In 1816 Monroe was elected as the fifth president of the United States. Since he was a member of the dominant political party, the Democratic Republicans, he was easily re-elected in 1820, winning 231 of 232 electoral votes. The Monroe administration was termed "The Era of Good Feelings", a time when the United States focused on expansion and avoided involvement in the troubles of European nations. James Monroe is most famous for establishing the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which declared U.S. resentment toward any European interference in the Western Hemisphere.=== Bible Quote ===
“The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”- Romans 13:9-10
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Dramatic footage shows the incredible force of mudslides which have swamped Madeira, killing at least 42 people as rescuers use their bare hands to try and locate more.
Child rapist walks in, gets visa
RAPIST from the US who lied his way into Australia raises questions over visitor scrutiny.
Garrett didn't see home safety warning
A DAMNING report warned of home insulation dangers last year, but Peter Garrett didn't see it.
Peter Garrett monumentally incompetent, says Tony Abbott
ENVIRONMENT Minister Peter Garrett cannot be trusted to fix the mess he has made out of the troubled household insulation program, federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said today. By refusing to sack him, neither can Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, he said. The coalition is continuing to pressure the government on its bungled scheme, which has been put on the shelf following mounting criticism and the link to four deaths. Mr Garrett yesterday admitted he had only recently read a damning risk assessment sent to his department in April last year. The report warned that lax controls could lead to fraud and criminal behaviour, inflated charges and ineligible people accessing the program. It also said the federal environment department was ill-equipped to roll out the $2.5 billion program. "It's absolutely inconceivable that a report that the minister himself commissioned was not actually seen by the minister until a fortnight ago," Mr Abbott said.
Neal promise 'followed by hubby's phone call'
THE day after MP Belinda Neal allegedly offered to help get medical favours for a Labor party member whose vote she needed, her husband and MP John Della Bosca rang the New South Wales health chief asking for her assistance. It has been confirmed Mr Della Bosca, a former health minister, called NSW Health director general Debora Picone asking for help with a constituent of his wife, The Daily Telegraph reported. Ms Picone is believed to have told Mr Della Bosca to take the matter through the proper formal channels. Mr Della Bosca's approach has been included in an interim departmental report sent to the ICAC on the case of Louisa Sauvage - a 72-year-old waiting for a hip replacement, who is acting president for the Wamberal/Terrigal branch in Ms Neal's marginal seat of Robertson.
Michelle Obama tells Fox News' Mike Huckabee the 'Let's Move' campaign aims to reduce childhood obesity by providing healthy options
Major Taliban Op Captured
EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Taliban governor in Afghanistan was caught in Pakistan, two senior U.S. officials tell Fox News
GOP Draws Line for Health Summit
Republicans hopeful for health care meeting with Obama, but will not accept whole cloth bill outlining Dem plans
Stimulus Saved Jobs — Gov't Ones?
Even Tiger Woods and John Edwards had a better year than the stimulus bill, Sen. Mitch McConnell says
Three lives lost after clifftop party row
THIRD young man dies after one's "moment of madness" leads to tragic cliff plunge during party.
A man who was chased outside his suburban home by two men before being stabbed and bashed to death may have been the victim of a road-rage incident, police say
Footy star glassing drama couple split
KATIE Milligan stood behind NRL star Greg Bird during his trial but the romance has not lasted.
Shock Tropfest winner thanks shock jock
RADIO bad boy Kyle Sandilands was the unlikely inspiration for this year's winning Tropfest short film
Victim dies on street after brutal attack
MAN dies after being bashed with a hammer and stabbed in vicious street attack by masked men.
Drivers hit by $30 fee for old rail scheme
THE State Government has told long-suffering commuters in Sydney's northwest they will have to wait 14 years and re-elect Labor twice if they want to get a train line. And a plan to deliver new express rail services to the Western Suburbs has no completion date at all. On top of this comes a new car registration levy that will force motorists to pay up to $30 a year more to partly fund the new pie-in-the-sky plans. The tax, to bring in $500 million over 10 years, will penalise those who do not own small cars with vehicles over 975kg costing between $5 and $30 a year more, depending on the car's weight, from July. At the same time, the M4 East motorway and Epping to Parramatta rail link may never see the light of day, with no plans to build either in the next decade. The latest transport blueprint is almost certain to be the final nail in the Government's coffin, with exclusive polling by The Daily Telegraph showing some three-quarters of voters ready to turn on Labor over its transport mismanagement.
Fast-track teachers to get six weeks training
TEACHERS could take charge of the most challenging classrooms after just six weeks training under a controversial strategy being considered by the Queensland Government. People with professional qualifications will be sent to teach in disadvantaged schools to plug a shortage of specialist teachers under the Teach for Australia program, The Courier-Mail reports. But unions have slammed the strategy – which aims to attract high-performing professionals and graduates from fields including law, economics, engineering, science, mathematics and English – as disrespectful to teachers and a Band-Aid solution. Teach for Australia chief executive Melodie Potts said research shows similar models overseas produce more effective teachers.
Naps Clear the Mind, Help You Learn
The study involved 39 healthy young adults who were placed into either a nap or no-nap group. You might not need to feel so guilty about taking a mid-day snooze. A new study suggests that napping for an hour or so can refresh your brain, boosting your ability to learn. On the other hand, the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, according to the findings. "Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap," said study author Matthew Walker, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The study involved 39 healthy young adults who were placed into either a nap or no-nap group. At noon, all the participants performed a learning task intended to exercise the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Both groups performed at comparable levels on this test. Then at 2 p.m., the nap group took a 90-minute siesta while the no-nap group stayed awake. Later that day, at 6 p.m., participants performed a new round of learning exercises. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. In contrast, those who napped did markedly better and actually improved in their capacity to learn. Other scientists say naps are natural. Humans are bi-phasic sleepers, which means we're meant to sleep in bouts, not long stretches. About one-third of U.S. adults say they typically take a mid-day nap. The new findings reinforce the researchers' hypothesis that sleep is needed to clear the brain's short-term memory storage and make room for new information, Walker said. Previous research has shown fact-based memories are temporarily stored in the hippocampus before being sent to the brain's prefrontal cortex, which may have more storage space. "It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder," Walker said.
=== Comments ===
John Howard's Maiden Over
by ZEG
A little departure from my usual political attacks but this great article by Gideon Haigh (currently in the 20/02/2010 edition of THE SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA) inspired the cartoon below and really is food for thought. Finally another challenge for John Howard to bowl over. After the long cleanup that he successfully achieved following the disastrous years of the Hawke-Keating Governments, he should certainly have no problem with his maiden over on this playing field -- Zeg
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Fact Checking Team Obama's Stimulus Claims
By John Lott
A look at what the White House said about the stimulus and what they didn't say...
On Wednesday, Fox News Channel’s Bill Hemmer interviewed Austan Goolsbee, the chief economist for the White House Recovery Board, on the one-year anniversary of the stimulus.
Here is a simple fact check of Mr. Goolsbee's claims:
Hemmer: "What does the White House predict a year from now?"
Goolsbee: Let’s remember, you’re citing the claim that the unemployment rate wouldn’t go above 8 percent, but if you remember in that same projection they said that if we didn’t pass the stimulus it would only go to 9 percent, and it was above that before the stimulus even came into effect. What the administration and everyone else missed was the depth of the recession that was in place at the end of 2008 and at the beginning of 2009 when the President came into office.
In April, President Obama was busy touting the stimulus as having "already saved or created over 150,000 jobs." Press releases from the administration were already being sent out claiming saved jobs on April 1. Even well before that, on January 25, Lawrence Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser, promised that the benefits from the stimulus bill would be seen "within weeks" after passage. Yet, despite Mr. Goolsbee's claim, the unemployment rate did not rise above 9 percent until May, well after these claimed jobs were supposedly being created.
As for the statement that the president was “surprised” by how bad the economy was, during his first radio address to the nation on Jan. 24, Obama claimed, "We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action." In Obama's first national press conference he talked about the United States finding itself in a crisis *12 times* and also took pains to emphasize that it was an "unprecedented crisis." Given that the unemployment rate in 1983 reached 10.7 percent, if the president believed that we were indeed in an “unprecedented crisis” or at least the worst shape since the Great Depression, it is hard to see how the unemployment numbers could surprise him or those on his team.
The Obama administration has frequently claimed that they didn't realize how bad the GDP numbers for the 4th quarter 2008 were when their first unemployment predictions were released, but the February 28 estimates were released well after the GDP numbers were out.
Mr. Goolsbee states that the economy was worse than he expected it to be. But there is another alternative explanation and that is that the stimulus created higher unemployment. In fact, my columns in this space predicted that during at the beginning of February 2009 that would be the case. Moving around a trillion dollars from areas where people would have spent it to areas where the government wants to spend it will move a lot of jobs away from those firms that are losing the money to those who are now favored by the government. Since people won't instantly move from one job to another, there will be a temporary increase in unemployment.
But there’s still more. Here’s this from Hemmer’s interview:
Hemmer: "So you are saying that you are standing by the numbers and you guys were right all along."
Goolsbee: What I’m saying is that the impact of the stimulus is very much what they predicted it to be. What they missed -- and what everyone missed -- was the depth of the baseline that was in place as the president came into office, yes.
Two graphs illustrate Obama's promises versus what actually happened. Whether one uses the president's predictions when he came into office or his later predictions as provided on February 28, the actual unemployment rate lies well above either of those predictions. (more at the link)
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Rudd insider reports from the heart of the maelstrom
Andrew Bolt
Myles Peterson was last year hired to write speeches for three Rudd Government ministers, including Health Minister Nicola Roxon. He now writes of the astonishing waste, arrogance and rush-rush spending that’s the defining characteristic of this colossally inept Government and its hyper-distractable leader.
The whole article, by a man who walked out in disgust, is a must read, but here’s just a few of its insights:
I was given my first speech to write. I was not given an induction, training, an occupational health and safety lecture, a security clearance, a standard operating procedures manual, a style guide or anything you would expect when starting a job with the federal government of Australia…Peterson’s insights ring so absolutely true of Rudd and the government he’s corrupted with his wild mix of impulsiveness, arrogance, authoritarianism and short attention span. His article help to explain Rudd’s extraordinary series of bungled programs and crashed dreams - Fuel Watch, Grocery Watch, the free insulation disaster, the Asia forum, the threats to prosecute Japan and the Iranian president, the emissions trading scheme, the Oceanic Viking fiasco, the $43 billion broadband, the $15 billion spendathon on school halls and canteens, the bungled roll-out of school computers…
Around the same time a section meeting was called. Our boss arrived late, but in the best of moods. ‘’We’re under budget!’’ she announced proudly. The old-timers let out whoops of joy… Our section was under-budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars, necessitating we blow all the unspent money before the end of the financial year. Unfortunately, ‘’training’’ did not mean I would finally get some training. ‘’Training’’ consisted of hastily booked, dubiously relevant conferences and courses, most of which were conveniently located a long way from Canberra....
I started to have my first run-ins with the ministers’ staff, cranky young professionals who were forever firing off orders and then countermanding them.... The ministers’ staff were as fond of cancelling events as they were of commissioning them. Then it fell to someone, usually me, to ring the nursing home or hospital or wherever the planned visit was to be and tell the locals to stand down their troops. The minister would not be coming....
After remaining silent on the issue for many months, the Prime Minister suddenly took an interest in the nation’s health. I found out when a grim-faced boss herded us all together. ‘’The PM is going to make a health announcement and you have to organise it,’’ we were told.
‘’When’s it happening?’’
‘’Monday.’’ (It was Friday afternoon.)
‘’When did we first learn about it?’’
‘’Now.’’
And that is how the department’s major reform initiative, YourHealth, and its associated round of public consultations began. ..
The Prime Minister’s office staff feared nobody and respected them less. The only time they shut up was when the Prime Minister himself was speaking. Any other speaker, including Minister Roxon and the commission’s spokeswoman, could go to hell. One grabbed my pen from my hand and stormed off with it. I later asked for it back and was laughed at....
A (YourHealth) website was thrown up that looked ghastly when it first went live, so ghastly the Prime Minister refused to promote it as had been planned… The gossip was the Prime Minister’s attention had been caught by the Web 2.0 phenomenon, as had many Western leaders in the wake of Obama’s presidential campaign, and YourHealth.gov.au would be the first to jump on the bandwagon.
Along with the tidal wave of events we suddenly had to organise, I was given a new duty: ensuring photographers were always present to capture our ministers nodding gravely as they consulted. There was no limit to the cost. Fortunate photographers around the country suddenly found themselves hired, whatever quote they supplied.... Money was thrown at local production companies to create sincere-looking website testimonials. Staff were ordered to use the site and vote on the polls to generate hits…
I repeat. Read it all.
UPDATE
A regular reader who this time withholds their name comments:
As a public servant, I am appalled by the whoop-it-up decisions made by his managers to fritter away under-spent budgets. This (in Peterson’s article) is particularly galling:
“I was attending a conference on Web 2.0, a topic I was mildly interested in but which had nothing to do with my duties.”
As it happens, Web 2.0 has everything to do with my duties but thanks to Lindsay Tanner’s additional 2% productivity dividend (ie, budget cut) applied across the the board (that impacts smaller agencies more than it does large agencies like Health} I am struggling to hang on to staff, let alone send them off to conferences in Sydney. It is sickening.
No wonder the public service is increasingly demoralised. I am not surprised at all about the flibberty-gibbert way the Health Minister is carrying on, eg building pointless, meaningless and expensive websites, having speeches written for events that never happen, using up health professionals as props for her PR stunts. She was appalling in Opposition and even worse than could be imagined in Government. That applies to all of them. The only ones who are not getting on my last nerve are Stephen Smith and John Faulkner, and that is only because their Departments resist the sort of nonsense that Myles has reported and will not let their ministers derail their mission. Look what happened to the last one who tried (Joel Fitzgibbon}. He had the rug pulled out from under him.
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THEY KNEW
Tim Blair
He prefers to miss meetings, and he doesn’t like reports much, either:
Environment Minister Peter Garrett has admitted he did not see a damning risk assessment of the federal government’s roof insulation program until 10 days ago, 10 months after it was delivered to his department because of concerns the scheme could lead to death or injury …Minter Ellison ain’t cheap. How much did this ignored report cost? And we edge ever closer to the top:
The report from the consulting arm of law firm Minter Ellison gave specific warnings on house fires and property damage by dodgy installers, substandard batts and a department ill-equipped to roll out such a massive program.
Kevin Rudd has revealed he was also in the dark about the taxpayer-funded report until February 11, the day Mr Garrett told parliament about its existence, despite it having been handed to the government in April last year.Further from Matthew Franklin:
That Garrett has not [been sacked] is evidence of the unspoken fact of this whole saga – that Kevin Rudd and his cabinet bear ultimate responsibility for having recklessly decided to pump $2.45bn into an unregulated sector without taking any advice about the consequences in terms of safety or value of money for taxpayers.Look who else is now asking questions:
‘’The question here is, not when Peter Garrett got the Minter Ellison report … but when Kevin Rudd got it,’’ Senator Brown said.What didn’t he know, and when didn’t he know it? Question Time might be amusing today.
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THE INTANGIBILITY OF NOTHINGNESS
Tim Blair
Jeremy Warner explains carbon markets:
Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon credits, or finding carbon reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible.Really? I don’t see how. By the way, how thrilling would it be to meet a “carbon accountant”?
“Carbon developers”, many of them employed by large multinationals, travel the world in search of carbon reduction projects to sell, while firms of carbon accountants have been established to verify on the United Nations’ behalf that those reductions are real. The whole thing, though well intentioned, looks wide open to abuse and scams.
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ZANA, WORRIER PRINCESS
Tim Blair
European Commission officials have produced a lavish comic book portraying themselves as heroes battling to save the world:
More than 300,000 copies of the glossy hardback – printed in five languages at a cost of £200,000 – are being sent to homes and schools in the UK and across the Continent.Sample dialogue, as supplied by Belgian graphic novelist Erik Bongers: “We must inform the Commissioner! She’s briefing the European Parliament on the earthquake tomorrow.” And: “The aid is channelled through organisations like UNICEF or Oxfam. When the Commission finances them, they become what we call our ‘implementing partners’.”
The graphic novel follows the ‘adventures’ of Zana, Max et al at the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department – known as ECHO – as they struggle to secure funding for the fictional sate of Borduvia, which has been devastated by an earthquake.
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Hamilton damns the abuse he dishes out
Andrew Bolt
Speaking as a recipient of so much such stuff for many years, I completely support Clive Hamilton when he condemns the vicious personal abuse that’s so common in the global warming debate:
Australia’s most distinguished climate scientists have become the target of a new form of cyber-bullying aimed at driving them out of the public debate.But when will Hamilton apologise for his own foul attacks, likewise aimed at “driving (opponents) out of the public debate”?
Instead of dishonouring the deaths of six million in the past, climate deniers risk the lives of hundreds of millions in the future. Holocaust deniers are not responsible for the Holocaust, but climate deniers, if they were to succeed, would share responsibility for the enormous suffering caused by global warming… So the answer to the question of whether climate denialism is morally worse than Holocaust denialism is no, at least, not yet.And perhaps Hamilton might stop writing such creepy and defamatory letters to my children:
Hi there,
There’s something you need to know about your father.
Your dad’s job is to try to stop the government making laws to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. He is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways.
Because of their pollution, lots of people, mostly poor people, are likely to die. They will die from floods, from diseases like dengue fever, and from starvation when their crops won’t grow anymore.
The big companies are putting their profits before the lives of people. And your dad is helping them.
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They’re either liars or fools
Andrew Bolt
They are either lying or they’re so monumentally incompetent that they failed to read the warnings in the very risk-assessment report they commissioned:
ENVIRONMENT Minister Peter Garrett has admitted he did not see a damning risk assessment of the federal government’s roof insulation program until 10 days ago, 10 months after it was delivered to his department because of concerns the scheme could lead to death or injury.What other warnings has this Government ignored, or papers has it not read, or cost-benefit analyses has it overlooked, in its manic rush to spend countless billions on a hundred impulsive grand schemes?
Kevin Rudd has revealed he was also in the dark about the taxpayer-funded report until February 11, the day Mr Garrett told parliament about its existence, despite it having been handed to the government in April last year.
The report from the consulting arm of law firm Minter Ellison gave specific warnings on house fires and property damage by dodgy installers, substandard batts and a department ill-equipped to roll out such a massive program.
It also warned that lax controls could lead to fraud and criminal behaviour, inflated charges and ineligible people accessing the program.
The $2.45 billion scheme, which was part of the government’s stimulus package, was later linked to four deaths, at least 87 house fires and alleged rorting, before being axed by the Environment Minister on Friday.
UPDATE
This scheme costs more than $120 for every many, woman and child in this country. And how much of that extracted cash has gone to shonks?
AN insulation business billed taxpayers $19,200 for insulating what turned out to be a vacant block of land in Brisbane.UPDATE 2
Matthew Franklin is exactly right:
That Garrett has not (been sacked) is evidence of the unspoken fact of this whole saga – that Kevin Rudd and his cabinet bear ultimate responsibility for having recklessly decided to pump $2.45bn into an unregulated sector without taking any advice about the consequences in terms of safety or value of money for taxpayers.As I said yet again on the Today show this morning, the question now is: What did Rudd know and when did he ignore it?
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The new Swedish pogrom
Andrew Bolt
Leftist politicians and Muslim immigrants have made one Swedish city too unsafe for many Jews:
Sweden’s reputation as a tolerant, liberal nation is being threatened by a steep rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes in the city of Malmo…We’re written before of Malmo’s disgraceful efforts to make Israeli tennis players unwelcome, too, and of a popular newspaper’s revival of the blood libel against the Jews.
In 2009, a chapel serving the city’s 700-strong Jewish community was set ablaze. Jewish cemeteries were repeatedly desecrated, worshippers were abused on their way home from prayer, and “Hitler” was mockingly chanted in the streets by masked men…
Malmo’s Jews, however, do not just point the finger at bigoted Muslims and their fellow racists in the country’s Neo-Nazi fringe. They also accuse Ilmar Reepalu, the Left-wing mayor who has been in power for 15 years, of failing to protect them. Mr Reepalu, who is blamed for lax policing, is at the centre of a growing controversy for saying that what the Jews perceive as naked anti-Semitism is in fact just a sad, but understandable consequence of Israeli policy in the Middle East…
The future looks so bleak that by one estimate, around 30 Jewish families have already left for Stockholm, England or Israel, and more are preparing to go.
(Thanks to reader Aussie Boy.)
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Victoria’s Che
Andrew Bolt
Victorian Greens MP Greg Barber reassures frustrated Age reporter and green activist Melissa Fyfe that his party will triumph as did heroes before:
‘’Eventually,’’ he says, ‘’Che Guevara comes down from the mountain and gets to be foreign minister.’’More on Barber’s bloody inspiration here.
UPDATE
Great news! A rare sighting of a species once thought extinct! There is more on Fyfe here, but the real news there is that the item marks the return to public debate of the long lost and much mourned Professor Bunyip.
(Thanks to reader The Drum on Fyfe.)
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The weekend of the long knives
Andrew Bolt
Rising violence, not racism, if Victoria’s real scandal:
Ambulance Victoria spokesman Ray Rowe said paramedics attended 11 stabbings in Melbourne over the weekend.In fact, the only known racial element to these stabbings is this:
The 17-year-old became the fifth stabbing victim of the weekend when he was attacked at the Springvale Community Summer Festival, in Melbourne’s southeast… Police say the assailants are described as Asian in appearance.But the only man so far charged and identified is:
Clayton McCarther, 22, of Southbank...
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Rapists may enter, while the honest wait
Andrew Bolt
I have a friend in Europe who has spent many months trying to get permission to join his Australian wife in Melbourne. And then I read this:
A CHILD rapist from the US lied his way into Australia when authorities did not check his criminal background…
The Herald Sun has been told the 63-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has spent time as a registered sex offender in Washington state and first arrived in Australia four years ago. His US victim was 14…
Immigration authorities were told of the man’s background at least six months ago, but did not make any immediate move against him.
He has since been charged with a burglary allegedly committed in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs in which the victim was injured… The man - who is also being investigated as a cancer “quack” - is now on a temporary spousal visa after becoming the de facto husband of an Australian woman.
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One TV show that Rudd does dare front
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd will not submit himself to an interview on Insiders, the country’s leading political talk show. But he has plenty of time to go on a friendly quiz show stacked with friendlly faces:
He has failed to sparkle on ABC TV’s Q&A this month, or to sparkle on his new spot on Channel Seven’s Sunrise. But tonight the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will hope there is a lot to a name when his pre-recorded appearance on Channel Ten’s Good News Week is aired. Rudd filmed a ‘’political mastermind’’ segment for the show at the weekend in Sydney, where he emerges to answer questions as the political champion of the panellist Claire Hooper. Paul McDermott, looking nothing like a Young Liberal and only a little like Melissa Doyle, asks Rudd which prime minister uttered the line: ‘’Life wasn’t meant to be easy’’. ‘’I’m pretty nervous to be here; my country beckons,’’ Rudd says at one point. ‘’Don’t stuff it up for your team,’’ responds the panelist Corrine Grant, a keen union supporter.
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But why did it take so long for so many to see through him?
Andrew Bolt
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul Sheehan counts 26 failures: How Rudd the dud dropped Australia in the alphabet soup.
UPDATE
Reader Phillip Dover, a warrior of the Left, angrilly defends Rudd as best he can in comments below:
“The Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul Sheehan counts 26 failures” Oh, no he doesn’t. Sheehan allocates V to a dubious personal judgement of Rudd rather than a specific policy .And combines X,Y,Z into repeating his claim of debt. So that’s 22 itmes at best. Not 26.
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You want the insulation guys to now run your hospital?
Andrew Bolt
Andrew Norton says polls show support for a federal takeover of hospitals, but the insulation disaster screams “no”:
(T)he lesson from the insulation fiasco is that it is time to think again about what it called ‘Big Canberra’ – the belief among senior politicians of both parties, often supported by a frustrated public, that the Commonwealth bureaucracy can succeed where state bureaucracies have failed…And this is spot on:
Bureaucratic service delivery faces basic problems of resource allocation, information flows and incentives… If anything, they are likely to get worse if control is shifted to the centre. Decision-makers will be further away from service delivery, and consumer-citizen electoral clout will be diluted if national politics is the only forum for airing grievances.
One of the greatest follies of the later Howard years was to join the centralising push.The bad news is that leading that charge was Tony Abbott.
UPDATE
Readers below protest that Abbott has since changed his mind, now recommending local hospital boards.
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Pachauri sure likes the greens
Andrew Bolt
Last year Kevin Rudd donated $1 million of taxpayers’ money to The Energy Research Institute run by fellow warming alarmist and IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri.
Let’s hope the old hypocrite used our cash wisely:
The R. K. Pachauri-led not-for-profit organisation’s mission is to “work towards global sustainable development, creating innovative solutions for a better tomorrow”. However, contrary to its public message, it runs a water guzzling nine-hole golf course in Gual Pahari in Gurgaon built on institutional land thus affecting the city’s vulnerable groundwater table and to boot, charges Rs 25,000 as membership fee, something that is considered illegal on institutional land.(Thanks to reader Scarlet Pumpernickel and others.)
Pachauri is also the head of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, a Nobel Prize-winning organisation that has faced flak from all quarters in the last three months due to dubious research being presented as part of its climate change report submitted to the United Nations. As the IPCC chief he has been asking governments around the world to cut down on carbon emissions and save water, among other things, to sustain the environment.
In Gurgaon, though, TERI’s is a completely different story. Here, it runs a five-acre golf course as part of the 69 acres of institutional land it acquired from Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) in 1985 to build a residential training facility for executives called Retreat.
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War over whales; to water over people
Andrew Bolt
Autocratic China kills people and jails dissidents, and Kevin Rudd says nothing since his 2008 slapdown.
Democratic Japan kills whales, and emboldened Kevin Rudd prepares to take them to court:
STEPHEN Smith and his Japanese counterpart have agreed to disagree on the issue of whaling ahead of possible legal action by Australia.
Japan’s Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada met with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith today for bilateral talks on issues including whaling, regional security and nuclear disarmament.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has issued a November deadline for Japan to bring a halt to its so-called scientific whaling program in the Southern Ocean…
“The point I would make is I think it’s very unfortunate the Australian side has indicated its intention to take action in an international court,” Mr Okada said in Perth.
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BAIT BATTS
Tim Blair
Several cities in the US and Canada use what are known as ”bait cars” to lure and trap thieves.
It’s a simple operation. First the bait car – fitted with hidden cameras – is left unlocked is an area known for high rates of car theft. Once the car is taken, police are able to monitor it and then shut the engine down remotely. Arrests follow.
Australia has lately been running a criminal baiting program of its own, but on a far larger scale than anything attempted in North America. Using billions in public funds, the federal government last year devised a system guaranteed to draw the attention of every grifter, con artist and scam merchant in the land.
It worked brilliantly, but there was one important difference between Australia’s program and those used overseas. In Australia, nobody was arrested. Instead, they’ve pocketed millions of dollars of your taxes.
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TIME SAVER
Tim Blair
At the Adelaide Advertiser, this headline is generated by the keyboard instruction F10:
Dead body found in suburbsAccording to my Adelaide informant, F9 gives you “Man Dressed as Lady Found in Torrens”.
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IT APPEARS TO BE ORCHESTRATED
Tim Blair
Warmenist Clive Hamilton – who tells children that their parents are killers, describes climate sceptics as worse than Holocaust deniers and thinks the best way to influence behaviour is by fear – is suddenly frightened himself:
Australia’s most distinguished climate scientists have become the target of a new form of cyber-bullying aimed at driving them out of the public debate.Oh no! Still, at least he wasn’t called a murderer.
In recent months, each time they enter the public debate through a newspaper article or radio interview these scientists are immediately subjected to a torrent of aggressive, abusive and, at times, threatening emails. Apart from the volume and viciousness of the emails, the campaign has two features - it is mostly anonymous and it appears to be orchestrated.
The messages are typically peppered with insults. One scientist was called a “Loudmouth, arrogant, conceited, ignorant wanker”.
It was widely reported that in the days before the Liberal Party leadership challenge last November, MPs were blitzed with emails from climate deniers. Some MPs were spooked into voting for Tony Abbott …Spooked, were they? Perhaps somebody ramped up the fear factor.
Journalists too have become the victims of cyber-bullying. I have spoken to several, off the record, who have told of torrents of abusive emails when they report on climate change, including some sufficiently threatening for them to consult their supervisors and consider police action.Poor dears. “Look at what those murderering oil-funded Holocausters have sent me! It’s so offensive!”
The effect of the cyber-bullying campaign on some scientists-including those I have mentioned-is quite opposite to the intended one. The attempts at intimidation have only made them more resolved to keep talking to the public about their research. Their courage under fire stands in contrast to the cowardice of the anonymous emailers.There ought to be a medal: the Brave Princess. Hamilton promises more:
Tomorrow: Who is behind the cyber-bullying campaign?
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Bartlett not even confident enough to smear properly
Andrew Bolt
Glenn Milne says next month’s Tasmanian poll is just one that’s looking bad for Labor:
But the real problems for (Premier David) Bartlett surfaced in the cyber world. After promising the requisite clean campaign, Labor posted a web link: liberalsrealchange.com. It looked like a Liberal Party site, but hit the “go” button and up popped: “Will Hodgman’s $2 billion, four-lane Midland’s Highway is a hoax!” And on it went about most everything Hodgman, the leader of the Liberal party, had had to say in his adult life.
The reaction from Liberal and Labor voters was extreme. But rather than pull the link and blame it on overzealous supporters our generation X leader decided to ask his followers on Facebook what he should do.
The idea of a political leader seeking advice from Facebook in the middle of an election campaign when you are meant to be projecting strong leadership was nothing short of bizarre.
The responses were a hoot… But the best contribution came from Harry Quick, the former federal Labor member for the Tasmanian seat of Franklin
“David, if you really want to know what your `friends’ think about your strategies and the negative way you are travelling, why don’t you do a bit of old-fashioned door knocking just by yourself; no media, no handlers. You will find out at first hand what the people really think. Have you the balls to do something like this? I think not."…
Other indications that Bartlett’s campaign is not running smoothly: blaming staffers for campaign stuff-ups; cutting press conferences short, late for campaign engagements; bad choice of venue for the Swan event today (Chickenfeed layoffs)”
The last point refers to a campaign event in which it was intended that Bartlett and Wayne Swan talk up the Tasmanian economy. But across the road from the chosen timber work site was a cut price Chickenfeed outlet that had just offered 200 redundancies. Many of the staff were out on the pavement for a smoko for the duration of the event.
They obviously had different views to Bartlett and the Treasurer on the local economy.
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