=== Todays Toon ===
circa 1929: A cartoon of Herbert Clark Hoover (1874 - 1964), 31st President of the United States, with the caption 'Beware of stowaways Mr Hoover' depicting men hiding in the gun barrels of a warship and a poster reading 'office seekers', and a surprised Mr Hoover with his suitcase . (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933). Hoover was a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no previous elected office experience. To date, Hoover is the last cabinet secretary to be directly elected President of the United States, as well as one of only two Presidents (along with William Howard Taft) to have been elected President without electoral experience or high military rank. The nation was prosperous and optimistic at the time, leading to a landslide victory for Hoover over Democrat Al Smith.=== Bible Quote ===
“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”- 1 Peter 2:2-3=== Headlines ===
The president rallies House Democrats on Capitol Hill for a final push on landmark health care legislation ahead of Sunday's historic vote.
'Deem and Pass' Dead
House Dems decide against using controversial Slaughter plan to pass Senate's version of health care bill
Protesters Rally on War Anniversary
Thousands gather in D.C., urging Obama to withdraw troops from Iraq on seventh anniversary of U.S. invasion
Boy Scouts Sex Abuse Files Made Public
Internal documents used to track Scout leaders suspected of sexual abuse now public record in Oregon lawsuit
Eager fans stepped out for Australia's leading Japanese and Asian animation and popular culture event.Election can't be called - leaders
MIKE Rann and Isobel Redmond both have refused to concede the South Australia election.
'Cyclone Ului sounded like a jumbo jet'
Gale force winds and blackouts as Cyclone Ului crosses coast.
Rapist flies into convict transport storm
ANGER after fugitive child sex offender flown uncuffed on a commercial flight carrying young families.
I'm a fair-dinkum cane toad, says Rudd
THE Prime Minister fights back against Tony Abbott's comment that he is a "fake Queenslander". - he certainly isn't a competent PM. -ed.
James Packer leaps back into good life
JAMES Packer is one happy billionaire, with his personal wealth bulging once again.
Doctors, dentists in 'Medicare rip-off'
MEDICAL staff are rorting a scheme that has bled more than $2 billion from the ailing health system.
Suspect: I didn't kill the Lin family
THE man whom police believe is responsible for the Lin family massacre insists he is not the killer, dismissing any such suggestion as a ridiculous rumour.
Californian roll was really whale sushi
RESTAURANT facing criminal charges for serving endangered whale meat sushi shuts its doors.
Shocking stories of abuse in schools
A GROUP of boys at a State primary school is alleged to have repeatedly sexually assaulted two of their female classmates for a year in a shocking case uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph under Freedom of Information laws. It is one of 319 incidents reported to the NSW Education Department's School Safety and Response Unit in the final two terms of 2009. Other startling revelations include students dealing drugs in the playground, bringing home-made bombs to schools and arming themselves with knives.
P-plater caught travelling at 249km/h
A P-PLATE driver has been charged and has had his licence suspended after being caught travelling at 249km/h in a 100km/h zone in Sydney's southwest. Police were conducting speed enforcement duties on the M5 motorway at Moorebank when they detected a Holden sedan travelling at 249km/h early this morning. Police stopped the vehicle and spoke to the 26-year-old male driver, who produced a P2 licence.
=== Journalists Corner ===
As the fate of health care is decided, NO ONE has you covered like Fox!Only one team has complete coverage as events unfold!
Health Care SpecialWhat's really in the bill, what will it cost taxpayers, and how will it impact you? Mike gets answers!
===
Historic Vote!
Geraldo looks at the potential winners & losers and how it could affect you!
===
We Have You Covered!
From reaction on the street to last minute backroom deals, O'Reilly, Hannity, and Rivera break down the vote!
=== Comments ===
Rudd’s rant exposed by his faulty figuresPiers Akerman
THE Rudd government may have overstretched itself in pressing Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to stand and deliver a health debate, without notice, on Thursday. - Mr Abbott is an impressive person. He has fought on issues in ways that others have not dared since Mr Howard led the Liberals. It is wrong to say that similar good ideas have not come from Liberal and national leaders around the country, but they don't often punch through the press gallery to the public. In some ways, the failure of Tasmania and South Australia to clearly jetison their garbage of ALP government will be a nail in the federal ALP coffin. It is very hard to throw these hucksters out of government because the press gallery give them full support in all conditions.
The latest poll in South Australia had the leader smeared by his closest supporters and a minister slapping a draconian law to influence the election through preventing free speech on the internet. Yet they still haven't been clearly identified by the electorate for the incompetents they are.
It is appalling that the lies told about Abbott are circulated by adults. - ed.
===
If Dems Win They Still Lose
By Bradley Blakeman
Democrats have ignored the majority of Americans and have dismissed their concerns as naiveté and not knowing what is best for them. Well, I predict that Americans will enact their revenge at being dismissed and disrespected this coming November.
If Democrats manage to get health care passed by the House using whatever parliamentary trick or maneuver they choose, the Senate still must take up the bill. The question then becomes, what tricks will they employ to pass a bill through their chamber and how long will this continue to drag out?
It is clear that the American people do not want -- and the country does not need -- health care reforms at a time of economic crisis.
If the health care bill was the greatest thing since sliced bread, Democrats would be proud to support it and would be lining up to vote for it instead of lining up to be paid off to support it.
Assuming Democrats are successful in passing a bill that the president will sign, they still lose. The American people are against health care reforms as dictated to by a democratically controlled Congress and White House.
Democrats have ignored the majority of Americans and have dismissed their concerns as naiveté and not knowing what is best for them. Well, I predict that Americans will enact their revenge at being dismissed and disrespected this coming November.
Democrats have been hell-bent on expanding government health care for decades. They know that this may be their only opportunity for years to come to accomplish their ultimate goal of government-run, mandated health care for all Americans. There is no question that due to fraud, mismanagement and abuse that Medicare and Medicaid will go bankrupt within the next decade unless serious measures are taken to save it. Likewise, Social Security is on a path to certain bankruptcy unless it is overhauled within the next few years.
Why on earth would Congress want to expand the government's incompetence in managing health care for our elderly and poor to all Americans? Why is Congress not trying to fix that which is already broken?
Democrats are blinded by ideology and raw power. Instead in concentrating on jobs, reducing the deficit, reining in federal spending and giving Americans hope, Democrats are seeking bigger and more expensive government and just ballooning the deficit.
If health care represents 1/6th of our economy and 5/6ths of the economy is ailing, why concentrate on the 1/6th at the expense of the 5/6th? It is like a fire department dousing a detached garage with water that is not on fire, instead of saving the house that is on fire.
There is no doubt that, if passed, the health care bill will be Constitutionally challenged on many levels. State governments are already looking into ways to refuse to obey mandates that affect their duties and obligations. Republicans most assuredly will call for the bill to be repealed and will make that argument in the 2010 midterm elections.
At a time when Americans in every part of our country are struggling to make ends meet and provide for their families, they are being asked by Democrats to pay into a health care system they will not see a benefit from for years.
Democrats thought they were clever in not beginning the actual health care reforms until after the 2012 presidential elections. Their strategy is to govern by creating programs that they do not have to administer and thus it becomes someone else's problem.
Well, my message to Democrats is a simple one: you can fool some of the people, like you did in 2008, but you cannot fool enough of the people in 2010.
Bradley A. Blakeman served as deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-04. He is currently a professor of Politics and Public Policy at Georgetown University and a frequent contributor to the Fox Forum.
===
Do the Math -- Obamacare Would Increase Deficits by $59 Billion
By Michael Cannon
The CBO's scoring rules don't paint the full picture of what the health care plan before Congress would really wind up costing Americans. The truth is, Obama plan would vastly increase the size and scope of the federal government, and increase our already record federal deficit.
Democrats have so thoroughly gamed the budget process and the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring rules that the official cost estimates of the Obama health plan reveal but a sliver of the legislation’s full cost. The Obama plan would vastly increase the size and scope of the federal government, and increase our already record federal deficit.
To hear Democrats tell it, the CBO projects the legislation would cost a mere $940 billion over the next 10 years. The CBO said no such thing: that figure pertains only to provisions aimed at expanding health insurance. Other spending provisions bring the cost to $1.2 trillion.
Then there’s the additional $208 billion that Democrats plan to spend on physicians who participate in Medicare. Democrats moved that into a separate bill to reduce the apparent cost of the main health care bill. Including that spending in the estimate completely wipes out the Obama plan’s professed $138 billion of deficit reduction. After correcting for that gimmick (and accounting for how the two measures would interact), the CBO estimates really indicate that the Obama plan would increase federal deficits by $59 billion over the next 10 years.
Even worse, Democrats hid another $1.5 trillion by preventing the CBO from scoring the legislation’s hidden taxes. At present, when Congress takes money from workers and gives it to private insurers, the CBO counts that as a tax. The Obama plan’s “individual mandate” would force workers to give money directly to private insurers, which the president’s economic advisers admit is also a tax. If history is any guide, those hidden taxes would cost roughly $1.5 trillion – but you won’t find any such estimate in the CBO’s score.
If you’ve been keeping count, we’ve revealed the actual cost of the bill is nearly $3 trillion. But to believe this legislation would cost “only” $3 trillion, we would have to assume that after President Obama signs it into law, it would be rushed to the National Archives and entombed within an impenetrable vault where it would never again be touched by God or man.
Yet this legislation would set in motion political forces that would make additional spending inevitable. It would create new constituencies for government spending, hook existing constituencies on even more government spending, and promise implausible cuts in existing subsidies to constituencies that are highly organized and vocal.
For example, the Obama plan assumes that Congress will cut future subsidies to private insurers, hospitals, doctors, home health agencies, and others who provide health care to the elderly. Yet those constituencies form a nearly unstoppable political force; Obama adviser Tom Daschle calls it the “patient-provider pincer movement.” They will come back to Congress, year after year, until Congress reinstates their subsidies.
The $208 billion increase in Medicare physician payments is evidence that the patient-provider pincer movement nearly always prevails. In 1997, Congress promised annual cuts in physician payments, but has cancelled those cuts every year since. That $208 billion in new deficit spending is just Congress admitting that those cuts will never take place.
The legislation would also create gross inequities that Congress would inevitably resolve by increasing spending. Under the Obama plan, even though Smith and Jones have the same income and household size, Smith could receive thousands of dollars in health-insurance subsidies just because of where he works, while Jones would receive nothing.
It won’t be long until the Joneses lobby their members of Congress to correct that inequity. Congress will find it much easier to give the same subsidy to Jones (rather than reduce Smith’s subsidy), if only because health care providers will be lobbying for that “solution,” too.
When Congress inevitably fails to implement the Obama plan’s spending cuts, and expands its subsidies to more and more people, the cost of this legislation will grow beyond $3 trillion.
The CBO did an admirable job of projecting the cost of this legislation as written. But the text of the legislation does not reflect the reality it would create.
Most Democrats know that even though the projected cost is $1.2 trillion, they are setting in motion political forces that will guarantee even more government spending. The question is, do enough Democrats know it?
Michael F. Cannon is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and co-author of "Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It."
===
WE ARE ALL ADELAIDEANS NOW
Tim Blair
Reader Michael D. devises an ingenious method of composing your Adelaide name:
Perhaps it could be the street your birth hospital is located in, the name of your first high school English teacher, plus the name of the cigarettes your grandfather smoked in the 1950s. Put them together and you have an Adelaide name. Mine is Haldon Wright-Players.Michael’s method works. My name is Kooyong Woods-Viscount.
===
COUNT BEGINS
Tim Blair
An early (very early) swing against Labor of 17.5 per cent in Tasmania and a similarly early 9.6 per cent swing against Labor in South Australia, where exit polls point to a possible hung parliament – as is also predicted for our non-mainland friends.
UPDATE. 41.3 per cent of the vote counted in South Australia. Labor clinging on, despite a 7.4 per cent swing to the Liberals. Greens vote is up by just 1.8 per cent, but on current trends preferences should be enough for Rann to retain power.
UPDATE II. 72.7 per cent of the vote counted in Tasmania. Labor vote down by 12.2 per cent. A Labor loss is likely, according to Nick Sherry.
UPDATE III. Better numbers in Tasmania for Labor; Nick Sherry changes his mind.
UPDATE IV. Sky calls SA for Rann.
UPDATE V. ABC: “Tasmania is headed for a hung Parliament, with the latest seat predictions saying 10 Labor, 10 Liberal and five to the Greens.”
UPDATE VI. Mixed (and still inconclusive) results:
Tasmanian Liberal leader Will Hodgman has laid claim to being the premier of the State’s hung parliament after Labor suffered a general 12 per cent swing against it in today’s poll.And in South Australia:
Labor looks certain to be returned to power despite a near 8 per cent swing and the loss of Jane Lomax-Smith in Adelaide.
===
How Obama may have triggered a new intifada
Andrew Bolt
Yossi Klein Halevi outlines just how far Barack Obama went out of his way this month to demonise Israel, and put it in yet more danger:
Suddenly, my city feels again like a war zone… (N)ow, again, there are clusters of helmeted border police near the gates of the Old City, black smoke from burning tires in the Arab village across from my porch, young men marching with green Islamist flags toward my neighbourhood, ambulances parked at strategic places ready for this city’s ultimate nightmare.
The return of menace to Jerusalem is not because a mid-level bureaucrat announced stage four of a seven-stage process in the eventual construction of 1,600 apartments in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighbourhood in northeast Jerusalem… Ramat Shlomo, located between the Jewish neighbourhoods of French Hill and Ramot, will remain within the boundaries of Israeli Jerusalem according to every peace plan…
The answer lies not in Jerusalem but in Washington. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem at the centre of the peace process, President Obama has inadvertently challenged the Palestinians to do no less....
Though Obama’s insistence on a settlement freeze to help restart negotiations was legitimate, he went a step too far by including building in East Jerusalem. Every Israeli government over the last four decades has built in the Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem; no government, let alone one headed by the Likud, could possibly agree to a freeze there. Obama made resumption of negotiations hostage to a demand that could not be met. The result was that Palestinian leaders were forced to adjust their demands accordingly....
In turning an incident into a crisis, Obama has convinced many Israelis that he was merely seeking a pretext to pick a fight with Israel… The popular assumption is that Obama is seeking to prove his resolve as a leader by getting tough with Israel. Given his ineffectiveness against Iran and his tendency to violate his own self-imposed deadlines for sanctions, the Israeli public is not likely to be impressed. Indeed, ...according to an Israel Radio poll on March 16, 62% of Israelis blame the Obama administration for the crisis, while 20% blame Netanyahu....
Obama’s one-sided public pressure against Israel could intensify the atmosphere of “open season” against Israel internationally… To the fictitious notion of a peace process, Obama has now added the fiction of an intransigent Israel blocking the peace process.
His recklessness is endangering Israeli — and Palestinian — lives. As I listen to police sirens outside my window, Obama’s political intifada against Netanyahu seems to be turning into a third intifada over Jerusalem.
===
Spot the feral
Andrew Bolt
I assume the police do check Facebook. If so, these pictures may be of interest, having been taken at Friday’s riot at Oakleigh, in which hoons from a mob of 2000 trashed a Bob Jane store because a race had been cancelled:
and
(Thanks to reader Ed.)
UPDATE
Yes, I agree with the critics in comments on that last link who wonder why on earth police didn’t arrest anyone at all in the riot and looting.
On the other hand, check these videos of police grappling with hoons, thugs and the stuff-yous on New Years Eve and note the complete contempt with which they are treated. And how ineffectual the women police in particular can seem when things get physical. (Or am I in fact confirming what I’m arguing against....? Is the lack of respect a direct consequence of the lack of reason to fear the force?)
PS
Note that in the two instances in the videos where we see men being arrested or led away, it’s the male officer, and not his female partner, who must do the physical work. Do the males get paid more? Are the female police just weaker and less effective on the front line? Has the deliberate feminisation of the force been a mistake?
===
Our foreign aid helps the starving activists of Australia
Andrew Bolt
You thought our aid budget was spent helping poor people overseas?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
ORGANISATIONS which campaigned for the Rudd Government’s election in 2007 are among those given hundreds of thousands of dollars from Australia’s foreign aid budget.“Awareness campaigns” is what they call this propaganda and sponsor-my-fun now.
Under new rules announced in 2009, Ausaid can now fund education and awareness campaigns in Australia.
Labor-friendly organisations are big winners from the $1.3 million handed out so far.
The ACTU has collected $147,000 for a campaign to educate workers on the Rudd Government’s international development aid program.
Another $150,000 has gone to the Oaktree Foundation, founded by former young Australian of the Year Hugh Evans, for 1000 young people to travel the country educating the public about poverty alleviation and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
The foundation was part of the 2007 Make Poverty History campaign and during that year’s election Mr Evans said it was planning a “full-scale” campaign urging people to support Labor’s position on foreign aid.
Other winners include a program to bring Australian and Afghani youth together via the internet for an arts project showing they understand poverty and a rickshaw ride for 400 from Queensland to Tasmania.
Under the new rules, 10 per cent of Ausaid’s Australian NGO Co-operation Program’s budget can be spent in Australia on awareness campaigns.
Contemptible. Utterly contemptible.
UPDATE
Reader Boy on a Bike says your aid dollars are indeed lifting some people out of poverty:
AusAID - have a look at their annual report, in particular TABLE 10: AUSAID SES EMPLOYEE SALARY RANGE, 30 JUNE 2009.
$205 000-$219 999 - one employeeAverage Australian income - around $50,000.
$175 000-$189 999 - two staff
$160 000-$174 999 - four staff
$175 000-$189 999 - one person
$160 000-$174 999 - one person
$145 000-$159 999 - three staff
$130 000-$144 999 - 22 staff
Yes, lots of AusAID staff have certainly been lifted out of poverty.
===
Not much hope, but lots of change
Andrew Bolt
===Tasmania falls to the press dream ALP may still be in power
Andrew Bolt
Great electoral system they’ve got down there, guaranteed to deliver years of instability:
Tasmanian Liberal leader Will Hodgman has laid claim to being the premier of the state’s hung parliament after Labor suffered a general 12 per cent swing against it in today’s poll.
The uncertain result from the poll is 10-10-5 split of Liberal, Labor and Greens in the 25-member assembly.
===
Top NATO soldier highlights gay issue for Srebrenica
Andrew Bolt
The Dutch - and UN - failure to stop the massacre of 8000 Muslims at Srebrenica was indeed a scandalous sign of European timidity, but this explanation strikes me as utterly bizarre:
The Dutch government and military responded with anger and contempt after General John Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps officer who was Nato’s supreme commander at the time of the 1995 atrocity, told a US Senate hearing that gay soldiers in the military could result in events like Srebrenica....
‘’(Europeans) declared a peace dividend (after the Cold War) and made a conscious effort to socialise their military - that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war,’’ he said.
‘’The case in point that I’m referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs. The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them. That was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II.’’
He added that the Dutch chief of staff had told him that having gay soldiers at Srebrenica had sapped morale and contributed to the disaster.
===
Rudd acts like Queenslander
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd hawks, spits and speaks with a drawl:
KEVIN Rudd calls Speedos “togs” and says when he refers to the King, he means Wally Lewis, not Elvis Presley.Is this what real Queenslanders do, is it? Draw up lists to prove they’re real?
The Prime Minister cited the examples in an effort to prove he was still a “fair dinkum” Queenslander.
Stung by Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s comment last week that he was a “fake Queenslander”, Mr Rudd felt the need to show his fellow banana benders he was still one of “them"…
Mr Rudd has hit back, telling The Sunday Telegraph his attendance at the season-opening Broncos-Cowboys NRL game last weekend was ample evidence of his maroon roots and he went further.
He packs his “port” (port is Queensland-speak for a suitcase or a schoolbag) - and he gets blank looks from his staff when he refers to NSW as “down south”.
(Thanks to reader CA.)
===
Expensive bit of shade
Andrew Bolt
Julia Gillard’s $16.2 billion Buidling the Education Revolution spendathon has blown billions on overpriced projects, unneeded facilities and union rorts.
Latest example? Guess how much this thing cost:
Answer:
Koonung Secondary College - Shade, shelter, seating, sport precinct & surrounds $200,000.00
===
How dare Obama insult Australia
Andrew Bolt
Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter and former Obama fan:
Excuse me, but it is embarrassing—really, embarrassing to our country—that the president of the United States has again put off a state visit to Australia and Indonesia because he’s having trouble passing a piece of domestic legislation he’s been promising for a year will be passed next week. What an air of chaos this signals to the world. And to do this to Australia of all countries, a nation that has always had America’s back and been America’s friend. How bush league, how undisciplined, how kid’s stuff.
===
Could more concrete, asphalt and industry have made Laverton warmer?
Andrew Bolt
Last week brought the latest shocking news about global warming’s horrific effects:
Researchers have found that because of a rise in temperature, caused by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions by humans, the common brown butterfly now emerges from its cocoon 10 days earlier than it did 65 years ago.Alarmist Professor David Karoly seized on the study as proof of man-made global warming:
This new work has tied the earlier emergence of butterflies directly to a regional temperature increase, and has tied the temperature increase very strongly to increases in greenhouse gas concentrations caused by humans...Two things are strange about this claim of early-emerging butterflies. First, it relies entirely on modelling the effects on butterflies, using old temperature records, rather than on a history of direct observation.
Second, it relies on that temperature record not having been contaminated by any urban heat island effect, so that increasing urbanisation could not be said to have artificially increased the warming. And, indeed:
For the laboratory work, team member, Natalie Briscoe spent hours in the lab, feeding caterpillars under different conditions to see how temperature affected their emergence into winged butterflies.So Laverton had “urban heat island” effect.
“The warmer it is, the faster they will emerge,” says Kearney.
This enabled the researchers to calculate how many days it would take a caterpillar to emerge given a particular temperature. They then combined this laboratory evidence on butterfly physiology with historical temperature records, to predict how soon butterflies would have emerged each year between 1944 and 2005…
He and colleagues used temperature records from the Laverton weather station, located on Melbourne’s outer edge. This weather station was used to avoid the “urban heat island” effect of the city of Melbourne on temperature records, says Kearney.
Reader Alan RM Jones is puzzled. Here’s Laverton in 1946, around the start of the period covered by the butterfly survey:
Here’s Laverton today (the coordinates mark the site of the weather station:
Spot any changes that might conceivably be a local source of heating?
UPDATE
Reader Nick of Western Port says the urbanisation is worse than the photo above shows:
See that area of fields around williams landing… ? It now looks like Laverton as well, surounded by bitumen,, bricks, roof tiles and concrete. That photo is way out of date, by about 3-4 years.
===
Tasmania rejects Labor, but gets trouble
Andrew Bolt
The Mercury:
TASMANIA looks set for a hung parliament with a huge swing away from the Labor Government in today’s state election
Deputy Premier Lara Giddings is in danger of losing her seat in Franklin with a huge personal vote for Greens Leader Mick McKim and Premier David Bartlett is being out-polled by Greens member Cassy O’Connor and first-time Liberal candidate Matthew Groom.
===
Rann goes…(er, not)
Andrew Bolt
Sky News’ exit poll is foul news for Mike Rann. Liberals 53 per cent, Labor 47.
LABOR in South Australia could lose at least six seats and a hung parliament is the most likely outcome in the state election, an exit poll is showing.UPDATE
”Our prediction is Labor has lost its majority and it’s a hung parliament,” Tim Gartrell from Auspoll said half an hour before the close of Saturday’s state election.
I need to get it off my chest. Sky News’ constant use of Bruce Hawker is offensive and subtly skews its coverage. Hawker is a paid spinner for the Labot party. He would never say anything to its detriment. But take his “opponent” tonight, Chris Kenny. Yes, Chris has worked for the Howard Government, but he’s now an independent commentator who can and does criticise the Liberals. It’s to some extent the same with Hawker’s usual sparring partner on Sky News Agenda, Graham Morris, who no longer is paid to spout the Liberal line.
Putting a paid Labor hack against such independent conservatives tilts the debate because every concession of error on the Liberal side is not matched by any on Labor’s. It also puts someone like Kenny in an invidious position of seeming as much as hack as Hawker, by being brought on as his “opposite”.
UPDATE
Nasty - and, yes, something Hawker refused to condemn:
LABOR stands accused of using dirty tactics by handing out “sneaky” how-to-vote cards in a last minute bid to hold key marginal seats.UPDATE
The Liberals and Family First are crying foul over the “fake” ALP-authorised cards that urge Family First voters to preference Labor, instead of Liberal as Family First intended.
Widely distributed in key marginals, the cards might form the basis of a challenge to seat results, although the Electoral Commission says there is no “technical breach” of the Electoral Act.
Labor denies the cards which are authorised by its state secretary Michael Brown, are in breach of the Act. Handed out at polling booths in Morialta, Mawson, Hartley and Light, the cards were waved in voters’ faces by people wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Put Your Family First”.
Bruce Hawker says Labor has clung on.
UPDATE
Extraordinarily large anti-Labor swing in Adelaide tips out Jane Lomax-Smith, but Labor’s marginal seats campaign somehow defies the swing in its two most vulnerable seats. And so Rann clings on, probably by a couple of seats.
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