Clifford Berryman, Washington Star, February 16, 1938depicts Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace as Adolf Hitler saluting goosestepping ranks of American farmers—the New Deal’s policies were highly unpopular.
=== Bible Quote ===
“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”- 1 Corinthians 13: 6-7
===
It was a contrast of moods as the Olympics' opening ceremonies kicked off with typical decorum, despite tragic death of a luger earlier in the day
Three dead in shooting at University of Alabama
A US teacher has shot dead three people and wounded three others after learning she had been denied tenure at an Alabama university, school officials and local media said today. The shooting happened at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and college spokesman Ray Garner said that police had arrested one person and detained another.
Tragedy has struck the Vancouver Winter Olympics with the death of a 21-year-old hopeful in a training accident / AFP
All in the name of economic progress and power!
Media report: Garrett 'knew of insulation death risk for months' When the senate investigations committee authorised this ill-conceived economic "stimulus" policy of installing millions of homes in the country with insulation batts and foil, my information is that the Minister in charge, Peter Garrett, had been warned up to 13 times: that this legislation would be fraught with danger and the possibility of encouraging dishonest operators. The established professionals in the insulation industry were obviously ignored as they were more than likely seen by the government as having a self-preservation agenda, that is, not wanting to allow back-yard operations to spring up overnight and take their business.
Garrett faces tough, grave questions
THE Environment Minister was allegedly aware of cheap imports reeking of toxic chemicals.
The travelling con show is coming to a halt
Time to scrap Rudd climate plan - academicsIsn't it refreshing to see that after the great con job sell in 2007, that it has taken only 3 years for the general Australian public to finally wake up to the the relentless spin and bulldust sale that is Kevin Rudd and his Labor Government.
Federal appeals court is debating a privacy issue you probably hadn't considered: the government's ability to track your location at any time by your cell phone.
Dems Dangle 'Plan B'
Senate Democrats may go into bipartisan health reform summit holding a legislative gun to Republicans' heads
TSA Workers to Get Secret Intel
In wake of Christmas Day bomb attempt, 10,000 employees to get access to classified information
1 Republican, 11 Dems: Bipartisan?
Speaker Pelosi leads 12-member 'bipartisan' delegation to Haiti, with one Republican and 11 Democrats
Google Buzz Has Serious Privacy Flaws
Users of Google's new social-media utility Buzz are claiming it could allow anyone to see who they have been e-mailing. The world's number one search engine claims Buzz lets users "share updates, photos, videos, and more." But users have discovered that unless privacy settings are changed, Buzz publicly shares details of users' contacts.
Bank boss steps in to save swimming legend Ian Thorpe after he admits his business empire is taking on water and he has suffered financial problems
World's biggest punter an Aussie
NICKNAMED the Loch Ness Monster, meet Australia's most mysterious and elusive gambler.
ATM alert saves customers $125m in fees
RULE forcing ATM owners to reveal withdrawal fees helps Australians hang onto their cash
Baldwin blames ex for daughter's 911 call
OSCAR host says Kim Basinger tried to embarrass him over phone threat to take overdose.
Why autism sufferers hate to be hugged
BRAIN clue may explain why those with the disorder don't like to be touched - even by loved ones.
Indian student on two murder charges
AN Indian student, 22, faces court today charged with the murder of two other Indians after a fight over money, it is believed.
Watchdog bans Satanic psychologist
A PSYCHOLOGIST who helped perform exorcisms on his patients and believed in "satanic abuse" has been banned from practising by the state's health watchdog.
British PM opens his heart to voters
GORDON Brown opens up to voters as never before and speaks about the grief of losing his daughter and his shortcomings as leader.
Plan to tackle teachers 'hothousing' as students put to the test
GROUPS of students could be given different national literacy and numeracy tests to stop teachers from "hothousing" them to score high marks and boost their school's profile. Curriculum chiefs are considering setting separate papers for students within classes after claims that publication of their results will encourage "teaching to the test" and narrow children's learning. Professor Barry McGaw, the top educator driving Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard's school transparency agenda, said yesterday plans to "give different kids, different tests" had been discussed at board level.
Love gets stronger with age - study
OLDER couples are more in love than most and continue to have satisfying sex lives, despite some physiological hurdles, according to Canadian researchers. Persons older than 65 obtained the highest scores of 119 and 120 points on the Spanier Dyadic Adjustment Scale, which measures couples' happiness, compared to the Canadian average of 114. "It's a significant difference," said Gilles Trudel, a psychology professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). The scale takes into account sexual satisfaction, but also how well couples communicate, function together in general, and their cohesion. Researchers questioned 508 couples all from Quebec and all already pensioners, most aged over 65. That divorced couples were not included in the study could account for its optimistic results, as this left only results from happy older couples, Prof Trudel admits.
Reality TV father raped long lost daughter
A 65-YEAR-old father who was reunited with his long-lost daughter via a Spanish reality TV show went on to rape her. The Times of London reported today that when he contacted the popular show, the man, who was not named to protect his victim's identity, seemed like a normal father who was desperate to get back in touch with the two daughters he had not seen for nearly 40 years. By chance, one of his daughters saw him on the program and the two were reunited after 38 years apart. But this was not to have the happy ending that normally delights the producers and audiences of Spain's reality shows. The father repeatedly sexually abused the younger daughter, who was scarred by the experience of growing up without a father. A court in Malaga jailed the father for seven years Thursday.
Senior ALP MPs linked to money scam
FEDERAL Police raided an Adelaide property yesterday as part of a covert investigation into a money scam that is using the names of senior Rudd Government ministers as guarantors. At least one victim has been fleeced of $100,000 after handing over money to conmen who forged documents allegedly from Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig and independent Senator Nick Xenophon. The Federal Police executed search warrants at an unidentified property in Adelaide yesterday but no charges had been laid.
=== Comments ===
Are You a Socialist?
By Bill O'Reilly
A recent Gallup poll is simply incredible. Thirty-six percent of Americans have a positive image of socialism, including 53 percent of Democrats. Just 17 percent of Republicans think socialism is good.
Now, socialism is the exact opposite of capitalism, which is our system in America. A socialist believes the government has a right to control and/or seize private property and regulate the distribution of goods and services.
That means the government has all the power. You have none. Can you say Fidel Castro? And 53 percent of Democrats think that's a positive thing? It's hard to believe.
Gallup boss Frank Newport says his company did not define socialism when it asked the question. Therefore Gallup believes that some of the respondents simply don't know what socialism is, and that is certainly possible.
In Western Europe, there are countries that have a hybrid kind of socialism: very high taxation, redistribution of wealth, but they don't seize private property outright. In Cuba, Venezuela and China, the government can seize anything and shoot you if you don't like it.
So let's be kind and say many Americans simply don't know what true socialism is.
Even so, the poll is disturbing because there is a trend right now by the Obama administration to expand the federal government and to redistribute wealth. Those are socialist tenets. No question about it.
Some Obama critics contend that he is a socialist, but we can find no evidence of that. Mr. Obama likes his property, and I don't believe he wants to seize my house.
However, there are people like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont who do, and those people are stalwarts in the Democratic Party.
It is long past time for Americans to wake up. The far left in this country wants to diminish personal power and impose social justice on the nation. They want to erode our personal freedoms in order to right what they consider wrongs brought about by capitalism.
"Talking Points" believes that will not happen, and the more exposure this quasi-socialism deal gets, the more Americans will reject it.
America was founded on hard work, personal responsibility and honest achievement. The feds are there to protect us from outside danger and to make sure the system does not embrace corruption.
Socialism has no place in the USA. Period.
===
MIDNIGHT OIL BURNED
Tim Blair
At this rate, our environment minister’s insulation scheme will have set fire to 430 houses by the end of Kevin Rudd’s second term:
Peter Garrett has admitted his troubled $2.5 billion insulation program has been linked to 86 house fires around the nation …And didn’t he do a great job of it. Next, Rudd attempts some tragedy relativism:
Tony Abbott said Mr Garrett must pay with his job for the lives of four insulation installers lost in the program and resign, otherwise “the Prime Minister has to sack him”.
But Kevin Rudd expressed confidence in Mr Garrett, saying safety had been his “No 1 priority”.
“I have absolute confidence in the minister,” the Prime Minister said. “There have been tragedies for people’s families. I understand that. But there are also tragedies with industrial accidents across the country in other areas.”Rudd is all about getting the balance right; a few dead people in roofs balanced against dead people elsewhere. Balance! Here’s Garrett’s latest line:
“Let’s be clear about the scale of the program. Over a million homes insulated, less than 1 per cent of complaints.”Well, the four dead insulation installers aren’t complaining. They can’t. Among the living, however, complaints increase. Few previously bothered clambering into their ceilings to check insulation, but many are now showing interest:
Tom Boyd lives in fear in his own home, and he blames the Federal Government …Two months ago, the family of 16-year-old Rueben Barnes – electrocuted while installing foil insulation in Queensland – sent a letter to Garrett:
When Environment Minister Peter Garrett this week suspended the use of foil insulation under the program, following the deaths of three Queenslanders, Mr Boyd picked up the phone.
The problem was no one was listening.
He called the program’s hotline and was directed to a government website.
“The website contains nothing concerning installed foil insulation,” he said.
“How, with all your staffing expertise and taxpayer dollars, did you not reasonably foresee that a billion-dollar program such as this would be a beacon for shonky and greedy operators looking to make a quick (and easy) buck at the expense of their workers lives?” the family pleaded in a letter sent a month after Rueben’s death. “How did you not foresee that this program, with its inadequate safety regulations and sub-standard training requirements, would not be the cause of not one, but multiple deaths?”That pretty much sums up the case against Garrett; his program threw government cash at the reckless. Further from Natasha Bita’s report:
The Environment Department let the program run for six months before publishing a safety manual for installers. But the industry was shocked to find that a draft manual did not include warnings about the potential risk of electrocution. The warning was included in the final document, at the insistence of the electrical industry lobby group and the Insulation Council of Australia and New Zealand.Safety was Garrett’s No 1 priority. Sure it was. His new priority seems to be protecting Peter Garrett:
In November it was updated again, to explain that metal staples could no longer be used.
Embattled Environment Minister Peter Garrett has refused to immediately release a safety risk assessment on the government’s insulation rebate program, prepared by lawyers from Minter Ellison early last year.It better be soon, otherwise Joe Ludwig will look like a fool. Sydney builder Lorne McCulloch is quicker off the mark:
On Thursday night on The 7.30 Report, Mr Garrett said the assessment would be made public. Yesterday, his office confirmed that it would be released, but did not say when.
Mr McCulloch inspected about 120 properties from October to January after appointments were made by staff working on behalf of the Environment Department.Batts thrown on top of lighting connections created fires:
Around 10 per cent of these homes had poorly fitted insulation.
At one job workers had simply fitted the batts in an area three square metres around the manhole to make it look as if the whole roof had been fitted.
At other homes, new batts had been thrown on top of older insulation, creating a fire danger.
In NSW alone, a fire brigade spokeswoman said 67 house fires had been caused by insulation batts being laid over lighting.Only 36? No problem, then. Apart from fires and electric shocks, there is the new issue of formaldehyde. At this point even greens are complaining, although the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Peter Hartcher gamely attempts an epic deflection:
Of those, Mr Garrett’s office said only 36 could be linked to the insulation program.
As the opposition pursues Peter Garrett over implementation of a part of the government stimulus …That’s beautiful, but the Age‘s Shaun Carney wins with his plaintive plea:
Government programs are not supposed to wind up like this.
===
HE KNEW
Tim Blair
Peter Garrett’s situation, plainly put:
Electricians formally warned Environment Minister Peter Garrett that metal roof insulation could cost lives months before he banned it.And:
By the time he acted, two installers had been electrocuted.
The electricians asked him to suspend the use of metal insulation in the program and issued a media release calling for the metal insulation to be removed from the scheme.
Mr Garrett refused to do so.
===
LIMP OLYMPICS
Tim Blair
“Some of us can’t help but feel a tinge of something,” admits the Vancouver Sun‘s Cleeve Dheensaw. “Maybe it’s even pride.” Vancouver does seem a little underwhelmed by the 2010 Winter Olympics, and grouchy about the cost:
Based on the sour mood on the part of many in the lead-up to tonight’s opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics at B.C. Place, many didn’t like it. They cited schools, day cares, hospitals. And, rather vaguely, imperialism and globalization apparently also has something to do with luge runs and Nordic ski trails.Come on, Vancouvereenies! Support your Games. Don’t make the Pedobear angry.
===
CLASH OF CLUNKERS
Tim Blair
Upset your Prius has been recalled? No problem; just buy an earth-friendly biodiesel number. Oh, wait …
Drivers who took the Government’s advice and chose a low-emission car could be left with a white elephant after a U-turn by ministers.Back to normal old diesel, then. Maybe an Audi. But then you’d run the risk of an insta-beating …
Britain’s biggest supplier of biofuels will announce today that it is closing its pumps because the Government is ending financial support from April.
It is the second time in five years that the Government has changed its mind and cancelled subsidies after encouraging motorists to invest in a particular type of green car.
UPDATE. There’s always the moped – a vehicle of the future, in 1979:
===
Syria explains Israel’s aid to Haiti
Andrew Bolt
Reader Robert:
Its almost universally accepted that within the Haitian rescue effort, the efforts of the Israeli medical teams was first rate and exceptional in terms of services provided and lives saved:He’s right. Here’s Syrian television:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3836254,00.html
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/135585
http://www.vosizneias.com/47165/2010/01/17/baby-born-in-israeli-field-hospital
etc etc etc
Except in the Muslim world - which, I might add, offered virtually no assistance… But their contribution to the media has to be seen to be believed.
Israel is aiding the people stricken by the Haiti earthquake. This is a wonder unto itself. But the real reason is to steal organs from the corpses of the Haitian dead...Syria is one of the countries the Barack Administration very much wants Israel to talk peace to.
===
The Age finds the “stolen” children that I couldn’t. It thinks
Andrew Bolt
For years I’ve asked the people pushing the “stolen generations” myth to name just 10 of these children.
It should be simple. We have been told for years that anywhere between 25,000 and 100,000 children were stolen from their parents just for being Aboriginal. As leading “stolen generations” theorist Robert Manne put it: “It was not from harm that the mixed-descent children were rescued but from their Aboriginality”, and by racist authorities who “wished, in part through the child removal policy, to help keep White Australia pure”.
So how hard could it be? Name just 10 of these tens of thousands of victims, Robert. Just 10. Just so we can see if the facts match the theory.
As I’ve written each time he’s tried, Manne has failed that challenge.
So have other “stolen generations” advocates who’ve tried.
But today, years after I first called for these names, Michael Gordon of The Age has finally identified people who were truly stolen. OK, he’s got just six names, not 10, but it’s a start, right?
Two weeks ago, Kutcha Edwards invited The Age to visit his extended family to gain a snapshot of what had happened since the apology (to the “stolen generations"). It soon became clear that the extended Edwards family is a microcosm of black Australia, and that they are still living with every negative consequence of policies that forcibly removed up to 50,000 indigenous children from their families between 1910 and the early 1970s.Gordon then tells of the suffering of the six Edwards siblings. I’m indeed very sorry for them, for it’s terrible for children to grow up without loving and caring parents.
But when you read this long feature on the family Gordon calls a “snapshot” of the “stolen generations”, one curious thing becomes too obvious to ignore for any reader looking for actual proof that here at last are indeed six children removed by racists “not from harm ... but from their Aboriginality”.
===
Dying to save the planet
Andrew Bolt
Peter Garrett’s free-insulation-to hotwire-your-house is not the only green scheme that’s deadly:
A US woman has filed a federal lawsuit against Japanese auto giant Toyota yesterday, blaming the company for the death of her husband when the Prius she was driving suddenly accelerated.
===
Been there before, and survived beautifully
Andrew Bolt
But this isn’t what they led us to believe about out “unprecedented” warming before Climategate exposed them:
Phil Jones, the professor behind the “Climategate” affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised....So if the science on the MWP is not settled, why did the IPCC use the since-discredited ”hockey stick” of IPCC author Michael Mann to claim it was:
He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made. But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.
What else will they now admit about the science they once claimed was settled?
UPDATE
Computer scientist Tim Lambert may be vituperative, deceptive, a cherrypicker, an ideologue, a misrepresenter and a Manichean conspiracist only too keen to smear a sceptic as a crook who lies for Exxon’s dollars. Oddly enough, he seems to have restrained his worst and most suspect traits to offer Lord Monckton a genuine debate at last.
True, Lambert is hardly the best authority on Lambert, but his summary of the debate at least indicates he landed a few blows, which sceptics who were there have conceded in comments on various threads is indeed the case, even if they scoff at Lambert’s claim that he “wiped the floor” with Monckton.
Anyway, this is how debate should be, and just to read even Lambert’s admittedly partisan account is to see how much faster we are likely to arrive at truths, or at least save ourselves from error, if we promote debate and insist it be held in good faith. If nothing else, it encourages a sceptic to publicise the point of view of a warmist.
Don’t ask me to adjudicate on the Lambert-Monckton stoush. Many of these issues are over my head, and I was not there in any case. All I know is that there was a debate, and that we have until now had terrifyingly few of them.
===
Why Rudd may not dare sack Garrett
Andrew Bolt
Just one of the minor details which the Rudd Government considers “just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s”:
Peter Garrett has admitted his troubled $2.5 billion insulation program has been linked to 86 house fires around the nation …But something smells, and it’s not just smoke from the houses set alight by this mad scheme.
The question is whether it’s credible that Garrett would have freely chosen to just let this scheme run on when he’d been warned repeatedly for nine months it was a menace, and when those warnings included this letter, from the family of 16-year-old Rueben Barnes, electrocuted late last year while installing foil insulation in Queensland:
How, with all your staffing expertise and taxpayer dollars, did you not reasonably foresee that a billion-dollar program such as this would be a beacon for shonky and greedy operators looking to make a quick (and easy) buck at the expense of their workers lives?By any measure, a horrendously expensive stimulus package that gives free insulation to anyone who couldn’t be bothered spending their own good money on it has turned into a complete disaster, with fly-by-night operators ripping off taxpayers, millions wasted on imported stuff anyway, hundreds of houses left lethally hotwired, at least 86 homes torched and four barely-trained installers dead, including a 16-year-old boy and a mentally disabled 19-year-old.
How did you not foresee that this program, with its inadequate safety regulations and sub-standard training requirements, would not be the cause of not one, but multiple deaths?
Garrett must of course go, especially when so many other programs he’s running have blown budgets or left thousands of people ripped off. Yet Rudd refuses to sack him:
Kevin Rudd expressed confidence in Mr Garrett, saying safety had been his “No 1 priority”.A suggestion: Garrett did indeed worry about his scheme being too quick-quick and chaotic. But Rudd’s office would not let him slow down and leave Rudd looking like he’d goofed again.
Is that why Rudd can’t afford to make Garrett now a scapegoat, with a tale to tell?
UPDATE
Sorry, could have put it simpler: What did the Prime Minister know, and when did he know it?
UPDATE 2
I mean, you really think this green warrior wouldn’t have wanted to halt this insane scheme before someone got burned, electrocuted or even poisoned?
THE Environment Minister was allegedly aware of cheap imports reeking of toxic chemicals. The insulation imports were reported to be “reeking” of the harmful chemical formaldehyde, the Herald Sun reports.
A Melbourne insulation industry leader, Warrick Batt, said last night he’d raised concerns about formaldehyde in a meeting with the Environment Minister.
Mr Garrett has faced Liberal claims in Parliament that he ignored 13 warnings of safety problems that led to the death of four roof insulation installers.
===
Man seeks protection from koalas with buckets
Andrew Bolt
It’s the law of the jungle out there in Nature. An army of kids in koala suits turns on their aged leader:
THE Wilderness Society has won a court injunction stopping its members from holding a meeting in Melbourne this weekend… About 140 people staff, members and volunteers have written to the society’s management committee, which includes Mr Marr, asking them to stand aside to allow a “new generation” of leaders.You can understand Marr’s fear of what one of these things might do if they turned nasty:
===
If the science is as compelling…
Andrew Bolt
On reflection, it’s actually the last two lines of Jonathon Holmes despairing call for a green me to fight the rampaging sceptics that says it all:
If the science is as compelling as the climate change advocates would have us believe, then this was an argument that should have been won long ago. For want of champions, it’s perilously close to being lost.The first line is correct, but the second is false. In fact, no cause has had so many champions for so long. At one stage, it was supported by both major parties, all the big science bodies, the business lobbies, every mainstream newspaper and television station, every school and almost every public intellectual, to judge from the resolutions of Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit of 1000 of our “best and brightest”.
So Holmes’ coda should be rewritten just slightly:
If the science is as compelling as the climate change advocates would have us believe, then this was an argument that should have been won long ago. Despite an army of champions, it’s perilously close to being lost.Ergo: the science is not as compelling as the climate change advocates would have us believe.
I suspect even the host of Media Watch. in truth a decent bloke, is edging to a conclusion he is bitterly trying to resist. I can only offer him the inspirational words of a former Media Watch host and fellow Lefitst David Marr:
The natural culture of journalism is kind of vaguely soft-Left inquiry sceptical of authority.
===
But, but, but…
Andrew Bolt
Shore-ly some mistake:
New Paper in Science: Sea level 81,000 years ago was 1 meter higher while CO2 was lowerMeanwhile, the BBC does what the ABC still refuses to contemplate - and that’s to hold the alarmists to account. Andrew Neil goes for the throat of former IPCC chairman Robert Watson:
The greatest scientific scandal of our lifetime is unravelling before our eyes, and the ABC has to be dragged screaming to even notice. Don’t forget, the reason this scandal grew so monstrous was that the media refused for years to even question the deeply questionable. This has been a media scandal as well.
===
Did Obama win World War 2 too?
Andrew Bolt
It’s one thing for a buffoon like Joe Biden to claim it was give-up Obama who won victory in Iraq, but for White House spokesman Robert Gibbs to repeat it? Truly shameless.
===
What does Rudd want from Insiders?
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s refusal to appear on the ABC’s Insiders stretches into yet another week. Only once in more than two years has he appeared on the top political talk show on television. Is he frightened - or trying to blackmail the national broadcaster?
I ask, because host Barrie Cassidy last week talked about “negotiations” with Rudd’s office. Barrie is truly as straight as a die, an honorable man, but what might Rudd be hoping to “negotiate”?
===
Both seem nice, is what matters
Andrew Bolt
The battle for America’s favorite female talkshow host is between an African American and an out-and-proud lesbian:
Executives at Warner Brothers have long believed that Ellen DeGeneres is the heir apparent to Oprah Winfrey in daytime TV. Still, they were startled by the news that a media research firm delivered to them last spring.It’s a mystery that so many intellectuals are so prepared to believe the masses are riddled with racism, homophobia and sexism.
The researchers from SmithGeiger, who had been hired to assess talk shows, convened to tell a group of six executives that “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” was, for the first time, on par with “The Oprah Winfrey Show” (and, in some cases, exceeding “Oprah") in the minds of viewers.
===
Suzuki snows the gullible
Andrew Bolt
Ah, that old shonk Suzuki can’t miss this opportunity to mislead:
VANCOUVER, B.C. — One morning last week, environmentalist David Suzuki looked across English Bay from his Vancouver home to Cypress Mountain, usually covered in snow this time of year but now left all but bare by a warm winter.Anthony Watts takes the old hysteric on a tour of snowfields now groaning under the white stuff.
”I’ve watched in horror as the snow has just melted away from Cypress Mountain,” Suzuki said, referring to the 2010 Olympic Games snowboarding and freestyle skiing venue. The view from Vancouver, Suzuki and others say, provides a glimpse into the future for the Winter Olympics.
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