=== Bible Quote ===
“[Love one another] This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.”- 1 John 3:11
===
Boy charged over confrontation with knife
POLICE have charged an 11-year-old boy who allegedly confronted a fellow pupil with a knife at a school in Sydney's west. The children allegedly became involved in an altercation yesterday afternoon at Claremont Meadows Public School. Police said it was alleged the 11-year-old boy left the school and then returned with a knife and confronted the other student, aged 12, outside the school grounds. He managed to alert a teacher, who disarmed the boy. No one was injured, police said.
He was Tutankhamun, the Boy King who briefly ruled Egypt more than 3,300 years ago — and today, modern medicine finally answers the mysteries of his death.
Feds Demand Toyota Info
Government tells Toyota to fork over documents to find out if massive recalls were conducted in timely manner
Bayh Retirement Boosts GOP Hopes
After being left for dead, Republicans find themselves not just with a pulse, but within reach of reclaiming Senate
Saudi Rehab May Free Ex-Gitmo Inmate
At Gitmo, inmate was hardcore Muslim terrorist, but in Saudi Arabia, he's rehabilitated 'beneficiary'
Police Probe Veteran BBC Reporter Who Admitted Killing Gay Lover
Police launched an investigation Tuesday after veteran British TV broadcaster Ray Gosling confessed on air to smothering his lover, who was dying of AIDS. A spokesman said officers would liaise with the BBC after Gosling's admission was aired on its 'Inside Out' program, broadcast at 7:30 p.m. GMT Monday. The BBC did not alert the police in advance of the confession, which was reportedly recorded last November. A police spokesman said: "We were not aware of Mr. Gosling's comments until the BBC Inside Out program was shown.
Sarah Palin's family has hit back at the creators of "particularly pathetic" Family Guy after the show appeared to mock her Down syndrome son in an episode / APFormer Socceroos player dead
MAN described as "one of the best players this country has ever seen" found dead in his apartment
Dodgy eateries named and shamed
CONSUMERS will see how safe their favourite restaurant is under a new 'scores on doors' system.
Doctors leave amid cover-up claims
THE Government has defended an exodus of doctors from a hospital denying claims of bullying.
Unwary death trap for firefighters
OLD bridges stop trucks reaching bush fires and could create a deathtrap not a quick exit.
Heir Prince William gets new hair do
PRINCE William's on a magazine cover with an unusually dark and much fuller head of hair.
Teachers union bid to cut pay
THE NSW Teachers' Federation tried to cut the $100K pay packets awarded to the state's highest performing teachers they set a "dangerous precedent".
Booze bans after drunken antics
TOUGH new casino alcohol rules are now going to be put in place after Brendan Fevola's drunken Brownlow antics.
Obama to unveil deal for nuclear plant
THE President is expected later today to unveil a loan guarantee for Southern Company to build two nuclear reactors.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Guest: Sarah Palin
The Iranian threat! How should America deal with the dangerous nation?
===
Guest: Joe "The Plumber"
Did he really bash McCain, or were his words just taken out of context? He sets the record straight!
===
Health Care Summit Showdown!
As lawmakers gear up, how much is each side willing to give up?
=== Comments ===
The Battle of the Vice Presidents
By Bill O'Reilly
Polls show Americans are somewhat divided over how the federal government should fight terrorism.
A recent Quinnipiac poll says 59 percent of Americans want captured terrorists tried by the military, and a CBS News poll says 55 percent of Americans want the prison at Guantanamo Bay to remain open.
However, there is confusion in the air because another CBS poll says that 55 percent of Americans think the president is doing a good job on terrorism. Just 34 percent believe he is not. So that doesn't really add up.
Most Americans disagree with the president on two key anti-terror issues: Gitmo and military courts. But they still support him on the terrorism issue overall.
Now, there was an interesting political display on the Sunday morning shows. We are billing it "The Battle of the Vice Presidents." In this corner, Dick Cheney:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: Up until 9/11, all terrorist attacks were criminal acts. After 9/11, we made the decision that these were acts of war, these were strategic threats to the United States. Once you make that judgment, then you can use a much broader range of tools, in terms of going after your adversary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Mr. Cheney went on to say that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court is a big mistake, as is closing down Guantanamo Bay.
In reply, Vice President Joe Biden said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT: Dick Cheney's a fine fellow. He's entitled to his own opinions. He's not entitled to rewrite history. The president of the United States said in the State of the Union we're at war with Al Qaeda. He stated — and by the way, we're pursuing that war with a vigor like it's never been seen before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
To be fair, both sides have a decent argument when it comes to downgrading Al Qaeda. The Bush administration's aggressive anti-terror policies kept the nation safe for seven years. The Obama administration has terrorized the terrorists by a very aggressive drone missile program.
However, there is a major philosophical difference. The Bush administration saw the situation as a war, while the Obama administration largely sees it as criminal activity.
Over the weekend, Mr. Obama's top anti-terrorism guy John Brennan addressed the issue that 20 percent of terrorists released from Gitmo are back fighting the USA:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN BRENNAN, OBAMA COUNTERTERRORISM ADVISER: People sometimes use that figure 20 percent and say oh my goodness one out of five detainees return to some type of extremist activity. You know, the American penal system, the recidivism rate is up in about 50 percent or so as far as return to crime. Twenty percent isn't that bad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Well that statement has caused major controversy. But there is no question Mr. Brennan is comparing criminal recidivism like robbers to Al Qaeda.
That's where "Talking Points" has a problem. We are in a war with the jihadists. The Obama administration does not say that, with the exception of the State of the Union, but it's the truth. And I believe truth is a powerful weapon in defeating the Islamic killers who are trying to destroy us.
===
IPCC revealed as blowhards
Andrew Bolt
Now the IPCC is accused of telling untruths in its fourth assessment report about hurricanes, too.
The Register:
Les Hatton once fixed weather models at the Met Office. Having studied Maths at Cambridge, he completed his PhD as metereologist…Every IPCC error revealed so far exaggerates fears of global warming. That alone says plenty.
Hatton has released what he describes as an ‘A-level’ statistical analysis, which tests six IPCC statements against raw data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) Administration.... He found that North Atlantic hurricane activity increased significantly, but the increase was counterbalanced by diminished activity in the East Pacific, where hurricane-strength storms are 50 per cent more prevalent. The West Pacific showed no significant change. Overall, the declines balance the increases… This isn’t indicative of an increase in atmospheric energy manifesting itself in storms…
The IPCC does indeed conclude that “there is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones.” If only the IPCC had stopped there. Yet it goes on to make more claims, and draw conclusions that the data doesn’t support.
The IPCC’s WG1 paper states: “There are also suggestions of increased intense tropical cyclone activity in some other regions where concerns over data quality are greater.” Hatton points out the data quality is similar in each area.
The IPCC continues: “It is more likely than not (> 50%) that there has been some human contribution to the increases in hurricane intensity.” But, as Hatton points out, that conclusion comes from computer climate models, not from the observational data, which show no increase....
The IPCC’s AR4 chapter lead was Kevin Trenberth, who features prominently in the Climategate emails. In 2005, the National Hurricane Center’s chief scientist Chris Landsea resigned his post in protest at the treatment of the subject by Trenberth.
“I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.”
===
NOTICE TAKEN
Tim Blair
“I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs,” complains the CRU’s Phil Jones, “because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process.” His latest thoughts on climate issues – including an interesting admission on decline-hiding – may be found here. Let the peer review begin.
===
BACK IN BLACK
Tim Blair
Speaking of art, reader Tone spots Australia’s greatest car:
Parked outside the AC/DC concert at Docklands on Monday night. Note the licence plate:
Surely it deserves some kind of award.
===
EATER GARRETT
Tim Blair
Imre Salusinszky covers the latest crisis:
Environment Minister Peter Garrett was yesterday defending the Rudd government’s Dingoes in Daycare program, as the toll of dead or missing babies and preschoolers linked to the initiative continues to rise.
“This is a well-conceived, well-funded program,” Mr Garrett told parliament during a heated question time. “If some of the dingoes we have placed in or near preschools have not been muzzled properly, that is a result of shoddy workmanship by individuals acting outside the guidelines.”
Dingoes in Daycare was an innovative program conceived by the government as a way of protecting a vulnerable species, while at the same time keeping the nation’s preschools and kindergartens neat and clean.
===
SNOW JOB
Tim Blair
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner explains Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s accidental meeting with Seven Network owner Kerry Stokes:
My understanding is that Stephen Conroy was on a holiday that he paid for completely. So he’s on his own time, a holiday that he has taken where he just happened to be in the same place as Kerry Stokes and he’s gone and caught up with him for an afternoon or something like that.Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph editorial wasn’t entirely convinced:
One month before Communications Minister Stephen Conroy gave Australian TV networks a $250 million cut in licence fees, he happened to bump into Seven boss Kerry Stokes.And now Conroy sets things straight:
According to Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, the pair by sheer coincidence ended up in the same country at the same time. In the same state. In the same resort. On the same ski run. It’s possible, of course.
But a TV executive might roll his eyes at this if it were a mini-series plot device.
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner had earlier claimed the senator “just happened to be in the same place” as Mr Stokes but Senator Conroy contradicted him yesterday to confirm the “catch-up” was organised ahead of their separate visits.Maybe not exciting, but … interesting.
“I knew that Mr Stokes was in Colorado and I was going to be in Colorado and we organised to catch up. It’s as exciting as that.”
UPDATE. Meanwhile, in the batt cave:
Environment Minister Peter Garrett was back in Canberra yesterday but remained holed up in his office as the roofing insulation scandal gained momentum.Legal challenges loom following the opening of today’s Senate inquiry.
A day after their boss visited the New England National Park, Garrett’s staff yesterday confirmed that installers who failed to meet government regulation requirements may still be working, with the department still trawling through a deluge of paperwork.
===
Proof: police won’t tell the truth about the Indian bashings
Andrew Bolt
My column today accused police of not giving us the statistics to show how bad crime is. Nor would they confess that many of the attacks on Indians here were in fact committed by thugs from an ethnic background.
On the same day, a Victoria University survey of the safety of international students here is released which reluctantly, obliquely but unmistakably confirms both my charges - and shows our yes-but-no police playing down what everyone else involved can plainly see. I’ve highlighted the clues:
There was agreement across all non-police respondents, however, about who the perpetrators of violence are. Perpetrators of violence were consistently identified as being groups of young, uneducated and alienated men. Police interviewees, however, suggested that without being able to draw on specific data about offenders from the Victoria Police database, they could not speak with certainty about offender profiles other than to say that they were overwhelmingly male.So police say that the attacks on Indians here can’t be blamed on ethnic gangs because they don’t keep the statistics, and, besides, some of the gangs include an Anglos or two, or someone from some other ethnic group, so there. Meanwhile even social workers concede what the police can’t say straight - that the attackers were often people newly arrived here. Which, the report’s authors refuse to add, tends to mean Africans and Pacific Islanders.
Police officers did stress, however, that anecdotal reporting suggested that where groups of offenders were responsible for assaults against international students, there was no evidence of ethnic or racial homogenisation within the groups, with the majority being mixedrace, mixed-ethnicity groups of offenders across the cultural spectrum, sometimes including but definitely not limited to young male offenders of Anglo-Celtic background, and sometimes not including Anglo-background youth at all.
As with the police observations on this issue, there was broad recognition by stakeholders in general that perpetrators of violence are often from multi-ethnic backgrounds. Youth and community service providers also indicated that those who were known to be involved in crime are often relatively new arrivals to Australia themselves and had grown up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
Yes, we have a race problem with the attacks on Indians - and so many of the rest of us. But it’s a very difference race problem than you’ve been told. And the police refuse to tell the full truth.
===
Question is: will Hillary challenge?
Andrew Bolt
A CNN poll shows just how badly Obama is struggling:
52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn’t deserve reelection in 2012, according to a new poll.
===
Neal pushes Labor mate to the head of the hospital queue
Andrew Bolt
How Labor MP Belinda Neal gives her supporters a leg up:
Last night Ms Neal denied allegations that she had offered to help a 72-year-old senior Labor Party branch figure get her hip-replacement surgery performed earlier if she voted for Ms Neal in the pre-selection.And if you’re not a Labor pre-selector… well, live in pain, jerk.
The allegations have been made by Louisa Sauvage, the acting president and treasurer of the Wamberall/Terrigal branch of the ALP, in Ms Neal’s seat of Robertson.
Ms Sauvage said Ms Neal visited her home last Friday to ask whether she would sign the MP’s preselection nomination form.
“She saw me with a walking stick and asked me what was wrong,” Ms Sauvage said. “I told her what the problem was and she said, ‘I think I might be able to do something for you’...”
Ms Sauvage said that on Monday morning Ms Neal called her about 8.30am and told her to promise not to tell anybody “but I think we can organise something for you”.
“She then told me I had to promise that I would vote for her,” Ms Sauvage said.
But last night Ms Neal denied acting improperly. She said: “After I visited Ms Sauvage and requested her support . . . she then raised her pain and her distress at having to wait a long time for an operation…
“Over the next couple of days I investigated and determined it might be possible for her to have her operation earlier if the operation were undertaken by a doctor who might have an earlier available vacancy....”
Ms Sauvage has been on a waiting list with the NSW Health system for three months and was told last week that it would be another 10 months at least before she could expect to have her surgery done. Late yesterday Ms Sauvage said she was phoned unexpectedly by the Wyong Hospital and told that a place had been found for her in April.
===
The day Jones let his (Labor) guest speak…
Andrew Bolt
Gavin Atkins compares how Lateline’s Tony Jones interview Labor’s Treasurer, Wayne Swan, with how he interviews the Liberal’s shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey:
Percentage of interview timeAtkins then gives examples of the kind of heckling Jones used against Hockey.
From a 3482 word segment, 2027 words were spoken by Hockey and 1455 words by Tony Jones - thus Tony Jones took up 42 per cent of the words used in the Hockey interview.
Out of a 2960 word segment, Treasurer, Wayne Swan spoke 2190 words, 870 words by Tony Jones, thus Tony Jones took up 29 per cent of the words in the Swan interview.
Interruptions
As indicated by the ellipsis punctuation (…) appearing at the end of an unfinished sentence, Hockey was interrupted 20 times.
As indicated by the ellipsis punctuation (…) appearing at the end of an unfinished sentence, Swan was interrupted 0 times.
(Link is playing up. You’ll have to cut and paste: http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/gavin-atkins-shadowlands )
===
Media Watch is overheating in its climate jihad
Andrew Bolt
Like previous hosts, Jonathan Holmes is now using Media Watch to prosecute an ideological campaign - this time to defend his global warming faith.
Last week Holmes tried (unsuccessfully) to discredit climate sceptic Lord Monckton, without even pretending that Monckton’s alleged sins were those of a journalist or media outlet - which is actually Media Watch’s true brief.
This week, Holmes acknowledged (only) one of the scandals now engulfing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but then devoted the bulk of his criticism for a misquotation by some sceptics instead.
Fair enough to nail those who alleged, apparently falsely, that former IPCC chief and alarmist Sir John Houghton had once claimed:
Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen.But context is all. First, I ask again why Media Watch has for so long given a pass to other misquotations, fabrications, exaggerations and alarmist predictions by climate alarmists, whether journalists, scientists or professional doom-mongers such as Tim Flannery and Al Gore? To be so savage on an atypical slip by a small rump of sceptics, while almost silent on the stock-in-trade fake scares of the alarmists, betrays an agenda.
But second is this. While it seems true that Houghton indeed has not said “Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen”, Media Watch should perhaps have noted he has indeed said something very much like it:
If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.And without in any way excusing misquotations, I rather feel that the critical issue here is not Houghton’s form of words but his attitude.
(Declaration: I have never cited the suspect quote attributed to Houghton.)
If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.
(Thanks to reader itsfaircomment.com.)
UPDATE
Reader Vivienne has caught a far more convincing report on the state of the global warming scare:
===
Better more members, however mediocre, than more pay for the best
Andrew Bolt
A classic illustration of union leaders confusing their own interests with that of their members:
THE NSW teachers union opposed a pay rise worth about $8000 a year for a new breed of “super teachers” entering classrooms this year.But that’s far-Left unions for you. They rather have more members, badly paid, than fewer who were paid top dollar. And as for any scheme which singled out the finest,,,
The NSW and federal governments announced in July the creation of a corps of highly accomplished teachers to work in disadvantaged schools as one of the first initiatives funded under a national partnership to improve teacher quality…
But the NSW Teachers Federation ... said the union had opposed the extra money on the basis that the government would be able to create a greater number of highly accomplished teachers if they paid them slightly less…
Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said it “beggars belief” that a teachers union would seek to take extra money away from teachers.
===
This patronising is a clue to the anti-democratic agenda
Andrew Bolt
Paul Kelly is rightly scathing:
THE Rudd government is now overdue to respond to Frank Brennan’s 2009 report seeking new policy and legal entrenchments of human rights: a “true believers” agenda largely deserted by the Australian people…
The Brennan report (recommending a human rights act) is a brilliant yet unconscious insight into the patronising morality at work that would be lethal for Rudd Labor. Its spirit is that the uneducated Australian public must be challenged to “reconsider current attitudes” and find a means to “recognition of other people’s dignity, culture and traditions”. Human rights advances depend on “reducing the levels of fear and ignorance that surround many aspects of life’.
Australians must be subjected to a “comprehensive human rights plan’ anchored in the school system and in the community to correct their thinking.
This is human rights dogma seeking an ideological re-positioning of our democracy.
===
Beware of the “they”
Andrew Bolt
Cricket writer Peter Roebuck is furious with a “they” he never actually identifies:
The foul smell of evil hovers over sporting competition. Now the terrorists talk of destroying the Commonwealth Games, among the most ancient, absurd and happiest of sporting occasions. Now they talk of disrupting the hockey World Cup, another glorious and unspoilt enterprise in which numerous nations compete… Now they talk about stopping the Indian Premier League, the most cosmopolitan of cricketing activities, a tournament in which people from all corners, including supposedly bitter rivals, play in the same sides. ..Who is this “they”? Why can’t Roebuck say?
Sometimes the terrorists achieve their foul purposes; they did so in Munich in 1972 and not so long ago they struck in the streets of Pakistan as bullets blazed at the Sri Lankan cricket team bus.
Or are his cricket reports similarly vague:
They beat them by 188 somethings somewhere...
===
A pressing engagement with Clinton
Andrew Bolt
Well, that’s awkward for Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski.
===
Saved isn’t stolen
Andrew Bolt
IT’S two years since Kevin Rudd said sorry to the “stolen generations”, so you’d think someone could have found some of the victims by now.
But no.
Last week’s anniversary of the Prime Minister’s sorry speech was marked instead by two efforts which backfired so badly that they merely confirm the “stolen generations” as the greatest lie told of our past.
For years I have challenged the authors of the “stolen generations” myth to name just 10 of the up to 100,000 children they claim were stolen simply for being Aboriginal.
To be precise: to name just 10 of the children stolen, as leading propagandist Professor Robert Manne put it, “not from harm ... but from their Aboriginality”, by racist authorities who “wished ... to help keep White Australia pure”.
Just 10. A doddle, right?
But, strangely, Manne kept failing my challenge. He’d name instead, say, a 12-year-old girl who’d been found with syphilis, or a boy abandoned by his mother, or a boy sent by his mother to a boarding school, or a girl sent to a home by her white father, or a boy rescued from near-slavery, or a boy found by a court to have been neglected or even children evacuated from war zones.
And it’s the same story again with last week’s attempts at victim-finding.
The most astonishing was that by ABC Radio National’s Awaye! program, which in a debate about the “stolen generations” presented as a victim Helen Moran (above), co-chairwoman of the National Sorry Day Committee.
Yet only two years ago, this same ABC had made clear that Moran was not stolen just for being Aboriginal, but seemed in fact to have been rescued from neglect, if not actual abandonment by her parents, who faced court as a result.
Moran herself in 2008 explained her removal like this: “We were told different stories so we were told that we were fairly poor, that we were living in bad conditions, we were told that they weren’t looking after us properly. We were told that Dad abandoned us all and Mum was left with six children. We were told that we were abandoned by both of them.”
===
The police statistics are just one more crime
Andrew Bolt
THE violence in Victoria is one scandal. The other scandal is that the Brumby Government and its police minions refuse to let us know how bad it’s got.
Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu last week released statistics, based on police data, which showed the number of assaults had jumped 70 per cent since Labor came to power in 1999.
The most spectacular rises were in assaults of the kind you see outside nightclubs, or on city streets and railways platforms.
Assaults by strangers rose an astonishing 269 per cent, and pack attacks - assaults by gangs of four or more - were up 124 per cent. Serious injuries resulting from assaults went from 1308 to 3114.
So you’d think the evidence was in to back the anecdotes we so often hear of worsening street violence - worse not just in number, but savagery.
You’d also think this Government had been caught cold, neglecting for so long the steep rise in street crime that has made so many people too afraid to use late-night trains, for instance.
For instance, how could this Government now justify letting its policing slide so badly that Victoria has the worst police-to-population rate in the nation, with just 206 police for every 100,000 people, against NSW’s 237?
How could it have so surrendered the streets that Frankston Council this week said it had been forced to hire up to eight security officers to make up for the lack of cops on foot patrol?
How could police have so lost the respect of even teenagers that just last weekend a police van was smashed during a call-out to a party at Skye?
How could the force have been so wilfully feminised that one Indian man who rang police for help when being stalked by an ethnic gang in St Albans told the media last week that the police who came tut-tutted: “Why did you buy pizza at nine o’clock, because it’s not safe to come out at night?”
Baillieu’s statistics should have been enough to make the rest of us join the Indians who have been screaming for months that this state isn’t safe enough. Hey, it’s not safe enough for the rest of us, either.
And the police and Government should have offered action. Instead, they offered excuses. The big fudge.
===
What Kevin Rudd?
Andrew Bolt
Janet Albrechtsen on the paradox that’s now hurting Kevin Rudd - that the more you see of him, the less you see:
We know next to nothing about what truly motivates him, apart from seeking and staying in political office. We know he will morph into any character, no matter how unnatural, if he thinks it will boost his political prospects: whether it’s trying to look cool to a newspaper editor by drinking in a New York girlie club, doing deals with Labor’s left faction to win the leadership or extolling his credentials as an economic conservative in order to win over voters at the 2007 election, only to then turn into a long-winded critic of capitalism when it became the orthodoxy.(Thanks to reader CA.)
People are finally noticing that there is a cold calculation to the way Rudd recalibrates his public persona in a way that his predecessors never did. After only a few weeks, viewers of Rudd’s new Friday morning gig on Channel 7’s Sunrise are already complaining that they prefer the Rudd who appeared on Sunrise before the 2007 election to the Rudd who now shows up. Ditto Rudd’s hour-long “get to know the PM” performance on ABC1’s Q&A program last week. When the Twitter PM was grilled by the Twitter generation (in a way the Canberra press gallery has never managed), his awkward smile and contrived mannerisms simply betrayed a deeper phoniness not seen before from our political leaders. Not on top of his own policies and promises, Rudd worked so hard at the spin, he had no idea how to be himself.
===
Palin once more exposes the depravity of her critics
Andrew Bolt
What continually amazes me is that Leftists such as Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane still pride themselves on their greater moral sense:
AMERICAN animated show Family Guy appeared to mock Sarah Palin’s Down syndrome son in an episode broadcast in the US yesterday.I thought MacFarlane using his show to brand John McCain and Palin as Nazis was already low:
A female character who apparently has Down syndrome makes comparisons to Mrs Palin’s 22-month-old son, Trig, in the episode, the New York Daily News reported.
“My dad’s an accountant, and my mom’s the former governor of Alaska,” the disabled character said, without mentioning any names.
But using a politician’s Down Syndrome child as the butt of your jokes is depraved.
===
As big a fix as Climategate
Andrew Bolt
Steve Watson rightly suspects the “independent” investigation into the University of East Anglia’s Climategate scandal was meant to be a whitewash:
(A) third member of the six man panel has been revealed to hold strong views on human induced climate change.(Thanks to reader Steve.)
The impartiality of glaciologist Geoffrey Boulton has been questioned after he admitted he firmly believed that human activities were causing global warming.... In a 2005 paper Boulton penned for Edinburgh University, he wrote that the argument regarding climate change was “over”.
It has also been revealed that Boulton was one of a group of scientists and meteorologists who signed a statement in December, in the wake of the climate research scandal, pledging their continued support for the IPCC and their unwavering conviction that global warming is being caused by humans.
The statement read:We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method.Boulton’s views clearly contradict the founding principle of the inquiry – to appoint experts who do not have a “predetermined view on climate change and climate science"…
The controversy comes within hours of the resignation of another member of the so called “impartial” panel. Dr Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature magazine, stood down on Thursday, after it was disclosed he had previously given an interview in which he defended the actions of researchers at the CRU…
Both cases come as little surprise, given that the head of the “investigation”, Muir Russell, is a member of one of the most vehemently pro man-made global warming advocacy organizations in Europe.
===
What terrified Turnbull now rattles Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Matthew Franklin claims:
LABOR has all but ruled out an early election, with Kevin Rudd’s political strategy aimed squarely at no poll for at least six months.How far the Coalition has come under Abbott, that in just three months the prospect of an early election has changed from a nightmare for the Coalition to a worry for Labor.
And the Prime Minister has also given an explicit promise that structural reform of the health system, which he promised in the 2007 election campaign, will be in place before the election.
UPDATE
More on the spin-like-a-dream-but-deliver-like-a-nightmare theme:
MINERS have savaged Kevin Rudd’s new workplace relations laws, arguing that increased militancy from some unions seeking to expand their coverage and unrealistic pay claims by maritime unions are vindicating their concerns about right of entry and “good faith” bargaining provisions… It argues that poorly designed reforms could undermine international competitiveness, increase sovereign risk and jeopardise investment and business growth.And yet another example of how young Australians are being regulated out of work by an Government which would rather 100 lose their jobs than one lose his “rights”:
VICTORIAN bicycle shop owner John Barker finally relented to young Jorden Tresidder’s persistent requests to work in his shop after school each day.UPDATE 2
But after realising there was a three-hour minimum work rule under Fair Work Australia, he had to break the bad news to Jorden, 15, that he could not hire him for 1 1/2 hours each afternoon...
Mr Barker said young people who could only start work after school would be hit hard, despite assurances by Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard that no worker would be worse off under the laws. “It’s going to disadvantage a lot of kids, especially in country areas where most retail businesses that are able to offer them employment close at five or 5.30pm,” Mr Barker said.
Reader Rebekah has the soundtrack to the next election:
===
Jones comes clean (kind of) on his dodgy data
Andrew Bolt
One of the greatest scandals behind the IPCC’s fourth report was its use of seemingly fraudulent data in a paper co-authored by Climategate ringmaster Phil Jones which purported to use data from weather stations in rapidly urbanising China to claim the urban heat island effect was no big deal.
Jones now finally admits to Nature that his Chinese data was actually dodgy, if not worthless when he and the IPCC used it to claim that the inevitable heating of newly concreted, asphalted and machines-installed cities hasn’t in fact caused much of the rise in measured temperatures:
But in 2007, amateur climate-data analyst Doug Keenan alleged that this claim was false, citing evidence that many of the stations in eastern China had been moved throughout the period of study… Jones says that he did not know that the weather stations’ locations were questionable when they were included in the paper, but as the study’s lead author he acknowledges his responsibility for ensuring the quality of the data. So will he submit a correction to Nature? “I will give that some thought. It’s worthy of consideration,” he says.Keenan, who as an amateur did what the peer-reviewers didn’t and exposed Jones’ trick, now explains why both Jones and Nature still aren’t telling the shamefull truth:
The (Nature) news report also misrepresents my allegations.Read the whole thing here, where you’ll also find Keenan’s proofs. This is the scandal that not only shocked even one of the Climategate scientists, Australian Tom Wigley, but perhaps most starkly illustrates how corrupt some of the science behind the great warming scare became.
My principal allegation is that some of the data on station histories never existed. Specifically, Jones et al. (1990) claim to have sourced their data from a report that was published by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yet for 49 of the 84 meteorological stations that Jones et al. relied upon, the DOE/CAS Report states “station histories are not currently available” and “details regarding instrumentation, collection methods, changes in station location or observing times … are not known”.
Those statements imply that the quoted claim from Jones et al. is impossible: “stations were selected on the basis of station history: we chose those with few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times”. ..
I have also alleged that, by 2001, Jones knew there were severe problems with the Chinese research and yet he continued using that research–including allowing it to be relied on by the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report..
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