Headlines Sunday 7th March 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

The Civil War election of 1864 pitted Lincoln (with Andrew Johnson, a pro-Union Tennessee Democrat), under the National Union or Union Republican Party, against his former general George McClellan running as a Democrat. "A Thrilling Incident during Voting,—18th Ward, Philadelphia, Oct. 11," lithograph by Harley, 26.4 x 29.0 cm (Philadelphia, ca. 1864). Courtesy of the Political Cartoons Collection at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the 17th President of the United States (1865–1869). Following the assassination of President Lincoln, Johnson presided over the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War.

=== Bible Quote ===

“[Praise to the LORD] O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago.”- Isaiah 25:1

=== Headlines ===

Pelosi vowed in 2007, after string of GOP scandals, that Dems would 'drain the swamp,' but her party has been rocked recently by its own share of controversy.

Obama's Last Stand
President makes final push to get health care bill passed after year of self-imposed deadlines, unexpected setbacks

'Jihadis' Have Hamas Running Scared
Palestinian group on U.S. terror list dealing with its own terror issue, reportedly fearing 'anarchy' in Gaza

Are Gangs Booby-Trapping Cop Cars?
Deadly device found near officer's car in what appears to be latest attempt to harm members of Calif. anti-gang unit

New York Woman Allegedly Tried to Whack Husband at Bargain Price
NEW YORK — An affluent housewife in Long Island, New York, accused of hiring a hit man to off her hubby lamented she could only afford to maim him — but then was thrilled to learn she could whack him at a bargain-basement price of just $20,000, authorities told the New York Post.

U.S. Hunts for Citizens Training With Terror Groups
The top U.S. diplomat in Pakistan says the U.S. is gathering information with Pakistan and other governments to identify and locate people holding U.S. passports who are receiving terrorist training then legally returning to commit violent acts.

Bikie gangs' national war brews
THE Comancheros' move from eastern states to West Australia is sparking a major drug turf war.

Dumped foetus found in sewerage plant
DNA tests to be carried out on the body of a baby girl found in a sewerage treatment plant.

Hostage drama: Woman killed, girl stabbed
A WOMAN'S dead and a man's now in custody following an alleged hostage situation.

Belinda Neal dumped in Robertson vote
THE Federal Labor MP can't contest her NSW Central Coast seat after losing at pre-selection

Mounting number of teenaged mothers
HIGH school teens, barely out of primary school, are falling pregnant at an alarming rate.

Anzac Day kids face march ban
NSW is under pressure to ban children from marching with fathers and grandfathers in the Anzac Day parade because they outnumber vets by seven-to-one.

City hit by hailstones in torrential storm
GIGANTIC hailstones pound Melbourne as the city floods and riverbanks burst in the north.

Armed robbers attack poker tournament
ROBBERS armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades steal millions from a poker tournament.

=== Comments ===

SOUTHERN CITY SWAMPED
Tim Blair
Mighty storminess across Melbourne:

Roads were blanketed in ice so thick it looked like snow.

Cars were forced to a halt in the city centre.

Emergency services were in meltdown.

Reports of damage started flooding in from across the city, including caved-in roofs. Early reports were that Etihad Stadium’s roof had partially collapsed.

Highpoint shopping centre was evacuated.

A car was reportedly stuck under a bridge on Kensington Rd, Ascot Vale. The West Gate Freeway on-off ramps were in gridlock.

Most train and tram services were cut off.

At Flemington racecourse there were reports that a champion horse had been spooked by the storm and broken its neck. The Super Saturday meeting was abandoned.

The 3pm AFL NAB Cup game between Brisbane and Geelong at Visy Park was cancelled.

Cancelled or abandoned AFL matches are extremely rare, which gives some idea of this storm’s power. A VFA Grand Final was called off in 1921, but that’s about it. Melbourne’s last epic flood hit the city in 1972. Herald Sun readers tell their stories:

• we are in bad company of heavy rain. it will send us into oblivion.

• Prahran got spanked! Had a car floating in the street!!

• it might do a few million dollars worth of improvements to frankston

• We have a moat outside of our house in Boronia. Does anyone know where to buy a crocodile?

And a comment from a reader in Broadmeadows:

• The hail stones make good weapons.

UPDATE. Flemington follies:

The torrential downpour - of a magnitude nobody could ever recall seeing at the races - saw patrons and even jockeys take part in throwing snowballs.

UPDATE II. Pictures.

UPDATE III. There’s more on the way.

UPDATE IV. Flinders Street:

And further video from Traralgon.

UPDATE V. Surfing in the city; ice in the suburbs.

UPDATE VI. Elizabeth St, 1972. Elizabeth St, 2010.
===
Melbourne storm
Andrew Bolt

HAIL has blanketed Melbourne like snow as a severe thunderstorm ripped through the city, forcing the cancellation of horse racing and sporting events.

Nineteen millimetres of rain bucketed down over the city in less than 18 minutes this afternoon, the weather bureau said.

The huge storm cell, which hit about 2.40pm (AEDT), resulted in a total of 26 millimetres of rain in Melbourne in less an hour, bringing emergency services to a grinding halt as reports of flooding came in from across the city.

I’ve never seen hail that big or rain that hard - in Melbourne or anywhere else.

(More videos below)
===
Neal loses preselection. Good
Andrew Bolt
Had to, if Labor were to hang on to the seat:

Federal Labor MP Belinda Neal has lost a preselection contest for the seat of Robertson on the New South Wales central coast…

She was being challenged by Deborah O’Neill, a Newcastle university lecturer, who beat her 98 to 67 with four informal votes

Good not just for Labor, either.
===
CHILL, WARMIES
Tim Blair
Beautiful headline from James Delingpole:

Warmists overwhelmed by fear, panic and deranged hatred as their ‘science’ collapses

We should probably come up with a peer-reviewed method of measuring this.
===
COCA POLAR
Tim Blair
The paws that refreshes: poley in a bottle.

(Via Dan F.)
===
Rudd’s latest boat in the armada
Andrew Bolt
Yet another:

Another suspected asylum seeker boat has arrived off north-west Australia as the debate heats up on the future of the Christmas Island detention centre.

The latest arrival, a boat carrying 83 people, was intercepted yesterday by Australian authorities east of Christmas Island the same day a newspaper report claimed up to five-thousand detainees could be held on the island over four years.

UPDATE

And yet another again:

Another boat carrying asylum seekers has been intercepted in waters off the West Australian coast early sunday morning.

The government says the boat with 28 passengers and two crew members on board was intercepted north west of Adele Island.
===
Rudd now brawls with Labor’s best Premier
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd is now campaigning against John Brumby in the year that the Labor Premier must go to the polls:

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has strongly rebuked Victorian Premier John Brumby, warning that the state is facing a health funding blow-out and will need the cash freed up by the federal government’s proposed hospital takeover to fix the transport and law and order pains inflicted on ‘’the long-suffering residents of Melbourne”.

In an escalating war of words, Mr Rudd said the Victorian government, which faces an election in November, had underinvested in critical state responsibilities.

Asked if the state had spent too little on areas such as public transport and law and order, he answered, ‘’Yes.’’

But Brumby will be tempted to return the favour to a man he privately doesn’t rate, especially when that man does not quite tell the truth:

Mr Rudd dismissed Mr Brumby’s warnings that there would be no new money for Victoria under the overhaul, accusing him of making claims that ‘’fly in the face of the facts’’.

‘’For John [Brumby] or anyone else to run around and say there is no new money flowing for the next four years - what absolute nonsense,’’ he said…

But the Victorian head of the Australian Medical Association, Harry Hemley, has endorsed the Brumby government view that the reforms contain no extra funding and has said that they would not affect patient care.

Rudd’s argument for Victoria needing to sign up is also mendacious. He says the states cannot afford the rising health bill, and thus must agree to the Federal Government taking more control.

Really? Why not just let the states spend the extra Commonwealth money instead, as Victoria does so capably already?

In the end, Rudd and Brumby have more to gain from a deal than they have from a fight, and should reach a compromise involving billions of your cash. But then again…

UPDATE

… the PM spent almost three times as many nights overseas as he did in Victoria during his first two years.
===
Guess how much Rudd blew on this thing
Andrew Bolt

How much would you pay for this apparent pre-fab, do you think? $100,000, maybe? Perhaps $150,000, tops?

Now read this:

At Stuarts Point Public School, a $931,000 library has been chocked using bricks and wood, which parents consider to be a safety issue.

Nearly $1 million?????? For that?

Good god. I’d say the $16.5 billion shovelled out by Kevin Rudd on the Building the Education Revolution may have wasted even more of your money than his mad insulation scam.

More here:

FOUR schools have joined forces to protest their dissatisfaction at work undertaken on their grounds as part of the federal schools stimulus building program.

The schools claim some of the costs for parts of the buildings were more than 10 times the standard market rates and some of the workmanship is unsatisfactory.

Representatives from Mid North Coast public schools - at Willawarrin, Eungai, Stuarts Point and Scotts Head - met their local MP and Nationals Leader Andrew Stoner last week to discuss their concerns after being ‘’stonewalled’’ by the NSW Department of Education.

Eungai Public School had been allocated $850,000 for a new two-room classroom under the federal government’s Building the Education Revolution scheme (BER). It has been told it is now over budget and will not receive other items it had been promised, such as air-conditioning, interactive whiteboards and covered walkways.

(Thanks to reader CA.)

UPDATE

By contrast, Timberline is offering to build this home for less than $79,000 (verandah, plans, certificates and council fees extra):

UPDATE 2

Ezyhomes will build something vaguely similar to that library at Stuart’s Point, only much bigger, with a toilet, bathroom and kitchen included and an easily adapted floorplan for $219,000 - less than a quarter of the price:

(Thanks to reader janey has moved.)

UPDATE 3

Reader Dracula shops for quotes:

Australian Construction Handbook – Edition 26 – 2008

Cost per Square Metre – Primary School – Single Story

Adelaide - $1255.00 - $1355.00

Brisbane - $1290.00 - $1390.00

Melbourne - $1270.00 - $1370.00

Perth - $1140.00 - $1225.00

Sydney - $1215.00 - $1305.00

Say Average Cost $1300.00 per mtr. Sq. At $931,000.00 the building (at Stuart’s Point) should have been 716 mtrs. sq. or 27 metres long x 27 metres wide.

Looking at the picture of the building I would estimate it to be 10 mtrs x 8mtrs or 80 sqm. mtrs. Amounting to a cost of $11,637.00 per mtr squared.

That’s $10,337.00 per square metre over the average national cost. What a rip off.
===
Dying of dehydration in a hospital ward
Andrew Bolt
Absolutely astonishing:

A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.

Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help. They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.

The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours....

Sources (in a coroner’s office) say they are investigating the possibility of a corporate manslaughter charge against St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London.
===
Double the doubt
Andrew Bolt
Doubts are rising fast, even though many of the right questions still aren’t being asked:

A Sun-Herald/Taverner poll of 609 NSW voters shows 8 per cent of people do not believe climate change is real and another 29 per cent think it is real but not caused by humans and 60 per cent of people believed in man-made climate change.

Last year, only 3 per cent said climate change was not real and 18 per cent said it was happening but not caused by humans. In 2008 2 per cent did not believe and 14 per cent said it was real but humans were not responsible.

These either-or polls, though, don’t pick up the real difference that needs debating. Where, for instance, would I fit in, given what I said on the Science Show as far back as 2007:

Andrew Bolt: I’m certainly pretty sure that there has been global warming, 0.7 of a degree over the last century, which is the IPCC’s latest report. I am pretty sure, given the consensus of science, that man has some role to play in that… (But) how much is man responsible?

And then there’s these questions, too: how bad would warming really be? Is it really worth the pain of trying to stop?

We need better polling to measure the true arguments that divide us.
===
Leaving dad way, way, way behind
Andrew Bolt
Some poor children deserve saner, more considerate parents:

AN EXPLOSION in online romances is making the toughest Family Court issue even tougher, with more divorcees than ever wanting to move their children interstate or overseas to be with a new partner.

A world-first study of 80 parents involved in relocation disputes shows online dating is having a devastating impact on already-broken homes, putting an average distance of 1646 kilometres between children and the parent left behind.

Parents are being bankrupted, selling their homes, losing contact with their children or travelling long distances only to have visitation rights denied…

University of Sydney researchers have been following 40 men and 40 women involved in 71 relocation cases since 2006. They say the growth of internet romances is combining with a rise in broken relationships, increases in international mobility and the tyranny of distances in Australia to make relocation a more vexed issue than ever.

“Vexed” is a mild word. Cruel to the children is closer.
===
Price declares war
Andrew Bolt
Steve Price introduces the new radio station I’ll be working for, and christens it MTR 1377.