Andrew Jackson provided the symbol for the Democratic Party, the jackass. He was apparently the only president to leave office with a surplus, possibly thanks to the good work of preceding President Adams and the fact that few were willing to engage in expensive war with the Indian killer and slaver. === Bible Quote ===
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”- Romans 8:35,37
===
Tiger Woods to break his silence on Friday to address reports of serial infidelity, apologize for his behavior and talk about his future plans, his rep says.
Missionaries to Be Released
Haitian judge to free eight of 10 Americans arrested on child kidnapping charges after deadly quake, remaining two will be held for questioning
Gibbs: Stimulus Success 'Undeniable'
White House argues stimulus boosted the economy and its Republican critics are just playing politics
Lindsey Vonn Goes for Gold
Find out how American skier with bruised shin fared in Olympic downhill competition
Ancient Arabic Inscription Found During Jerusalem Home Renovation
A home renovation in Jerusalem's Old City has yielded a rare Arabic inscription offering insight into the city's history under Muslim rule, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday. The fragment of a 1,100-year-old plaque is thought to have been made by an army veteran to express his thanks for a land grant from the Caliph al-Muqtadir, whom the inscription calls "Emir of the Faithful." Dating from a time when Jerusalem was ruled from Baghdad by the Abbasid empire, the plaque shows how rulers rewarded their troops and ensured their loyalty, archaeologists said.
Six ordinary people have been thrust into the centre of a murder mystery after their identities were stolen by a group of international assassins. Picture: Channel 10 / Getty
12-year-old boy drowns at camp
A BOY'S body was recovered from a waterhole last night as a high school camp ended in tragedy.
Ex-Socceroos star 'dead for several days'
WOMAN, 22, charged with manslaughter after a syringe was found near Ian Gray's body.
Rudd's neglect nearly kills Abbott
A highway black-spot is an accident waiting to repeat again. Rudd ignores it's need for money to be improved, spending it on his mates elsewhere.
Top Gear zooms all the way to number one
TOP Gear has revved its way to the top, leaving its closest TV opponent in a haze of smoke.
Mauled girls trying to save family cat
A PITBULL cross breed turned on two sisters when they tried to pry their grandma's cat from its jaws.
Thugs involved in school fight
THUGS recruited to settle a school playground dispute have ambushed several students on their way home from classes in two separate and cowardly attacks in NSW.
Bali Nine executions 'sensitive' election issue
THE executions of three Australian drug couriers in Bali could be highly sensitive for the Federal Government in an election year. That's the message from embassy officials who have warned Indonesian authorities. Two officials from the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, political counsellor Paul Griffiths and staff member Emily Street, met staff from the Indonesian Attorney-General's office on Tuesday to discuss the fates of Bali Nine members Scott Rush, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, Fairfax newspapers report. The three are on death row in a Bali jail but plan to lodge a final appeal against their death sentences. If their appeals fail, the only way they can avoid the firing squad is through an appeal for clemency direct to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. - they can die knowing Rudd has done nothing to help youth lost in drug wars, or them. - ed.
Crean denies stay of execution request for Bali drug mules until after election
TRADE Minister Simon Crean has emphatically denied Australia has approached the Indonesian Government to hold off executing three Australian drug couriers in an election year. Mr Crean was playing down a Fairfax report that Australian embassy officials in Jakarta have told Indonesian authorities that the possible executions of the Australians is a highly sensitive issue for the Rudd Government. "It's not true," Mr Crean told ABC radio today. "We would never tie the circumstances of people potentially facing death row or of consular cases or of people in trouble, we would never tie that to an election cycle." - So they won't lift a finger to help Scott Rush. -ed.
Desperate call for high school teachers
MORE than 1840 high school classes are waiting for permanent teachers. The Education Department is also yet to fill hundreds of vacant positions. According to The Daily Telegraph, 421 teaching jobs are vacant in NSW, including 288 regular teachers and 133 head teachers. Maths was one of the subjects hit hardest by the lack of head teachers, with 11 Sydney high schools and eight regional schools awaiting senior staff. - I'd put my hand up, but I've been illegally blacklisted from work after 16 years full time teaching experience as a Math Teacher and with substantial qualifications. Unfortunately I'm also a witness to the cover up of the death of Hamidur Rahman. - ed.
BBC host arrested after murder admission
A VETERAN BBC host faces jail after admitting on-air he killed his AIDS-infected lover with a pillow.
DNA link traps a serial rapist - sex beast suspected of other crimes
IN his youth, Jason Van Der Baan was merely a disturbed child. He blew his finger off bombing mailboxes. In his late teens he graduated to theft. But in adulthood, Van Der Baan proved capable of holding a blade to a 15-year-old's neck and raping her on the banks of the Parramatta River. And he almost got away with it. However, last year as he awaited release from jail for two separate rapes dating back to the mid-1990s, detectives matched Van Der Baan's DNA to the 15-year-old girl's case and he was charged. Now, after a recent decision in the Sydney District Court, the 40-year-old Van Der Baan will remain behind bars until at least 2021.
Anti-gay pastor screens porn in church
A PASTOR seeking to bolster Uganda's anti-gay laws screened gay porn in a church in the capital Kampala overnight in a bid to gain support. The screening in an evangelical church was attended by around 300 supporters after plans for a "million man march" were thwarted by police. "The major argument homosexuals have is that what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is nobody's business, but do you know what they do in their bedrooms?" pastor Martin Ssempa asked the crowd. Pastor Ssempa then displayed a slide show of gay pornographic pictures. "Is this what Obama wants to bring to Africa?" he asked, referring to fierce US criticism of a Ugandan bill drafted last year that would further criminalize homosexuality. The bill would even criminalize public discussion of homosexuality and could penalize people who knowingly rent property to homosexuals.
Mozzies will buzz off feral rabbits
THE mosquitoes set to boom in Sydney after the summer deluges will be put to use helping cull a suburban rabbit plague. Tens of thousands of rabbits have spread across northern Sydney, bouncing around Manly, Ku-ring-gai, Pittwater, Warringah, Ryde, Parramatta, The Hills, Hornsby and Lane Cove local government areas. The State Government's Cumberland Livestock Health and Pest Authority has been waiting for mosquito and fly numbers to increase so that the insects can spread the rabbit-killing calicivirus. Cumberland LHPA ranger and rabbit project leader Steve Parker said the authority had been catching rabbits to test that they were not immune to the calicivirus - also called rabbit hemorrhagic disease (RHD). "For the release of RHD to work, the environmental conditions need to be favourable and there should be no, or very low, resistance to the disease in the rabbit population," Mr Parker said.
Liberals want hip operation inquiry
A DAY after federal Labor MP Belinda Neal was accused of offering a senior ALP branch member a medical favour in return for her vote, Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt confirmed an MP approached health officials requesting help for a constituent. The confirmation from Health Minister Ms Tebbutt came as the Opposition called for an investigation into claims that Ms Neal offered to fast-track branch member Louisa Sauvage's hip surgery to help her preselection battle. Ms Neal denied allegations she had offered to help the 72-year-old have an operation in return for her vote in preselection for her seat of Robertson. She repeated those denials yesterday. A statement from Ms Tebbutt's office yesterday said "an MP" did make a request to the head of the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service on behalf of a constituent who needed surgery. "It is not unusual for MPs to make representations on behalf of a constituent," the statement said. - Neal's devil baby strikes again - ed.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Martha says, "Hey D.C., get your house in order!"
Could her "Stewart-ship" help get America back to work?
===
Tea Party Talks
How will the RNC impact their movement? Dick Morris weighs in!
===
Brennan's Bombshell
Michelle Malkin on the Obama advisor's shocking statements on terror.
===
Guest: Karl Rove
Why Bayh's goodbye could spell big trouble for the Dems! Karl Rove has details.
=== Comments ===
Malicious bullets fired by the global warmists’ guns
Piers Akerman
LAST Tuesday I received an email from London’s The Independent newspaper, asking about a quote attributed to Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the British Met Office, which ran in a column of mine four years ago. - The quote is apt and demonstrates the belief of the activity. That is the point of a quote. When a quote is taken out of context, it illustrates something that doesn't happen. Piers quote is correct and your extension is highly misleading, Eli, if you are asserting it means something different.
In fact there have been gross inflations (lies) coming from the pro warming lobbies and they have been hoist on their own petard. What is predictable is that their 'journalists' would lie and avoid research to produce a discrediting attack on someone who has done their job well.- ed.
===
The Tea Party and Extremism
By Bill O'Reilly
Two weeks ago, I said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL O'REILLY: Some of these Tea Party people are nuts. They are. They're crazy. I mean, we sent Jesse Watters down there, and he puts the number at about 10 percent that are just loons, out of their mind. Every group has that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And that's true. No matter what group you're talking about, you'll find loons.
Enter The New York Times, which is finally taking the Tea Party seriously. In a front-page article Tuesday, they put forth that Tea Party people are primarily extremists. They lump in the John Birch Society, the Patriot movement, Friends for Liberty and other groups that are on the fringe.
The Times also attempts to link Fox News to Tea Party extremists.
"Talking Points" predicted this would happen; that a movement with the potential power of the Tea Party would be attacked by the left-wing media. At first, The Times ignored the Tea Party. Now it's trying to diminish the brand.
But the Tea Party people themselves should be careful. Most Americans are not ideologues. They are just folks who want a fair system and a noble country. Every time a Tea Party person threatens to overthrow the government or other nonsense, the brand gets hammered.
That being said, the Tea Party movement is at a disadvantage. There's no central authority. Every Tea Party group is different. There's no party platform other than disenchantment with big government. With that kind of structure, you can expect chaos and some extremism, which the liberal media will use that to attack the Tea Party.
"Talking Points" has always admired sincere Americans who get involved in trying to improve their country, and that is what most Tea Party people do. They are regular folks who are fed up.
Look at it this way: There's no question America is heading towards bankruptcy. We owe $13 trillion. We can never pay that money back.
Also, there's no question the federal government allowed millions of illegal immigrants to come to the USA. For decades, the feds didn't try to stop that.
Also, the Obama administration wants to change the economy with strict federal regulations and guidelines. That's what health care is all about. That's what cap-and-trade is all about.
So many Americans simply oppose those things, and you are not an extremist if you do so; you're a concerned citizen.
But if you threaten violence, if you traffic in racism, if you call the president of the United States a communist, those are extremist positions.
In the end, the Tea Party will rise and fall on well-thought-out policy and being able to persuade their fellow citizens they have solutions to complicated problems.
The left-wing media is gunning for the Tea Party, and it will be fascinating to see how the conflict turns out.
===
NO BLOOD FOR FOIL
Tim Blair
Fairfax correspondent Tim Lester seeks perspective on this ridiculous Garrett-blaming death nonsense:
The Howard government rolled out the troops going to Afghanistan but we don’t blame, or didn’t blame, John Howard nor do we now blame the defence minister when a soldier dies, do we?Well, Bob Brown probably would. But Brown is beside the point, as always. The issue now is that a mainstream journalist thinks wartime risks are equal to the risks associated with suburban ceiling insulation.
===
DOORSTEP GAMER
Tim Blair
Horrible gamers frighten the South Australian Attorney-General:
An Australian politician who opposes the lifting of a censorship ban on adults-only computer games has said he feels more threatened by gamers than outlawed motorcycle gangs.He was probably just looking for his asthma inhaler. But since Atkinson – a South Australian – is terrified, readers are invited to offer advice:
South Australia’s Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, who has the right to veto the lifting of a national ban on computer games rated too violent and extreme for consumption, said he had received a threatening note from a gamer.
“I feel that my family and I are more at risk from gamers than we are from the outlaw motorcycle gangs who also hate me,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation late Monday.
“The outlaw motorcycle gangs haven’t been hanging around my doorstep at 2:00 am, a gamer has.”
===
FACTOID FITS, ORIGIN UNCHECKED
Tim Blair
The Independent last week revealed that the entire case against global warming rested upon one quote:
For climate sceptics it was a key piece of evidence showing that the scientists behind global warming could not be trusted. A quotation by one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists was supposed to demonstrate the depths to which he and his ilk would stoop to create scare stories exaggerating the threat of global warming.This was news to me. Having made one or two points myself over the years, I can’t recall using Sir John’s quote “almost every time”. Why would any sceptic do so, when fresh examples of warmist idiocy offer themselves so frequently? Why repeatedly rely on an allegedly 16-year-old quote from someone nobody among general audiences had heard of? To paraphrase the quote: no one would listen.
Sir John Houghton, who played a critical role in establishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), was roundly condemned after it emerged that he was an apparent advocate of scary propaganda to frighten the public into believing the dangers of global warming.
“Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen,” Sir John was supposed to have said in 1994.
The quotation has since become the iconic smoking gun of the climate sceptic community … wheeled out almost every time a climate sceptic has a point to make …
Having built up the quote’s awesome power – key piece of evidence! iconic smoking gun! – The Independent then exposed the shocking truth:
Sir John Houghton has never said what he is quoted as saying. The words do not appear in his own book on global warming, first published in 1994, despite statements to the contrary. In fact, he denies emphatically that he ever said it at any time, either verbally or in writing.So … his “ilk” would apparently “stoop to create scare stories exaggerating the threat of global warming”, even by Sir John’s account. But he wouldn’t. And now he wants to set the record straight:
In fact, his view on the matter of generating scare stories to publicise climate change is quite the opposite. “There are those who will say ‘unless we announce disasters, no one will listen’, but I’m not one of them,” Sir John told The Independent.
“It’s not the sort of thing I would ever say. It’s quite the opposite of what I think and it pains me to see this quote being used repeatedly in this way. I would never say we should hype up the risk of climate disasters in order to get noticed,” he said.Took him long enough to say he’d never said it. According to The Independent, Sir John’s non-quote has been kicking around for more than three years:
The earliest record of the quote comes not from 15 years ago but from November 2006 when it appeared in a newspaper column written by the journalist Piers Akerman in the Australian newspaper The Sunday Telegraph.More from Piers shortly. The Independent‘s story excited local tax-funded conservative-monitoring program Media Watch, which agreed with the notion that Sir John’s quote was the foundation of warming scepticism:
Everyone who is anyone in the sceptic firmament has used the quotation.That isn’t true. Besides which, if we were seeking an eternal quote with which to condemn Sir John, we’d be more likely to use this, from the UK Sunday Telegraph in 1995:
“If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”This quote seems remarkably close in sentiment and tone to the disputed quote of legend – yet it wasn’t mentioned by The Independent. Nor was it mentioned by Media Watch, despite several following days during which to research the matter. Why not? Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes explains:
The more a factoid fits in with the story you want to tell, the less you’re inclined rigorously to check its origin.Obviously so. Piers Akerman today deals with this. There’s a positive side to Media Watch‘s story, however; if the program is now investigating claims from years ago, perhaps it will re-open the books on Phillip Adams and Alan Ramsey … among many, many others.
===
Not dead yet
Andrew Bolt
Here’s another peddler of doom who needs to be held to account. This time it’s Climate Progress, the propaganda outfit led by Joseph Romm, named by Time magazine as one of the “Heroes of the Environment”.
Last year Climate Progress screamed that our drought was proof of global warming hell:
Absolute must read: Australia today offers horrific glimpse of U.S. Southwest, much of planet, post-2040, if we don’t slash emissions soonAnd it ballyhooed this bizarrely apocalypic report on Australia in the Los Angeles Times:
Drought, fires, killer heat waves, wildlife extinction and mosquito-borne illness — the things that climate change models are predicting have already arrived there, [scientists] say.And Climate Progress added:
It is, sadly, probably too late to save much of Australia… Again, since Australia is the most sensitive and driest of the habitable continents, it’s no surprise that it is the first to see such climate change driven decadal drought,Well, we’re not dead yet, notes relieved reader Gaz:
I started feeling sorry for myself: not enough water - we will have to drink beer. Tough. But then I confirmed that rainfall in Australia is on an upwards trend:===
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rain&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=T
For most of Australia the chances of more than average rain in the next 3 months is 50% or better (the lower probablity is in the very wet areas that are NOT drought affected):
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/rain_ahead.shtml
In the last week we had:Floods in Brisbane:And in the last month we had quite a bit of water in the Darling/Murray:
http://media.smh.com.au/national/national-news/brisbane-suburbs-in-flood-1129336.html
Floods in Sydney:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/flood-warning-from-bureau-20100213-nyen.html
Floods on the NSW South Coast and Central Tablelands:
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/south-coast-farwest-are-disaster-zones-20100216-o3xm.html
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/floodwater-to-quench-lakes-at-murray-mouth-20100119-mj6q.html
So what happened to the doom-and-gloom prediction?
Nothing stolen except our brains
Andrew Bolt
Wow, big surprise:
THE state government has dumped the board of the company that it funds to provide services to the stolen generations and has referred to police an audit showing almost $100,000 in inappropriate spending and unaccounted money…Right from the very start, this was an organisation set up to fail - and set up for “inappropriate spending”. The politicians who set it up should now be dumped, too.
While the government can’t technically sack the board of a private company, it will no longer provide funding to Stolen Generations Victoria - which was set up about five years ago and receives almost $1 million in funding over three years - effectively forcing it to stop operating unless it can find other funding sources.
I’ve given its farcical history before:
You see, seven years ago the Victorian Government couldn’t find a single Aboriginal child who’d been stolen just because they were black:
("Stolen generations” propagandist Robert) Manne was also on the board of Victoria’s Stolen Generations Taskforce when it looked for the “stolen generations”. It found 36 organisations to help the victims, but not one person in the state who’d truly been stolen.Even stranger, the Aboriginal-led taskforce couldn’t even find proof of any policy to steal Aboriginal children:
Victoria had ”no formal policy for removing children”, it concluded.In fact, that taskforce, to justify its existence, even had to broaden the definition of “stolen” to include children who had been rescued from harm, abandoned, raised by grandparents who lived “white”, or even just sent by their parents to boarding school (absolutely true):
The Victorian Stolen Generations Taskforce uses the term ‘Stolen Generations’ to refer to ”any adult Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person separated at a young age from community, family, language, land or culture, as well as the families of that separated child.”Yet despite the taskforce’s complete failure to find any truly “stolen” children, and despite the existence already of 36 organisations in Victoria to help any who might one day turn up, the Labor Government decided in response to the taskforce’s report to set up a 37th: Stolen Generations Victoria.
It also gave Stolen Generations Victoria around $1 million every three years to help people no one can actually find. So what else did you expect but that this money would be spent “inappropriately”?
On with the history…
In 2008, two days after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said his “sorry” and falsely claimed 50,000 Aboriginal children had been “stolen”, we were told 100 Victorian Aborigines had suddenly revealed themselves to have been “stolen” under racist policies, after all, and now wanted compensation:
(T)he Herald Sun can reveal that Reservoir man Neville Austin, 44, will launch the first stolen generation claim against the State of Victoria…Hmm. Some conflict of interest there. You’ve read of Lyn Austin before on this blog:
Mr Austin says he was removed from his mother as a five-month-old after he was admitted to the Royal Children’s Hospital with a chest infection…
In a public letter, he wrote: “Being Aboriginal was the sole reason I was taken away from a mother and family who loved me. It was all done in the name of assimilation, with the ultimate goal of ridding this country of its indigenous people.” ...
His cousin Lyn, who heads Stolen Generations Victoria, has said up to 100 Victorian Aborigines were interested in similar claims.
At least the SGV has now found one allegedly “stolen” child - chairwoman Lyn Austin herself. But when asked on 3AW yesterday why she’d been taken from her mother, Austin admitted: ”I don’t know.”What a colossal farce. The politicians who created it should be hounded from office.
(Apologies for the lack of link to the Stolen Generations Taskforce report. The State Government has deleted it.)
===
More alleged victims of Nitschke’s deadly kind of “help”
Andrew Bolt
Yet more evidence that euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke is actually giving sucide help to the depressed, rather than the dying:
On Monday, The Age reported that coroners were aware of 51 Australians who had died from an overdose of Nembutal - a lethal barbiturate that Dr Nitschke has promoted since the late 1990s as a peaceful way to die. Of the 38 cases fully investigated by coroners, only 11 people were known to have suffered chronic physical pain or a terminal illness before their deaths, prompting some to speculate the remaining 27 people had taken their lives for psychological reasons.For eight years I’ve warned of many other cases where the people Nitschke has helped were not dying and even not in pain. He seems to be helping too many people who need not death but love. I consider him a menace to the vulnerable, and despair that he’s been allowed to trade his wares for so long, aided by so much flattering media coverage.
===
How the AWU tried to foist on us a prime minister it thought mad
Andrew Bolt
AWU boss Paul Howe
‘The similarities between Tony Abbott and Mark Latham are remarkable: both shoot from the hip, both mad, both thinking that saying it how you see it is in the best interests of how to run a country… It’s always disappointing when Labor loses elections, but thank God we lost the 2004 election and saved this country from a Latham prime ministership...If Howe thinks Latham was mad and a menace to the country, why did his union nevertherless donate nearly $20,000 of dollars of his members’ money to Latham’s election campaign?
===
Even Obama does what Rudd won’t dare
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama says yes to two more nuclear power stations:
To meet our growing energy needs and prevent the worst consequences of climate change, we’ll need to increase our supply of nuclear power. It’s that simple.But somehow it isn’t simple to Kevin Rudd, the alarmist who claims global warming ”is the great moral challenge of our generation” yet is too much the timid populist to do the only useful thing that could slash our emissions by what he wants:
Our policy is that Australia has multiple other energy sources and we will not be heading in the direction of civil nuclear power.
===
Did Rudd force Garrett to ignore the warnings?
Andrew Bolt
As I’ve said before, it’s inconceivable for Environment Minister Peter Garrett to have received so many urgent warnings without trying to stop his disastrously dangerous program to have cowboys install free insulation. Which means the real question is: what did Kevin Rudd know, and when did he ignore it?
In a significant blow to the government’s defence of its decision to subsidise home insulation as part of its economic stimulus response to the global recession last year, it emerged yesterday that industry experts told Mr Garrett of poor safety standards in August 2008, months before the financial crisis began. The AFIA’s former treasurer, Steve Oliver, told The Australian yesterday he personally warned Mr Garrett of regulatory problems at a meeting the minister had called with industry representatives to discuss potential subsidies of insulation, solar and other energy-saving devices.Result so far: four men dead, pehaps 1000 homes now “live” wired, millions wasted on insulation actually made overseas, and anywhere from two per cent to 40 per cent of home installed by insulation so bad as to be near useless.
Mr Oliver said he had urged Mr Garrett at the meeting at Sydney’s Observatory Hotel to force all installers and manufacturers to obtain third-party certification under a scheme managed by the government, known as CodeMark, if he planned to pour money into insulation…
“It was one way the government could ensure that the product and the installation being done were correct and that the taxpayer could get good value for money. “As I was saying this, he (Mr Garrett) was smiling and nodding his head.”
News of the warnings came as Kevin Rudd stonewalled in the face of media questions about why he pumped so much stimulus money into the sector if he knew it was not properly regulated.
The Prime Minister simply refused to answer the question. He also ignored a question from The Australian about whether the Department of Environment made similar warnings early last year, when cabinet was hammering out the details of the scheme…
At a press conference yesterday, The Australian asked Mr Rudd whether he and his cabinet bore responsibility for having Mr Garrett administer a scheme in an industry sector they now acknowledge had inadequate safety regulations.
He failed to answer and declined to comment on opposition claims the Department of Environment warned cabinet against a rapid rollout of the scheme early last year.
Later, The Australian asked the same questions in writing, prompting a demand from one of Mr Rudd’s press secretaries that the newspaper reveal whether it had any documentary evidence of advice from the Department of Environment.
===
Next, a handout for valve radios, too
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann says it’s not a bribe, but food for a dinosaur:
KEVIN Rudd and Stephen Conroy’s $250 million gift to Kerry Stokes and the other TV moguls is outrageous and totally unacceptable… But outrageous not actually for the reason being suggested. That as Tony Abbott put it earlier in the week, it looked like an “election-year bribe.” ...
(T)he real driver - for both sides of politics - is a peculiar desire to protect and promote the three-player Free-To-Air TV oligopoly… What really worries Rudd and Conroy is the FTA-TV model imploding before all our eyes.
At its extreme, your screen could go black. Or in some ways worse, the networks would cut back or abandon ‘quality’ local content, upsetting legions of Labor luvvies.
Yes the networks have not promised to deliver more local content. That’s precisely the point; they’re struggling to pay for what they have to do now.
===
Big Oil jumps from the sinking green ship
Andrew Bolt
Of rats and sinking ships:
Three big companies quit an influential lobbying group that had focused on shaping climate-change legislation, in the latest sign that support for an ambitious bill is melting away.Another sign, too, of the hypocrisy of the green groups which smeared sceptics as shills in rthe pay of Big Oil, while trousering the petro-dollars themselves.
Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday they won’t renew their membership in the three-year-old U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad business-environmental coalition that had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases.
(Thanks to reader Baa Humbug.)
===
Crime really is rising, even if it makes us sound grim to say it
Andrew Bolt
It is easy, seductive and the mark of fun-to-be-with bon-vivant to wave away concern at the rise in street crime as, say, just another bout of moral panic. Or merely the construct of the professionally indignant.
Or, as the always entertaining Jack the Insider puts it:
There is a fear industry that works actively in media and in politics. One of their great tactics is to look at our youth in much the same manner as one might examine a leprotic maniac wielding a chainsaw (and maybe an iPod).Hmm. That’s certainly against the anecdotal evidence. So let’s see how Jack arrives at his conclusion:
For the record, there has been no dramatic rise in violent crime in Australia. Indeed for most of the last century, violent crime has decreased.
The rate of homicide - which includes manslaughter and murder - sits around 1.6 for every 100,000 people in Australia. In 1923, it was at the same figure. Australia’s murder rate is roughly the equivalent of that found in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Our murder rate is a quarter of that in the United States and an eighth of the murder rate in Russia.There’s already some hints there of how Jack picked out what he could to give himself some comfort. He’s comparing today’s crime levels with those of more than a century ago, rather than with our more recent past. And he’s used as his central proof the homicide rate, which is indeed a measure of the most extreme form of violence and the least easy to fudge with figures, since the dead are unmistakably dead. So you might think Jack is right, and that I was wrong to insist in yesterday’s column that street violence was worsening, despite apparent attempts by police to understate the real problem. Jack is reassuring and responsible, and I’m angsty and alarmist.
In the 19th century, Australia’s rates of violent crime, including homicide, were approximately double what they are today. While these figures were in decline for much of the last half of the 1800s, it seems that with Federation, Australia became a markedly less violent place.
But stop there. What most scares so many people when contemplating catching a late night train, or walking home through the midnight city, is not so much the thought of being murdered, in my opionion. It’s instead the thought of being punched, kicked, glassed, raped, stabbed and left hurt and bloodied, if not actually murdered.
And that’s when we must turn to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which Jack repeatedly urges his readers to do in response to their emails suggesting he may be wrong.
Here are two recent graphics based on ABS data. The first is of rates of recorded assault, 1995-2006:
And this is of recorded rates of sexual assault, 1993-2006:
And here is Judy Putt, general manager of research at the Australian Institute of Criminology, to interpret them:
Homicide has decreased by nine percent since 1990 and armed robbery by one-third since 2001, but recorded assaults and sexual assaults have both increased steadily in the past 10 years by over 40 percent and 20 percent respectively. The rate of aggravated assault appears to have contributed to the marked rise in recorded assault, and for both assault and sexual assault the rate of increase was greater for children aged under 15 years, with increases almost double that of the older age group. Neither population changes among young adult males nor rates of offending seem to explain the trends in recorded violent crime, and indicators of change in reporting to police provide only a partial explanation. Based on self-reported victimisation and reporting to police, it would seem increased reporting of assault is somewhat responsible for the rise in recorded assault rates against adult victims.I really do think we have a problem. I know it makes me look bad to say so, but we’ll all look bad if we don’t try to fix what’s gone haywire.
UPDATE
Reader Dean:
The murder stats are immediately suspect. Are they adjusted for the fact that modern medicine saves a hellava lot more seriously injured people now than 100 years ago? So for the status quo I would expect the murder rate to have reduced considerably in 100 years.
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