Headlines Saturday 29th May 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

NASTY GROWTH REMOVED‏
Well, finally something to celebrate this week. Malcolm Fraser has left the Australian Liberal Party and all I can say is....."when was he a true member anyway ?".

=== Bible Quote ===

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”- Romans 12:15

=== Headlines ===

Obama administration says it has been on top of the Gulf oil spill since 'day one' — FoxNews.com takes a closer look at what has been going on in the Gulf and in the White House each day since the crisis began April 20

Rahm Linked to Sestak Offer
White House says chief of staff had Bill Clinton offer Joe Sestak job with Obama to drop Senate bid

Wanted: Spymaster to Protect Country ... While Handcuffed
White House struggling to fill intelligence director post known for little power — but lots of blame

Mich. Considers Licensing Journalists
Lawmaker raising eyebrows with proposal to regulate reporters to ensure credibility and 'good moral character'

The diminutive former child star who was plagued by health and financial problems has died after suffering a head injury in a fall at his home

Pervert mocks Facebook security
WEBSITE slamed for security failures after paedophile used it to groom up to 1000 children.

Federal Government Fails On People Smuggling
``What has happened is a federal government policy has resulted in more entrants, more people being charged with people smuggling, and that's a burden that needs to be shared among all Australian jurisdictions.''

'Serial sex monster' raped homeless man
NOTORIOUS sex offender faces life in jail for locking victim in caravan and attacking him.

A child a day falls on to rail tracks
PLATFORM accidents show rail network to be a potential death trap for children and babies.

I yearn to see Krishna and Trishna - mum
THE mother of separated twins Trishna and Krishna says she desperately misses the girls she gave up for adoption.

Who stole the old Carrie? Give her back
SATC2 an enjoyable romp but we can't help wondering if Carrie has lost her personality.

States champion poor on power bill law
NATIONAL consumer law would let electricity companies disconnect customers that are too poor to pay their bills.

Canteen lady on $186,000 PMH theft
A FORMER canteen attendant accused of stealing more than $186,000 from WA's Princess Margaret Hospital cafe has appeared briefly in court.

Suicide attack on mosques leaves 70 dead
GUNMEN wearing suicide vests turn Friday prayers into bloodbath in Pakistan's second-biggest city

Child care costs means it's cheaper to send kids to school early
THE soaring cost of childcare is forcing thousands of parents to pack their children off to school before they turn five and can cope in the classroom. Childcare and early learning centres claim up to 80 per cent of children in their care are being sent to school too early as families avoid spiralling fees of up to $100 a day.

=== Comments ===

Man who thought he wore the pants
Piers Akerman
IF ANOTHER ancient Easter Island statue falls flat on its stony face, who cares? If the statue was in fact Malcolm Fraser, then the Canberra press gallery and the Left-wing bloviators get most concerned, even though former Liberal Party prime minister Fraser has made a career out of such pratfalls. - I recall an adage “Those who study history are condemned to repeat it” or some such. The point being that the point of history is to muddy the waters. More things happen than are intended or known, and when one looks back, one sees what one sees, and misses what one doesn’t. History is important, but it is too easy to be tunnel visioned.
So many want to hide the truth too. Is it ok to say that FDR was a failure, now, and why? We know he successfully prosecuted the war, and that the allies won WW2, but things might have been better if that president had been better.
The same may be noted of Fraser in his time in office. He followed Whitlam, and so some may say he was a successful conservative. Some of the young in the late seventies painted Hitler moustaches on Fraser, and so some may feel that he wasn’t a dumb liberal. But we have no example that shows us Fraser making a hard decision, much as there is no example of Rudd making one.
Fraser may claim that as a former Liberal Party leader he had good intentions. But we aren’t privy to his commensurate good actions. We only know he was better than someone much worse, and that as a result some poor leaders stayed in government following him.
Fraser never endorsed Mr Howard, and Mr Howard has a brilliant record in government. Fraser not endorsing Mr Abbott is actually a good sign. - ed.
===
President Obama Holds First Formal Press Conference in Almost a Year
By Bill O'Reilly
The president ran into some good news on Thursday. It looks like BP has finally been able to cap that damaged oil well after more than five weeks. How effective the cap will be is yet to be fully determined, but at least progress is being made.

There is no question that Mr. Obama understands Americans are very angry about the spill, and the president sounded tough in holding not only BP, but all the oil drillers responsible. In fact, a number of drilling projects have been cancelled or suspended, and the president made another plea for renewable energy. He wants to get out of the oil business.

But it didn't take long for questions about whether or not the Obama administration had been too slow to react to the disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So this notion that somehow the federal government is sitting on the sidelines and for the last three or four or five weeks we've just been letting BP make a whole bunch of decisions is simply not true. What is true is that when it comes to stopping the leak down below, the federal government does not possess superior technology to BP.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

The president basically put forth that from the jump the feds did everything that they could to deal with the situation. While Mr. Obama admitted some mistakes were made, they were mistakes he said borne from an unprecedented situation, not apathy or incompetence. Mr. Obama was adamant on that point. He did, however, say that he made a tactical mistake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Where I was wrong was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worse case scenarios. Extraction is more expensive, and it is going to be inherently more risky, and so that's part of the reason you never heard me say drill, baby drill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Well, that's obviously a slap at conservatives, like Sarah Palin.

The president went on to say that he does not have confidence the oil companies can prevent another catastrophic spill. Therefore, he's clamping down on the drilling.

The questioning then pivoted to the border chaos.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I don't approve of the Arizona law. I think it's the wrong approach. I am prepared to work with both parties and members of Congress to get a bill that does a good job securing our borders, holds employers accountable, makes sure that those who have come here illegally have to pay a fine, pay back-taxes, learn English, and get right by the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

So all in all, no big surprises in the press conference, at least for me.
===
ADELAIDE ISN’T EVEN BETTER AT FOOTBALL
Tim Blair
Headline of the week:
Adelaide – better than Paris, London or New York
===
MAYBE THEY JUST WANTED TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT HIM
Tim Blair
The latest twist in the Alaskan pervo fiasco puts the heat on the Wasilla Stalker himself:

ABC News tries to talk to author Joe McGinniss, who is renting the house next door to Sarah Palin in Wasilla, Alaska. When the reporter knocks on his door, he is told by McGinniss that he’s trespassing and threatens to call the police.

Oh, yes:

UPDATE. A curious sub-story has developed since the McGinniss-Palin saga began. Lefties – led by Shannyn Moore – are demanding to know why Palin didn’t complain when the house next to hers was for three years a recovery place for ex-junkies and winos:

The tenants were men recently released from prison who were recovering addicts. What? No fence to protect sexy Sarah in her tank top? Dear God! Who was lurking in that house watching her children play?

Just ex-junkies and winos. Emphasis on the “ex”; folk in this situation tend to be both sober and supervised. Palin was evidently so secure about things that she didn’t feel the need to build a big fence. But imagine if she had. Imagine if Palin had barricaded herself away from people in a recovery program. Leftists, who generally excuse substance hobbyists as “victims” and such, would have railed against her terrible bigotry. But Palin’s tolerance of her neighbours now prompts Eric Boehlert to ask:

Did Palin complain about those neighbors intruding on her privacy? Did Palin engage in fear mongering about the well being of her children back then?

Apparently not. And this, to leftist Boehlert, is a bad thing.

Between 2006 and 2008, the house right next door to Palin (and the one now occupied by McGinnis) was run by Oxford House, a sort of half-way home for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. That’s right. Recovering drug addicts and alcoholics. But at the time, did Alaska celebrity Palin used her children to launch a p.r. campaign against Oxford House?

No, she didn’t. What exactly does Boehlert have against recovering drug addicts and alcoholics? For all we know, the house could’ve been filled with Kennedys. Naturally, Palin gyno psycho Andrew Sullivan joins in:

Whining about her next door neighbor is a little conveenient after all these years.

After all those years of living peacefully next to recovering addicts who never bothered her, as opposed to an anti-Palin obsessive willing to spend more than $60,000 just to watch her eat. I know who I’d prefer as neighbours.

UPDATE II. Michael Wolff puts his money on McGinniss. Let’s see how that works out.

UPDATE III. The Independent‘s Guy Adams describes Palin’s Facebook response as “colourfully spelt”. Well, here’s her article. Spot the spelling errors.
===
It’s the phone company which must have had the affair
Andrew Bolt
Not her fault at all:

Gabriella Nagy is suing the Canadian phone company Rogers Wireless for $600,000 for sending her cell phone records along with her and her husband’s regular phone bill, which subsequently led to him discovering that she was having an affair. Nagy complained that, “The thing that really hurt me is that it all came out not through my own doing.”
===
Betraying our Israeli allies for cheap spin
Andrew Bolt
Greg Sheridan agrees that Kevin Rudd’s decision to throw out an Israeli diplomat smacks of the cheapest and nastiest kind of spin:

Rudd’s policy towards Israel mirrors his policy towards an Emissions Trading Scheme - an extravagant and emotional level of promise, followed by a complete failure of delivery, marred by short-term political expediency.

This is a tough judgment, but it is the only one that fits the facts…

The long delay of three months (after Israel was caught having used forged Australian passports) with nothing happening, and the deliberate resumption of diplomatic dialogue, led the Israelis, and Israel’s friends in Australia, to believe the government was going low key. Then, all of a sudden, some internal dynamic changed and a couple of weeks ago, the government sent ASIO director David Irvine to Israel.... (H)is trip, and the fact that Smith this week publicised it, represents an overt politicisation of ASIO by the government. The Irvine trip, which could produce nothing more than the AFP trip, gave the government cover for the expulsion. The manner and timing of the expulsion reflect very poorly on Rudd.

The government decided to announce the expulsion on Monday, the first day of parliament’s new sitting. This was the day it was likely to face its heaviest pasting over the resource super-profits tax, just as the earlier outburst of confected anger against Israel coincided with a spike in the pink batts controversy.

This is a government obsessed with the management of the daily media cycle… But it is very low-grade behaviour to ruin a key relationship such as that with Israel for domestic political advantage.

Sheridan doesn’t mention another factor I think is crucial to understanding this wild and damaging overreaction - Rudd’s desperate desire to woo Muslim nations in his campaign for a UN Security Council seat. About which, this latest news of Rudd-bestowed but taxpayer-funded junkets:

This week, for example, (Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith) was allowed to host the opening of the Botswana High Commission. In Canberra. On Africa Day. You might think nobody would turn up for that, but you’d be wrong. The Australian government flew journalists in from South Africa, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zimbabwe for the event (curiously, not from Botswana). Such was the enthusiasm of Smith’s department for this event, they called it “Batswana” in the media release. We suppose he corrected this in the speech, which basically was aimed at getting Australia a seat on the UN Security Council but dressed up as concern for Africans.
===
Rudd steals your cash to advertise he’s a liar
Andrew Bolt
Barrie Cassidy holds a liar to account for deciding to spend $38 million on taxpayer-funded ads arguing for his super profits tax:

In opposition, in an interview with Kerry O’Brien (video here), Kevin Rudd promised he would ban all publicly funded advertising within three months of an election - “unless explicitly agreed between the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition.

O’Brien: “Is that what you will promise to do in a Labour government?”
Rudd: “That is an absolute undertaking from us. I believe this is a sick cancer within our system. It’s a cancer on democracy.”

Then in a later doorstop interview, he guaranteed he would have a process in place run by the auditor-general to vet these advertisements.

A journalist asked: “Would you resign if you didn’t deliver that in your first term?”

Rudd: “… you have my absolute guarantee that will occur - 100 per cent guarantee. And each one of you here can hold me accountable for that.”

Well he did put the auditor-general in charge in his first year; then replaced him in his third year. Now the advertisements are flowing thick and fast...

It’s a few months since I described the Rudd Government as the most deceitful in living memory. Many of those who didn;t believe me then will believe me now.

Yes, the most deceitful. And now corrupt.

Oh, and in utter panic, given the preposterous reason it’s given for stealing your money for Labor ads:

...a national emergency, extreme urgency or other compelling reasons

This is, in effect, a theft of public money for political purposes. It’s as despicable as that.

UPDATE

Michelle Grattan writes more in sorow than in anger:

TO SAY the government is hypocritical is an understatement. After all Kevin Rudd’s sanctimonious statements about getting the politics out of taxpayer-funded advertising, we have Labor’s $38 million campaign to sell a new tax.... Maybe the government is simply desperate...

UPDATE 2

Jennifer Hewett says the real “national emergency” or matter of “extreme urgency” is not opposition to Rudd’s super tax, but the tax itself:

Investment bankers and brokers trying to talk up Australian equities and companies to international investors say they are finding it much harder going…

Citigroup analyst Paul Brennan says that after a trip to Singapore and Britain it is clear that a “number of investors believed there was now greater political risk to investing in the Australian market”.

Commonwealth Bank research says “increased sovereign risk is an issue not just for the resource sector but for the entire private sector in Australia”.

”If Kevin Rudd wants a smaller Australia with less growth, fewer jobs and increased funding costs for all banks, he could not be doing a better job,” says another senior investment banker dealing with a flood of queries from alarmed international clients.

UPDATE 3

You can tell which of the Ministers quietly briefing Peter van Onselen want no blame for the mad decisions Kevin Rudd takes:

THE Rudd government conceived the resource super-profits tax in an atmosphere of secrecy and delivered it to meet a rushed timetable, bypassing normal checks and balances of policymaking…

Julia Gillard and Lindsay Tanner ... received detailed information about the new tax… Swan had been quickly drawn to the idea of the super-profits tax…

Only a small group looked into the viability of the proposed tax on behalf of the government… Frontbenchers who might have seen the pitfalls, such as Martin Ferguson, Craig Emerson and Mark Arbib, were allowed limited or no input… Labor Party federal secretary Karl Bitar wasn’t in the loop about the proposed tax....

Senior ministers with experience from the Hawke and Keating years, John Faulkner (a minister from that time) and Emerson (who was involved in implementation of the petroleum resource rent tax as a senior staffer to Hawke in the 1980s) didn’t know about the new mining tax or how it would be structured until it was too late.

UPDATE 4

Rudd Government Miinster Tanya Plibersek gets in a tangle trying to defend this hypocrisy in debate with George Brandis on Lateline:

TANYA PLIBERSEK: Well, the premise of George’s argument is that this is political advertising and of course it’s not… This is not about the Labor Party’s point of view, this is about the proposals that the Government are making. They are clear proposals. And you say that there’s ...

GEORGE BRANDIS: If they’re clear proposals, why do you need $38 million to explain them?…

TANYA PLIBERSEK: This is a complicated thing to explain...

These ads aren’t selling a Labor idea but a Government idea, which you all know is not the same thing at all. And they are needed because these clear proposals are actually complicated to explain.

With thinking like this, you can understand why a Rudd Minister can unblushingly defend doing the exact opposite of they promised not three years ago.

UPDATE 5

The argument is made that Rudd’s ads are no more an abuse of taxpayer funds than were John Howard’s over his GST changes (the “Unchain My Heart” campaign) and his WorkChoices laws.

In fact, Rudd’s are far less defensible because Howard’s ads in both cases at least had the excuse of giving the public information about news laws that were in place and likely to affect their lives. Information was given about their rights, and how to learn more to deal with what was coming.

Check, for instance, this Howard advertisement for the WorkChoices laws that were affecting every workplace:

But Rudd’s pass on no information about any new laws or government programs. There is no legislation even before Parliament, and whatever the Government finally decides on is almost certainly going to be different to what it’s proposing now. Indeed, the advertising may turn out to be for a tax that will never pass Parliament. This is purely political advertising to help win an argument and save an election.

Nor, indeed, is this the first such political advertisement the Government has made with your money to help promote a policy rather than a program. And, again, the advertisement it shot was not just political and highly deceptive, but made to support a plan that never got through Parliament, and probably never will:

Still to come from this thieving and lying government are pre-election advertising campaigns on global warming (again) and on the broadband plan that’s still a decade from completion - if it ever gets that far.

(Thanks to readers Chappy, Pira and CA.)
===
The land with no beer
Andrew Bolt

There’ll be fewer tears at the pub with no beer, and more cries for a nice shiraz instead:

BEER consumption has slumped to a 60-year-low as Aussies opt for quality over quantity when it comes to the nation’s favourite drop.

The Herald Sun said today national consumption of the amber brew sank to 4.49 litres (9.5 pints) per person in the year to June 30, 2009, according to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

That’s the lowest since the 1950s. Per-capita beer consumption has been steadily dropping off since its peak of 6.4 litres (13.5 pints) per year in 1979 - partly thanks to the introduction of tighter drink-driving laws.

I blame wine, too.

UPDATE

Reader Oliver below points to an error in the article: the reporter seems in fact to be referring to the amount of alcohol in each form of drink.

UPDATE 2

Readers below suggest Australian beers struggle to compete with the best of overseas. I’d agree. Make mine Peroni. (As for Dutch beers, Heineken is wildy overrated. Grolsch is clearly superior.)
===
And then Fraser said, “could you read back that section?”
Andrew Bolt
A lovely anecdote from Tony Wright, who describes his first day as a reporter - interviewing Malcolm Fraser.

It captures beautifully the terror so many of us have faced in our early know-nothing days, and not just them, alas. It’s like the day I was told to interview someone called Tom Keneally about some book he’d written…
===
Is that all you’ve got, John?
Andrew Bolt
Spiteful, stupid and appealling to class resentments? Meddling in issues which are none of its responsibility? I think the Brumby Government has finally lost me:

A RE-ELECTED Brumby government will push for Australia to become a republic, try to rewrite Victoria’s constitution and launch an assault on cyber-bullying in schools.

Labor’s draft policy platform for November’s state election reveals a plan to paint Premier John Brumby as the best leader to tackle the challenges caused by climate change and the rapid growth and ageing of Victoria’s population.

Labor strategists also plan to step up their ‘’class war’’ against Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu by highlighting his privileged background and depicting him as out of touch with the needs of ‘’everyday Victorians’’.

That’s four strikes I can count already - even without mentioning how Labor left the state dangerously low on drinking water, dangerously loaded with fuel for fires, dangerously unable to protect abused children and dangerously underpoliced on our streets.

And this is to be defended with a campaign complaining that Ted Baillieu is rich? Why doesn’t Brumby make the same snide attacks on the richer Kevin Rudd?

UPDATE

When they reach for the slops, you know they’ve got nothing - appealling to resentment only because they cannot to reason:

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu’s millions of dollars in stocks and property assets will be a central focus of attacks from the Government over the next six months.The Victorian Labor Party’s policy platform released takes the first of many swings at Mr Baillieu’s wealth, portraying him as out of touch with the struggles of working Victorians.

Who was most out of touch with the concern many Victorians had over rising street crime? Brumby or Baillieu?

(Thanks to reader CA.)
===
The maddest thing about Palin is her critics
Andrew Bolt
Palin Derangement Syndrome is detected yet again. Sarah Palin is now monstered by the Left for failing to have “used her children to launch a p.r. campaign against Oxford House” - the place next door which once housed recovering alcholics and addicts.

Oh, and she should put up with a creepy writer who has now hired the house so he can spy on his latest subject and her children from the verandah.
===
Case proved for Abbott’s TPV
Andrew Bolt
This justifies Tony Abbott’s policy to introduce temporary protection visas - which allow the Government to send back boat people once their home is safe again:

ABOUT two-thirds of refugee claims by Afghan asylum seekers in the past month have been rejected on the grounds that the minority Hazara community no longer faces persecution and discrimination.

The decisions reverse the trend of more than a decade, where Afghan Hazara asylum seekers in Australia were found overwhelmingly to be refugees and deserving of protection under the United Nations refugee convention.

So Hazaras whose claims were dealt with six weeks ago can stay because they are persecuted, but those who were dealt with just weeks later are safe to go home. A TPV of even just two years would have sorted this out, and deterred some of the unpersecuted, I should imagine.

UPDATE

Malcolm Turnbull, who was leaving the Liberals before deciding he might yet lead them again, looks forward to a fight - with Abbott:

Former opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull says he is looking forward to a vigorous debate within the Coalition about its new border protection policy.

(Thanks to reader Nonna.)
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Question asked
Andrew Bolt
(Thanks to reader Tony.)