Monday, January 18, 2010

Headlines Monday 18th January 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

=== Bible Quote ===
“Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing.”- Philippians 2:14-16
===
Australian UN worker killed in Haiti

An Australian man has been killed in Haiti, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says. - Rudd, like Latham, refuses to address the nature of the tragedy, as Mr Howard would have. Rudd was on holiday when it happened. - ed.


At least 26 babies in need of formula and caregivers after powerful quake ravaged their orphanage in Port-au-Prince.

Can Obama Carry Coakley?
President to stump for Dem Senate hopeful in attempt to keep GOP candidate from dealing a blow to health care

Obama: Health Care Not About Dems
President says passing massive health insurance bill would be a victory for American 'decency'

Chicago Bears' Gaines Adams Dead

The 26-year-old defensive end pronounced dead after going into cardiac arrest, officials say - don't do drugs. -ed.

Wisconsin Woman Who Stripped to Avoid Arrest Going to Jail
A 36-year-old Wisconsin woman who stripped in front of her children in a drunken attempt to avoid a shoplifting arrest is going to jail. As part of a plea agreement, Julia E. Laack of Sheboygan pleaded no contest to three charges including retail theft. The Sheboygan Press says she was sentenced Thursday to six months in jail.

Netanyahu Family Rejects Housekeeper's Lawsuit
Israel's PM, Netanyahu's office issued a statement Sunday saying the case is false and "full of lies and defamation." In her lawsuit, the former housekeeper accuses Sara Netanyahu of verbal abuse, paying her less than minimum wage and forcing her to work on the Jewish Sabbath.

Teacher sues for $883K after 'career-ending' push

A FORMER teacher who claims a colleague attacked her is suing the prestigious school where they worked. - such a small case when compared with what happened over the issue of Hamidur Rahman - ed


Bronson was in a bit of a bind after retrieving a copperhead snake, but thanks to his obedience training he survived.


Five dead, but lesson not learnt

P-PLATER clocked at 165km/h in 70km/h zone as police nab hoons minutes from horror crash site. WHEN Anthony Iannetta shielded his little sister from the impact of a tree he most likely knew he was about to die. The protective big brother, just 18, shielded his little sister Elissa as the car, a high-powered six cylinder XR6 Falcon, skidded out of control at an estimated 140km/h, killing five teens in Melbourne about 2am yesterday.

Desperate battle for survival in Haiti
SURVIVORS pulled from the rubble without a scratch as looters threaten to take over Haiti.

Bride to return home with husband's body
A BRIDE, who lost her husband in a crash, is hoping she is well enough to bring his body home.

Police injured in booze-fuelled attacks
POLICE officers have been rushed to hospital after a horror spate of alcohol-related attacks.

PM finds time to drink beer with William
KEVIN Rudd hopes to find a way on to Prince William's agenda and have a beer with the visiting royal.

Environmentalist challenges politicians to reduce emissions

THE NSW Australian of the Year for 2010 has challenged Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to reveal how climate-friendly their lifestyles are. Jon Dee, environmental campaigner and founder of the action group Do Something!, has launched the 10 Per cent In 2010 challenge, urging Australia's elected representatives to reduce their personal greenhouse emissions by 10 per cent over a 12-month period.

More teachers preying on children
SCORES of teachers have been banned from schools after they were caught having inappropriate relationships with students.

'Warlike' blondes get what they want - study

IT'S official - blondes do have more fun. According to a study by the University of California, that's because blondes are more confident and aggressive, even displaying "warlike" tendancies to get their own way in life.

Man tries to force teen girls into van
A MAN has tried to force two young teenage girls into the back of a van marked Kids Club after following them and showing them bizarre paintings.

'Governor gets cozy with mystery girl'
MARRIED NY Governor David Paterson (Democrat) was spotted kissing a young woman like a smitten schoolboy, it has been reported.
=== Comments ===
Why I’m Joining the Fight for Marriage Equality
By Margaret Hoover
This week a landmark civil rights court case began in California. The federal trial Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenges the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage. Two couples argue that they have a constitutional right to marry, and that California’s law denies them due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment, relegating them second-class citizens.

You may think, “San Francisco liberals at it again! Hijacking the courts, inventing new constitutional rights!” Stop there. The lead counsel in the case is George W. Bush’s Solicitor General, who successfully argued Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court in one of his fifty-five performances before the nation’s highest judicial body. He is Theodore “Ted” Olsen, a founder of the Federalist Society, constitutional law expert, and one of the most respected conservatives in America.

Mr. Olsen thinks constitutionally guaranteed rights ought to transcend left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican divides (he even recruited legal opponent David Boies as co-counsel). I agree with him. And as a proud Republican representing a younger generation of conservatives that cherish individual freedom, I am honored to join the American Equal Right’s Foundation’s Advisory Board.

I encourage everyone, but especially Republicans, to consider Mr. Olsen’s arguments on the merits, both in his opening statement and throughout the trial’s ensuing three weeks. The plaintiff’s counsel seeks to convince Judge Vaughn R. Walker that the Supreme Court has already decided in Loving v. Virginia, Turner v. Safely, and in Lawrence v. Texas among others, that the right to marry is a fundamental right currently denied to an entire class of American citizens.

There was a reason that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s father is said to have supported Republicans. Republicans were historically the party ever-expanding freedom to disenfranchised minorities, from newly liberated slaves to giving women the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony was a Republican.
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In case PM forgets, buck stops with him
Piers Akerman
THROUGHOUT 2008 and 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd devoted much of his time to warning the public of the dire consequences that would follow a failure to accept his government’s global warming legislation. - Spot on Piers. Rudd is a policy free zone. We never did get to find out what his 5 point plan was to improve the economy. Maybe it was to spend everything he never earned, but it is scary to think what he will be promising to spend coming into this coming election. I pointed out to some friends in 2007 that Rudd was a classic tax and spend ALP man, and a friend, who was also high school captain and just having finished her HSC before embarking in Business Law said “That isn’t true. We studied that at school. It is a myth to say that the ALP tax and spend big.”
Rudd even said he was an economic conservative like Mr Howard was supposed to be, but Rudd claimed Mr Howard had been spending too much. Rudd pointed to things like the first home owners scheme and the baby bonus to show where he felt Mr Howard had spent big. The truth is, those had been good policy and effective. Yet how effective has Rudd’s school spending been? When a school will spend a million dollars to build a classroom private contractors could bill for tens of thousands of dollars .. but Rudd needs to spend quick. Or the computers that some school children are getting which are not yet worthwhile within the classroom because the classrooms don’t yet have the infrastructure to support them.
Rudd has failed on a very personal level too. He has failed as a human being, increasing apparent corruption and profligate spending while poor people are suffering and the most desperate are dying. - ed.
jennifer replied to DD Ball
DD
Rudd has copied the Educational system of the Blair government.
(Blair is Rudds hero apparently-) but dont worry. I imagine it will die a natural death like all his other projects, probably just as well,
Anything he has done has only wasted our money.
Jennifer, I was at one of NSW’s most challenged urban schools soon after Rudd was elected and gave his fake apology to Aboriginals. The school put on a show, using its Aboriginal students to endorse the pathetic Rudd’s stance. A lot of money was spent on the effort, time was taken off class, but nothing lasting or worthwhile was done. Like Rudd’s education revolution, nothing worthwhile is done, but it is very expensive. I’m sure the same is happening under Labor in the UK - ed.
chrissy replied to DD Ball
Speaking of people suffering,where has our “PM” been while this terrible earthquake horror has been going on?
sure there has been a donation, but where has Mr Rudd been.
No message of support for these poor people from the people of Australia through it’s leader???
Too late now! where were you Mr Rudd?
If you speak now it will come across as an afterthought.
Shame on you!
===
ICE REMAINS, IPCC MELTS
Tim Blair
It’s now five years since debate about climate change officially ended, yet debate continues somehow. The latest focus is upon an IPCC-approved claim that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035 – a claim that may now be withdrawn:
A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.
But that news story must itself have had some rigorous science behind it, right? Wrong:
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Still, Hasnain is a scientist, so he wouldn’t have just been offering idle speculation, would he? He would:
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research.
Yet surely the IPCC had the sense to review this claim and not overplay it? They didn’t:
When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was “very high”. The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%.
The London Times summarises: “If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research.” Which is saying something. More from Walter Russell Mead:
If evidence this slender was sufficient to convince the IPCC that this threat was real, it’s clear that the panel is more like Chicken Little than a serious source of scientific information.
Something is falling, but it isn’t the sky. Speaking of serious sources of scientific information and their rapid collapse, check the clip below. Just like East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit, East Anglia itself is completely off the wall:

Respect to the weather guy, though. He hides the decline with commendable calm.
===
BEANTOWN TURNAROUND
Tim Blair
A Republican senator from Massachusetts? Well, Obama did promise change. Democrat Martha Coakley might be doing better in the race for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat if her staff at least knew how to spell the state’s name (although the Hitler Limbaugh is a cute touch). Alfonzo Rachel reports from Boston; so does Jules Crittenden, who predicted the unusual circumstances that will make Tuesday’s election so very interesting.
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NOBODY PREDICTED THIS
Tim Blair
“Sack the lot of them,” demanded Englishman Michael Brighton in 2007, enraged by the inaccuracy of weather-predicting “muppets” at Britain’s Met office. And the BBC may be planning to do exactly that:
Buffeted by complaints about its inaccurate weather forecasts, the Met Office now faces being dumped by the BBC after almost 90 years.

The Met Office contract with the BBC expires in April and the broadcaster has begun talks with Metra, the national forecaster for New Zealand, as a possible alternative …

Last July the state-owned forecaster’s predictions for a “barbecue summer” turned into a washout. And its forecast for a mild winter attracted derision when temperatures recently plunged as low as -22C.
Poor warmies. On the plus side, however, reduced hours for the Met’s supermegacomputer would be good for the environment. Locally, let’s see if the ABC follows the BBC’s example and veers away from Met alarmism:
A study forecasts that global warming will set in with a vengeance after 2009.
===
Tracey Spicer argues for use of medical marijuana

POLITICIANS enjoy beating their chests about "zero tolerance".

On drugs. Binge drinking. Bullying. Sexual harassment. But what about zero tolerance for suffering?

As a society we allow our weakest - those with cancer, AIDS, chronic arthritis, fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis - to writhe in pain because they can't get the right drugs. Many are helpless, innocent children.

An AMA study out today reveals 84 per cent of cancer kids suffer "a lot" or "a great deal" of pain in the last month of their life.

Just stop for a minute to imagine what that's like. You know your beloved son or daughter is dying. You sit by their bedside and watch as the life ebbs from their body: the circles darken under their eyes; their bones protrude from their limbs; the colour saps from their skin. The nurse injects morphine but it doesn't cap the breakthrough pain.

Morphine is a terrible drug with nasty side effects. Many people are allergic to it. For some, it doesn't work at all. When my mum was dying of pancreatic cancer, she begged me to buy marijuana. The shooting pain that frayed every nerve ending was too much to bear. Ultimately, I was too much of a coward. It's a decision I regret to this day.

There's a growing body of research proving cannabis - either smoked or in a liquid - eases the excruciating pain of cancer patients, the spasms of MS sufferers and the crippling effects of arthritis. The active ingredient, THC, slows the progress of Alzheimer's, reduces tumour growth in lung cancers and inhibits the spread of breast cancer.

While proof of its efficacy is new, the use of medical marijuana is not. Since the 3rd Century AD, the Chinese have considered cannabis one of the 50 fundamental herbs in traditional medicine. It took 16 centuries for western medicine to catch on, using it as a pain reliever until aspirin came along. - Tracey's argument is ridiculous and emotive. If marijuana needs to be used for medical purposes then it must be done so through pharmaceutical companies or not at all. The belief that marijuana is only virtuous if it is hand reared and sewn is absurd. Her argument has nothing to do with Zero Tolerance or in countering youth drug culture- ed.

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