=== Todays Toon ===
"Now, as I was saying four years ago–"In his 1968 bid for the presidency, Richard Nixon announced to the war-weary country that he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. When he ran for re-election four years later, American troops were still fighting in Indochina, with casualties continuing to climb.
"Now, as I was saying four years ago–", August 9, 1972Ink, graphite, and opaque white over graphite underdrawing on layered paper
Published in the Washington Post (73)
LC-USZ62-126919
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States from 1969–1974 and was also the 36th Vice President of the United States (1953–1961). Nixon was the only President to resign the office and also the only person to be elected twice to both the Presidency and the Vice Presidency.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.”- 1 Timothy 2:5-6=== Headlines ===
In surprise trip to Afghanistan, Obama tells troops he intensified the fight to make sure Taliban and Al Qaeda will not gain upper hand and threaten U.S. security - tougher on Israel - edSunshine State Showdown
Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio trade jabs as 2010's hottest gubernatorial race graces the 'Fox News Sunday' stage
Dems: You'll Learn to Like It
By the time November comes Americans will get used to health care, making it a plus for Dems seeking election
Protesters Demand Pope Quits
Rally calls for Pope Benedict XVI to resign over the Catholic Church's handling of clerical sex abuse cases - the Pope has not done anything wrong, but these activists don't seem to care about that -ed.
A man who kidnapped, tortured and murdered five children in the 1960s has been force-fed through a nasal tube for 10 years, but he says he just wants to starve to deathSmall town teen's violent end
COMMUNITY in shock as girl who was "impossible to hate" found dead in a pool of her own blood.
US questions Rudd's internet filtering plan
THE US Government has weighed into the row over Prime Minister Rudd's plan to censor the web.
Cabbie accused of kidnapping females
RACIAL tensions simmering as Indian driver charged with holding five passengers against their will.
Ironman Abbott overcomes triathlon pain
OPPOSITION Leader becomes the hard man of politics as he crosses the finish line in under 14 hours.
Prince turns $3.6m investment into $66
PRINCE Edward's company implodes, while the investment firm of rock royal Bono struggles.
Detainees flee as PM's 100th boat looms
MAN escapes by strapping himself under a truck as more arrivals put PM Kevin Rudd under pressure.
Stop making TV crime look cool
THE glamorisation of crime has been condemned by Police Chief Andrew Scipione, who says Xbox games, TV and Hollywood crime dramas are "abhorrent".
At least 150 trapped in flooded mine
CHINA suffers yet another mining disaster as underground waters burst into a vast coal complex, trapping 153 workers.
Spin doctors on rate rises
COUNCILS are spending thousands hiring consultants to convince ratepayers to pay more rates.
Keneally Government accused of advertising drugs to teenagers as "nose candy"
THE Keneally Government has been accused of advertising hard drugs to teenagers as if they are a "smorgasbord of fun and games at an amusement park". A postcard authorised by health officials targeting young people shows lines of cocaine and describes them as "nose candy".Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva refuses to yield to Red Shirts during TV talks
LIVE televised talks between Thailand's embattled Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and anti-government protesters have failed to end two weeks of street demonstrations.
=== Comments ===
Refugee trade puts security at stakePiers Akerman
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd’s asylum seeker policy is dead. By no objective criteria can it be said to be operating successfully.
By no objective criteria can it be said to be operating successfully.
The special facility at Christmas Island is full to overflowing, boat people are being flown to mainland detention centres with minimal security checks and, as reported in The Daily Telegraph today, security measures at sites such as Villawood, in Sydney, can no longer cope with the flood.
The orderly process for resettling refugees operated by the UNHCR, as slow as it may have been, has broken down under pressure from the pull factors introduced by the Rudd Government.
Despite claims that the Indonesians are doing more to halt people smuggling through their waters and across their borders, the cash inducements are too great for the criminally-minded, and the penalties too small, to make a difference.
The enticements offered by the Rudd Government’s soft approach to undocumented asylum seekers introduced in August, 2008, has enabled the people smuggling business to flourish.
As the flow of refugees to other nations in other parts of the world has eased, the illegal traffic to Australia has increased, with lethal consequences. The Rudd Government may have thought it could radically alter the strong Howard line and no one would notice but people smugglers forced out of business have returned to the market with a vengeance.
The offshore solution, which evidence shows halted the illegal people traffic, has been all but abandoned. Christmas Island is little more than a temporary sanctuary on the route to the Australian continent.
Even those given negative migration assessments under the United Nations merit system on Christmas Island are transferred to the mainland, where the Rudd Government opens another pathway through an appeal to a mainland-based panel of review.
It can only be a matter of time before a refugee advocacy group tests the legal status of those whose applications for permanent visas have been rejected, and there are judges champing at the bit for such a case to come before their court. Not that the Rudd Government seems interested in rejecting people smugglers’ clients, even when they give cause to be regarded as undesirable.
Northern Territory Coroner Greg Cavanagh earlier this month found that a fire which killed five asylum seekers last April 16 was deliberately lit by three others in order to prevent a return to Indonesia.
The SIEV 36 torching not only cost asylum seekers their lives, it also endangered Australian service personnel attempting to render assistance.
The Rudd Labor Government granted all survivors of the SIEV 36 disaster permanent visas even before the coronial inquiry had been completed. Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis said those visas should be cancelled on character grounds, as the Afghan witnesses lied to the inquest.
Mr Rudd and Immigration Minister Chris Evans have refused to review the visas and are now hiding behind a further inquiry, though Coroner Cavanagh found no Afghan witnesses told the truth about their involvement in or knowledge of the fire and explosion aboard the vessel.
The front page of The Brisbane Sunday Mail yesterday showed a picture of happy Afghan women and children shopping at a suburban mall. They had been fast-tracked off Christmas Island to make way for the new arrivals, just as others were flown out to other centres late Saturday night, because the Government fears another riot now the island’s facilities are even more stretched than they were when detention centre inmates ran amok last November.
The image of newly-arrived asylum seekers with overflowing shopping trolleys, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer, sent a strong message to those hoping to come here. It told them not to go through the official UNHCR channels but, instead, put their money and trust in people smugglers if they want to access permanent visas and all the benefits available to Australian citizens.
The same message is also coming from refugee action groups in Australia, despite the proven risk to those willing to pay and take their chance at sea, and even though each undocumented asylum seeker who arrives takes the place of another refugee awaiting resettlement in a UNHCR camp.
Refugee advocates argue for Australia to take more refugees and penalise other groups who wish to settle here, including those who overstay their visas and those under business or student migration programs.
The Rudd Government acted this year to slash the categories available to those hoping to slip through on student migration programs after widespread rorting, but the argument for increasing the humanitarian refugee intake solely to provide places for those unwilling to subject themselves to the UNHCRs merit program is flawed.
It would be more humane, and less risky, if refugee advocates worked to stop people smugglers instead of tacitly encouraging this sickening traffic. Mr Rudd also professes to be nauseated by the notion of people smuggling.
The day after SIEV 36 was set ablaze he claimed that people smugglers were the “absolute scum of the earth” and should “rot in hell”, but nothing he has subsequently done has matched his rhetoric.
Some refugee advocates, such as author David Marr, mock and sneer at those who wish to see order restored, claiming those who oppose the current chaotic situation believe refugees are “evil”.
Such theatrical hysteria does not constitute debate nor assist those seeking to reduce the risk to lives and end the real evil of people smuggling. How many more deaths are refugee advocates prepared to tolerate in their campaign to force an open door migration policy on Australia?
Why are they are so anxious to give migration preference to those with the money to bribe people smugglers, while those who play by the rules are forced ever backward in migration queues?
Intelligence reports indicate the number of potential people-smuggler clients grows daily, while this government has no plan to reverse its ill-considered policy and no coherent strategy to deal with the growing crisis. - I like migrants and I want there to be more. But I think the boat people are choosing a bad way to come to Australia and I am appalled Rudd is inviting them to choose this method.
Thinking cynically, Rudd probably felt that Mr Howard’s successful solution had fatally damaged the industry, and so changing the laws would allow him a free pass to claim he was more humane and achieving better results. After all it is a tenet of zero tolerance and drug prohibition that if the industry is stopped for a while it will fold.
But it is apparent that this is as much a failure as all of Rudd’s other hair brained policies. But Rudd dare not admit the mistake because he fears being rolled. More than losing an election.
Marr is an advocate and only appears foolish because he has advocated really foolish things. If those Marr follows ever do something wise, Marr might stumble on wisdom. That ain’t happening any time soon. The reason why the industry rebounded so quickly is because it is backed by foreign governments and organizations. Rudd has really exposed Australia and weakened her security. - ed.
===
The usual suspects suspected
Andrew Bolt
This could get a lot bloodier, since the Russians don’t do counter-terrorism surgically:
Russian officials launched a terrorism investigation after 37 people were killed in two explosions that hit the Moscow metro during morning rush hour on Monday, local news agencies reported.
The first hit the Lubyanka Metro Station in central Moscow about 7:56am local time. Twenty-five people were killed and 15 people were injured.
Sky News reported that a second explosion hit the Park Kultury station, three stations away on the same line, about 40 minutes later at 8:38am local time. Emergency services told AFP 12 people were killed and seven injured…
RIA Novosti reported that a security source told the agency the Lubyanka station was hit by a bomb. Interfax, quoting a Russian security source, reported the first blast may have been caused by a suicide bomber.
Russian prosecutors will launch a “terrorism probe” after the two blasts, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
===
Why bother sending a Navy to man Rudd’s red carpet?
Andrew Bolt
What do they mean by “stopped”?
Two more asylum seeker boats carrying 85 passengers stoppd by NavyWhat do they mean by “intercepted”?
HMAS Glenelg last night intercepted a boat carrying 37 asylum seekers and four crew near the Ashmore Islands....Another asylum seeker boat carrying 41 passengers and three crew was intercepted today by HMAS Broome near Christmas Island.In the six years before Kevin Rudd so foolishly weakened on boat people laws, an average of just three boats a year arrived. Since he revealed his “kinder” policies, he’s had to lock upo six times the number of asylum seekers, and 53 boat people have been lured to their deaths.
It was the 32nd asylum seeker boat intercepted in Australian waters this year.
===
How to train an ABC warmist
Andrew Bolt
Ah, the rewards of touting the institutional Left’s preferred positions:
ABC journalist Margot O’Neill is the recipient of the 2010 Donald McDonald ABC scholarship to the Reuters Institute of Oxford. A senior reporter with Lateline, O’Neill has built up an impressive catalogue of investigative work for the program. She is a two-time Walkley Award winner and has taken home a UN Media Peace Award and the national Human Rights Award for TV reporting. Her scholarship will see her spend time at the world-renowned Environmental Change Institute to identify, review and deconstruct climate change reporting.I’ve done a bit of that deconstructing of climate change reporting myself, but without any scholarship and using as my example the reporting of ... why, O’Neill herself. Try here and here.
===
Where there’s love there’s life
Andrew Bolt
I cannot sympathise with suicides when they cause more distress than they end. Natasha van Gor writes:
to my daddy,What a darling.
you will live in mine, chantelles and Karla’s heart for ever.
i can’t imagine life without you, it just doesn’t feel real.
where are you daddy come back.
i want to tell you,
how much i truly love you.
i don’t know what else to say by i was your little princess and always will be no matter what you say.
In my heart forever
your daughter moo xx
Please, please, think of those left behind. Less of this unfortunate trend of celebration, then, and more of this in our life-trashing culture:
For more information on depression and how to seek help on suicide prevention, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 , SANE Helpline on 1800 18 SANE (7263) and Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
(Thanks to reader Wilson.)
===
Webber’s wobbly
Andrew Bolt
Australian Formula 1 driver Mark Webber is wrong about the specific - the law against dopes like Lewis Hamilton doing burnouts on our street - but he’s right in general about Australia:
I think we’ve got to read an instruction book when we get out of bed - what we can do and what we can’t do … put a yellow vest on and all that sort of stuff…
It’s certainly changed since I left here. It pisses me off coming back here, to be honest. It’s a great country but we’ve got to be responsible for our actions and it’s certainly a bloody nanny state when it comes to what we can do.
===
11 more lured to their deaths
Andrew Bolt
The toll of people lured to their deaths after Kevin Rudd softened our boat people policies has gone up to at least 53:
Senior navy sources said they had been told several refugee boats had set sail for Australia last year from the northeast of Sri Lanka, but had not been heard from since.
One vessel sank off the Cocos and Keeling Islands west of Christmas Island in November, with the loss of 11 lives.
===
Shock: female sailors like sex, too
Andrew Bolt
The Navy has spent a lot of money and time trying to prosecute - or persecute - male sailors for trying to have sex with female colleagues:
“MAFIA-STYLE" bullying of female sailors and predatory behaviour initially went unrecorded because of problems with the navy’s reporting system, an inquiry has heardThe presumption is that women are the victims in a sexual encounter:
A FEMALE sailor on board HMAS Success said she was too drunk on one occasion to remember whether she had consented to sex or not, an inquiry has heard.However:
The sailor’s story was related by senior equity and diversity officer Dianne Markowski, who was called on to run workshops on board the Success....
Ms Markovski’s statement also told of a public sex act between two junior sailors in a bar, watched by a number of people who had been called over by senior sailors. The inquiry is investigating inappropriate behaviour on HMAS Success. It has previously been told predatory sexual behaviour including intimidation and threats of physical violence.
At HMAS Creswell, home to the navy’s officer training college, commanders were told of a noticeable ”trend towards sexually aggressive females among the trainees”.
===
How Oakes damned the Right for sins of the Left
Andrew Bolt
There are four fundamental problems with Laurie Oakes’ snide attempt to portray many of Barack Obama’s opponents as unhinged and violent morons:
WINGNUTS - people on the lunatic fringe of politics - are winning in America. A new poll just about puts it beyond doubt.First, this on-line poll is rigged and unrepresentative:
Released a few days ago, it shows that 40 per cent of Americans believe Barack Obama is a socialist, a third think he’s Muslim, three out of 10 fear he “wants to turn over the sovereignty of the US to a one-world government”, and 14 per cent agree that the President “may be the anti-Christ”. Phew!
Can a whole country go crazy? It makes you wonder…
In the US, as Congress passed President Obama health reform legislation and in the aftermath, it was a very different story… Protesters hurled racist epithets at African-American members of Congress, and spat on them. At least 10 members of Congress who supported the legislation received death threats… Windows and doors in the offices of Democrat politicians were smashed.
In other words, a poll that purports to be measuring the prevalence of these beliefs likely is propagating them instead.Second, the violence is absurdly exaggerated. For instance, Oakes’ claim that black Congressmen (plural) were spat on turns out to be a case of a single Congressman complaining that a protester had accidentally sprayed saliva as he talked, and apparently without any racial abuse at all:
Cleaver told me: “I said to this one person, ‘You spat on me.’ I thought he was going to say, ‘Hey, I was yelling. Sorry.’ But he continuing yelling and, for a few seconds, I pointed at him and said, ‘You spat on me.’ “ . . . I would prefer to believe that the man who allowed his saliva to hit my face was irrational for a moment,” Cleaver said.Third, the most extraordinary vituperation - and this from the media - has been unleashed from the Left, as Sarah Palin would know.
Indeed, the author of Wingnuts, who is horrified that some on the Right liken Obama to a Nazi, is rather keen on that smear himself:
In a disturbing parallel to the Nazi’s [sic] kristallnacht, windows are shattering in Democratic offices nationwide.Just as keen on Nazi slurs are Australian Leftists such as Professor Clive Hamilton:
Instead of dishonouring the deaths of six million in the past, climate deniers risk the lives of hundreds of millions in the future. Holocaust deniers are not responsible for the Holocaust, but climate deniers, if they were to succeed, would share responsibility for the enormous suffering caused by global warming… So the answer to the question of whether climate denialism is morally worse than Holocaust denialism is no, at least, not yet.And Professor Robert Manne:
Denialism, a concept that was first widely used, as far as I know, for those who claimed that the Holocaust was a fraud, is the concept I believe we should use [against climate sceptics].And, lastly, is it really a sign of derangement to believe Obama is at heart a socialist, at least in the Swedish social democrat tradition? Is Oakes and the rest of the Left now arguing that “socialism” is a vile insult?
In short, Oakes’ column is a self-pleasuring fantasy, produced by the very kind of tactics he condemns.
(Thanks to reader Gordon. UPDATE: Post modified to add Hamilton quote.)
===
Abbott fit to lead
Andrew Bolt
Tony Abbott is astonishingly fit and his critics astonishingly sanctimonious, snide - and mortified:The 52-year-old has completed the Ironman Australia in Port Macquarie, on the New South Wales mid-north coast, taking just under 14 hours to swim 3.8 kilometres, cycle 180 kilometres and then run a 42 kilometre marathon.So much for the gloating that he’d have to pull out, was too unfit or, on the other hand, had trained too much to do his job:
Health Minister Nicola Roxon, on ABC TV’s Insiders yesterday, wondered how on earth he had time for policy formation. Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said last week the muscle that most needed a workout was surely Abbott’s brain.(Thanks to reader Rendle.)
UPDATE
Health Minister Nicola Roxon on Insiders savages Abbott for doing healthy things, as she reads straight from the Hawker Britton script for the day:
Ultimately we don’t have an issue with what Mr Abbott chooses to do [but let Roxon now make an issue of it]. What we do have an issue with is that so far he doesn’t have a health policy… And now it’s up to him how he balances his time and produces his work and keeps himself fit.Two things. In between exercising, Abbott has written a whole book on his policy directions.
And I can promise your audience that you’re not going to see me in that lycra or my bikini at any time soon. But I think it’s admirable that he can do it.
What we do have an issue with is he doesn’t seem to be producing any policy at the same time.... I think it’s a fair question to say: does that amount of time actually have an impact on the lack of policy development that we’re seeing from the Opposition? ...
I would like to exercise more but then I’d have less time with my young daughter… I’m certainly not going to pass any judgment about the choices that Tony Abbott makes.
And I do think it’s good to have people setting an example. But his approach even as health minister was always the government isn’t going to help in particular ways because everyone should just look after their own health.
Second, Roxon is at this very moment considering spending millions and drawing up intrusive laws to force people to live by the example that Tony Abbott sets voluntarily and for free. Here are just some of the recommendations of her council of health fascists:
- Establish a Prime Minister’s Council for Active Living ...Roxon sneers at Abbott for living the healthy life she’s spending your cash to promote.
- Develop a business case for a new COAG National Partnership Agreement on Active Living…
- Drive change within the food supply to increase the availability and demand for healthier food products, and decrease the availability and demand for unhealthy food products…
- Commission a review of economic policies and taxation systems, and develop methods for using taxation, grants, pricing, incentives and/or subsidies to promote production, access to and consumption of healthier foods…
- Embed physical activity and healthy eating in everyday life
- Fund, implement and promote comprehensive programs for workplaces that support healthy eating, promote physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviour.
UPDATE 2
Reader Rojin:
So it’s OK for Kevin Rudd to spend time writing a book about his pet dog and cat, but not OK for Tony Abbot to spend time training to compete in the iron man event.
===
Neo-pagans can’t even be bothered genuflecting
Andrew Bolt
Even fewer people now lie to pollsters about their support for a useless gesture:
But there are signs Earth Hour may be losing some of its momentum in Australia - where it originated four years ago - with just 41 per cent of Australian adults in capital cities saying they took part in the lights-out protest, according to a poll by AMR Interactive. That figure is down from 58 per cent in 2008 and 47 per cent last year…But bravo to Greg Bourne, the chief executive of WWF Australia, who has clearly studied at the Kevin Rudd Institute of Spin:
A spokeswoman for Energy Australia said power usage in Sydney’s CBD fell by about 6 per cent between 8.30pm and 9.30pm on Saturday, compared with 9 per cent last year.
But Mr Bourne said that was a sign the Earth Hour message was working. “In the first year, where everything was [lit up] before the switch was flicked, there was a big change visible. This year there was a lot less change primarily because there is a lot less energy being wasted in Sydney.”UPDATE
The Hunter Valley, home of coal mines, gives up on the faith that will drive it broke:
Air-conditioners used to temper unseasonably hot conditions have been blamed for a 1.9 per cent surge in energy consumption levels during the hour from 8.30pm on Saturday. The increase from 653 megawatt hours to 665 megawatt hours was the equivalent of switching on an extra 5080 air-conditioners, or more than one million energy-efficient light globes.(Thanks to reader Bruce.)
In Earth Hour 2009, the Hunter recorded a 7.3 per cent drop in energy use.
===
Still, it was a great photo op
Andrew Bolt
Yet another great Kevin Rudd idea goes precisely nowhere:AUSTRALIAN taxpayers are the only financial backers for Kevin Rudd’s $100 million-a-year global clean coal initiative, as world leaders have failed to match their resounding endorsement of the idea at the G8 meeting last July with a single dollar.(Thanks to reader CA.)
Praised by US President Barack Obama as a “significant” announcement, the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, which is charged with speeding the development and take-up of clean coal technology, has attracted more than 200 of the world’s biggest economies and companies as members.
But to date their only financial commitment is to guarantee $10 [million?] in the event the institute goes broke.
UPDATE
And speaking of grand plans with less support than Rudd claims:
KEVIN Rudd is facing accusations he exaggerated support for his hospital reform, after more than half the expert groups he claimed had backed the plan said they could not yet endorse it.
During last week’s debate with Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister said the “profession right across the country is getting in behind what we are saying”, and the government “was backed” by nine groups.
But five of the groups—the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association, the Australian Nursing Federation, the Rural Doctors Association of Australia and Catholic Health Australia—say while they support the general direction of reform, there are still too many holes for them to sign up to it at this stage.
===
Earth Hour shows exactly why it can’t last two
Andrew Bolt
Environment journalist Sara Phillips is upset that Earth Hour isn’t sustainable - and nor is the future it symbolises:
Sitting in the dark is not sustainable for more than a symbolic hour. And if anyone is going to understand the concept of sustainability it ought to be the green groups. The fact that the chief of the WWF himself is mixed in his messages is proof that the Earth Hour message is well and truly scrambled.(Thanks to reader Richard. UPDATE: Apologies, link now fixed.)
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