=== Todays Toon ===
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, KG, GCVO, PC (3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903), known as Lord Robert Cecil before 1865 and as Viscount Cranborne from 1865 until 1868, was a British Conservative statesman and thrice Prime Minister, serving for a total of over 13 years. He was the first British Prime Minister of the 20th century and the last Prime Minister to head his full administration from the House of Lords.=== Bible Quote ===
"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”- Matthew 18:15=== Headlines ===
Former Attorney-General Jeff Shaw dies
Former NSW attorney general Jeff Shaw died early on Tuesday morning of complications from pneumonia. Mr Shaw was attorney general in the Labor government from 1995 to 2000 and subsequently served as a Supreme Court justice in 2003 and 2004. Friends and colleagues, including former NSW minister Rodney Cavalier, have described him as an activist who remained true to his principles throughout his political and legal life. "New South Wales today lost one of its finest legal minds and most effective reformist legislators," they said in a statement issued to AAP. - Highly lauded, but I wonder if anyone can point to what he did as being worthwhile? This is an increasing problem for the ALP in that their heroes have feet of clay. I wouldn't mind if a realistic account were published of his time spent in office .. attorney general and a judge .. it would be worth knowing .. if it had been worth doing. But all that I know of this man was that he was good for covering dirt .. and now it will cover him. - ed.
He's got an undying love for his BlackBerry, constant presence on Facebook and a song-packed iPod — so why did Obama rip into gadgets over the weekend?Kagan 'Supremely Qualified' — With No Experience?
She's never served on a bench, but that doesn't mean Elena Kagan will be Obama's Harriet Miers, backers say
Fannie: Thanks, May We Have Another?
Mortgage giant Fannie Mae suffers $13 billion in losses in first quarter, asks Treasury for $8 billion infusion
Despite Purge, Porn Still on Wikimedia
Though Wikipedia's parent co. has killed thousands of porn images, countless others remain
Doomed British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stands down as Labour leader in a last-ditch attempt to spoil the Tory-Lib Dem deal and keep his party in powerRudd told to lift game or else
ALP puts Prime Minister on notice as third poll in ten days says he's party's biggest liability.
Families on fishing trip swept to death
DISTRAUGHT relatives of missing rock anglers brace for the worst after body pulled from ocean.
Apple blames GST for iPad's high price
TECH giant denies profiteering the reason why Australians charged $70 more than Americans.
Topless hero saves neighbours from fire
SUNBATHER put safety before modesty when she battled apartment blaze single-handedly.
MasterChef pressure test no piece of cake
WE TAKE television's toughest challenge - find out if our gataeux would meet Matt's standards.
Schools can cheat in NAPLAN exams
SECURITY of national numeracy and literacy tests questioned as students begin exams.
Council targets 'anti-gay' group
A CHURCH group that allegedly targets young people with same-sex conversion therapy could be banned from a council-owned Surry Hills neighbourhood centre.
=== Journalists Corner ===
"Proof" Positive? Will Arizona's law requiring immigrants to carry a legal ID yield beneficial results?
Another Congressional Hearing?Are House financial panels just a waste of YOUR money? Neil breaks it down!
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The New GOP Strategy!
Get a behind-the-scenes look at the Republicans' latest plan!
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Rallies & Debates!
What do Arizona's voters actually think about their new law? Frank Luntz polls for answers!
=== Comments ===
Stock Market Shenanigans, Greece and President ObamaBy Bill O'Reilly
After stocks dropped about a thousand points on Thursday in just a few minutes, President Obama has ordered an investigation. But don't expect any smoking gun.
There's no question the market was manipulated, but the guys behind it are far too smart to get caught. Instead, millions of honest investors got hammered, people like you and me.
Fox Business correspondent Stuart Varney, a smart and honest guy, says that somebody made a mistake in trading Procter & Gamble, which ignited the market drop. Stuart also reports the Greek situation has people nervous. Perhaps.
But "Talking Points" thinks the whole thing was contrived and that wise guys made billions as the market recovered in the afternoon. As always, I could be wrong.
As for the Greek situation, it's totally out of control. People are rioting over there because they don't want their benefits cut. They want to continue living in their socialist paradise, even though Greece owes almost a half-trillion dollars and can't pay it back. Those loons in the street don't care about their country. They want what they want, and blank you if you don't like it. That's what socialism is all about. Give me stuff at other people's expense.
Now, if you're a Greek citizen, you get free education, including college. You get free health care. You get a generous pension. And in some cases, you can retire at 55. You get six weeks of paid vacation each year. Also, many Greeks don't pay any taxes. Even though the VAT is 21 percent, the underground economy rules.
The USA will send Greece billions of bucks through the International Monetary Fund. That means our tax money is going to bail out those irresponsible people.
Next on the list: Portugal. Then it could be Italy. Most of the great entitlement nations are on the rocks.
Here in America, California is bankrupt. New York, New Jersey and Illinois nearly bankrupt. In addition, the federal government owes $13 trillion, 37 times what Greece owes. Yet, liberals in America are not calling for spending restraint. They want expanded health care. They want higher taxes, which will strangle the already shaky economy.
President Obama's the leader of that crew, but "Talking Points" believes he will be a one-term president if he doesn't wise up fast. No country can afford the entitlement culture anymore. We must work for what we get. Otherwise, what happened in Greece will happen here.
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URSUS BOGUS
Tim Blair
Science magazine is deeply disturbed:
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts.To illustrate its item about scientific facts, Science chose this image of a doomed poley bear:
One small problem. As James Delingpole reveals, that poley bear image is fake. It’s been photoshopped. Science subsequently admitted:The image associated with this article was selected by the editors. We did not realize that it was not an original photograph but a collage, and it was a mistake to have used it.As Science says: “There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions.”
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BROWN DOWN
Tim Blair
Gordon Brown – tipped by Bob Ellis to win the UK election – quits:
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has quit as leader of the Labour Party in an effort to woo the Liberal Democrats into a power-sharing agreement.Between them, the Lib-Dems and Labour lost 91 seats. They won’t exactly be sharing power.
UPDATE. Brown is still in town, according to the Times:
Gordon Brown announced tonight that he is to step down as Labour leader but wants to remain in No 10 for a few more months as part of a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats.That’s what Britain needs. More Gordon.
UPDATE II. The Guardian‘s Jonathan Freedland – whose idea nickery helped George Bush claim Ohio in 2004 – likens Brown to Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth.
UPDATE III. A list of possible candidates to take over from Brown. It may be a choice between Balls and Straw.
UPDATE IV. David Miliband is another possible leader, although he was “famously photographed looking more awkward than usual clutching a banana outside Labour’s party conference.”
UPDATE V. Friendly conversation over Brown’s legacy.
UPDATE VI. Lib-Dem energy spokesman Simon Hughes: “I’m sure there will be a government by the end of the week.” No rush, mate. Take your time.
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MEAT NUKED
Tim Blair
A friend recently returned from Argentina, one of the great steak nations. Distressingly, he reports that ‘Tinians prefer their beef charred rather than rare. They also insist that visitors follow this crude carbon custom. My pal’s attempts to order cuts with some flavour – that is to say, bleeding like a haemophiliac emo – were met with bewilderment, despite his excellent Spanish.
They just hate their steak rare, which seems a terrible waste of brilliant meat. It’s almost as crazy as a country with enormous uranium reserves but no nuclear power … oh, wait.
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Blame the one who left and now will not pay
Andrew Bolt
Author Maria Tumarkin seems to be confused in The Age about who’s actually most responsible for these heartless separations:How can we expect new Australians to abandon their mothers and fathers?Er, we don’t expect this. It’s the new Australians who have done any abandoning, surely.
Yesterday, right across the nation at the extra-long lunches in well-reviewed eateries, children of all ages toasted their mothers’ infinite capacity for love, selflessness and forgiveness. And this morning, the confectionery-floral-jeweller-publishing conglomerate started cackling well before the banks opened.That swipe at people who must earn their own way is something we’ll come back to in a second.
Well, that was the end of that for most of us - heathens and true believers - but not for tens of thousands of first-generation Australians whose ageing mothers and fathers are kept off our shores by some ingenious immigration policies.The Opposition is whacked, the Government not singled out. Already a political thread is obvious. But already I’m asking: why were these people for whom Tumarkin bleeds so heartless as to leave these dreadfully suffering parents behind, when these rules are by no means new? Indeed, my father on coming here half a century ago never saw his own parents again, which leaves me a little less teery at the pain of grandparents free and rich enough to fly in for visits, and to be visited in return.
And if the opposition has its way, most of these mothers and fathers won’t make it here in a thousand years. They can come for a visit, of course, hug a grandchild or two, just as long as they don’t stick around.
Today the waiting period for a parent visa for successful applicants is estimated to be between 15 and 18 years. What do you think will happen in those years to the ageing women and men, far away from their children and grandchildren, many in countries where there is almost no protection for the elderly?No protection for the elderly? So Australia must now open its borders to the elderly of the world on the grounds that other countries won’t pay them pensions and health care as generous as our own?
If it feels like the most cynical war of attrition on the elderly and their families in Australia, that’s because it is. Two thousand parent visas for 2008-09 and no additional places allocated in 2009-10. This is in a country where, according to 2009 Bureau of Statistics data, more than a quarter of Australians were born overseas.These figures are starting to mount up. Has Tumarken made the slightest effort to cost the policy she now recommends so stridently? How much would the rest of us have to pay to bring over the aged relatives of people who came here knowing what our rules on family reunion were? How full would our hospitals and aged care centres become, and who does Tumarken expect to pay?
Of course, if you have about $60,000 ($40,000 in the non-refundable application fee plus bond and other expenses) to put on the table, you can apply for Contributory Parent Visas processed in under two years. But even if you find the money (a Herculean undertaking for most first-generation migrants), strict health requirements will filter out the frail and the sick - our own lovely bit of selection.No sooner do I ask than Tumarken answers. She describes a terrible suffering of grandparents left behind, then whinges about their children having to pay $60,000 to mend their broken hearts. Too much, she cries. Let other taxpayers foot the bill instead. Somehow granny’s tears must shame you and me, but not her own children, who both left her behind and now refuse to bring her over.
(Thanks to reader Andrew.)
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Uh oh
Andrew Bolt
The threat:
SENIOR Labor Party figures have made it clear that Kevin Rudd’s leadership will not survive any further policy backflips or bungling, amid growing tension about his government’s re-election prospects.On the same day:
KEVIN Rudd and Wayne Swan are considering changes to how they implement the new 40 per cent resource profits tax after state Labor governments sided with the big mining companies amid more projects being delayed and jobs being put under threat.(Thanks to reader Alan RM Jones.)
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Boats, boats
Andrew Bolt
Two more:
One boat carrying 36 passengers and three crew has been picked up near Ashmore Islands, with a second carrying 86 people spotted near Christmas Island.UPDATE
Rudd decision to suspend applications for asylum from Sri Lankans and Afghans doesn’t seem to be detering many from risking their lives:
FIVE Australia-bound asylum-seekers who perished at sea set themselves adrift in a fatal attempt to find a passing ship after their wooden fishing boat ran out of fuel, food and drinking water. As the remaining 59 Sri Lankans from the boat arrived yesterday at Christmas Island after being rescued and the Australian Federal Police began investigating the incident, new details emerged about the tragedy.UPDATE 2
Channel 9 reports that a four-star Brisbane hotel has secretly become the biggest immigration detention centre in Queensland, holding 79 boat people that couldn’t be squeezed in anywhere else. Video here.Boat people around the world would be thrilled to think such accommodation awaits them.
The secrecy and lies revealed in the report says plenty.
(Thanks to readers Pira and Aussie Mum.)
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The great Budget fiddle
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann on two great bits of trickery that’s gone into today’s Budget:
The government had the (Ken) Henry tax review for nearly six months. Why was it necessary to rush it out a week before the budget? ...(UPDATE: Thanks to all who pointed out the typo.)
The answer is very simple. By making the (resources rent tax - or “super profits” tax) in particular ‘official policy’, the money it raised, the money it is expected by Treasury to raise, will be included in tonight’s figures.
It is not petty cash. The RRT will raise $3 billion in 2012-13 and $9 billion in 2013-14 - the last two years covered by the official budget forecasts.
So purely in order to be able to include $12 billion of (projected) revenue in the budget papers, Kevin ‘Gougher’ Rudd and Wayne ‘Riskless’ Swan, were prepared to deceive the resources industry and risk seriously damaging the nation by sowing genuine fear…
That alone shows both are unfit to continue in their roles…
Then there’s the ETS. Again, why was it necessary to formally abandon it just before this budget? For exactly the same reason. Once formally abandoned, the ETS numbers come out of the budget.
Now with the ETS they come out of both sides of the budget. Both the money expected to be raised by the tax and the money handed out in compensation.
So if formally ending it is budget neutral, why do it?
The answer is even more damning of Rudd and Swan… Removing the compensation - totally artificially - cuts spending by over $10 billion a year from 2012-13.
But if it also removes a similar sum from the revenue side, what’s the point? The answer is that it enables the government to deliver on its promise to keep spending growth to 2 per cent year.
So we have a prime minister who welches on “our greatest moral challenge” purely - sorry, only - to meet a completely artificial budget number. And an utterly meaningless number at that.
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Brown quits in slo-mo, if he really quits at all
Andrew Bolt
Gordon Brown quits - very, very slowly:
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced he will stand down as Labour leader and eventually premier in a dramatic move which could see his party keep power despite losing a deadlocked election…The kind of people who vote Lib Dem aren’t, after all, natural conservatives, which means Britain’s most popular party could be frozen out of office - and by Britain’s most unpopular leader:
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who emerged as kingmaker after no party won a clear majority, welcomed Mr Brown’s statement that he will quit by September as “important” in a possible power-sharing deal between the two parties.
Mr Brown added that it “could be in the interests of the whole country to form a progressive coalition government” involving Labour and the Lib Dems. In Thursday’s poll, the Conservatives won 306 seats in the 650-member House of Commons - 20 short of an absolute majority of 326 - followed by Labour on 258 and the Lib Dems on 57.Of course, any Labor-Lib Dem coalition would also lack an absolute majority - and a lot of respect from voters who I doubt expected to see much more of Brown.
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Premiers panic as Rudd faces an investment strike
Andrew Bolt
Rudd’s “super profits” tax is turning into a suicide pill:
KEVIN Rudd and Wayne Swan are considering changes to how they implement the new 40 per cent resource profits tax after state Labor governments sided with the big mining companies amid more projects being delayed and jobs being put under threat.Terry McCrann:
South Australia’s Labor Treasurer, Kevin Foley, has declared he plans to travel to Canberra with BHP Billiton to lobby his federal colleagues to change the resources tax, while Queensland Premier Anna Bligh yesterday called on the Rudd government to “get it right” on the tax or it would threaten jobs around the country.
Mr Foley said yesterday he wanted to ensure the expansion of BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine in South Australia’s outback, and the Rann government shared the concerns of the company…
Mining investment and exploration continued to be threatened yesterday as $300 million was chopped off the takeover bid for Macarthur Coal in Queensland by US giant Peabody Energy; Incitec Pivot stopped drilling for phosphate; Xstrata cancelled projects; and Macquarie Bank advised clients Australia was “now seen as being a high sovereign risk destination to invest” and there was a “significant risk of major capital flight out of Australia”.
One of Australia’s biggest goldminers, AngloGold Ashanti also threatened to shift investment offshore.
The Prime Minister and Treasurer both indicated they intended to change the implementation of the new tax, including providing an exemption for miners of low-value commodities such as phosphate rock and quarry materials for building.
Financial Services Minister Chris Bowen was forced to head off speculation that the government intended to apply a super-profits tax to banks after comments by Mr Swan in Sydney last week to business economists.
THE first victims of Kevin and Wayne’s RSPT - Really Stupid Politicians Tax - are ironically their fellow Queenslanders and more than likely some even from their home town of Nambour.What an economic disaster. And what a dud political strategy. Gerard Henderson suggests that Kevin Rudd has overestimated the stupidity and hate-the-rich resentments of the Australian voter:
They are the shareholders in Macarthur Coal. Two weeks ago they were being offered $16 for their shares by Peabody Energy, with every prospect of the price being squeezed a little higher by their directors.
Now they are being offered only $15 and the directors have all the negotiating power to try to squeeze more, of a limp-wristed athlete at an arm-wrestling contest.
In her Australian Financial Review column on Friday, Laura Tingle reported on a briefing the Prime Minister’s Office organised for selected newspaper journalists shortly after the Prime Minister’s release of the Australia’s Future Tax System Review, headed by the Treasury secretary, Ken Henry.
According to Tingle’s report, Rudd gave the impression to those attending the briefing he believed the package would be a political winner with those Australians who want to see mining companies verbally belted.
Certainly this interpretation is consistent with how the Prime Minister acted on the day after the announcement of the proposed tax. On May 3, he appeared on the AM program, declared BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto were 40 per cent and 70 per cent foreign owned respectively and alleged “their massively increased profits … built on Australian resources are mostly, in fact, going overseas”.
Later that day Rudd marched in the Labour Day celebrations in Brisbane and was filmed claiming the tax would fund superannuation for the marching workers. In fact, most funding for Rudd’s plan to increase compulsory superannuation contributions - from 9 to 12 per cent - will come from employers.
The most interesting take from the Herald/Nielsen poll turned on the fact 47 per cent opposed the resources tax, with 44 per cent supporting it and 9 per cent undecided…
A majority of Australians probably accept that mining companies should pay more tax - a proposition with which some mining executives happen to agree. But it is one matter to increase the tax rate for this industry and quite another to make mining in Australia the most heavily taxed mining industry in the world.
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The pocket Windschuttle: the dodgy NT data
Andrew Bolt
Here’s the third of reader Tony Thomas’s summations of the key arguments of Keith Windschuttle‘s important new book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History - Vol III: The Stolen Generations.
Today: the evidence from the Northern Territory:
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