Saturday, January 16, 2010

Headlines Saturday 16th January 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

Obama claims to be a Christian, but there isn't much faith in his administration.
=== Bible Quote ===
Fools mock at making amends for sin,
but goodwill is found among the upright.
Proverbs 14:9
===
$5bn Metro now rail-roaded

THE controversial $5 billion metro rail project in Sydney's inner-west is all but dead. Transport Minister David Campbell last night buckled under pressure from inner-city councils to announce the Government was now considering an extension of existing light rail to the inner-west and through the CBD. - more proof the ALP cannot do anything and the state is suffering. -ed.


Frustration turns to anger in Port-au-Prince as quake survivors battle for goods scavenged from the rubble of collapsed buildings amid reports of machete-wielding looters roaming the streets.

Dems' Backroom Deal Gives Unions 'Cadillac Tax' Break
In giant step closer to health compromise, Dem leaders take heat for giving interest groups special treatment

Can Obama Save Ted K's Seat?
President to make final-hours campaign stop in Massachusetts in bid to save Senate seat, protect health bill

Now, the U.N. Wants to Tax Us?
World Health Organization considers asking governments to impose consumer tax on banking, Web

Scientists Turn Stem Cells Into Pork
Call it pork in a petri dish -- a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say ... - Democrats can do the same - ed.


Paula, 11, love child of Shari-Lea Hitchcock and former businessman billionaire Richard Pratt, will inherit about $23 million dollars

Mum-to-be gets police check up
A HOSPITAL wanting a mother to be induced sent two police to her home when she missed a visit.

Adopting parents fear children dead
FRENCH families adopting don't know if their Haitian children have survived the earthquake

Solo sailor Jessica Watson has visitors
SHE was a speck in a vast ocean but for Jessica Watson's parents, it was a sight for their sore eyes.

Foxtel ready to switch onto 3D viewing
FOXTEL plans to air 3D programs as pay TV companies try to bring Avatar like technology to homes.

Tough-talk teacher upsets local 'hillbillies'
A SCHOOL teacher who branded locals "rednecks" and "hillbillies" has been stood aside as complaints about her are investigated.

Rescue just hours away when Nick died
CANYONER Nick Delaney had survived two days lost in the Blue Mountains with his friends and just when rescue was hours away a falling boulder killed him.

Landmark gay pageant closed by police
CHINESE police have blocked the country's first homosexual pageant just minutes before it started.

13yo boy in iPod sex assault
A 13-YEAR-old boy was sexually assaulted after his iPod enabled a paedophile to find the child's western Sydney home. The boy was allegedly attacked at Penrith after Allen Warner, 54, started communicating with him in a mainstream internet chat room, accessed on an "iTouch" wireless device.

New laws to evict bully students
EDUCATION authorities have been given unprecedented access to police and juvenile justice files on the state's most violent students and worst bullies in a bid to evict them from schools. - it will still be useless as these laws do not go to the heart of the teacher problem of bad administration as highlighted by the Hamidur Rahman issue. - ed.

Defence on a cyber war footing after 2400 attacks
DEFENCE has launched a new centre to repel cyber attacks against Australia amid revelations there were 2400 assaults on the department's computer systems last year. As global concern mounts over Chinese cyber attacks on Google and other major companies, Defence Minister John Faulkner outlined the scale of attacks against Australian government computers and networks.
=== Journalists Corner ===

Horror in Haiti!
After a devastating earthquake kills thousands and leaves a country stranded, Fox News has the very latest information as events unfold!
===

Race for the Senate!
Could the health care bill live or die based on the heated Massachusetts Senate election?
===
Guest: Karl Rove
Will President Obama follow through on his promise to televise the health care negotiations?
===
Dems' New Payment Plan
Why the Democratic Party's latest health care strategy could cause another financial crisis!

=== Comments ===
$100 Million of American Tax Money Heading to Haiti
By Bill O'Reilly
The world is cringing looking at pictures of the terrible earthquake in Haiti. No one knows for sure, but the death toll could top 100,000. And right now lives are in the balance, as there are folks alive in the rubble.

Already, thousands of American military are going to Haiti trying to save lives and impose some kind of order there. Thursday, President Obama pledged an enormous amount of money.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'm also announcing an immediate investment of $100 million to support our relief efforts. This will mean more of the life-saving equipment, food, water and medicine that will be needed. This investment will grow over the coming year as we embark on the long-term recovery from this unimaginable tragedy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Since 1992, the beginning of the Clinton administration, the USA has given Haiti close to $3 billion in assistance. And billions more have been donated by other countries. President Clinton took a personal interest in improving life for the Haitian people, but he failed. And today, his wife knows the pitfalls of the Haitian situation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: We have systems in place now to be able to track the money, to hold it accountable, to look for results. We're doing that across the board. I'm revamping our aid system so that I can look you in the eye and the American taxpayer in the eye and say, look, you know, I'm not going to spend a penny unless I have some confidence that it's going to go to the right place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

So why did Bill Clinton and everyone else fail in Haiti? The reason is fairly simple.

There is no central authority there. The police are corrupt. There's no army, and many politicians are thieves. In slums like City Soleil, neighborhoods are run by drug dealers, voodoo priests or common extortionists.

Say relief workers give food and clothing directly to Haitians in need. Odds are as soon as the relief person leaves, a thug will steal the charity from the poor person. Block by block in Haiti, gangsters rule, and the people are powerless to do anything about it. If you fight the criminals, you and your family will be brutalized.

So with the world now focused on a true humanitarian disaster, perhaps it is time to really help the good people of Haiti and have the United Nations impose some discipline there. Yes, we should send aid immediately, but President Obama should not just promise $100 million with no accountability. Every dollar needs to be managed. And if that means the USA calls the shots, "Talking Points" says good. And I believe the Haitian people would say good as well.

The earthquake in Haiti rated 7.0 on the Richter scale, the same as the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 when 62 people died. The death toll in Haiti, as we said, may be hundreds of thousands. Infrastructure is the difference, and money can buy that. But not in Haiti, where billions of dollars have gone right down the drain.
===
Flattered on my holiday
Andrew Bolt
Alice Thomson of The Times, in reviewing James Cameron’s Avatar, has a way with words that’s pleasantly familiar. In bold are the most familiar of all:
Andrew Bolt: MOST people will date the death of the great global warming scare not from the Copenhagen fiasco - boring! - but from Avatar.
Alice Thomson: Yet the £130 million spent on this environmental junket for 115 world leaders appears to have come to nothing… Green is no longer minty cool, it’s sludge-brown boring
Bolt: Cameron...has created a virtual new planet called Pandora, on which humans 150 years from now have formed a small settlement. They are there to mine a mineral so rare that it’s called Unobtainium (groan).. But meeting such perfect beings, living such low-emission green lives, Sully realises instead how vile his own species is… “There is no green” on their “dying world” because “they have killed their mother”. Now we land-raping humans plan to wreck Pandora, too, with our “shock-and-awe" bombings…
Thomson: The Na’vi ... may live 150 years in the future, but their message to humans is clear. You have no vegetation left on 22nd-century Earth. You have messed up your planet and wasted your resources, now don’t come and destroy ours… When humans are sent to exploit their mineral wealth (called Unobtainium, of course) with a campaign of shock and awe bombings, they fall in love with the Na’vis low-emission lives...
Bolt: The Na’vi live in trees, at one with nature. They worship Mother Earth and, like Gaians today, talk meaningfully of “a network of energy that flows through all living things”. They drink water that’s pooled in giant leaves, and chant around a tree that whispers of their ancestors… For all their talk of the connectedness of nature, the Na’vi still kill animals for food - although not before saying how sorry they are…
Thomson: These creatures, who inhabit the distant moon Pandora, live in branches and worship Mother Earth. They drink water that is pooled in giant leaves, chant around trees that whisper of their ancestors and use pterodactyls for transport (although they do still eat meat, apologetically).
Bolt: Sully, the hero, not only chooses to fight on the side of the aliens but to actually become an alien, too. He rejects not just humans but his own humanity.
Thomson: ....the hero chooses to become an alien and reject selfish humanity.
Bolt: And, of course, the Na’vi reject all technology that’s more advanced than a bow and arrow…
Thomson: The Na’vi may be armed only with bows and arrows...
Bolt: If Tim Flannery, Al Gore and all the other Copenhagen delegates could at least agree to design a new kind of people, they’d wind up with something much like these 3m-tall gracelings.
Thomson: The script could have been written by Al Gore.
Bolt: All of this preaching comes straight from what’s left of Cameron’s heart after five marriages and a professional reputation of on-set meanness. Avatar, he’s said, tackles “our impact on the natural environment, wherever we go strip mining and putting up shopping malls”, and it warns “we’re going to find out the hard way if we don’t wise up and start seeking a life that’s in balance with the natural cycle on life on earth”.
Thomson: The director sounds a bit ridiculous when he says: “We’re going to find out the hard way if we don’t wise up and start seeking a life that’s in balance with the natural cycles of life on Earth,” ... but Cameron is clearly a believer who is not in it just for the box-office receipts.
I’ve always wanted to write for The Times. But back to my holiday.
===
Warmists buried under Britain’s snow
Andrew Bolt

Interrupting my break to pass on the picture of this (Northern Hemisphere) winter:
From head to toe there is barely a patch of land not blanketed by the heaviest snowfall in 50 years. It was taken at 11.15am on Thursday by the NASA satellite Terra and transmitted to the University of Dundee Satellite Receiving Station.
Hey, this shouldn’t have happened - if you believed the Climategaters and their models a decade ago:
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
In fact, this shouldn’t have happened if you believed Climategaters just last year:
In October, the Met Office predicted Britain would have a mild winter, despite the inaccuracy of its “barbecue summer” forecast which drew strong criticism, after heavy rainfall saw the wettest July for almost 100 years. It said the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 were likely to be “milder than last year” and that there was an 85 per cent chance of normal or above average conditions.
Christopher Booker notes that the Met’s models now seem tuned to always expect warmer weather than what actually turns up.

Now even the BBC is going for the throat of the Met’s boss, wondering why he deserved his performance bonus and why we should believe his models that predict a warming century:

So embarrassing is all this to warmers that The Age devotes an entire oped piece to explaining why record cold doesn’t disprove man-made global warming:
People across the northern hemisphere are facing the fact that a warming planet doesn’t get rid of winter. Britain is experiencing snow and chill, and on Monday the heaviest snow on record plastered Seoul. In coming days, the central US will experience its most brutal cold wave in 10 to 20 years. And most of western Europe will be encased in a deep freeze by this weekend…

(But) it’s also critical to remember the ‘’global’’ in global warming. Even if every inch of land in the northern hemisphere were unusually cold, that would only represent 20 per cent of Earth’s surface.
Sure, but two points need to be made.

First, warmists such as the Age editor or the green groups now insisting that record cold in one part of the world proves nothing have no hestitation in claiming that record heat in another part, though, proves plenty. Example:
THE Federal Government has said climate data showing last year was Australia’s second-hottest on record means the Senate should pass the emissions trading scheme next month… “It’s up to the Senate and Mr Abbott to recognise that climate change is real, to recognise that for Australians warming is happening,” the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, said yesterday.
Second, this cruel winter highlights the fact that - as the latest statellite data confims - even though man’s emissions have kept rising, the planet has kept cooling since at least 2001, in direct contradiction of the warmist theory:

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