch – and under what circumstances you watch them. A better anthem for Copenhagen: Tangled up in CRU.

(Via Imre Salusinszky, who emails: “Do they even know that Dylan did an entire episode of Theme Time Radio Hour on hot weather and never once mentioned global warming?")
===
HEWSON + LATHAM = MALCOLM
Tim Blair
Malcolm Turnbull takes the first steps towards a predicted role as bitter Financial Review columnist.

UPDATE. Turnbull – a man of principle, according to himself – is lashing out against everyone. All those burning bridges must be causing a massive carbon footprint. He’s now (Hewson + Latham) ^ Keating. To review this site’s coverage of Mal Gore’s meltdown, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
===
Save the planet! Avoid Australia
Andrew Bolt
Saving the planet means giving Australia a miss:
AUSTRALIAN Tourism is taking a pounding by the new UK “climate” tax… Despite industry opposition, Prime Minister Gordon Brown introduced a 112 per cent rise in a passenger duty, slugging a family of four wanting to fly to Australia with up to $700 in fees and charges.

The airline industry has hit back with new figures showing airlines operators have cancelled more routes and flights out of London than any other city in Europe, including a dozen flights Down Under…

A spokesman for the Treasury claimed that the tax, which increases the greater distance you travel making Australia the most expensive, was fair.

“Air Passenger Duty is an important contributor to the public finances, while helping the Government to achieve its environmental goals,’’ he said.
===
The middle edges back to the Liberals
Andrew Bolt
It’s the voters in the middle that may revolt against Kevin Rudd’s ETS most. Glenn Milne says the Higgins and Bradfield by-elections shows that Labor voters and the critical outer suburban areas in particular backed the Liberals’ more sceptical stand. Take Chadstone:
That part of Higgins, in the southeast corner of the seat, borders the Labor seats of Hotham and Chisholm.

It is classic Australian suburbia, the heart of what used to be known as the land of Howard’s battlers. Without Labor offering a candidate in either seat, Hamilton in Higgins and the Greens’ Susie Gemmell in Bradfield became Labor’s electoral proxies.

The Greens declared the by-elections to be a referendum on climate change. They were. And the Greens got thumped, despite optimistic predictions by the likes of Malcolm Mackerras that with the ascension of Abbott they would surely take at least Higgins.

But what was most interesting at the weekend was where the big swings to Abbott came from.

At the 2007 election the Chadstone booth, right near the iconic shopping centre so reviled by Deveny, was lost by the Liberals with a two party preferred vote of 49.95 per cent. Yesterday the Liberals won it with a two party preferred (TPP) vote of 56.83 per cent, a swing of nearly 7 per cent.

And it wasn’t just Chadstone. Many areas of Higgins that were Labor territory at the last election swung to Abbott and Kelly O’Dwyer. At the Alamein booth, in the more working-class area of the electorate, the Liberals easily lost the booth in 2007 with a TPP of 41.05 per cent but that transformed into 52.32 per cent on Saturday, a swing to the Liberals of just over 11 per cent....

These results were mirrored in Bradfield, particularly in the northern area of the electorate around Hornsby, a suburb in which the centrelink queues are long and which, horrors, has a shopping centre much like the one in Chadstone.

At Hornsby Central, Hornsby East and Hornsby Hospital booths the TPP swings to the Liberal’s Paul Fletcher were between 5 and 13 per cent. In Chatswood West, where from the top of the many apartment blocks you could probably glimpse Kirribilli House in the hazed distance, the swing to Abbott and Fletcher was 6.8 per cent.

The point here is that, in the areas of Higgins and Bradfield that most reflect the outer suburban seats of the major cities where general elections are won and lost, voters gave the thumbs down to Rudd and the Greens on climate change. They forgave the Liberals for the destructive soap opera that the party had become until Abbott arrived and they endorsed both him and his stand against the ETS.
UPDATE

From the Australian’s on-line poll:

Is the science behind man-made climate change irrefutable, or does it need more work?

Irrefutable 36.4% (1277 votes)

Needs work 63.6% (2231 votes)
===
Darling, whisper “global warming” in my ear
Andrew Bolt
Just saying “global warming” makes you obviously brilliant at everything - so brilliant that you win prizes as a filmmaker, peace-maker and now poet. Vanity Fair goes into raptures:

In his almost 30 years of crusading against global warming, Al Gore has worn a variety of hats. In roughly chronological order these include: congressman, senator, author, vice president, traveling evangelist, filmmaker, investment adviser, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Now, with the publication of his new book, Our Choice, Gore has unveiled a fresh and most unexpected talent: the book’s opening chapter of concludes with a poem he wrote—21 lines of verse that are equal parts beautiful, evocative, and disturbing.

Here is how the poem begins:

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun
Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea

===
Turnbull will destroy himself before he destroys the Liberals
Andrew Bolt
Malcolm Turnbull would rather destroy the Liberals than let anyone else lead it. That was already clear from his interview with Laurie Oakes eight days ago.

Since then he’s leaked private emails between him and his former deputy, Julie Bishop, to embarrass her and new leader Tony Abbott. He’s verballed his once finance spokesman Joe Hockey by leaking a comment made in the confidence of shadow cabinet discussions - and by misrepresenting a rhetorical “$50 billion” figure as a considered costing.

And the latest? Now he again betrays a private confidence - or his claimed account of it - to publicly savage Abbott again:
MALCOLM Turnbull has today described the new Liberal leader Tony Abbott’s views on climate change as “bullshit” and vowed to cross the floor and vote with Labor when the legislation is brought back to Parliament next year.

The former Liberal leader this morning posted a blog via the website Twitter where he pledged to tell a few “home truths about the farce that the Coalition’s policy, of lack of policy, on climate change has descended into”.

His intervention follows reports today that the opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey attacked Mr Abbott’s plans for a climate change switch at a shadow cabinet meeting two weeks ago, warning it would cost over $50 billion....

(Said Turnbull:) “It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist. Mr Abbott apparently knows what he is against, but not what he is for… The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is “crap” and you don’t need to do anything about it....

“(Abbott’s) only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with “Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but ...”
One thing must be immediately clear to even Turnbull’s closest supporters. He cannot ever again be trusted with the leadership, let alone a confidence. He should be manouvered out of Parliament, if not the party.

Turnbull is now more bitter than even Latham, and more dangerous. Latham at least left Parliament before dishing out his dirt against his own, and reporters were more inclined to laugh off his attacks as mere bile. And at least Latham still loathed the other side even more than his own.

But Turnbull?

Already party insiders have noted that Turnbull had a habit of scribbling down the remarks he heard from others - at least the most memorable or most stupid of them. They also noted that Turnbull had a habit of hearing - or imagining he heard - what he most wanted to hear.

Stand by for more payback from a man who seems unbalanced by one more rejection too many - by his mother, by Kerry Packer, by his fellow republicans and the anti-republic voters, and now by the Liberals. Those who still like him should urge him to keep his silence until he regains his balance, and before he cements his reputation as a megalomaniac never to be trusted again.
===
Only the green faith allowed
Andrew Bolt
Censorious world that these green crusaders have in mind for us:

Participants in the COP15 climate summit should not be subject to Christmas symbols such as fir trees, says the foreign ministry

Although the COP15 climate conference is set to take place during the Christmas season, the Foreign Ministry believes the holiday and all its symbols should be kept well clear of the summit…

Christmas is a religious holiday that has no place at a United Nations function, according to the Foreign Ministry’s Svend Olling, who is the head of practical planning for the climate summit.

“We have to remember that this is a UN conference and, as the centre then becomes UN territory, there can be no Christmas trees in the decor, because the UN wishes to maintain neutrality,’ said Olling.

===
Let them eat carbon
Andrew Bolt
The BBC’s official “Ethical Man” - yes, really - decides to show the ethics of a typical green crusader by flying to Jamaica:
We reasoned that if you watched our film and thought the idea of a man calling himself “ethical” flying off to Jamaica for the weekend smacked of hypocrisy, it might make you reflect on your own behaviour and consider flying less.

And, because we were keeping a tally of my carbon footprint, we reckoned the record of my flight would serve as a reminder of just how carbon-intensive flying is.
He emits so that you may feel guilty.

This, incidentally, is the excuse it took Ethical Man three years to dream up.

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