Headlines Tuesday 26th January 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

It is Australia Day. Time for Rudd to go overseas and visit with those he fawns on.
=== Bible Quote ===
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”- Philippians 4:8
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Schools to get online grading

PARENTS will be able to instantly compare their child's school with 20 others in the same area on a controversial Federal Government website that will go live this week. - parents will not be told what education authorities know in this new site which will not fulfill any election promise - ed.

Rudd nephew 'caught up in KKK stunt'
THE nephew of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been moved on by police after a KKK anti-racism stunt, according to media reports. Artist Van Thanh Rudd and a friend told the ABC they did not mean to upset anyone with the stunt in which they donned Ku Klux Klan hoods for a bizarre anti-racism protest outside the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne. - his uncle has good intentions while spending big on tax payer money too. - ed.


Despite allegations that he is a sloppy scientist, a climate report littered with errors and calls for his head, the U.N.'s climate chief says he's not going anywhere.

'Blame Bush' Wearing Thin?
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle feel it might finally be time for Obama to drop predecessor blame game

Italy's Insult to Injury
Rome's top disaster official blasts U.S. relief effort in Haiti as a 'pathetic' show for TV - admittedly Obama is an ongoing embarrassment - ed

French Un-Veil Ban Proposal
Lawmakers in France propose outlawing Muslim garb in places like schools, hospitals and other public buildings


Were you one of the record number of us who had the day off yesterday - only to now be well enough to enjoy a barbie? It's an Australia Day miracle, right?

Shut asylum camps - top Aussie
NEW Australian of the Year has labels detention centres 'factories for producing mental illness'.

PlayStation 3 'has finally been hacked'
THE hacker who first unlocked the iPhone says he has opened up Sony's "unhackable" PS3 console.

Child taken in shopping centre 'prank'
A TEEN who allegedly ran off with a young boy in a shopping centre is charged with child stealing.

Child porn shock rocks Biggest Loser
A CONTESTANT on The Biggest Loser has been charged with possessing child pornography.

Prince Harry shacks up with girlfriend
PRINCE Harry has reportedly left his dad's "cramped" home for the luxury pad of Chelsy Davey.

Found car offers no clues to missing man
HERMAN Rockefeller's family are appealing for help to find him as police puzzle over the millionaire's mysterious disappearance.

Covering his lying tracks
A RAILCORP Transit Officer accused of punching a teenage boy during Australia Day celebrations in Sydney's west asked his colleagues to lie about it.

Saddam's cousin 'Chemical Ali' executed
SADDAM Hussein's notorious henchman "Chemical Ali'' has been hanged for mass murder.

Navy has only one working submarine left
THE navy's trouble-prone $6 billion submarine fleet has been reduced to one operational boat, raising serious questions about the long-term serviceability of the six Collins Class vessels designed to serve as Australia's frontline strike weapon. - ALP are never good managers of defense. -ed.

Airliner crash blamed on storm
A FIERCE storm appears to have caused the crash of an Ethiopian Airline jet that plunged in a ball of fire into the sea with 90 people on board, Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr said yesterday.
=== Journalists Corner ===

Attention: Mr. President!
Bernie Goldberg has something to say to you, sir! Find out on "The Factor"!
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Guest: Karl Rove
What the GOP's big win in Massachusetts really means for health care & the 2010 election.
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Complete Coverage
As the president addresses the nation on the country's key issues, Fox is there. Then after the State of the Union, get the reaction from the GOP.

=== Comments ===
Collapse of Far-Left Media
By Bill O'Reilly
The radical radio network Air America has announced it is all over for them. They are out of business. No surprise since that operation was never successful.

But here is a surprise: Last Tuesday when the Massachusetts votes were being counted, Fox News had almost six times as many viewers as MSNBC in prime-time and five times the audience of CNN.

That's not a victory; that's a massacre.

Sean Hannity, Greta and myself totally wiped out our cable news competition on perhaps the most important news day of the year.

To add perspective, "The Factor" at 8 p.m. on Tuesday beat all of ABC's prime-time programming that evening.

Now, most of the liberal media ignored the story and will not tell you how dominant Fox News has become. That's why many newspapers are failing. They simply will not tell you the truth.

But writing in The Miami Herald, TV critic Glenn Garvin did tell the truth:

"If you watched CNN or Fox News last night, you got a balanced analysis on how Republican Scott Brown pulled off the political upset of the century… On MSNBC, you got practically every conceivable expression of venom against Brown and anybody who voted for him… It may be too much to expect NBC, these days reduced to a national wisecrack, to be embarrassed over the frothing lunacy that passes for news coverage at corporate stepchild MSNBC."

"Talking Points" believes it's important that you, the concerned American citizen, understand exactly what's going on here.

A graph put up by Johnny Dollar on the Internet shows the percentage of time each network covered the election night speeches of Scott Brown and Martha Coakley. Fox News covered everything both candidates said. But not MSNBC and CNN. They covered Coakley far more than Brown.

Two things are clear. First, that the USA is moving to the right very quickly. And second, that Fox News is an honest enterprise. We gave Ms. Coakley the same amount of time we gave Mr. Brown even though she lost.

Americans have generally wised up about the media. You know when you're being conned. The attacks on Fox News by the left have failed. We are now dominating prime-time TV news coverage in this country. And it's not about ideology; it's about fairness.

To be fair, CNN has covered the Haiti story very well. There is no question about that. And I applaud the CNN correspondents who have done such a good job.

But our Fox News correspondents are just as good, and our political coverage is much more balanced than our competition. We like hearing differing opinions. It is more beneficial to you to hear all points of view.

After this week, there is no doubt that in the United States of America, Fox News is the go-to network for important information and honest analysis.
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Cull time servers from list of heroes
Piers Akerman
SCANNING the names of the great and the good, the time servers and publicity seekers who received Australia Day Honours, it is difficult not to suggest the lists be pruned to recognise only those who performed feats above and beyond what all should aspire to achieve.

There are those toward the very top of the list - NAB and BHP Billiton’s Don Argus, and ex-banker Mark Johnson’s roles at APEC and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute - who have shown leadership in business and commerce that have made this nation stronger. They have demonstrated prudence and taken on responsibilities that have had genuine international impact.

Then there are those in the same stratospheric level whose occupation of that heady real estate reflects the position they hold within the bureaucracy, the military or the judiciary. The gong goes with the turf.

There are awards for outstanding public service, but really, in these days of a highly politicised public sector, spectacularly so in the case of Treasury what actually constitutes outstanding public service?

Service to the politics of the government of the day or service to the people the government is meant to be serving?

My eye is always drawn down to those in the military sections of the list who are identified only by a single initial, those who serve Australia anonymously in the field of war and whose identities must be protected.

To Private S of NSW who received a Star of Gallantry for acts of conspicuous gallantry in action in circumstances of great peril while a lead scout in Afghanistan in 2008, and to Sergeant B, also from NSW, who received a Commendation for Gallantry for his deeds in action as the commander of an explosive ordnance detachment in Afghanistan in 2008.

What acts of courage are covered by these bland descriptions, and what did Major G, of WA, already a holder of a Distinguished Service Medal, do to earn his Distinguished Service Cross for distinguished command and leadership in action in Afghanistan in 2008?

Or Major M, or Lieutenant Colonel P, both NSW, for that matter who also were awarded the DSC for their distinguished command leadership in the Afghan conflict in 2008?

Add to this list the Distinguished Service Medal winners Sergeant D, of WA, Sergeant G, of NSW, Corporal J, of WA, Major J, of the ACT, Captain P and Captain T, from NSW, all of whom received their awards for distinguished leadership in action in Afghanistan in 2008, as a patrol commander, or second-in-command, troop commander, or platoon commander.

What distinguished service did Private A, of Tasmania, Major J, from WA, Corporal J, of NSW, Sergeant M, of NSW, Warrant Office Class Two M, of NSW, and Captain R, of the ACT, perform in warlike operations in Afghanistan to win commendations for their distinguished service? What was the meritorious achievement in capability development for Australian Defence Force Counter Terrorism that won a Conspicuous Service Medal for Sergeant T, of NSW?

Swirling about each of these awards is the smell of fear, the sharp smell of spent munitions, the dusty hollow odour of explosives, and the taste of death and sweet relief of survival.

The current generation of Australians for whom these people put their lives on the line may never know. Future generations who might live in a world less threatened by Islamist fundamentalism represented by the Taliban and its Fifth Columnists here and elsewhere around the Western World may discover more when documents are unsealed in years to come. By then, the medals may have lost some of their lustre, the ribbons may have faded, the honours themselves may have been relegated to a box in a dresser or an attic in the home of a descendant, to be looked at, perhaps even worn at an Anzac Day commemoration.

My colleague, defence writer Ian McPhedran, tells me the unnamed recipients are members of the Special Forces, serving in the Special Air Service Regiment, the Commandos or the Incident Response Regiment. Most readers, he said, would be amazed if they could glimpse the classified citations that accompany the awards.

The highest level medals for gallantry are only given for acts of extreme bravery under fire and all eight recipients of the gallantry awards, including some who were able to be named because they were not members of the Special Forces, performed feats of extraordinary courage, usually as they were trying to save a mate or mates as bullets were flying about them. They were doing more than just their job.

They were doing more than holding down a public service position until they reached retirement age or succeeded through natural attrition to the most senior levels.

Dr Michael Evans, a Fellow at the Australian Defence College in Canberra, spoke of the anti-honour culture that has been prevalent in the West since the 1960s in a speech to the US Marine Corps University at Quantico, Virginia, in November, much of which has been reprinted in the current edition of Quadrant magazine. The military, he speculates is the last hold-out against the “tsunami of secularism and moral decline that has left us with a public culture dominated by effete celebrities and corporate media billionaires united by their lack of civic virtue”.

Duty, honour and country would rank high in the values of those identified in today’s lists by a single initial.They would not waste much time worrying about identity, gender, race and class. Why would they? The courageous would find the preoccupations of the chattering classes to be as lacking in honour and irrelevant on the battlefield as they are to most ordinary Australians. - Police don’t have to be anonymous. The things we do to our own soldiers is abysmal. In some ways, we despise those who sacrifice the most for us. I made a tribute for police with my doco on Nicola Cotton and I meant it to apply to Australian police too. In some ways, the police service has succumbed to the call for senseless secular values. It was illuminating to watch Clooney’s lauded Syriana recently and hear how in Hollywood the call for the secular is made by Hollywood conservatives, when the truth is such calls are made by people from the Democrat party, or the ALP. - ed.
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But when will the IPCC apologise for Pachauri?
Andrew Bolt
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change belatedly admits to a grossly irresponsible bit of scaremongering, but when will it admit to the suspect role played in it by its deeply compromised chairman?
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No he couldn’t
Andrew Bolt
The question now is, after Barack Obama’s Democrats lose even Ted Kennedy’s old seat: “Yes we can what?”

Rebuild the economy? Pull out of Iraq? Close Guantanamo within a year? Create jobs? Cut the deficit? Stop global warming?

Just what?

It’s taken just one year for Americans to realise Barack Obama was just the symbol who crashed.
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The climate sure is changing at the CSIRO
Andrew Bolt
Yes, the climate is indeed changing. The intellectual climate, that is, even at the CSIRO.
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Serving it hot to the warmists
Andrew Bolt

Godfrey Bloom gets it said in the European Parliament:

When are you all going to wake up? Scam, scam, scam.

(Via Watts Up With That.)
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Move over, Sarah
Andrew Bolt
It hasn’t taken long for Scott Brown to become the latest name in the Republicans’ list of presidential possibles after his stunning win in Massachusetts
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Not a Hopenhagen
Andrew Bolt
A watered-down deal now has watered-down deadlines
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He hasn’t spent so wisely that we should give him more
Andrew Bolt
First Treasury secretary Ken Henry willingly helps Kevin Rudd to waste more than $60 billion on a spending frenzy on fripperies to stop a recession that turns out to be far, far milder than either predicted.

Now he’s moaning that Treasury is running out of cash and will need much, much more
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Not just a tragic accident
Andrew Bolt
The death of five teenagers in a car crash in Mill Park was not just a tragedy, but a consequence of a dysfunctional culture of booze and up-yours self-assertion that many of the young mourners actually celebrate
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How to catch up with Lord Monckton
Andrew Bolt

Christopher Monckton, who conducted this brilliant Socratic dialogue with a Greenpeace supporter, is touring Australia from next week. Lecture dates and booking details here. When Kevin Rudd answers Monckton’s challenge, I’ll post that, too.
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Mahathir: Jews “had to be periodically massacred”
Andrew Bolt
This Jew-hating, terrorist-excusing conspiracy theorist was actually the elected leader of Malaysia - and spoke at a Muslim gathering where he expected his views to win support
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Climate has Rudd tongue-tied
Andrew Bolt
Last year Kevin Rudd claimed global warming was the “great moral challenge of our generation”

But the climate sure has changed since Climategate and the farcical failure in Copenhagen. This year global warming is the scam that Rudd barely dares to mention:
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Another Climategate inquiry
Andrew Bolt
The scandal will not die. Britain’s Parliament will now investigate Climategate:
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Why so many?
Andrew Bolt
Whether we actually want our cities to turn into giant megapolisis is one question. A more urgent other is why we’re now importing so many immigrants when our governments no longer dare to supply even those here already with enough water, power, land and public transport.
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Every Dad needs a daughter - especially if he’s in politics
Andrew Bolt

Yes, irrelevant and all that. But Tony Abbott’s latest photo session for Women’s Weekly - posing with his daughters - will not harm him one little bit.

In Massachusetts just this month, Scott Brown proved that telegenic daughters sure help make the candidate look desirable, too.
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The failure of Barack Obama
Andrew Bolt
Once Barack Obama had what was described as “cool”. Now that “cool” is called “aloof”, as he concedes:

BARACK Obama has admitted to losing touch with the American people in his first year as President...

Once your trademark become your liability, you’re in deep, deep strife - especially when that trait is as fundamental as your personality.
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The mistress gets it said
Andrew Bolt

An Obama economics advisor learns that one stimulus package at least has worked, creating a job that’s not so easy to scrap:

On first glance, it could be the ultimate Valentine’s Day card—a gigantic billboard that towers over New York’s Times Square, featuring a happy couple with the text: “You are my soulmate forever, Charles & YaVaughnie.”

But as every scorned lover knows, looks can be deceiving. This billboard—which also has gone up in Atlanta and San Francisco—is the ultimate act of revenge -- a very public retaliation by a dumped mistress aimed at a very wealthy, and married, businessman who is an adviser to President Obama.

The information age has once more made infidelity a high-risk occupation.
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Explaining Climategate
Andrew Bolt
Dr John Costella on how Climategate unfolded, email by astonishing email. A great reference document.
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Terrorists must be scared of propellers
Andrew Bolt
Warnings that an absurd distinction helps make a terrorist attack in Australia almost inevitable
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A day for dissing the flag
Andrew Bolt
It’s an Australia Day tradition. Celebrities queue to denounce the both the occasion and the historic symbols of the nation. The highlights of this year’s un-Australia Day celebrities
On the other hand ..

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Investigate Pachauri now
Andrew Bolt
The IPCC and its deeply conflicted chairman are starting to smell very badly, and not just because of Climategate
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The IPCC scandal: the African data was sexed up, too
Andrew Bolt
Yet more evidence that the IPCC cooked the books. Here’s its 2007 claim that global warming could devastate African agriculture:
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Stern’s figures were false, too
Andrew Bolt
Now the heat is going on professional alarmist Lord Stern, too. Stern not only relied on a false IPCC claim but quietly slashed his scary predictions of hurricane damage without publicly acknowleding he’d got the (still exaggerated) figure wrong by a factor of 10.



Roger Pielke Jr explains the fiddling.
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Defend the freedom of the happy drunk
Andrew Bolt
Michael Keane on the tyranny of the health fascists:

THERE are increasing calls to regulate and tax many supposedly harmful lifestyle products, such as fatty foods, soft drinks and even video games, under the guise of public health imperatives…
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Murdoch a sceptic
Andrew Bolt
Personally, I treat private conversations with Rupert Murdoch on global warming as, well, private. But Des Moore goes public in announcing that Murdoch, who famously declared we “must give the planet the benefit of the doubt”, now harbors many doubts himself
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Two more in two days
Andrew Bolt
It’s already clear that immigration will be an election-year issue. And so will boat people, arriving here in ever-increasing numbers thanks to the foolish decision Kevin Rudd made to relax our laws. Here’s just the latest two boat arrivals
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Rudd cool on warming
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd finds a different crisis for 2010:

KEVIN Rudd has declared 2010 a year of “major health reform”, warning that health spending alone will outstrip state tax revenues within two decades.
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Abbott again pack-attacked in The Age
Andrew Bolt
Two in three Australians tell Galaxy pollsters we should cap our immigration intake:

Two-thirds of respondents - 66 per cent - think the Federal Government should cap immigration rates.

But seven out of seven writers on The Age’s letters page today say Liberal leader Tony Abbott is a xenophobe, racist and “a threat of our nation” for merely wanting to discuss how many immigrants we bring in, too, and how best to settle them.

Not much room for debate on that paper, is there? Smugness rules.
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How a green group became an IPCC source
Andrew Bolt
The IPCC lifted its false claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 almost word for word from a WWF report. Why would a scientific body have accepted, without checking, the claims of a deep green group that depends on green scares for donations?
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How Rudd stacks the IPCC
Andrew Bolt
How to stack the IPCC. First, let the Rudd Government have sole power to nominate Australia’s IPCC authors:
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Monckton applies the heat
Andrew Bolt
Christopher Monckton’s debate this morning with Australian IPCC reviewer Ben McNeil on Sunrise, a minor temple of the warming faith, did not go well - for the alarmists. My goodness, but McNeil did seem awfully green (again) for an academic who demands such drastic changes to the way we live.

Even David Koch, long a fierce preacher of the warming faith, seemed no longer so sure of his old gospel.

I suspect Monckton will cause a lot more damage to the warmists before his tour is over - not least by simply getting the hearing that many local sceptics have been denied:

CLIMATE sceptic Christopher Monckton says he has evidence climate change is not a problem and that Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme is unnecessary.

Lord Monckton said today he had come to Australia to prove the Prime Minister wrong.

The former adviser to British prime minister Margaret Thatcher said Mr Rudd carried out ”a 45-minute sustained personal attack” on him last November claiming he had no evidence on the effects of climate change.

“I’m going to say to the people of Australia, when your prime minister said I don’t have any evidence, here I am, here is my evidence, here is where I got it from,” Lord Monckton said in Sydney today.

The climate change sceptic will carry out an extensive 13-day lecture tour of Australia at an estimated cost of $100,000. The cost is being covered by two semi-retired Queensland engineers, John Smeed and Case Smit.

Lord Monckton claims climate change isn’t a problem for the planet and carbon dioxide emissions don’t contribute significantly to global warming. He claims world temperatures will rise by just half a degree (Celsius) by the end of the decade, compared with UN scientists’ prediction of a 3.5 degree rise.

Monckton’s interview with Alan Jones here. But this debate will be a complete mismatch. Poor Graham! Poor Barry!
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And this is a generation that thinks it can run the world?
Andrew Bolt
How utterly helpless, clueless and irresponsible are the kinds of people who go to the Big Day Out concert that more than 1000 of them don’t even know not to go out in the midday sun - or at least not without a drink of water, if only to wash down the ecstasy:

More than 300 people were arrested over the two-day Big Day Out music festival in Sydney, with one person caught with 24 ecstasy tablets, police say.,,

Ambulance officers were also kept busy, with 1,587 people treated by St John Ambulance volunteers over both days, while 36 patients were hospitalised. Many of those revellers were treated for dehydration, as temperatures climbed into the (40s) on both days.

1587? Even after organisers shipped in free water? God spare us.
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Five out of six subs retire hurt - before a shot is even fired
Andrew Bolt
Astronishing:

THE navy’s trouble-prone $6 billion submarine fleet has been reduced to one operational boat, raising serious questions about the long-term serviceability of the six Collins-Class vessels designed to serve as Australia’s frontline strike weapon.

So who’s been sacked?
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Green is the color of the carpetbag
Andrew Bolt
Green was meant to be the sign of a modern new morality. Now it’s a sign that someone’s on the make:

THE consumer watchdog has reported an alarming rise in complaints about misleading ‘’green’’ advertising, particularly by energy retailers…

Graeme Samuel, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, told The Age that a sharp rise in complaints about green ads - from almost none two years ago to about 500 since early 2008 - was ‘’very unusual’’. He said such complaints were becoming as common as those about telecommunication companies…

The ACCC’s most recent green-related action ordered Global Green Plan, which was Government-accredited to provide renewable energy under the name GreenSwitch, to buy 4000 renewable energy certificates - now worth about $140,000. GreenSwitch customers had paid for the certificates, but the company had failed to purchase them over two years.

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Justice for Halabja
Andrew Bolt

It should hardly need pointing out that had Iraq not been liberated Ali would still be in government, and not at the end of a rope:

Iraq’s government spokesman says Saddam Hussein’s notorious cousin “Chemical Ali” was executed last night about a week after being sentenced to death for the poison gas attacks that killed more than 5000 Kurds in 1988.
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Turnbull leaves the Liberal Party - without the courtesy of quitting
Andrew Bolt
He publicly attacks his leader, openly plots to replace him and vows to vote against his party’s position. In what way is Malcom Turnbull still a member of the Liberal Party?

The former Opposition leader, Mr Turnbull, has pledged to cross the floor to support the amended ETS.

In his Australia Day message in his seat of Wentworth yesterday, he took a swipe at Mr Abbott, saying climate change was ‘’an issue that cries out for strong, far-sighted leadership both at home and internationally’’.

Mr Turnbull also teased that he may try again for the leadership. ‘’Part of our special Australian identity, too, is a spirit of enterprise and resilience, a willingness to get in and have a go, and if that doesn’t work out, dust yourself off and have another go.’’

PS: Should Turnbull ever - by some miracle - regain the Liberal leadership, will he allow the members of his team to express the same disloyalty as he does now? Or is only he exempt from the usual conventions?
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IPCC censors too tough even for China
Andrew Bolt
Man bites dog news. China calls on the IPCC to show more toleration of dissent:

Amid controversy surrounding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on melting glaciers, Xie Zhenhua, Vice-Chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, today urged the UN panel to make the fifth assessment report comprehensive by also citing contrarian views.

It’s sure embarrassing when even China thinks you’re too censorious.
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Pitman cries poor
Andrew Bolt

Professor Andy Pitman, an Australian IPCC author, says his side is losing the global warming debate simply because they’re all selfless angels, while the other side are corrupt, deceitful and unemployed conspiracists:

ELEANOR HALL: How much damage then do you think this sort of sloppiness on the part of the IPCC has done?

ANDY PITMAN: Oh, my personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organised, have nothing else to do. They kind of don’t have day jobs. They can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the general public whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this actually isn’t one of them.

All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily for no funding and no pay whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full-scale misinformation campaigns and are doing a damn good job I think. They are doing a superb job at misinforming and miscommunicating the general public, state and federal governments.

That explains everything to Pitman’s satisfaction. The absence of any proof for his absurd claims explains everything to the rest of us.

Oh, and here’s a list of Pitman’s grants. My word, but he seems well funded by the warmist lobby. Oddly enough for a man who claims he does his IPCC work “out of hours, voluntarily for no funding”, his long list of grants include these:

1999-01
Australian Greenhouse Office (for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change $15,000

2004-7
Australian Greenhouse Office (for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change $48,400

(Thanks to a dozen laughing readers.)
===
RIGHT BEFORE IT WAS WRONG
Tim Blair
So the science wasn’t settled after all:
Professor Christopher Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution in California, who is the new co-chairman of the IPCC working group overseeing the climate impacts report, said the 2007 report had been broadly accurate at the time it was written.

He said: “The 2007 study should be seen as “a snapshot of what was known then. Science is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time around.”
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AUSTRALIA DAY
Tim Blair
Join happy foreigner Mark Steyn in celebrating Australia Day – which you can do by listening to (or recording your own) Australian voices.

UPDATE. Times change. Previously we were warned against the worship of athletes. Now athletes warn against the worship of YouTube.

UPDATE II. Further reason, if reason be needed, to celebrate:
Banks and investors are pulling out of the carbon market after the failure to make progress at Copenhagen on reaching new emissions targets after 2012 …

Two sources said that Australian bank Westpac had scaled back plans to increase its carbon desk in London.
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HE’S CHECKING FOR SIGNS OF NARCISSISM
Tim Blair
The President looks at himself. This is an official White House image, by the way.
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BOSTON STRUGGLER
Tim Blair
Poor John Kerry:

Just when he was set to bask in the limelight as the Bay State’s senior senator, Democrat John F. Kerry is being pushed back into the political shadows, forced to play the liberal foil to GOP superstar Scott Brown …

On Capitol Hill this week, Kerry’s office was filled with reporters and cameras, but they were following the newly elected Brown.

Six years ago, Kerry claimed: “I don’t own an SUV.” Now he’s overshadowed by someone who brags: “I drive a truck.” Change!
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O FOR O
Tim Blair
Typically, but not always, the pattern runs like this. The economy is stable and employment is up, so folks think that they can afford to elect a big-spending, left-leaning government.

All is well for a time. Then, when the economy tanks and that government’s spending habits become a little painful, a right-leaning government is elected to fix things. Programs are cut, the economy stabilises, and here come the lefties again.

In extremely broad terms, we frequently see this cycle repeated in western democracies, possibly because we enjoy watching both sides of politics play to their stereotypes: conservatives as heartless brutes who would steal the bread from an orphan’s mouth, and leftists as clumsy spendthrifts who are extremely generous with other people’s money.

Until the very last weeks of the 2008 US Presidential campaign, it looked as though Barack Obama would be a cycle beneficiary.
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FACTS UNHEARD
Tim Blair
V.K. Raina, the scientist who exposed the IPCC’s glacier fraud, demands an apology:

“I want a personal apology from the IPCC chairperson R.K. Pachauri who had described my research as voodoo science,” Mr. Raina told The Hindu over phone from Panchkula …

With over 100 scientific papers and three books to his credit, Mr. Raina said he had not read the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC that made the prediction on melting of the Himalayan glaciers, but read the contents only from what was published in newspapers and magazine.

“But all along I knew that this was not based on facts. During my 50 years of research and several expeditions to the region, I never found anything as sensational as was predicted in the IPCC, but no one heard me then.”

To paraphrase someone involved in another conflict, we hear him now. Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd – “Thanks folks, better run”; “And can I say, having said that I’ve got to zip” – scampers away from questions on climate change. And they weren’t even particularly difficult questions. He’ll be overtaking cheetahs if anyone asks him about the IPCC.
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RAY MUST CHANGE
Tim Blair
A demand that we change the flag might mean more if it came from someone who wasn’t so resistant to changing his own hairstyle.