Headlines Tuesday 2nd February 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

=== Bible Quote ===
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”- Deuteronomy 6:4-5
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Seizing on Sen.-elect Scott Brown's superhero status in the GOP, New England doll company creates new action figure modeled after the truck-driving Republican

Deeper in Debt
Obama's $3.8 trillion budget is expected to push next year's national debt well above $15 trillion — more than the nation's GDP

Moon Mission Lost in Space
White House axes NASA's Constellation program — and is prepared to fight any congressional effort to save it

'Chance to Kill Americans and Took It'
NYC prosecutors wrapping up case against American scientist charged with trying to kill troops in Afghanistan

Black Hawk Drone in the Works

Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. is launching a $1 billion venture featuring a pilot-less Black Hawk helicopter as military demand rises for technology to fight two wars. The Stratford-based helicopter maker and military contractor announced Monday the creation of Sikorsky Innovations, intended to speed the transformation of the mechanical helicopter into a computerized aircraft. It also will promote projects that are now designing helicopters to fly faster, simulate vision and monitor their own performance. The Black Hawk is a military workhorse, used in Afghanistan, Iraq, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989 and the Gulf War in 1991. It's also part of military packages sold to other nations and has been used in civilian missions such as rescuing snowbound mountain climbers.


At least 41 people were killed and 106 wounded, including women and children, when a female suicide bomber blew herself up among Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad / AFP


Special presentation on the devastation, the people, and the struggle to rebuild ahead of the first anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires

Lines to blame for Black Saturday
A ROYAL Commission's found the Black Saturday bushfire was caused by power lines.

Abbott gains ground on Rudd
COALITION in best position since election loss and PM's support at its lowest, poll reveals.

Sordid ad may have led to 'murder'
AN ad believed placed by Herman Rockefeller has emerged in an underground swingers magazine.

Somali pirates let UK couple reunite
SOMALI pirates holding UK couple Paul and Rachel Chandler let them be reunited temporarily.

'They needed rescuing and we were there'

A RAN sailor disregarded orders as he rescued a dozen asylum seekers from a burning boat. In the opening week of the inquest, statements suggested that trouble started on the SIEV 36 because its passengers mistakenly thought they would be turned back to Indonesian waters.

Public transport fares fall into line
HUNDREDS of thousands of Sydney bus and train commuters will soon pay less to travel to work after a pre-election overhaul of the state's transport fares.
=== Journalists Corner ===

This Valentines Day, forget the chocolate and flowers and get that special someone in your life a gift that makes a difference.

The US Campaign for Burma Online Store offers conscientious gifts such as "Free Aung San Suu Kyi" T-shirts, art work by Shepherds Fairey and the "For The Lady" benefit CD, featuring Coldplay, U2, Paul McCartney, Damien Rice, and many other great artists.

You can be sure not only to delight your loved ones, but to also support the grassroots movement for human rights and a democractic Burma.

Go to the US Campaign for Burma Store and show those you care about just how big your heart really is!

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Smart, Tough, Trusted...
Megyn Kelly covers every story, every event ...
Digging deeper, debating key issues and discussing the topics impacting you!

Government Spending Freeze?
Which areas will Obama cut into and will it be enough to put a dent in America's deficit?
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James O'Keefe Exclusive!
He exposed the ACORN scandal. Now, he's accused of wiretapping! Hear his story.
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Guest: Dana Perino
Does the administration have the political muscle to pass their agenda?

=== Comments ===
Crazy way to treat our most vulnerable
Piers Akerman
IT SOUNDS a little crazy but the deteriorating state of the mental health of Australians is not only being ignored by the Federal Government, but the professional supervising body meant to supervise psychologists is accused of having the lowest training standards of training in the Western world. - While it is appalling and unacceptable, it is also strangely fitting. Beneath psychology is counselling, and counsellors are given an appalling workload with only minimal training which emphasizes socialist theory. So that you really need to know your Marx writings forward and backward, and probably need to recite jokes about Karl if you are to be a counsellor. As a counsellor, you probably don’t know how to refer your client, and so it is common to hear counsellors complain of their clients who suicided or continued their drug lifestyle while accessing federal aide.
I was told by one psychologist who retrained as a barrister that the most important thing the psychologist learned in their first week of clinical work was to collect the fee. The ALP claim that both parties have been slack with mental health, but the truth is only the ALP can claim to have placed a bureaucracy over the band aid .. and the wound is changing color. - ed.
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President Obama, Haiti and the 'Bold Fresh' Tour
By Bill O'Reilly
Glenn Beck and I are here on the Gulf Coast to do two sold-out "Bold Fresh" shows at the Sun Dome arena, and it's nice to be in the Sunshine State with temperatures in the 70s.

We knew when we signed on for this tour that creepy far-left people would be stalking us, and they are in the form of the loopy Media Matters outfit. That's the group that tries to damage non-far-left Americans by taking their statements out of context and posting them on the Net.

After our first show on Long Island last Saturday, Media Matters rejoiced in saying that I had compared the South Side of Chicago to Haiti. The bit they used was this:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: I'm seeing a guy [President Obama] who's very, very committed to the government. The government's going to solve the problems, and I'm going: I don't know how that's possible. If you've ever been to the South Side of Chicago, I mean, it's a disaster, all right? It's like Haiti. I've been to Haiti a couple of times. I support some charities there, but Haiti just never gets better, no matter how much you put in there because they don't have a system. And I said the government can't do it, but Obama really believes the government can do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Now, those comments deeply offend far-left Kool-Aid drinkers, even though every word is true. And if you don't believe me, just ask a guy named Lupe Fiasco.

This is beautiful, to borrow a phrase from Dennis Miller.

Looking to build on the Media Matters deal, MTV asked a Chicago hip-hop activist, who calls himself Lupe Fiasco, for a comment. Here's what Lupe said:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LUPE FIASCO, CHICAGO HIP-HOP ACTIVIST: (INAUDIBLE) I don't want to be pointed out as supporting Bill O'Reilly, but when you're comparing certain areas of the U.S. that are predominantly African-American or Latino, it's very easy to compare it to the Third World. You know, just in the amount of violence that's there, the amount of corruption that's there. There's very credible kind of argument there that you can compare that to, you know, so I agree with that in some aspects.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Well, that's not exactly what the far left wanted to hear from Lupe, but the guy is telling the truth, as I did.

For decades, Chicago's South Side has been a pocket of poverty and brutality. Barack Obama is well aware of this because he worked there. An enormous amount of federal and state money has poured into the South Side, yet it remains a major problem.

The situation directly parallels what's happened in Haiti: massive aid, few results.

Self-reliance is the key to success in life. A nanny state chokes that. If the president and I have one big area of disagreement, it is big government. I believe it cannot solve your problems. He believes it can level the playing field, at least somewhat.

But that hasn't happened in Chicago's South Side, has it?
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HORDES REPELLED
Tim Blair
“There is no point in denying it,” wrote warmenist George Monbiot. “We’re losing.” And that was back in early November, before Climategate, before Copenhagen and before the IPCC catastrophe. The situation for our warmy pals is now even more hilarious:

A global deal to tackle climate change is all but impossible in 2010, leaving the scale and pace of action to slow global warming in coming decades uncertain, according to senior figures across the world involved in the negotiations.

So much for having only 50 days to save the world. It gets better:

“The forces trying to tackle climate change are in disarray, wandering in small groups around the battlefield like a beaten army,” said a senior British diplomat

I say we keep fighting them. Just for the fun of it.
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MISSOURI WARMED
Tim Blair
St. Louis Post-Dispatch medical columnist Dr. Paul Donohue receives an anguished inquiry:

Dear Dr. Donohue,

My daughter complains that I flatulate more often than most individuals. Furthermore, she claims that the gas an individual passes contributes to global warming. I don’t know if I am physically able to keep my gas to myself to go green. Is my daughter really right?

(Via explosive reader Mambo Bananapatch)
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BURGERS DON’T LIE
Tim Blair
In 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Fourth Assessment Report on climate change, warning of catastrophic results if global warming continued.

In 2009, a Burger King store in Memphis, Tennessee, put up a sign reading “Global warming is baloney”.

The IPCC subsequently won a Nobel Peace Prize, while Burger King has never even been short-listed. Yet which of the two is truly more deserving?
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HAIR TRIGGER
Tim Blair
11.56pm. It is reported that Prince Harry is unhappy over being portrayed as a redhead, which is understandable given the popular view that such types are hot-tempered maniacs.

1.25am. It is reported that Prince Harry has “thrown a right royal tantrum” during a polo match, in which he “threw his mallet down in disgust and took off his helmet and punched it in a fit of pique.”
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PATCH PUSHED
Tim Blair
IPCC chairman Rajendra “Patchy” Pachauri claims to have the support of Al Gore – for whatever that’s worth – but Gordon Brown has thrown him under the bus (or the chauffeur-driven Corolla, whichever you prefer):

Rajendra Pachauri, who has faced criticism as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change following allegations of inaccurate statements in panel reports, suffered a fresh blow last night when he failed to get the backing of the British government.

A senior government official reiterated Pachauri’s position but stopped short of expressing confidence in him.

The situation is a little more serious than that, according to the Independent:

Britain has officially expressed its concern to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about lax scientific procedures used by the body which supplies the world with the facts about global warming.

Evidence has emerged the IPCC made exaggerated claims in its last report in 2007 about the melting of Himalayan glaciers by 2035, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and increased frequency of violent storms. The panel also used research that had not been peer-reviewed. That has prompted the British Government to communicate formally its disquiet to the IPCC and its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.

No word yet on whether IPCC believer Kevin Rudd has expressed similar concerns. Christopher Booker:

It is not just Pachauri who has been holed below the waterline. So has the entire IPCC process. And beyond that – and despite the pleading of Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and the BBC that none of this detracts from the evidence for man-made global warming – so has the warmist cause itself. Bereft of scientific or moral authority, the most expensive show the world has ever seen may soon be nearing its end.

Possibly related: Kevin Rudd now thinks that a whole bunch of things are more important than climate change.
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THAT’S THE SPIRIT
Tim Blair
Besides a certain fake turkey, no non-sentient being from the Bush era has survived for as long as the Spirit rover:

The little guy is still up there on Mars, scoping out rocks and such. Even though he’s currently stuck in Martian dirt. (Note: do not click that link if you are in an emotionally vulnerable state or suffer abandonment issues.)
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LICENCE TO CHILL
Tim Blair
It was spies what done it, claims David King:

A highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency, according to the Government’s former chief scientist. Sir David King, who was Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser for seven years until 2007, said that the hacking and selective leaking of the unit’s emails, going back 13 years, bore all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated intelligence operation – especially given their release just before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.

Use of the term “hallmarks” suggests previous anti-warmy spying activities connected to major enviro events. A list would be handy.

In an interview with The Independent, Sir David suggested the email leaks were deliberately designed to destabilise Copenhagen and he dismissed the idea that it was a run-of-the-mill hacking. It was carried out by a team of skilled professionals, either on behalf of a foreign government or at the behest of anti-climate change lobbyists in the United States, he said.

Ha! They’re way off. But I may have said too much …

UPDATE (via Brat). King backs down:
The government’s former chief scientist has backed away from his sensational claim that a foreign intelligence agency or wealthy US lobbyists were behind the hacking and release of controversial emails between climate scientists.

Sir David King admitted he possessed no inside information about the leaks of embarrassing emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, and had merely been speculating on material already in the public domain. His remarks to a journalist had been a “side-issue”, he said.
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CAN’T ARGUE WITH THAT
Tim Blair
Says the Prez: “The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.”

UPDATE. Obama fan Andrew Sullivan hears truth in silence:

I’ve listened to dozens of state-of-the-union speeches and I have rarely heard such a quiet talk meet such silence. It was the kind of silence that greets the truth.

There was an unusual amount of laughter and dissent in that silence.

UPDATE II. Sixteen lies in seven minutes?
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Rudd will age us with his spin
Andrew Bolt
Tim Colebatch describes a brilliantly formed example of Kevin Rudd’s style of “government” - his intergenerational report on ageing Australia, released yesterday:

The big gap in the IGR is that, while framing the answers this way, it then shrinks from answering the hard questions. How do we get more people into work? How do we encourage them to work longer? And how do we raise productivity?

Instead, the report gives us PR guff in praise of Rudd government policies and iffy projections of how much the ageing population will cost future budgets.

Its projections of future budgetary costs in 2049-50 are of no value. Treasury does not know with any precision what will happen in the next 40 years. If we had asked Treasury in 1970 to forecast the cost of an ageing society in 2010, its answer would have been just as worthless. Over 40 years, too much changes for anyone to make accurate costings.

Take Treasury’s three intergenerational reports. IGR1, in 2002, told us that by 2041-42, the ageing of society would put the budget in deficit by 5 per cent of GDP. Yet by 2007, IGR2 had virtually halved the forecast deficit that year to 2.7 per cent of GDP. And now IGR3 has halved it again to a forecast deficit of just 1.3 per cent of GDP!

These numbers are rubbish.

Colebatch could have written almost the very same criticism of Rudd’s even more preposterous claims about global warming and the cost to Australia’s economy by 2050. I hope he soon will.

UPDATE

Let Terry McCrann show how it’s done:

KEVIN Rudd is damned and damned utterly by his own Intergenerational Report. It loudly proclaims we have a prime minister who hasn’t got a clue. Of course it does so completely unknowingly and self-evidently unintentionally. Most deliciously, in so capturing the report’s comprehensive inanity, with the illustration chosen for the cover…

The damning of the government is the fundamental conflict between Australia’s projected population growth and its composition, and the government’s climate change policy - the so-called, deliberately false, Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).

Two things will happen to our population. It will increase. From 22.2 million now to 25.7 million in 2020 and to 35.9 million in 2050, according to the report.

And secondly, it will age. From 13 per cent of us now aged 65 or older to nearly 23 per cent being so in 2050…

How do we grow the economy in per capita terms?

And there’s only one answer which the report does note - Treasury isn’t that incompetent. Productivity. Except that it ‘assumes’ that we’ll get the productivity growth - yes, it is that incompetent.

The assumption is surreal. Because productivity growth is impossible in a world of the CPRS.

Even the Green Treasury of Henry should understand that cheap energy is the fundamental building block of productivity growth. And the CPRS is specifically designed to make energy - completely pointlessly - more expensive.

Whatever other conclusions you might - or might wish - to draw from the report, one is unambiguous and undeniable. The central policy objective of a responsible government, advised by a competent bureaucracy, would be to promote and expand the cheapest possible energy. Which is now the dirtiest of four-letter words: coal.

Energy is the building block of everything. If we are truly going to nearly triple the size of the Australian economy by 2050, as Treasury ‘assumes’, we will have to almost as dramatically increase our production of energy…

I would like to see Henry get up and claim that we can cut emissions by 35 per cent in per capita terms in 10 years and grow the economy by a third in that time. And doing so by making energy dramatically more expensive.

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Never mind the argument
Andrew Bolt
Among the 15 paragraphs devoted by The Age today to climate sceptic Lord Monckton’s visit to Melbourne, there is this sentence:

Lord Monckton’s stump speech is built around attacks on the science underpinning man-made climate change and the scientists and those that believe them.

A prize to anyone who can find, among all the personal vilification of Monckton, any line explaining what those arguments actually are.
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Obama’s scratch-my-back tour
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama decides to give Kevin Rudd a present for his election year:

US President Barack Obama will make what will be an emotional trip with his family to his childhood home of Indonesia in March, and will also visit Australia, the White House announced.

Rudd will hope that Obama isn’t seen here as quite the damaged goods he now is back home.

But Rudd will want the talking points changed a little to remove the issue that’s now poison for him:

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Mr Obama looked forward to discussing issues including green energy, climate change, economic recovery and non-proliferation with Mr Rudd.
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Rudd attracts more boat people in a month than Howard in six years
Andrew Bolt
And still they pour in, lured in part by Kevin Rudd’s foolish decision to weaken our border laws:

A BOAT with 181 suspected Afghani asylum seekers was intercepted off the coast of Christmas Island last night… It is the eighth asylum seeker boat to arrive this year.

So far this year already, seven boats have unlawfully landed 449 boat people in Australia. This is more than landed (288) in the entire last six years of the Howard Government
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Where’s warming?
Andrew Bolt
Rudd is spooked - not so much by any likely election defeat, but by growing public cyncism to his signature issue and “the great moral challenge of our generation”:

KEVIN Rudd has warned Labor MPs they could “lose the election” and first-term governments often run into electoral turbulence at the first re-election attempt… But he said the Coalition was also putting forward its fourth leader in two years in Tony Abbott and Labor had a good story to tell on infrastructure, water, health and education spending and the new My School website.

Which fiercely urgent, “delay is denial”, the-planet-is-in-danger issue is no longer among the five top issues Rudd would prefer to discuss?

UPDATE

No wonder Rudd would rather not mention global warming, which will beome only more toxic an issue now that the media tide is finally turning, too:

The Liberal Party and Coalition primary votes are at their highest levels since John Howard lost government, and Labor’s 10-point two-party preferred lead at the beginning of December has been cut to just four points, 52 per cent to 48 per cent…

Mr Rudd’s personal standing has continued to fall, with his satisfaction rating dropping two points to 50 per cent last weekend - a decline of nine percentage points since the start of November; dissatisfaction jumped four points to 38 per cent, his highest level as Prime Minister.
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The reef must soon bleach or Ove gets it
Andrew Bolt
Influential alarmist Professor Ove Hoegh-Gulberg was furious last weekend when we again pointed out that his predictions of global warming doom for the Great Barrier Reef keep turning out to be false.

From this year we’ll be making him even crosser, I suspect.

After all, in 1999 he published a paper claiming that global warming would so heat the oceans that the mass bleaching of the reef in 1998 (from which the reef in fact has recovered almost entirely) would occur every two years from 2010 - and every year from 2020. Here’s Figure 11 from that paper which he gives to demonstrate:

If the reef doesn’t bleach severely this year, it had better next - or Ove will be hearing more from us about false alarms and the Profits of Doom-saying.

(Thanks to readers Peter and John.)

UPDATE

Not looking good for Ove already. The National Oceanographic Data Center now calculates that ocean temperatures have not risen - as Ove predicted - but fallen over the past five years or more..
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A cover to age us prematurely
Andrew Bolt

The Rudd Government can’t miss a chance to flog its green alarmism. Here’s the cover of today’s report on ageing Australia - and if windpower truly is the hallmark of life in 2050, our aged then will have those smiles wiped from their faces.