John Quincy Adams Goes To CongressAs a diplomat, Adams was involved in many international negotiations, and helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine as Secretary of State. Historians agree he was one of the great diplomats in American history
=== Bible Quote ===
“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”- 1 John 4:11-12
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Watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates that 12 spending bills for this fiscal year contained 9,499 congressional earmarks worth nearly $16B.
DOJ Clears Bush Attorneys
Internal review finds Justice Department lawyers did not commit professional misconduct when they authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding
EPA: The Science Is OK, Case Closed
Agency swings backs at global warming skeptics, defends findings that 'greenhouse gases pose real threat'
Texas Plane Crash Crime or Terror?
Whether Austin plane attack was cowardly crime or domestic terrorism is one of many unanswered questions
Golfer says he is returning to therapy and begs media to stay away from his family, adding that he will one day return to golf
Say sorry to me, says ex-porn star
JOSLYN James says she gave up porn for Woods and now wants her own "face to face" apology.
'Death penalty fitting for mass killers'
TONY Abbott reignites capital punishment debate after voicing support for execution of terrorists.
MacKillop will be saint, says Pope
NEW hero for the country as Benedict XVI confirms the canonisation of rebellious nun.
Toddler's tooth agony 'ignored' for days
GIRL who suffered severe mouth infection lost teeth after doctors gave her only Panadol for pain.
Future comin' at ya! First review of 3D TV
THINKING about buying that new flatscreen this weekend? Hold off for one with added impact.
Grieving insulation families may sue
PETER Garrett waited too long to axe his bungled program, say the relatives of the three dead installation workers.
Does locking up radicals breed more?
THE conviction of five men for plotting terrorism attacks in Australia raises the question of whether locking them away makes us more safe.
NZ teen guilty of British girl's murder
A SCHOOLGIRL was drowned after being beaten, strangled and then dragged into a river on New Zealand's north island.
Arrest made over rape of eight-year-old
POLICE have arrested a man over the alleged abduction and rape of an eight-year-old girl in western Sydney. The 20-year-old, of Whalan, in Sydney's west, was arrested in North St Marys, about 7pm (AEDT) today after a tip-off from the public. The man ran from officers who chased him briefly before making an arrest in the backyard of a Birch Street home. He has been taken to Penrith Police Station where he is assisting investigators.
More charges over 12-year-old prostitute
A WOMAN has been charged with prostitution offences relating to a 12-year-old girl as police investigate a trade in underage prostitutes in Hobart. She is the third person charged by police with a Tasmanian MP and an alleged pimp already facing charges in court. Detectives charged the 41-year-old Hobart woman today.
=== Journalists Corner ===
The first lady on her passionate fight against childhood obesity!
What's the driving force behind her "Let's Move" campaign?
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Tiger Talks!
Greta gets the fallout from Tiger's press conference!
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Senator Scott Brown
The senator reveals his plan to get this country back to work.
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The Stimulus Plan One Year Later
After all the spending, did it really get Americans back to work, and at what cost to the economy?
=== Comments ===
Bashing President Obama
By Bill O'Reilly
Bashing Obama, that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo." The Conservative Political Action Conference opened its annual convention in Washington with some of the biggest names on the right in attendance. And what has bound them together so far is President Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think 2010 is going to be a phenomenal year for the conservative cause. And I think Barack Obama is a one-term president.
(CHEERING)
SEN. JIM DEMINT, R - S.C.: Just because you get on TV doesn't mean you can sell Socialism to freedom-loving Americans.
(CHEERING)
LIZ CHENEY, CO-FOUNDER KEEP AMERICA SAFE: And while we're sending messages to President Obama today, here is one more. Stop apologizing for this great nation and start defending her.
(CHEERING)
DICK ARMEY, R - FORMER HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: You're intellectually shallow. You're romantic. You're self-indulgent. You have no ability, perhaps the most proven yourself already to be the most incompetent president perhaps in our lifetime.
MITT ROMNEY, FORMER REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The gold medal that was won last night by American Lindsey Vonn has been stripped. Yeah, it was determined that President Obama has been going downhill faster than she has.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Now, here's the question. Does Obama bashing accomplish anything? "Talking Points" became disgusted when President Bush was attacked every two minutes by the left. I mean, it got to the point where good people simply had to walk away from that. Even if you think Mr. Bush was doing a bad job, the personal attacks on him were vicious and accomplished nothing.
So what's the difference with President Obama? Well, there are two kinds of political attacks. The personal, meant to diminish the human being and criticism of policy, meant to persuade people, the person in power is doing a bad job. Of course, there's nothing wrong with policy criticism or satire. That's a hallmark of America. But the personal stuff is cheap. And we're seeing more and more of it. There are times when people have to be called out. You may remember my interview with Congressman Barney Frank. But that's unusual. Most of the time, we and you can get your points across without being cruel.
"Talking Points" does not mean to lecture. We've made mistakes here as well. And there is no question that President Obama is having some big problems. All the polls show that. So is he a legitimate political target. But if CPAC makes a weekend out of bashing Obama, it will be making a big mistake. In order to regain power in America, conservatives must come up with solutions to complicated problems. And that's what they should be doing at the Washington convention.
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PRO-PAIN
Tim Blair
The tragedy of gaming claims Arlen’s finest:
Key line is at 7:14.
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Olbermann blind to blacks
Andrew Bolt
Turns out that Keith Olbermann, the David Marr of MSNBC, is not just blind to his hypocrisy:
He’s also blind to evidence:
(Via Instapundit.)
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The man who made Barnaby and Lindsay look grown up
Andrew Bolt
Gerard Henderson gives Satyajit Das precisely what he deserves for his offensive and utterly vacuous grandstanding on Q&A this week - that unmistakable jeering of the truly irresponsible.
(Thanks to reader Mark.)
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This dead ETS parrot must cease to be
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann on the madness of Rudd’s planned emmissions trading scheme after the great Copenhagen flop:
IT’S time to bury the Dead Parrot. The Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong Emissions Trading Scheme, we thankfully never knew…===
Business groups, led by the Business Council of Australia, should be loudly and persistently leading the charge against the still-proposed ETS. As much to very partially make up for their supine and stupid support for the ETS, as for the now greater damage it would cause if implemented…
(W)e would be the only country committing to an unconditional reduction in emissions. All the other commitments given so far to cut emissions of carbon dixoide are conditional on one thing or another. And of course there is no commitment to cut at all, not even conditionally, from the two countries that between them emit nearly half the world’s carbon dioxide, the US and China. Nor the third, India, which takes it well over half.
Yet, if our ETS legislation passed the Senate, we would be committed to cutting emissions by 5 per cent by 2020....
What is not widely recognised is that the seemingly soft 5 per cent cut is actually far more punitive… First it is a cut from our emissions in 2000. But the obvious real starting point is where we are today, and our emissions today are some 8-10 per cent or so higher than in 2000. So the cut is not really a soft 5 per cent but a more punishing 13 per cent from today’s starting point…
Further, that cut takes no account of our burgeoning population. In per capita terms, we would have to cut by 35 per cent. To repeat, a cut that has to be done in just 10 years. There is no way that could be “achieved” without trauma to the economy overall and individual living standards.
Drowning in dreams and paper
Andrew Bolt
One reason that the insulation fiasco is symbolic of the Rudd Government:
As the government suspended the (insulation) program yesterday, it emerged that a risk assessment of the program by MinterEllison Consulting warned last April that the Environment Department lacked the experience, staff and regulatory capabilities to properly roll out the program, which has been linked to at least 86 house fires and the deaths of four installers…The number of cabinet minutes recorded spiked to 1543 from 811 the year before...
The warning will reignite the debate about whether the Rudd government’s policy program is overambitious, forcing the bureaucracy to rush programs and increasing the risk of failure and wasting taxpayer funds…
Cabinet met 44 times in the 2008-09 financial year compared with 30 in 2007-08. Cabinet committee meetings ballooned to 235 from 104 the year before.
And the department struggled to keep up with the pace. It delivered cabinet minutes within the benchmark 24 hours 74 per cent of the time, an improvement on the 56 per cent in 2007-08 but down from the 94 per cent in the last year of the Howard government.
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What, only 10?
Andrew Bolt
JoNova on the 10 top reasons why Climate Change Minister Penny Wong’s defence of the IPCC is a joke.
UPDATE
Globalwarmingquestions lists 43 reasons to distrust the IPCC. Links for each of the errors, distortions and exaggerations it says it’s identified in the IPCC reports are included.
(Thanks to reader Craig.)
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Barnaby hurt, but Labor will be next
Andrew Bolt
A serious whack for the Coalition:
Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens has declared himself at odds with Coalition finance spokesman Barnaby Joyce and questioned Mr Joyce’s fitness for the job, telling a parliamentary committee he had ‘’yet to meet a finance minister who has ever mused any possibility about debt default of his own country’’.But a serious problem of perception looms for the Government that made such a meal at the last election of rising interest rates:
The shadow finance minister claimed this month that Australia was ‘’going to hock to our eyeballs to people overseas’’ and was ‘’getting to a point where we can’t repay it’’.
Mr Stevens told the committee yesterday that there were ‘’few things less likely than Australia defaulting on its sovereign debt’’.
Mr Stevens told the committee he expected to increase rates two to four more times in the months ahead.UPDATE
And Stevens corrects yet more of Kevin Rudd’s preposterous spin:
Rudd tells the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann on May 13 last year:UPDATEWE are looking at the worst set of global economic circumstances since the Depression. We are in unique times.The Reserve Bank’s Glenn Stevens tells a Senate committee yesterday:THIS situation is quite different from those faced by the major economies. Whereas many of them had their worst recession since World War II, we had probably our smallest.
A little tweaking and Rudd’s campaign ad from 2007 could turn into a Liberal one for 2010:
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Sceptic in from the cold
Andrew Bolt
Holland’s biggest daily newspaper, De Telegraaf, rehabilitates the country’s most famous sceptic:
Henk Tennekes - He was right after all===
In the nineties, Henk Tennekes was made to clear his desk and resign as Director of the KNMI (Dutch Meteorological Institute).
His sin? In a newspaper column the world-renowned meteorologist had disproved all the bold claims about climate change....
“When that column was published, my associates complained behind my back to the big boss, Harry Fijnaut.” Henk, within two years you’ll be out on the street” said Harry. In fact, it took him three years because he first had to invent a reorganization which would make my position superfluous. That’s how those top level bureaucrats arrange things."…
And so Tennekes became the first climate exile in the Netherlands…
And in the meantime, “hard proof” for the greenhouse effect evaporated. After all the scandal surrounding the UN IPCC panel, the sceptics voice can finally be heard…
The now 73-year-old scientist still persists in his fundamental criticism of climate modelling,…
Tennekes: “Why does the IPCC ignore the oceans? The top 2½ meters of all sea-water contain as much heat as the total amount of heat in the atmosphere. Why has the topmost
kilometre of the oceans turned colder during the last five years? We don’t know. Until we understand what is happening with the heat in the oceans, the models which aim to predict the climate are totally useless…
“No, I’m not surprised about the fuss surrounding current climate research. This storm has been brewing for years… IPCC is run by an intimate clique of only a few dozen people.”
What grammar rules, say teachers?
Andrew Bolt
The sad thing is we’re not even surprised any more:
ONE of the world’s most respected authorities on grammar has written to every school principal in Queensland, warning them of an error-strewn grammar guide distributed by the state’s English Teachers Association.Just a difference of opinion? What can’t post-modernism excuse?
University of Queensland emeritus professor Rodney Huddleston says he was forced to write to schools directly because the English Teachers Association of Queensland refused to acknowledge or correct the 65 errors he had identified in its teaching guide on grammar, printed as a series of eight articles in its magazine…
Professor Huddleston’s view is supported by the former president of the Australian Linguistics Society, Randy LaPolla…
(In) June 2008, Professor Huddleston wrote to the author, Lenore Ferguson, the magazine editor at the time, outlining the errors. Dr Ferguson said at the time they were differences of opinion rather than errors…
Professor LaPolla told The Weekend Australian the mistakes in the grammar guide were basic errors and it was “bizarre” that school teachers in Queensland were telling Professor Huddleston he was wrong.
One of the errors cited by Professor Huddleston is “Sam’s”—as in “Sam’s folder”—being classified as a possessive pronoun, rather than the possessive form of a proper noun. Another example is the phrase “set of”, as in “a set of bowls”, being described as an adjective, which Professor Huddleston says is not a grammatical unit but a noun followed by a preposition.
UPDATE
Here’s a more contemporary method of teaching English, with plenty of language but perhaps not much grammar:
THE parents of a 16-year-old Coolum High School student are fuming after their daughter was given a monologue to read in drama class from the screenplay of the R-rated film Chopper about notorious criminal Mark “Chopper” Read.
The short segment from the screenplay by Andrew Dominik contained obscene language, violence, drug references and had racial undertones.
The mother, who wished to remain anonymous, could not understand why a state school would allow children to perform a segment from an adults-only script which contained language such as “f...”, “sh..”, “c...” and “pr..k”.
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If not, then why did Rudd lobby?
Andrew Bolt
Mary MacKillop has been named Australia’s first saint.
Reader Curiosity Killed the Cat now has a most excellent question for the spin-meister who so noisily lobbied for her canonisation:
Prime Minister, you have been a strong supporter of sainthood for Mary MacKillop. Do you truly believe that cancer can be cured by praying to a long dead person, or by wearing or carrying a piece of their clothing or remains? - Rudd backed it for the same reason he called Torah Bright after she won gold, not before. - ed.
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Broke Flannery just can’t resist another bet
Andrew Bolt
Even with a trail of dud predictions to haunt him, the unembarrassable Tim Flannery can’t resist another:
Iconic Australian beaches such as Bondi in Sydney and Bells Beach in Victoria are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, environmental scientist Tim Flannery says…Isn’t it time reporters questioned Flannery about his success rate with past predictions before taking his latest seriously?
“It’s hardly surprising that beaches are going to disappear with climate change,” he told reporters outside the National Climate Change Forum in Adelaide.
UPDATE
Meanwhile, a real climate expert - Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - says climate models of the kind that Flannery and other alarmists rfely on are just not working:
Certainly climate change is real; it occurs all the time. To claim that the little we’ve seen is larger than any change we “have been able to discern’’ for a thousand years is disingenuous. Panels of the National Academy of Sciences and Congress have concluded that the methods used to claim this cannot be used for more than 400 years, if at all. Even the head of the deservedly maligned Climatic Research Unit acknowledges that the medieval period may well have been warmer than the present.UPDATE 2
The claim that everything other than models represents “mere opinion and speculation’’ is also peculiar. Despite their faults, models show that projections of significant warming depend critically on clouds and water vapor, and the physics of these processes can be observationally tested (the normal scientific approach); at this point, the models seem to be failing.
One thing those models didn’t predict was this record snowfall in the US.
Sure, shameless warmists now say the huge snows are exactly what they expected from global warming, after having predicted the exact opposite for years.
But the models clearly failed. For a start, a 2005 Colombia University study said nine IPCC climate models agreed that global warming would bring less snow to the US - and from 1990:
Continental-scale snow cover extent (SCE) is a potentially sensitive indicator of climate change,… In this study, current and future decadal trends in winter North American SCE (NA-SCE) are investigated, using nine general circulation models (GCMs) of the global atmosphere-ocean system participating in the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC-AR4).... all nine models exhibit a clear and statistically significant decreasing trend in 21st century NA-SCE, although the magnitude of the trend varies between models.Any sign of those models being right?
More on Watts Up With That.
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A good warming will sort them out
Andrew Bolt
Good news! This means global warming will make outback dunnies safer:
REDBACK spider numbers have exploded on the back of cooler summer conditions, Melbourne Zoo spider expert Patrick Honan said.
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When did Rudd know his insulation scheme was a killer?
Andrew Bolt
Again I ask: what did the Prime Minister know about the dangers of his mad free-insulation scheme, and when did he ignore it?
After all, it’s inconceivable that Climate Change Minister Peter Garrett would have taken it upon himself to push on with a scheme he was warned was killing people and setting fire to houses.
And, indeed:
KEVIN Rudd has admitted that cabinet did not seek any assessment of the risks of pumping $2.45 billion into the poorly regulated insulation sector before the stimulus program began last February.Are you also finding those denials unconvincing? And is the source of them the same bozo who falsely denied the Sun-lies story and swore Rudd hadn’t abused a flight attendant?
It was not until April—more than two months later—that the government obtained advice about the program’s risks from top-tier law firm Minter Ellison, which was circulated to the Prime Minister’s Department.
That was despite warnings to a senior official in the Prime Minister’s Department last February that fly-by-night operators could cause safety problems.
South Australian co-ordinator-general Rod Hook, charged with overseeing stimulus projects in his state, said he told his commonwealth counterpart, Mike Mrdak, he had concerns about the program “from day one in February 2009”. Mr Mrdak was then a deputy secretary in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet…
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said last night those warnings were not conveyed to Mr Rudd. The spokesman said it was the job of the Environment Department, not the Prime Minister’s Department, to assess the program’s risks, because it was the agency charged with the rollout.
However, the Minter Ellison advice was circulated to the Prime Minister’s Department.
Mr Rudd’s spokesman yesterday denied speculation that Department of Environment officials urged his department to roll the program out more slowly, to heed industry concerns.
“PM&C does not have a record of such a warning,” the spokesman said.
Even the astonishingly forgiving Laurie Oakes concedes:
The original policy - part of the economic stimulus package - was devised by those at the top of the Government. Rudd. Deputy PM Julia Gillard. Treasurer Wayne Swan. Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner. But it was the Environment Minister whose career was on the line. Garrett was left carrying the can.UPDATE
Meanwhile Garrett tries to mop up the mess - and simply confirms how huge it is:
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These terrorists have many friends
Andrew Bolt
The Sydney Morning Herald reveals more strong evidence of a dangerous us-against-them victimology in Sydney’s Muslim community. From its background piece on the five Muslims sentenced in Sydney last week for plotting terrorism in Australia:
(O)ne community leader suggested Muslims could be split into four camps on the case: those who believed, like Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly, that the five men were convicted for their thoughts, not their actions; extremists who, while normally Hilaly’s rivals, supported this line and hoped it would stir anger and radicalise more people; those who believed the court’s finding must be accepted and that Australia’s security is paramount; and a ‘’silent’’ group who went further, believing - though not declaring - that the five got what they deserved…The Sydney Morning Herald, in reporting this, asks of the terrorists (most of whom were born in Lebanon or Bangladesh):
Many Muslims feel under siege this week; that Islam has been prosecuted and its adherents persecuted. Uthman Badar, from the Australian arm of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group banned in some countries for its extremism, said anti-terrorism laws here had lowered the burden of proof. People were being prosecuted merely for their ideas. “...The anti-terror laws were designed to silence Muslims through fear and intimidation.’’
Samir Dandan, from the Lebanese Muslim Association, says many Muslims believe they receive harsher treatment than non-Muslim Australians. ...
One Muslim community leader ...considers people naive if they believe Hilaly, who claims he can confirm ‘’100 per cent’’ that the five men are innocent. But this leader does not want to put his name to his comments, knowing it would draw a backlash from his community at such a sensitive time.
‘’We see a lot of anger out there,’’ says Keysar Trad, founding chairman of the Islamic Friendship Association. Anger, he says, at the violence against Muslim countries; anger that Muslims are too readily blamed for troubles… On the odd occasion, hotheads have approached Trad, Hilaly and other imams, but ‘’our immediate response is that violence is unacceptable under Islamic teaching’’. Would they report them to police? ‘’Would a priest refer someone who comes to him to the police if he feels he has talked that person out of committing a crime?’’
Australia had welcomed these men and their families. What turned them against Australia?The SMH is too timid to directly answer that question. But surely when so many Muslim leaders freely concede the terrorists have the support - or at least the silence - of so many fellow Muslims here we must ask what influence their faith has in licensing such hatred, or such tribalism.
And until we are sure that Islam, as interpreted today, no longer encourages believers to side like this against their new Australian home, it would be prudent to more strictly limit the arrival of yet more of its adherents. The racists we should fear are not outselves, but the terrorists and their supporters.
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China will be mollified
Andrew Bolt
Obama sends the Dalai Lama out with the trash:
Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama (L) walks out the doors of the Palm Room of the White House by trash bags waiting to be picked up due to delays from the snow storms of last week in Washington, DC, February 18, 2010 after meeting with US President Barack Obama.UPDATE
For all of its talk about transparency, the White House shut out the press Thursday when President Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama.
Instead, Obama met privately with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader in the Map Room on the ground floor of the White House, far removed from reporters and photographers. Press secretary Robert Gibbs issued only a brief statement after the event, and the White House distributed a single in-house photo of the two leaders.
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Dead rubber of a dead game
Andrew Bolt
Last week:
IN its most brutally merciless performance of the summer, a clinical Australia has systematically dismantled a barely competitive West Indies outfit in front of a record low crowd in Adelaide.Last night:
The attendance of 8378 - the lowest for an Adelaide game involving Australia - will fuel the burgeoning calls to kill off one-day cricket and replace it with more Twenty20 matches.
THE consolation for the West indies at the MCG was there weren’t many people there to seem them humiliated by Australia.Blame Australia’s boring dominance. But Shane Warne was onto this dying of the game even before this summer of no-contest cricket:
A sparse audience of 15,538 turned up - the lowest MCG attendance for an Australia - West Indies game in the 39-year history of one-day international cricket - watched the Aussies romp to a 125-run victory after it shredded the West Indians for for 199 in only 36.5 overs.
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The unspinning of Mike Rann
Andrew Bolt
A fine analysis by David Humphries on the issue now most dogging South Australian Premier Mike Rann - his apparent affair with waitress Michelle Chantelois:
But that’s unlikely to outweigh the distaste left with some voters - women particularly - at Rann’s wilful and engineered diminution of Chantelois’s character after her claims went public. ‘’It’s not the sex allegation but Rann’s handling of it,’’ one such voter told the Herald. By dismissing Chantelois as a fantasist who was personally and politically malevolent towards him, ‘’he belittled her in public and showed [a] nasty character’’.
There’s another consequence in the election context. It goes to the issue of trust, a quality essential in perception for those who engage the politics of spin. In Australian politics, few remaining practitioners can, or choose to, rely on these methods more than Rann, Australia’s longest-serving incumbent government leader.
Haydon Manning is the head of politics and public policy at Flinders University, Adelaide. ‘’Very few voters warm to him as premier,’’ he says. ‘’He’s the polished professional, the politician who can spin anything.’’
But successful spinning requires a bedrock of trust, or at least a willingness to be persuaded. What happens when a very public spat over an alleged sex scandal comes down to she-said-he-said and many voters are willing to believe the woman?
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