Headlines Sunday 28th March 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

"Moving from one's positions now is filled with difficulties": The Okinawa issue was a problem for both Sato and Johnson according to this editorial cartoon in The Christian Science Monitor.
Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969 after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States from 1961 to 1963. He served in all four federal elected offices of the United States: Representative, Senator, Vice President, and President.

=== Bible Quote ===

“My salvation and my honor depend on God ; he is my mighty rock, my refuge.”- Psalm 62:7

=== Headlines ===

Sarah Palin rallies thousands of conservative Tea Party activists in the Nevada hometown of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

No 'Recess' at White House
Despite GOP objections, Obama uses recess appointments to fill 15 posts without Senate confirmation, including controversial labor board nominee

Arabs to Iran: Let's Talk
Head of Arab League urges nations to talk to Iran about its nuclear program instead of imposing new sanctions

Vatican On the Defensive
Top cardinal says recent attacks against the church over handling of clerical sex abuse cases have been harmful

Embattled U.N. Climate Chief Apologizes for Response to Criticism, Won't Resign
The outspoken chairman of the U.N.’s climate change body is to adopt a neutral advisory role and has agreed to stop making statements demanding new taxes and other radical policies on cutting emissions. In an interview with the Times of London, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, apologized for his organization’s handling of complaints about errors in its report. He also apologized for describing as “voodoo science” an Indian Government report which challenged the IPCC’s claims about the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers. But Dr Pachauri, 70, rejected calls for his resignation and insisted he would remain as chairman until after publication of the IPCC’s next report in 2014. He claimed he had the support of all the world’s governments and denied that, by remaining in post, he was undermining the IPCC’s chances of regaining credibility with the public.

The Oppposition Leader jokes he does no more exercise than John Howard but, in the eyes of Australia, this is one gruelling race he cannot afford not to finish

Lights go out worldwide for Earth Hour
AUSTRALIA flicks the switch to darkness and kick starts a global energy-saving marathon. - pictured is North Korea's daily observance for over sixty years - ed.

Now schools can sue parents
SCHOOL principals in NSW have been advised staff can sue parents who defame and harass them through social networking sites and email. The NSW Primary Principals Association believes the issue has become so serious that the Education Department's legal services chief, Michael Waterhouse, was asked to address principals on taking legal action. The association says it has been told of at least 11 incidents, mostly in the past year, where principals or teachers have been harassed, defamed, intimidated or attacked by parents or community members. - there is a substantial possibility this law may be abused by the ALP. -ed.

ALP tries to get a win from loss
LABOR has tried to turn Kristina Keneally's TV-debate loss into a win, using Barry O'Farrell's verbal slip in the leaders' head-to-head contest in negative radio and TV ads. Soon after Friday's debate, ALP officials rushed the slip - in which Mr O'Farrell said he was going to win the next election - to an advertising agency to be turned into "attack" TV advertisements. Liberal staff claimed Mr O'Farrell had meant to say he was "determined" to win the election. But those five words - "We are going to win" - will feature in TV ads aired over coming weeks.

Woman's $114,000 parking fines
SORRY record of 360 tickets in less than two years puts driver at top of fine-evasion league.

Uma Thurman's mother of all flops
BOX office record for Kill Bill star as just 11 people turn up to see her latest movie.

Parents hire armed cops to police parties
OFF-DUTY officers can earn $103 an hour keeping troublemakers away from teen parties.

Court sticks victim for cost of trial
OUTRAGE as father of five children murdered by their mother is billed for cost of her conviction.

Sex-mad backpackers spreading diseases
THEY come for the sun, get drunk and have unprotected sex - the tourists who are being blamed for huge increase in STDs.

Isobel Redmond says Liberals may challenge election results
THE South Australian Liberal Party will consider challenges to election results in marginal seats as more voting discrepancies emerge. Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond labelled the election the "dodgiest" she has been involved in, following Labor's ruse to have supporters impersonate Family First officials in marginal seats and give out how-to-vote cards directing preferences to Labor instead of the Liberals. It has also emerged that: - In the Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide, 96 patients missed out on voting after Electoral Commission staff were unable to take their votes on polling day. - An undisclosed number of people in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital also were unable to vote, and officials say it is almost certain patients in other major hospitals such as the Royal Adelaide Hospital also missed out. Law officers are investigating an anonymous claim that a family voted 159 times - including a minor who voted 31 times - in marginal electorates in order to expose flaws in the electoral system. The Electoral Commission used a roving team to take votes from bed-bound patients at the FMC before the election but was not able to patrol the wards on polling day. It is not known how many of the patients were enrolled in the nearby cliffhanger seat of Bright.

Couple fell 10m from lovers' hotspot
POLICE are investigating how a man and a woman found in Coogee by a passer-by fell from the roof of a beach-side building popular with late-night lovers.

Asylum seekers denied protection, sent to Villawood
THE transfer of 89 asylum seekers from overcrowded Christmas Island to Australia's mainland yesterday marked the end of the Howard Government's policy of universal offshore processing, the Opposition said.

=== Comments ===

PM worms out of tough questions
Piers Akerman
GIVEN the media focus on the federal Opposition, it would be easy for a foreign observer Googling Australian politics to believe Tony Abbott was Prime Minister, not Kevin Rudd. - All good questions, Piers, but there are more. What was Rudd’s involvement in the attempted assassination of Xanana Gusmao? How does Rudd account for the loss of lives by refugees arriving by boat, estimated in the late ‘70’s as being 100% of all arrivals, but possibly being many times more. Why has he sold Stern Hu down the river to the Chinese after his election campaign when he told the Chinese he was their puppet and they could pull his strings? Can he explain to my 7 yo niece how global warming works again, she has forgotten it. Maybe explain it publicly, and to scientists this time. Where is the cooperation between states on water and health he promised? Why is small business doing so badly since he was elected .. with thousands of small time sandwich shops letting staff go for lack of business? How come anti corruption watchdogs have been cowed by the ALP? - ed.
===
And, no, George Bush is not the right answer
Andrew Bolt

Can AFL footballers, with 12 years of Australian schooling behind them, name even five Prime Ministers?

What a devastating indictment of our education system and culture of proud know-nothingness.
===
Now Rudd must bring his boat people to the mainland
Andrew Bolt
A record rate of boat arrivals fills Christmas Island to overflowing:

ABOUT 90 male asylum seekers have departed Christmas Island on a charter flight bound for the mainland…

The charter is the first in the past four days to carry asylum seekers without visas to the mainland as the Department of Immigration and Citizenship moves to ease pressure at its Christmas Island detention facilities.

Until now, only teenage asylum seekers, families and people with special circumstances, such as health problems, have been transferred to the mainland…

The Australian Navy found another boat of suspected asylum seekers today, southeast of the Ashmore Islands. Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said HMAS Glenelg found the boat, which was carrying seven suspected asylum seekers.

UPDATE
Rudd sends more of those signals that explain the huge increase in boats:

More asylum seekers are expected to arrive in Queensland in coming days. Some of the detainees in Brisbane have been here for months and a group of Afghani and Kurdish asylum seekers yesterday were taken on a shopping trip to a suburban mall.

A busload of four women, two little girls, a boy and three men yesterday left the transit centre accompanied by two Immigration staff and arrived at Centro Toombul shopping centre, on Brisbane’s northside, at 10am. They spent the next hour and a quarter shopping inside the centre.

The group returned to the bus with two shopping trolleys loaded with grocery bags. Their purchases in Coles included Home Brand Hawaiian pizza, Smiths potato crisps and cartons of Coca-Cola.

When The Sunday Mail asked if they were Afghanis, several said “Yes” and one said “Kurdish”. They smiled, nodded and said “Yes” when asked if they had come from Christmas Island, but did not say how long they had been in Brisbane.

An Immigration staff member said: “They are not supposed to talk to you.”

But you are supposed to pay for their groceries.
===
Book now for the new Italy
Andrew Bolt
Britain’s National Trust warns of the humanity-destroying apocalypse to come if the planet warms by 4 degrees. Britain’s gardens, it claims, will then look like this:
I’d say book your holidays now and beat the rush.
===
Earth Hour bores
Andrew Bolt
A joke falls even flatter:

MELBOURNE’S landmark institutions went dark last night - including the Arts Centre, Luna Park and the Skipping Girl sign on Victoria Street in Abbotsford - although there were signs the city’s enthusiasm for the event may be waning.

National project manager for Earth Hour, Jennifer Croes, conceded that this year Victoria had not embraced the event as much as some other states…

According to the spreadsheet released by Earth Hour, [Victorian] 466 businesses, councils and government agencies had signed on, with a few more expected by the switch-off. Figures released from the 2008 Earth Hour show that 1474 businesses signed up (not including councils), indicating that participation may have dropped by more than two-thirds.

When people in mainland Australia’s reddest state lose interest in even making the most tokenistic gesture to “save” the planet from global warming, we can assume the fraud is falling to bits.

The Australian Energy Market Operator notes a surge in demand for nasty coal-fired power around 9.30pm yesterday, at the end of Earth Hour:
In NSW, it’s hard to see any wavering at all around Earth Hour:
And less than 24 hours after this campaign to cut emissions from burning oil and coal, Melbourne holds a fossil fuel orgy:

AUSSIE hero Mark Webber is well placed to claim a fairytale win in today’s Australian Formula One Grand Prix… Gates were opened early to let a swelling crowd into the track ahead of schedule with 82,200 watching, almost 8000 more than last year.

UPDATE

Alarmism falls in Germany, too:

Leading German magazine SPIEGEL Online has conducted a representative survey about climate change. The (not so surprising) result is that now only a minority (42%) are afraid of the climate change, compared to 62% in fall 2006.

UPDATE 2

Reader TonyfromOz on the fraud:

We’ll hear wild claims about how much CO2 was saved with the lights going out for that one hour. However, it is all theoretical, because nothing is actually ‘saved’ at all. Power plants just do not stop providing their power to the grids for that one hour, so they just keep humming along as they always have. The Earth Hour Con explains this and details the reality of what does happen for that one hour.

Oh! And if you have turned your household lights off for that one hour, you will have saved some money off your next electricity account. Five cents in fact. Five cents.

UPDATE 3

Sydney university warmists muck up the whole idea of Earth Hour by switching lights on instead of off:
(Thanks to reader Big Ted.)
===
Bullying isn’t a defence to bullying
Andrew Bolt
A human rights lawyers who claims her son is no bully has picked a very odd way to prove it:

AN ELITE Melbourne private school is suing the mother of a former student it says set up a defamatory website disparaging the school and its principal after her son was expelled for bullying.

Tintern’s Southwood Boys Grammar, an Anglican school in Ringwood, says the mother sought revenge against the school by setting up a website to mislead people into believing it was an official school site. It also alleges she set up an email address and sent emails pretending to be from the school to parents and staff, directing them to her website.

The mother, a human rights and welfare lawyer, uses the pseudonym ‘’Julie Barkly’’ on the website to protect her identity.

Ms Barkly’s son Shaun, also a pseudonym, was expelled from Southwood Boys Grammar in November 2006 after what it says were 15 incidents of ‘’harassment, bullying, wilful misconduct and unacceptable behaviour’’. It alleges Shaun pushed and bullied other students, closed a window on the fingers of a student and moved a chair as a student went to sit down, resulting in him falling to the floor.

I have no idea who this lawyer is,or why the Sunday Age saw fit not to name her. Is her name Mrs Jellyby, I wonder, and does the alleged behaviour of this human rights lawyer tend to confirm the truth of what Bertrand Russell once observed:

Much of what passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Or H.L.Mencken:

The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.

(Thanks to reader CA.)
===
More bills than water, thanks to Brumby’s dam ban
Andrew Bolt
The cost of Labor’s dam ban just went up even more:

JOHN Brumby’s multibillion-dollar plan to save water in northern Victoria and boost Melbourne’s supply has been rubbished by Australia’s top economists and water experts.

They say that the project is based on ‘’spurious’’ claims and will result in the waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money.

The government’s controversial Foodbowl Modernisation Project is already pushing water bills higher and will drain a further $1.6 billion from state and federal coffers. But experts say taxpayers are forking out four times the money necessary to provide more water for the city and the environment....The $1 billion first stage, expected to be finished by 2014, will deliver 225 billion litres in ‘’saved’’ water, divided equally between irrigators, Melbourne and the environment. Melbourne’s 75 billion litres will come down the already-completed $750 million north-south pipeline, which, since last month, has delivered water to the city from older rural water-saving projects and environmental reserves.

Instead of spending just $1.3 billion on a new dam on the Mitchell River, this Government wasted $3.5 billion on a desalination plant that will produce a third of the water. And for insurance it’s wasted $750 million more on this pipeline to steal water from irrigators.

Scandalous. Green dreams have cost us billions.

(Thanks to readers Scarlet Pumpernickel and CA.)