Saturday, February 06, 2010

Headlines Saturday 6th February 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

Obama is not the first Democrat to exploit racial divides. The Democrats have accused Republicans from the time of Lincoln.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”- Psalm 33:4-5
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How well did Penn State probe key 'Climate-gate' figure who brought school big money? Critics say barely.

Change in the Wind?
As Americans look ahead to the mid-term elections, anything new is preferable to anything old — such as an incumbent, Fox News poll finds.

Obama: 'We're Climbing Out'
Obama upbeat on drop in jobless rate but Labor Department numbers, debt ceiling show it's not all roses

... and Mom Is 11 Years Old
A New York 11-year-old girl is facing years of physical and psychological challenges after giving birth a few days ago

NYC Student, 12, Arrested for Doodling on Desk

NEW YORK — A New York City middle school student has been arrested for doodling on her desk with a marker. Twelve-year-old Alexa Gonzalez scribbled "Lex was here 2/1/10" on her desk Monday. She also wrote "I love my friends Abby and Faith." The girl says the doodles could have been erased, according to the Daily News.


John Terry is no longer England captain as the fallout from his affair with model Vanessa Perroncel (inset), when she was the partner of Terry's Chelsea teammate, continues

Bankers in secret Aussie meet
THE world's top bankers gather in Sydney for crisis talks as the global economy teeters.

Knife bandit goes on terror rampage
A MAN who held a knife to the throat of a three-year-old girl continues to target women.

Diggers' private hells are nation's shame
IT'S a secret suffering most are unaware of - the mental scars of our young veterans.

Gen Y 'too lazy and unprofessional to hire'
EMPLOYERS are refusing to hire Generation Y workers because they lack a work ethic.

Jackson doctor to be charged over death
MICHAEL Jackson's doctor will be charged in connection with the pop star's death, prosecutors confirm.

Life shattered by act of violence
A FAMILY in Nepal prays. They hope their son, Bepin Shrestha, 30, comes out of his coma. Last Sunday, two men allegedly jumped him from behind in Dee Why.

N Ireland parties agree to 'new chapter'
NORTHERN Ireland will take control of its police and justice system under a deal being hailed as a vital one for preserving peace.
=== Journalists Corner ===

Sarah speaks at the Tea Party Convention!
The politics, the people's demands and how Palin thinks Washington can shape up!
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Maintenance Needed!
On 65,000 flights that is! So why are they still taking off? We find out!
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Exclusive: Tony Blair
Under fire from his government for going to war with Iraq -- Tony on his explosive testimony!
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Exclusive: Robert Gates
How far has our military come in Afghanistan and what work still lies ahead? Plus, the controversial Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy!

=== Comments ===
Is Jon Stewart Open to Being Bill O'Reilly's Vice President?
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 4, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Now for the top story tonight, we wrap up our talk with our pal Jon Stewart.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'REILLY: Let's play a little bit of a scenario. I'm thinking about running for president.

JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": I think that is a really bad idea.

O'REILLY: I want you to be my vice president.

STEWART: I think that's a really bad idea, too.

O'REILLY: OK.

STEWART: I got pictures of me from college that I have in a shoe box that preclude me from working at the post office.

O'REILLY: It doesn't matter. Stewart…

STEWART: So I would not…

O'REILLY: At this point…

STEWART: You have no idea the trouble you'd be getting into.

O'REILLY: No, this is why I have selected you as my vice president.

STEWART: All right.

O'REILLY: OK? Your image is so bad, no matter what they found, it wouldn't matter, OK. Now, I have to vet you. I'm vetting you on the air.

STEWART: All right.

O'REILLY: Global warming?

STEWART: What about it?

O'REILLY: All right. You're big on that. You're frightened of it. You want to flee, don't you?
===
From Tim on Piers
The U.S and the South and East of Europe are already in depression. The USA is running a U6 17% unemployment level - 15% is the depression level yardstick. Also their figures for GDP are doctored. The 5% one they put out last week will be revised down to 3% last quarter. I dread to think what the real figure is ..- 8% by my reckoning for 09.

Ben Benanke flooded the system with cash from September 08 and on and this has taken stocks back up from the DOW 6500 low in March 09. My expectation was that Ben had a DOW 10 000 target by July of 09 but it took him a couple of extra months to reach it. PE ratios value the DOW at about 6000 ..The present 10 000 is insane. But as I have said all along “you can go broke waiting for markets to act rationally.” Besides, no one wants it to tank ... it would shatter confidence. Ideally it would be better for everyone if the stock exchange was placed on the back burner and more emphasis placed on the real earnings of businesses. Anyone who views the stockmarket as anything more than a fixed card game needs their head examined.

The big problem for the yanks is real estate. Most regions are stagnant or heading South still. Ben has failed to draw a line under the US property crash and this has continued to see pressure applied to the debt instruments built on it.

Greece , Spain , Portugal , Italy and the East will have little choice but to default. Ireland will cop it and the UK pound will also cop it as Brown drives that country to debt ruin. While Copenhagen was going on these idiots would have been meeting in a back room somewhere discussing how they can quietly default without anyone noticing. There are several options but make no mistake the Eurozone wont be a growth zone for a long long time after the stims wear off.

The survival of the EU itself is at stake. Countries like Greece have continually violated EU deficit policy and have had to be continually saved by countries like Germany ...This situation cannot continue.

The solution to the problem is as obvious as it is painful - Write off debt or just plain pay it all back. Many pollys and economists don’t understand that the solution to the problem is the depression.

This thing has years to run and there will be ups and downs all over the joint. One thing is for sure climate change is a non starter now. But depression and recessions end ..its better to view the cataclysm as an opportunity - one which Rudd is wasting.
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Rudd can promise, but can’t deliver
Andrew Bolt
Is there a noble Kevin Rudd plan that’s actually worked? From today’s papers, the latest on how sounds-good Rudd in fact delivers:

Item:
THE Rudd government’s ambitious plan for a new, more transparent system for lobbying politicians and a cleaner system of political funding is in crisis.

Corporate Australia and unions are exploiting gaps in the new disclosure rules… Big accounting and legal firms are emerging as some of the biggest players on the professional lobby circuit, using former political heavyweights and their minders to access the corridors of Parliament on behalf of clients, free of scrutiny…

Some of the more high-profile figures include Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s former boss, Wayne Goss, as chairman of accounting giant Deloitte, former NSW premier Bob Carr with Macquarie Group, and former Victorian premier Steve Bracks a KPMG consultant.
Item:
BLACKLISTED insulation operators are continuing to trade under the federal government’s $2.7 billion ‘’pink batts’’ program, despite appearing on the government’s list of deregistered installers....

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, unveiled the program to insulate 2.7 million homes last February as part of the government’s $42 billion stimulus package. The program has been dogged by claims of rorts and malpractice. This week a fourth insulation installer was killed in Queensland while trying to crawl out of a manhole in a roof.
Item:
It was pitched as yet another federal government plan to help Australians tackle climate change - a free energy assessment for hundreds of thousands of homes and “green loans” for those who wanted them. Not only would it boost household energy efficiency, it would create jobs in the process.

But barely six months since its launch, the $175 million Green Loans program has become just the latest government green scheme to descend into farce, hot on the heels of the solar panel and insulation rebates.Thousands of people could be unemployed and thousands of dollars out of pocket after paying to be trained to work under a scheme that is likely to end more than two years early…

By January 22, more than 182,000 assessments had taken place. One week later it reached 205,000 - suggesting 23,000 assessments had taken place in seven days… The big problem was that the market became flooded with assessors because no limit was set on their number. The scheme was also promoted enthusiastically by training organisations charging between $1500 and $2000 for the assessor course… The biggest irony is that despite the hundreds of thousands of home assessments, the Green Loans have been a fizzer, with just 1000 taken up.
Item:
THE Green Loans scheme is the second government debacle in just over six months that has left masters student Rob Campbell, of Sunshine, disillusioned.

The first time around, he co-ordinated a group of 140 households in the outer eastern suburbs to bulk-buy solar panels under the government’s rebate scheme, which Environment Minister Peter Garrett canned with a day’s notice in June after it blew a half-a-billion-dollar hole in his department’s budget. Only half the households on Mr Campbell’s list got their panels…

Now, Mr Campbell, like thousands of others, is at the centre of another bureaucratic bungle - the Green Loans scheme… Mr Campbell completed a course to become a qualified household assessor… But after spending about $4000 on training, accreditation and insurance to obtain one of the new ‘’green jobs’’ spruiked by the government, Mr Campbell received just one government referral in six months
Item:
Now, backed by unions flexing their muscles under the Rudd government’s new workplace laws, some of these angry workers suddenly have the power to shut down Karratha, the remote Pilbara town that generates a big chunk of the nation’s economic growth and will be at the epicentre of the next wave of major jobs-generating projects.
All these reports come from just today’s newspapers.

Rudd’s attention to the detail of the delivery of his promises last as long as the next news cycle. It’s telling that its his green rhetoric in particular that’s led to such chronic underdelivery.
===
Children killed by the “stolen generations” myth
Andrew Bolt
Yet another example of how the “stolen generations” myth can kill - by making welfare officials too scared to remove Aboriginal children they’d save if they were white:
AT a remote health clinic in the dusty reaches of central Australia, a toddler is being airlifted to hospital. The little boy, John (not his real name), has been burned so badly he needs skin grafts. Despite the severity of his burns and his agonising pain, John’s Aboriginal carers have not sought medical aid for the boy. Amid the alcohol-ridden violence of their remote community life, it takes a lot to trigger an emergency.

In the offices of Northern Territory ministers, there is a growing understanding that the crisis in child protection is finally coming home to roost… At the centre of the crisis is a particular failure to protect Aboriginal children, who are routinely placed in the care of relatives in unsafe circumstances, where they are often exposed to sexual abuse and violence.

(Pyschologist Howard) Bath (in a government report) blames the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle—a national guideline that stipulates indigenous children should be put in the care of relatives wherever possible to maintain links to their culture—for the lack of rigour in assessment of relative carers.

“The present data suggests, as do some of the decisions in the case studies, that in some cases this principle appears to be given primacy over basic child protection considerations,” Bath says…

Recent coronial hearings into the deaths of 12-year-old Deborah Melville and a seven-week-old baby hinted at the extent of the government’s failings…

The Country Liberals’ member for the Alice Springs seat of Araluen, Jodeen Carney, says the scale of the crisis is on clear display in the streets of Alice Springs, where children as young as five roam the streets in packs at midnight.

“In Aboriginal communities and in Alice Springs, anyone can walk down the street and see children who are clearly neglected,” she says.

“And there seems to be an acceptance of that neglect. Anywhere else in Australia, those children would be reported to welfare and they would be taken away from their families because they are not being fed properly, they are allowed to roam the streets at night and they are not going to school. If that’s not child abuse, I don’t know what is.”
Those who helped to fake the “stolen generations” myth have blood on their hands.
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The new Jew-haters
Andrew Bolt
Harry’s Place:
Today the Community Security Trust released its report on antisemitism in 2009. It is the most depressing report ever, with levels of attacks on Jews and and antisemitic harassment – both verbal and physical – at a level not witnessed in this country for generations. Indeed, the 924 cases reported reflect an increase in over 50% from the previous record high in 2006…

The Report sites the war in Gaza at the beginning of last year as a “trigger event"… (T)he question remains why British Jews - of all religious or ethnic minorities - alone are targeted in connection with foreign events. People do not rampage through Soho’s China Town smashing the windows of Chinese shops whenever there’s some incident in Tibet… But Jews, particularly those who appear ‘visibly’ Jewish, have to go on the alert if violence erupts over 3,500 km away…

Another part of that story may very well be the creeping acceptance of antisemitism on Liberal/Left circles when framed in an “anti-Zionism” context and the gradual merging of far-Left and far-Right narratives. The source of the attacks and abuse seems spread fairly evenly over far-right white supremacists, and Islamists and leftists.
The report does not actually mention the Left, but does mention a typical Leftist slur that equates Israelis - or Jews generally - to Nazis:
For example, incidents that equate Israel with Nazi Germany would normally be recorded as antisemitic, whereas those that compare Israel to, for instance, apartheid South Africa normally would not be. While the charge that Israel practises apartheid upsets many Jews, it does not contain the same visceral capacity to offend Jews on the basis of their Jewishness as does the comparison with Nazism, which carries particular meaning for Jews because of the Holocaust.
I suspect the report had this kind of thing in mind, drawn by Michael Leunig, the far Left cartoonist of The Age:

It’s actually not the offence caused to Jews that I find the most disturbing aspect of this slur, but the vilification of them as Nazis themselves - because when your enemy is a Nazi, what are you then entitled to do in “resistance”?

This new report helps to answer that question.
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Sea the difference
Andrew Bolt

Dr Roy Spencer says the sharp spike in global temperatures last month - when so many countries suffered a freezing winter - was driven mostly by an abrupt rise in sea surface temperatures.
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The Governer becomes a far-Left activist
Andrew Bolt

Victorian Governer David de Kretser has forgotten his duty and is now playing at politics. Even less forgiveably, this supposedly bi-partisan official is playing his politics overtly in a “civil campaign” with activists from the radical green Left:
Invitiation (sic) to the launch of The Transition Decade,

Sunday February 14th 2010

The Governor of Victoria will launch a new national climate action civil campaign to restore a safe climate.

A growing alliance of groups has created the foundation for a powerful collaboration of groups and individuals – working together to start a campaign for Transition Decade to estore a safe climate ..

Keynote Speakers Include:
Professor David de Kretser A.C, The Governor of Victoria
Professor Will Steffen, Executive Director ANU Climate Change Institute
Uncle Bob Randall, Yankunytjatjara Elder And Traditional Owner Of Uluru
Professor Rob Adams Am Director Design & Urban Environment, City Of Melbourne
Philip Sutton Safe Climate Australia…

“This could be the most important Climate Change event of the year”
- David Spratt, Co-author Climate Code Red

Kind Regards,
The Transition Decade Guiding Team
http://www.t10.net.au
The Transition Decade Alliance:
Beyond Zero Emissions
Climate Emergency Network
Friends of the Earth
Sustainable Living Foundation
Just to launch any kind of “civil campaign” for political change - change of the kind that would be rejected by the Liberal Party - is already a betrayal of a Governor’s fundamental duty to stay above politics and remain the neutral “umpire”. I’m astonished that de Kretser would even considered involvement in such a campaign, let alone launch it.

But to have allied himself with such players shows a naivity that’s shocking. Here’s just some of de Kretser’s new political allies.

David Spratt, for instance, speaks at conferences organised by Marxist groups and demands we switch to a ”war-type economy” and spend “more than 30 per cent ... of the economy” to “save most humans and species from a global warming apocalypse”.

Sponsor Friends of the Earth is an anti-corporate activist of the far Left which elped to organise the often violent 2000 S!! blockade in Melbourne of the World Economic Forum, and now insists ”wealthier peoples need to consume less” and we must “bring about an end to new fossil fuel exploration” and coal-fired power stations.

The members of Climate Emergency Network, another sponsor, include Marxist and revolutionary Left parties, such as Resistance, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity, as well as law-breaking green protest groups such as Greenpeace and Rising Tide.

De Kretser will also share the stage with Christine Milne, one of the more radical MPs of the Australian Greens - a party whose green policies he will thereby seem to endorse over those of the Liberal and Labor parties, neither of which is represented, nor, I suspect would agree to come. Can’t de Kretser seen just from this alone how inappropriate it is that he be there?

Former governor, Labor stalwart and judge Richard McGarvie long ago spelled out the duties of the office de Kretser now fills, saying a governor or governor-general must be a “respected person who remains entirely above partisan politics and exerts a unifying influence”.

There is a critical reason for that, beyond the fact that political meddling by an unelected governor is undemocratic, which is why we’d be shocked if the Queen tried what her man in Government House is now playing.

Even more important is that the essential role of a governor is to make sure the constitution works as it should. Usually that’s an uncontroversial task—signing into laws the Bills passed by parliament, swearing in an elected government and dissolving parliament when the premier asks. But as we saw with the sacking of the Whitlam government in 1975, or of NSW Premier Jack Lang in 1932, sometimes a governor-general or governor must act in ways that can—if not done carefully by an apolitical figure—have us at each other’s throats, screaming that democracy is dead. It will then be critical that no one can prove him a partisan.

De Kretser is clearly passionate about global warming, and even preached on that subject - inappropiriately, thought some guests - at his reception last month for Prince William. He’s entitled to have his opinions, but he is not entitle to abuse his position to advance his highly political and divisive views on the biggest issue now in Australian politics..

If de Kretser wants to become active in politics, he should first resign as Governor. As it is, he is betraying his office.

If he cannot see this for himself, the Premier must call in to help clear his vision.
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The Climategate whistleblower?
Andrew Bolt
As I suspected, not a thief or hacker or spy, but a whistleblower, if police really have their Climategate leaker:
A scientist at the University of East Anglia has been questioned by detectives investigating how controversial emails were leaked from the campus’s climate research unit.Norfolk police have interviewed and taken a formal statement from Paul Dennis, 54, another climate researcher who heads an adjacent laboratory.
If he’s the whistleblower who exposed the corruption, fakery, collusion, evasion and bullying among the top climate scientists, I wonder whether he’ll get the Left’s normal applause for such public-spirited souls.

UPDATE

Nonsense, says Paul Dennis.

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