=== Todays Toon ===
By threatening war with England, raising taxes and endorsing slavery Polk goes down in the annals as a successful Democrat Pres.
James Knox Polk (pronounced /ˈpoʊk/ POKE) (November 2, 1795 – June 15, 1849) was the 11th President of the United States (1845–1849). Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented the state of Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as Speaker of the House (1835–1839) and Governor of Tennessee (1839–1841) before becoming president.
A firm supporter of Andrew Jackson, Polk was the last strong pre-Civil War president. Polk is noted for his foreign policy successes. He threatened war with Britain then backed away and split the ownership of the Northwest with Britain. He is more famous for leading the nation into the Mexican–American War, in which the US was victorious. He lowered the tariff and established a treasury system that lasted until 1913.
The expansion reopened a furious national debate over allowing slavery in the new territories. The controversy was inadequately arbitrated by the Compromise of 1850, and finally found its ultimate resolution on the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War. Polk signed the Walker Tariff that brought an era of nearly free trade to the country until 1861. He oversaw the opening of the U.S. Naval Academy and the Smithsonian Institution, the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and the issuance of the first postage stamps in the United States, introduced by his Postmaster General Cave Johnson.
Being satisfied with the accomplishments of his term, he decided to retire and not seek re-election. He died of cholera three months after his term ended. Scholars have ranked him favorably on the list of greatest presidents for his ability to set an agenda and achieve all of it.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”- 2 Timothy 1:7=== Headlines ===
Survivors of Chile's 8.8-magnitude earthquake have begun looting supermarkets for food while rescuers race to find people alive under the mountains of rubble / AP
Death toll reaches 708 in earthquake-ravaged Chile as crews search for hundreds more missing in the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Towns 'swept away' in Chile
CHILE'S quake toll passes 700, with towns washed away and millions more displaced.
Rock, Meet Hard Place
Senate maneuver would allow Democrats to move forward on costly budget items in health care overhaul but would eliminate popular reforms like pre-existing conditions
Will Rangel Lose His Gavel?
Fate of House Ways and Means committee chair Charlie Rangel uncertain after admonishment by ethics panel
Search Heats Up for Calif. Honor Student
Thousands of volunteers scour California lake for any sign of Chelsea King, who vanished while jogging on Thursday
Jewel Thieves Rob Store But Leave Child Behind
PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia police say a pair of thieves made off with some expensive jewelry but left behind a 4-year-old boy. Police say a man and woman entered the Platinum & Ice Jewelry store on South Street with the child at about 3 p.m. Saturday. They asked to see some rings and then grabbed a tray of items valued at more than $100,000 and ran out.
Boom city hits $1 billion property mark
RECORD weekend for auction prices and strong private sales reflects "surging confidence".
Young drivers logging up the lies
QUARTER of P-platers say log books were "completely false" when they gained their licence.
I won't risk my life for gold, says Rice
SWIMMING champion may not defend her Commonwealth title in India because of security fears.
Disabled AC/DC fan impaled in mosh pit
MAN seriously hurt after friend accidentally catapults his wheelchair into the crowds.
Stillbirth mum takes fight to defence chiefs
BABY death secrets sought as part of new compo fight blaming nuclear contamination in outback.
Why it costs $400 just for a tradie to turn up
PLUMBERS and electricians are charging up to $200 an hour - and double that on weekends - as the Government's stimulus package creates a boom for tradespeople.
Comeback kid Gordon Brown set to win British election
The Conservative Party under David Cameron had enjoyed a 10-point lead over Labour and Mr Brown until January but voters have begun to register their unease as the expected May 6 general election draws nearer. The polls are all the more worrying for Mr Cameron as Mr Brown has suffered bruising attacks in the press over bullying accusations and his general fitness to lead, and has come under pressure from many within his own party to stand down. Mr Cameron is deperately trying to reconnect with voters yesterday told party members that it was his patriotic duty to unseat Mr Brown. His speech came as a more damaging details about Mr Brown's toxic relationship with Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, were revealed.
Half of Australian students have bullied another child, says survey
HALF of Australian school students have bullied another chikd, while 70 per cent say that bullying is a moderate to extremely serious problem in their school. The results of a national survey of 1000 students from Years 7 to 10 who had just undergone an anti-bullying seminar suggest the problem could be far greater than previous research has found.
=== Comments ===
Talking PointsPresident Obama's shoes
===
Hannity's America: 2/26
Biden declares it's easy being vice president
===
Climate Scientists Agree to Take Another Shot at Global Warming Research
By Bret Baier
Friday Follow-Up
We begin with a Friday Follow-Up to an earlier story.
It is back to the drawing board for the world's climate scientists. In the wake of mistakes, errors and apparent cover-ups surrounding global warming research, the World Meteorological Organization has approved, in principle, a do-over.
The proposal was presented Monday by Britain's Met Office. It calls for the collection of more precise temperature data and greater transparency.
However, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging environment ministers to reject attempts by skeptics to undermine efforts at a climate change agreement. He says global warming poses a clear and present danger.
Hot or Not
Speaking of precise data, some scientists say temperature sensors across the U.S. are compromised.
A volunteer group that tracks weather stations says sensors are exposed to artificial heat sources and not in compliance with the National Climatic Data Center regulations. SurfaceStations.org founder Anthony Watts claims 90 percent of the total 1,200 weather stations are too close to things like parking lots, garbage incinerators, and airports.
But climate scientists who analyze the data say they are able to adjust for faulty locations.
Sad State of Affairs
An internal report criticizes the State Department's public affairs office for poor communication, low morale and uneven leadership.
The inspector general's report found that some employees had been instructed not to return phone calls from reporters asking sensitive questions. The AP reports it also found the environment in one office was so tense and hostile, several workers feared violence.
Spokesman PJ Crowley today called it a tough report. On the issue of answering reporters' questions, Crowley said they have a clear policy and are committed to being responsive.
Bare Necessities
And finally, people in the world's developing countries often have too little food, water and money.
But they apparently have plenty of cell phones. The U.N. now says 57 percent of the people in developing nations are signed up for service. Internet use is also growing, but at a slower rate.
===
NEW AGE DAWNS
Tim Blair
From the archives:
File details: “Maths teacher Dick Jones demonstrates the use of a calculator to students at Cleveland Boys High in Sydney. News Ltd. file pic. dated 30/1/1981. Picture: Robert McKell.” - I remember Mr Jones at Bass Hill HS. He was one of the best Math Teachers I have worked with, along with Mr Cooke and Clunas at Moorebank HS and Mr Blair at Casula HS. - ed.
===
SHOP OF HORRORS
Tim Blair
One kebab, please. Hold the blood.
===
COOL BRITANNIA
Tim Blair
Environment columnist Peter Gorrie rages against the polls:
This drives me nuts.Look on the bright side, Pete. An entire quarter of the British population still shares your mental state. Speaking of views altered since last year, here’s an ABC report broadcast in July:
A recent British opinion poll found only one-quarter of respondents believe human activities are causing climate change – down 16 percentage points since November.
A dire bushfire forecast has been issued for Victoria, with this summer’s season expected to be even fiercer than the Black Saturday bushfires that killed more than 170 people earlier this year.We’re now at the end of summer. Nobody died.
A leaked report from the state’s Department of Sustainability and Environment says a season with the “greatest potential loss to life and property” is now in sight.
UPDATE. Gorrie shouldn’t blame the public, according to this guy:
Environmentalist Tim Flannery has blamed scientists for a rise in climate skepticism, saying they had not clearly explained the science to a ‘’confused Australian public’’.No wonder they’re confused. Flannery keeps telling our soaked citizenry that they’re out of water.
===
SCREEN TEST
Tim Blair
Ferrari crew members don’t like it when McLaren engineers look at their latest car during winter testing.
===
TAXES OF COURAGE
Tim Blair
A-grade artistic arrogance from British playwright Jonathan Holmes:
A mature democracy should have the courage and the understanding to see the debt it owes its artists …If only we were brave enough to pay them even more.
The benefits of the arts are such a no-brainer, so obvious, that the sole genuine reason for cuts is censorship of some form. In the 20th century, the only governments to systematically attack the arts have been the ones that also attacked democracy.By “systematically attack”, he means “reduce public funding”.
Yet the most profound argument for art runs much deeper than any of this. Art, very simply, is how we comment on our world, how we …Dear God, I do believe he’s actually going to say it:
… speak truth to power.While I’m speaking vomit to carpet, please visit David Thompson for a far more comprehensive review of Holmes’s pleading. In other news of our superiors, James Campbell joins the queue of those taking exception to the views of Cate Blanchett.
===
Electrical Safety Office: don’t trust Rudd’s checks
Andrew Bolt
The disaster just got worse. Kevin Rudd’s plan to check the safety of the 48,000 homes that installed his free foil insulation is useless.
Rudd will pay inspectors $400 a house to check if badly installed foil risks electrifying the ceilings, but the Queensland Government’s Electrical Safety Office warns that even foil that’s safe now could in time kill people.
It warns that the only way to guarantee more people won’t be electrocuted is to take out what Rudd spent many millions installing:
There are electrical safety risks associated with ceiling spaces where foil ceiling insulation has been laid on the ceiling structure. In such cases, the foil insulation is likely to cover and has the potential to make contact with electrical cables/equipment and other services in the ceiling space.Reader S. explains it crisply:
Also, ceiling insulation faults, defective electrical cables e.g. perished or rodent-damaged cable insulation and home maintenance activities may, over time, result in electrification of the foil insulation. These factors increase the risk to householders, and to tradespeople undertaking work in ceiling spaces. Some of the associated risks may include electrocution, serious electric shock and burns.
The Electrical Safety Office has the following safety advice for householders and tradespeople needing to access the ceiling space of a house fitted with foil insulation. This advice applies whether or not the foil insulation has been electrically checked by a licensed electrical contractor since its installation.
To reduce these risks, householders and tradespeople should not enter the ceiling space of a house where foil ceiling insulation is installed. If access to the ceiling space cannot be avoided, householders and tradespeople should ensure that all sources of electricity supply to the premises are isolated before entry to the ceiling space. This may include the identification and isolation of all sources of electricity supply to the premises by a licensed electrical contractor.
As an electrical contractor, now in Qld, you could never, ever be confident that you’d be safe in the roof space or that you won’t face your house burning down or becoming electrified at some point in the future. Even the millions being spent on inspections now will mean nothing, even the next day as a rat could have chewed on the electrical cable and the foil becomes live.UPDATE
What a shambles.
Worse and worse:
Mr Rudd’s extraordinary act of contrition comes as the National Electrical and Communications Association estimates it could cost taxpayers $500 million to clean up, repair and replace unsafe and poor-quality roof insulation…(Thanks to reader Pira.)
And the Herald Sun can reveal that crime gangs in Romania, Lebanon and Asia have been skimming millions of dollars from the roof insulation scheme. Federal Police are investigating fake insulation companies set up by the gangs to claim $1200 rebates for work that has not been done.
UPDATE 2
And it will get worse still, with Rudd just one bad fire from losing his job:
INSULATION batts installed in a Melbourne house on the day the federal government axed its national scheme have caught fire, causing thousands of dollars in damage…
Metropolitan Fire and Emergency Services Board investigator Rod East said the fire was caused by badly installed insulation batts.
“They laid them completely across everything, and they went straight over the downlights, which can run up to 300C,” Mr East said. “The installer charged an extra $200 to put downlight covers on, which he didn’t do....”
Mr East said he had attended about 21 fires caused by insulation batts since Christmas. ”We will see more fires as the weather starts to change and people keep their lights on longer,” he said.
===
The Left gets your cash to drown out debate
Andrew Bolt
Mark Day is right to worry about the ABC using taxpayers’ money to crowd out the the chatter of the free market:
The ABC has long been perceived as a non-threatening media entity, designed to provide niche services where commercial interest was low. But its moves into the online space, including free news websites, the development of 30 regional hubs to develop user-generated online content and the introduction of a new 24/7 free-to-air TV news channel, are being seen as threatening…This would be slightly less of an issue if the ABC didn’t preach one brand of politics above all other, distorting debates and muffling inconvenient truths.
The chief of the regional publisher APN News and Media, Brendan Hopkins, said last week that the ABC was competing with it in the bush with the regional hubs—an initiative made possible only by a $15m extra grant thrown in by taxpayers. Hopkins says it is a travesty that taxpayer funds are being used to compete with local news providers…
Hopkins is singing from the same song sheet as Brian McCarthy, now chief executive of Fairfax following its merger with Rural Press. He says the ABC is out to steal his audience and has objected to the use of public funds to “build empires.”
Similarly, the arrival later this year of a free nonstop news service on the ABC’s high-definition channel will have a negative impact on Sky News, the Foxtel/Austar local news channel which is owned by the Seven and Nine networks, together with BSkyB in the UK (38 per cent owned by News Corporation, owner of The Australian). True, advertisers can’t buy time on the ABC, but the ABC can tear away eyeballs and therefore bring about lower ad revenues for commercial operators…
When is enough enough? Direct grants to run the ABC and SBS, plus the free-to-air networks’ $250m licence reduction, add up to $1.4 billion this year. What are we prepared to bear next year, or the years after that when mobile TV services will bloom and internet TV will allow infinite content. Will the ABC demand to compete in these spaces?
Example: how much has the ABC covered up the flaws in the global warming “science” that have now been so spectacularly revealed? Has the ABC once dared to question the astonishing “stolen generations” myth that is now killing Aboriginal children?
Or judge from Errol Simper’s misplaced praise for the ABC’s Lateline:
The program has a reassuring culture—amounting to a tradition—of thoughtful, intellectually aware presentation: Kerry O’Brien, Maxine McKew, Tony Jones, Leigh Sales, Virginia Trioli, Ticky Fullerton, whoever it has been down the years.The culture that Simper praises as “comforting” is one preached by presenters exclusively of the Left, which is indeed a comfort to those of like mind.
Or take the hosts of the Media Watch: every one of the seven it’s had have been of the Left, too, and have used the show to convict conservatives of thought crimes. The ABC claims to be all in favor of diversity, but it is not in the one area that should matter most - a diversity of ideas.
For it to then be funded so shout down those offering alternative perspectives seems an abuse of its role, of taxpayers’ funds and of free speech - in every meaning of the word “free”.
===
If Rudd attacked China the way he attacks our friends…
Andrew Bolt
Not content with angering allies such as Japan, India, Indonesia and Singapore, the Rudd Government now slaps Israel, too, in perhaps the most dangerousy foolish of all its snubs:
AUSTRALIA has abstained from a key UN vote supporting a war crimes investigation of Israel’s military assault on Gaza last year, three months after voting against the resolution.Not related to the Dubai murder? But who now trusts a word this spin-mad Government says?
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said yesterday the decision was unrelated to “recent events”, a reference to Canberra’s anger at Israel’s failure to explain the use of three Australian passports by suspects in the murder in Dubai of a senior Palestinian militant.
Not an official in Smith’s own ministry:
However, a Foreign Affairs Ministry source told the Herald there was no doubt the decision to abstain was intended as a sign to Israel not to take Australian support for granted… “But there is no question that the debacle surrounding our passports being used in Dubai helped to make up the government’s mind to abstain. The final decision was taken late on Friday, Australian time, just a few hours before the vote,” said the official.Not Daniel Flitton, diplomatic editor of The Age:
This vote is clearly an act of retaliation by Australia - and by Britain, France and Germany. Israel has lost friends thanks to the sordid affair in Dubai concerning fake passports and murder, and the stink will hang in the air a good while yet.Charming. Throw Israel to the wolves for (allegedly) asssassinating a terrorist leader buying weapons to use against Israeli citizens. And the difference between this and killing Islamists (and bystanders) in Pakistan by drones?
UPDATE
Labor MP Michael Danby, a Jew, says he’d wished his Foreign Affairs Minister had bothered to tell Labor colleagues about this changed vote before telling the papers, and says the original “no” vote was the correct one.
You’re in the wrong party, Michael.
UPDATE 2
Jews in Australia: 89,000
Muslims in Australia: 340,000
===
Not to be
Andrew Bolt
Don’t teach students the best that’s been thought and said. Too brain-hurty in these more barbaric times:
SHAKESPEARE has been dumped from an HSC English course to make the subject more relevant to students.Aah, the old “relevance” argument. Part of my youth was spent in a railway town on the Nullarbor plain, among the children of fettlers. “Relevance” means that I and my fellow students should have been taught nothing more than Thomas the Tank Engine and Train Driving for Dummies.
The English Studies course has abandoned classical works in favour of contemporary texts such as Catcher In the Rye and movies such as The Matrix and is being piloted in 75 high schools for senior students who have no plans to go on to university.
(Thanks to reader CA.)
UPDATE
A fashionable and destructive shame-Australia myth is to be bracketted with Anzac Day for impressionable Year three students:
The draft curriculum shows students in year 3 will learn about national celebrations and days of significance ”including Australia Day, Anzac Day, Sorry Day”.
===
Gore promises the Warmist Inquisition
Andrew Bolt
I once heard Al Gore speak - quite heatedly, after I challenged him - and was struck by how Biblical was his gospel of global warming.
Now in the New York Times he reveals just how religious is his mission, and just how theocratic would be any government he and his global warming followers controlled:
From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.He will use the law to redeem your soul. To which the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witchhunters would have said: “Amen.”
(Thanks to reader Miles.)
UPDATE
Scratch one of Gore’s plagues of Egypt:
RESEARCH by hurricane scientists may force the UN climate panel to retract its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms.
The benchmark 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said an increase in cyclone-force storms since 1970 was probably caused by climate change.... The cover of some editions of Mr Gore’s latest book, Our Choice, even depicts a world beset by super-cyclones as a warning of what might happen if carbon emissions keep rising.
However, the latest research, just published in the Nature Geoscience journal, paints a very different picture.
It suggests the rise in cyclone frequency since 1995 was part of a natural cycle and that several similar previous increases have been recorded, each followed by a decline.
It draws on computer modelling to predict that the most likely impact of global warming will be to reduce the frequency of tropical storms.
===
Which rock did these parents crawl from?
Andrew Bolt
New laws tend to measure not just new standards but new problems - which suggests we’re getting too feral:
FERAL mums and dads who threaten officials at sports matches face fines of up to $2000.UPDATE
Under a zero-tolerance blitz on players and fans developed by the State Government and Victoria’s peak sporting bodies, a range of hefty fines will be imposed across all codes…
A second offence will cost a player’s club premiership points and could lead to a $2000 fine…
The sports clubs of more than one million Victorians also will be hit hard if they fail to play their part in curbing sports hooligans… Those clubs and associations that do not sign on for the code by July 1 will be in danger of losing vital state government funding.
Another bloody weekend in the city I once thought so genteel:
FRIENDS of a stabbed teen, and a victim slashed with a machete have demanded immediate action on knife crime after five vicious attacks at the weekend.UPDATE 2
A 19-year-old youth was one of four stabbing victims while a fifth man was bashed with a hammer.
How feral precisely? Note that business at this Sydney kebab shop keeps ticking over even as the evidence of the latest vicious brawl stains the counter.
===
When the one-trick pony’s trick gets boring
Andrew Bolt
Glenn Milne says Kevin Rudd’s spin is becoming too obvious, just when he most needs it to get himself out of trouble. Take his new position on public hospitals:
Rudd’s cabinet colleagues will tell you he simply thinks he’s smarter than either them or anyone else, including voters. They are all barely tolerated. So when he gets into trouble and tries to divert attention from his problems he simply assumes the mug voters will buy it.Which illustrates Dennis Shanahan’s point - that Rudds’ new say-sorry spin may actually backfire:
Take health for example, the next big policy reform agenda on Labor’s books. Never mind its seven months late on Rudd’s promised delivery date. But there he was on Insiders yesterday declaring: “The actual operation of the health system, the actual operation of the hospital system, in my experience, is best done by local hospitals themselves.”
Excuse me if I’m mistaken but two things aren’t clear to me here; wasn’t Rudd prior to the last election talking about a federal takeover of state hospital systems? And just last week wasn’t he attacking Tony Abbott’s proposal for local boards to run hospitals?
Actually, I’m relieved to say I’m not mistaken. Listen to the same Rudd in November 2007: “They [the opposition] are about to embark on an administrative explosion within the health and hospital system through the construction of these multiple hospital boards across the country. I want to see, instead, resources used not in administration but in front-line service provision.”
Just as he took responsibility for the roofing disaster and the attendant risk of being blamed for any further house fires or worker injuries, the PM has knowingly accepted responsibility for the latest strategy, which is seen by Labor MPs as “Rudd in the lead and a few in the loop”.UPDATE
The danger for Rudd in reasserting his leadership, trusting in his successful political instincts and rebuilding trust with the electorate through saying sorry is that people will overlook the positives of the first two years of Labor’s golden age of polling, and concentrate on perceived failures, broken promises and disappointment with him personally.
Phillip Coorey:
THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has alarmed colleagues with what some believe is excessive criticism of the government’s performance as he seeks to lift it out of its slump…UPDATE 2
‘’The bottom line is, I think we deserve it, both not just in terms of recent events but more broadly,’’ Mr Rudd said…
One minister said it was one thing to show contrition but inviting broad condemnation when it was unwarranted was ‘’over the top’’ and risked damaging the government.
‘’We’ve been a good government. We’ve done a lot more good than bad,’’ the minister said.
The Australian hears the same:
The prime ministerial contrition comes after several senior Labor sources have been expressing concern at Mr Rudd’s scratchy public performances this year. These concerns predate the fallout from the bungled home insulation program.
It is understood Mr Rudd has been told to be more humble, and to spend more time explaining policies to the public. But the extent of the mea culpa, understood to be at the Prime Minister’s own initiative, surprised some colleagues. They believe Mr Rudd is treading a fine line between contrition and undermining key government achievements, particularly economic management during the global financial crisis.
===
Worst interview ever?
Andrew Bolt
I missed this last week, but politician friend J. rates Justin Madden’s interview with Jon Neil Mitchell as the worst political interview he’s ever heard. (Click the audio.)
Other nominations?
===
I take back my nice words on Lambert
Andrew Bolt
Damn. Just when I try to do the noble thing and give Tim Lambert credit for having argued the science against Lord Monckton, rather than engaged in his more typical sneering and sliding, along comes JoNova to demonstrate that a willingness to believe the best of the worst is usually an error. Her deconstruction of Lambert’s trick against Monckton here.
===
Jones’ CRU felt a warming that others didn’t
Andrew Bolt
Dr Roy Spencer wonders why the Climatic Research Centre of the since-disgraced Phil Jones kept recording temperatures warmer than those of the International Surface Hourly (ISH) weather data archived by NOAA :
Most noteworthy is what appears to be a rather rapid spurious warming in the Jones dataset between 1988 and 1996, with an abrupt “reset” downward in 1997 and then another spurious warming trend after that.Go to the link for more.
It is increasingly apparent that we do not even know how much the world has warmed in recent decades, let alone the reason(s) why. It seems to me we are back to square one.
No comments:
Post a Comment