=== Todays Toon ===
Hercules George Robert Robinson, 1st Baron Rosmead, GCMG, PC (Chinese name: 羅士敏勳爵 or 羅便臣) (19 December 1824 - 28 October 1897) was a British colonial administrator who became the 5th Governor of Hong Kong.In Crown Street in Sydney, a building which includes a couple of terraced houses has been named for Hercules Robinson. A monumental bust of Sir Hercules sits atop the facade.
On Sydney's General Post Office at 1 Martin Place, on the Pitt Street side arches of the building there are carvings of four of New South Wales governors including Sir Hercules.
=== Bible Quote ===
“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”- Mark 8:36=== Headlines ===
BP Document: Worst Case Could Be 100,000 Barrels a Day
Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey releases an internal BP document that shows leak could spew far more oil into the Gulf of Mexico than has been estimated in public accounts.Kristina Keneally heading for a rout
THE gloss has worn off Kristina Keneally, as voters think she's lost control of the NSW Government. - The puppet is losing its gloss. She has failed to inquire about Hamidur Rahman, or address the issue that dogs her party, corruption. When asked about the by election loss, she failed to acknowledge her party's role in the result, hence lying to the electorate. - edSuspect Nabbed in Al Qaeda Jailbreak
Yemen police make arrest after suspected Al Qaeda gunmen blast through intelligence headquarters, killing 11 and freeing several detainees
Gates: U.S. Not Ready for Nuclear Iran
Though Iran could have enough nuclear material to make bomb as early as next year, Defense Secretary Gates tells 'Fox News Sunday' Obama administration is not prepared 'to even talk about' containing nuclear Iran
U.S. Praises Israel's Loosened Gaza Ban
White House credits Israeli government with easing policy on blockade of Hamas-led Gaza, as Prime Minister Netanyahu announces July 6 visit to Obama
Six Australians including (from clockwise) Ken Talbot, Geoff Wedlock and Don Lewis are among 11 people feared dead after their plane went missing in West African jungle.Teenager bullied to point of death
A 14-year-old faces life in a wheelchair after making desperate suicide bid to end his torment.
Housing market cools after fever pitch
REAL estate prices across Australia finally begin to steady after record sales earlier this year.
Ruddy heck, Abbott narrows gap on PM
TONY Abbott narrows leadership race as Kevin Rudd reaches a new high in voter dissatisfaction.
School fire destroys 30 sailing boats
A FIRE that broke out in the boat house of a Sydney girls' school early this morning has left a $1 million damages bill. An on-site manager discovered the fire at the Marist Sisters' School shed at Woolwich, just after 1.30am today.Female condom 'with teeth' to fight rape
A FEMALE condom lined with hooks is designed to stop male offenders in their tracks.
Forget soaps, actors join Underbelly cast
ACTOR Todd Lasance is among soap stars switching to the dark side of Underbelly drama.
Big sales fail to lure careful shoppers
NOT even a host of mid-year bargains is enough to break our prolonged spending sobriety.
Four in five Australian women drink during pregnancy as health warnings 'unclear'
FOUR in five Australian women drink during pregnancy, research reveals. While most mothers-to-be had a low alcohol intake, one-in-five drank moderately, and a small number drank heavily, the study found.
=== Comments ===
An Amazing Screw-up in the Gulf CleanupWith: Bill O'Reilly
An amazing screw-up in the Gulf cleanup, that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo." You're not going to believe this. With the world watching how the Obama administration is handling the Gulf oil crisis, now we find out that 16 barges were grounded by the Coast Guard.
According to ABC News, these barges were sucking up thousands of gallons of oil from the water in the marshes. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal says they are extremely effective. So why, why would the Coast Guard shut them down? Ready? Because the Guard wanted to confirm there are life vests and fire extinguishers on board the vessels. And the Guard couldn't find the people who built the barges to get that confirmation. Insane? You bet. You halt the cleanup over life jackets?
This is why many Americans are furious about the oil debacle. This morning, the Coast Guard told us the barges are back in action, but they never should have been out of action. The first poll taken after President Obama's speech on Tuesday shows that most Americans ignored it. 68 percent say they didn't watch. Those who did watch are almost split down the middle on whether it was a good or bad speech. But the big finding in the poll is that President Obama's leadership number has dropped seven points since January. Now 53 percent believe Obama is a decisive leader. With stuff like that crazy Coast Guard dopiness, that number will continue to fall.
On the other side, some conservatives are angry with Republican conservative Congressman Joe Barton of Texas. In the House hearing yesterday, Barton said this to BP CEO Tony Hayward.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARTON: I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Well, as you may know, Mr. Barton apologized for his apology. But the damage was done. Here's Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRAUTHAMMER: You don't express sympathy for a corporation that's sort of soiled and destroyed -- practically is destroying the Gulf Coast. What you can do is say that, you know, we don't like the precedent of the federal government using its leverage and threats, prosecution to force companies into acting against what might be their own interest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
"Talking Points" believes President Obama should be applauded for getting BP to pony up $20 billion. In fact, that's the best thing the president has done in the whole mess. A voluntary action on that scale by BP only helps the suffering people on the Gulf Coast. And that's the bottom line.
Now this week then will mark two months that oil has been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. The estimates are 60,000 barrels a day continue to pollute the waters. And there's no end in sight.
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Is Hamas the Next 'Comeback Kid'?
By Joel Mowbray
Lost amid the hand-wringing over Israel’s botched flotilla raid last month and speculation about the diplomatic fallout for the Jewish state has been perhaps the most significant development, namely the resurgence of Hamas.
On political and financial life support not even a month ago, Hamas has become the face of the Muslim world’s newest cause célèbre: ending the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza. This newfound determination cannot end a “humanitarian crisis” that didn’t exist in the first place, but it just might end the political and economic crises that had been besetting Hamas over the past year.
While understandable on the surface, President Obama’s call last week to curtail the blockade of Gaza so as to stop only weapons is exactly what Hamas needs to emerge stronger than it was when it won the 2006 election.
Even though it was never well-explained to the international community, the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade had a crucial secondary aim beyond thwarting weapons smuggling: crippling the Islamist regime.
What few Western leaders seem to realize is that the blockade was working. Hamas was in freefall, with its cash flow drying up and most Gazans turning on the party they had backed just a few years earlier.
This March, according to the Associated Press, the Hamas government was only able to pay most employees roughly half of their salaries. Not coincidentally, this came right on the heels of Egypt’s most aggressive efforts to clamp down on smuggling, from building an underground steel wall to detonating tunnel entry points on Egyptian soil.
The following month, Hamas was once again unable to meet its payroll. This shortfall happened despite a bevy of new taxes imposed by Hamas on everything from cigarettes to smuggled automobiles and gasoline.
The culprit for Hamas’ financial woes? “We are having difficulties in getting the money in (to Gaza) because of the siege,” Deputy Finance Minister Ismail Mahfouz reportedly wrote on the Gaza Finance Ministry’s website.
While far from suffering a “humanitarian crisis”—Gazans have not suffered shortages of food or medicine—life has gotten markedly worse in the Hamas-controlled territory since 2006, which has been the point of the siege all along.
The same world community now objecting to crippling an unreformed terrorist organization that consolidated its power through a blood-soaked coup was almost universally supportive of sanctioning and isolating apartheid South African—the goal of which was to sow unrest to help topple the government.
Never before have Palestinians been forced to make a stark choice between supporting terrorism and pursuing prosperity; until now they’d more or less been able to enjoy both simultaneously. While growth was stagnant or negative during most of the so-called “intifada,” Palestinians started their terror campaign in the fall of 2000 with the wealthiest non-oil Arab economy.
Faced with the reality that continued Hamas leadership likely would result in even greater misery, most Gazans had soured on the terrorist group. According to figures released this January by respected pollster Nabil Kukali of the Palestinian Center For Public Opinion, Gazans’ support for Hamas had plummeted to 22%—making the Islamists much less popular in Gaza than Fatah.
In a surprisingly candid interview with Public Radio International this January, Hamas Senior Advisor Ahmed Yousef admitted that Hamas’ popularity was suffering “because of the sanction[s], the pressure.”
Should the economic siege of Gaza be broken, most Gazans will likely credit the “martyrdom” of the nine dead flotilla passengers—which only happened because of the violent ambush of descending Israeli soldiers. Though not the doing of Hamas, it certainly followed the spirit of Hamas—a point that probably won’t be lost on most Palestinians.
While clever Western diplomats might believe that they can chart a path that will enable Fatah to receive the credit for ending the economic siege of Gaza, they would be wise to study carefully the aftermaths of Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005.
In both instances, domestic political concerns were clearly the primary motivation for Israel pulling back military forces, yet each time, Hezbollah and Hamas dubiously claimed credit for driving out the “Zionist enemy.”
The gambit worked both times.
With Egypt temporarily opening its border with Gaza in a show of “solidarity”—an obvious pandering to its largely anti-Israel population—Hamas appears to have rebounded considerably. And that’s even before Gaza receives its portion of the proposed U.S. aid package of $400 million for the Palestinians.
When Israel announced Thursday that it would allow the transfer of even more food into Gaza and ease restrictions on materials for civilian projects under international supervision, Hamas quickly refused the offer. Why? Because, as explained by senior Hamas official Ismail Radwan, Hamas is holding out until Israel decides to “completely lift the siege on the Gaza Strip.”
If President Obama is successful in breaking the economic siege of Gaza, his victory will be a Pyrrhic one. Economic revival in Gaza cannot help but reinvigorate Hamas, thus increasing terrorist attacks against Israel and dashing whatever hopes Mr. Obama himself harbored for achieving peace.
In other words, ending the economic siege of Gaza will lead to the same ending as so many other paths paved with good intentions.
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SHOUTERS FOR SHARIA
Tim Blair
The United Kingdom isn’t:
At least nobody tried to drink wine. That would have been provocative.
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WAH CLUBBED
Tim Blair
Twitter’s virtual Darwinism in action:
The associate editor of News Custom Publishing at Herald & Weekly Times, David Bonnici, lost his job last week after a series of highly inappropriate comments on Twitter were discovered by management.An example of Mr Bonnici’s commentary – he is better known online as Clubwah – may be found here.
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TOO WARM FOR SCHOOL
Tim Blair
First she’s accused of an inexorable lust for Al Gore, and now Laurie David’s book is dumped from schools:
A review committee, convened after parents complained, concluded that author Laurie David’s book, “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” contained “a major factual error” in a graphic about rising temperatures and carbon-dioxide levels.David’s stupid book will be used again when fixes are made. She’s doing better than Leonardo DiCaprio, who faces a total ban:
However, the district will cease to use a companion video about global warming, narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio …So it’s like most DiCaprio videos, then. Perhaps his next documentary could examine wind farm welfare:
The committee found the video “without merit” and recommended that it not be used.
Britain’s biggest wind farm companies are to be paid not to produce electricity when the wind is blowing …(Via Possum Hunter)
Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
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GREENS HERE TO HELP
Tim Blair
Kevin Rudd’s polling remains flatter than Julia Gillard’s vowels, but there is still this:
Based on preference flows at the last election, calculated on an 80 per cent flow of Greens preferences to Labor, the government is ahead on the two-party-preferred figure of 52 to 48 per cent. This is based on a Greens primary vote of 15 per cent …The Liberals face other problems, too:
Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s election campaign for NSW is in turmoil with the Liberal Party unable to field candidates in three key western Sydney marginal seats.Anyone care to nominate? There are also National Party candidacies available in Page and Richmond. Could be fun. So might be the transcript of last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Rudd, as recommended by Kae.
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SPIRIT OF ‘65
Tim Blair
Jim Clark’s 1965 Indianapolis 500-winning Lotus 38, silent for 45 years, roars anew:
Quick quiz for the engineering-inclined: why is the Lotus asymmetrical?
(Via Motor Sport, which reports that the 38 will run next month at the Goodwood Festival of Speed)
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GO WEST
Tim Blair
Reader Smike, currently a resident of the north-eastern US, emails:
So over hot dogs for Friday’s dinner, my better half and I discussed attractive places to live. No hard and fast lists of criteria, just sort of places where we’d feel at home. Who knew that both Western Australia and Texas would top our lists?Both are great. I lean towards WA, of course. Birthplace of Dennis Lillee and all. Plus, it’s a place where a determined and hard-working person can make a lot of money fast.
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IMPLICATIONS UNSEEN
Tim Blair
“It was a state by-election fought exclusively on state issues,” according to treasurer Wayne Swan. “I don’t see any federal implications at all.” Perhaps Wayne wasn’t looking at Penrith closely enough:
At a small polling booth at the Samuel Terry Public school, Labor supporters handing out how to vote cards for the Labor candidate in the Penrith State by-election (also in the federal Labor seat of Lindsay) were wearing Your Rights At Work t-shirts. Why? Because Federal Labor was conducting an under-the-radar test of its message for the federal election campaign – a scare campaign based on the claim that Tony Abbott would bring back Workchoices.At least some of the anti-Labor vote in Penrith seems due to federal issues – helpfully introduced to the state campaign by Labor. Alleged internal Labor polling contains further bad news for the government, including a farewell to Maxine McKew.
What happened? The swing against Labor was 30.3 per cent. The second highest swing across the seat. Voters weren’t buying the pitch.
The story was similar at the Nepean Hospital Kingswood booth – where voters enjoy the longest hospital waiting lists in the country. This is where Kevin Rudd has been trying to sell his national health reform package to reduce waiting lists. What happened? The swing against Labor was 32.5 per cent – the largest swing of any booth and the largest in the nation’s history.
The other horror for federal Labor was the result in four booths in the lower Blue Mountains (also in the federal marginal seat of Macquarie). All four booths saw the Greens outpoll Labor in primary vote – despite a letterbox campaign by Labor Senator Doug Cameron on Workchoices.
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MINERS MISSING
Tim Blair
A possible tragedy in Africa:
Nine Australian mining executives are missing, feared dead, in west Africa after their plane disappeared.Among the missing: executive Ken Talbot.
Board members from West Australian based iron ore miner Sundance Resources have been in Cameroon in the past few days speaking with officials about the promising Mbalam project.
“Sundance Resources regrets to advise that an aircraft chartered by the company has been reported missing after it failed to reach its destination on Saturday, June 19,” a statement from the company says.
UPDATE. No signal, no distress beacon and no plane. All on board are feared dead. Numbers vary in different reports, but could be up to ten.
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Three more soldiers die
Andrew Bolt
Terrible news, in the week we buried two other Diggers:
THREE Australian soldiers have been killed and seven wounded in an incident in Afghanistan.This war seems to be drifting. The Coalition - Australia included - does not seem to have committed enough forces to win. If we put out soldiers in harms way, we cannot deny them what they need to achieve their mission.
Chief of the Defence Force Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston has confirmed a Coalition helicopter went down in Kandahar province, in the south of Afghanistan.... He said it was “not the result of enemy action"…
The deaths bring to 16 Australia’s casualties in Afghanistan since 2002.
UPDATE
From icasualites.org, a picture of a war that’s just drifting on:
===Golfing Obama whacks yachting Hayward
Andrew Bolt
A shocking look:
BP chief Tony Hayward is at the centre of another PR debacle after watching his yacht at a prestigious race around the Isle of Wight.Barack Obama’s spokesman is scathing:
White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel told the US ABC News it was the latest in “a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes” by BP since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion. “To quote Tony Hayward, he’s ‘got his life back’, as he would say,” Mr Emanuel said.You wouldn’t catch Obama goofing off on a yacht while the US battles the greatest oil spill in history. No, sirree:
Meanwhile, President Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden enjoyed a round of golf on Saturday...UPDATE
Charles Krauthammer:
Pres. Barack Obama doesn’t do the mundane. He was sent to us to do larger things. You could see that plainly in his Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill. He could barely get himself through the pedestrian first half: a bit of BP-bashing, a bit of faux-Clintonian “I feel your pain,” a bit of recovery and economic-mitigation accounting. It wasn’t until the end of the speech — the let-no-crisis-go-to-waste part that tried to leverage the Gulf Coast devastation to advance his cap-and-trade climate-change agenda — that Obama warmed to his task.Mort Zuckerman says Obama is a president who can speak but not lead:
Pedestrian is beneath Obama. Mr. Fix-It he is not. He is world-historical, the visionary, come to make the oceans recede and the planet heal.
How? By creating a glorious, new clean-green economy. And how exactly to do that? From Washington, by presidential command, and with tens of billions of dollars thrown around. With the liberal (and professorial) conceit that scientific breakthroughs can be legislated into existence, Obama proposes to give us a new industrial economy....
Here’s the offer: Tax carbon, spend trillions, and put government in control of the energy economy — and he will take you he knows not where, by way of a road he knows not which.
That’s why Tuesday’s speech was received with such consternation. It was so untethered from reality. The Gulf is gushing, and the president is talking mystery roads to unknown destinations. That passes for vision, and vision is Obama’s thing. It sure beats cleaning up beaches.
America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. One renowned Asian leader stated recently at a private dinner in the United States, “We in Asia are convinced that Obama is not strong enough to confront his opponents, but we fear that he is not strong enough to support his friends.”UPDATE 2
Noel Sheppard says reacted just as you’d expect to Obama and Hayward goofing off:
America’s media on Saturday had a collective hissy fit over BP CEO Tony Hayward having the nerve to participate in a yacht race on his day off.
At the same time, no such outrage was expressed concerning President Obama and Vice President Biden going golfing.
This double standard continued Sunday as the three broadcast network political talk shows all began with Hayward’s yacht outing while ignoring the President’s R&R on the links.
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Our suicidal ideas
Andrew Bolt
US historian Shelby Steele on the slow death of the West:
One reason for this is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. Today we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. Today the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past—racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on.(Thanks to reader Brendan.)
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Bye bye billions more
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann on the blowing of yet more of our billions to renationalise our communications network:
KEVIN Rudd is writing out yet another huge taxpayer cheque - paying Telstra $11 billion to reduce the size of the looming financial disaster of his proposed National Broadband Network.UPDATE
The Government was going to spend up to $43 billion to build what even its own “support” study showed would be a white elephant on such a scale that it would have made the insulation debacle look like the model of success.
The payment to Telstra is a humiliating admission that the NBN could not proceed without Telstra’s infrastructure. And even more importantly, by preventing Telstra competing with it.
The net result of yesterday’s deal is that we will go back to a mid-20th century future: a government monopoly of our basic telecommunications. Now it will be the fibre of broadband as opposed to the old Telecom copper phone wire.
Michael Pascoe says just the spin makes him suspicious:
Anyway, the extra $2 billion [to seal the deal] ... has been concocted by the government setting up another entity called USO Co to take over Telstra’s Universal Service Obligation and paying Telstra $100 million to retrain its copper people as fibre optic people.UPDATE 2
(And if you think about that figure for very long, you might wonder just how expensive and slow such retraining must be. Telstra’s entire workforce is about 30,000 people, most of whom probably don’t need to know how to connect a fibre optic phone and quite a few might well be made redundant by NBN taking over the nation’s cabling. So where does the $100 million go? $20,000 each for 5,000 people? I don’t know.)
USO Co isn’t part of NBN. Broken or unavailable pay phones, emergency call handling and the simple availability of a working basic phone service in your home will once again be the direct responsibility of the government. Some of the stuff the Post Master General’s Department used to do.
So if your electricity is cut off and there’s a problem with the batteries you’ll need to make your fibre-to-the-home phone work, it’ll be Comrade Conroy’s job to come around and change them.
The government’s media release was careful to state that ‘’Telstra attributes a value of approximately $2 billion’’ to the training money, NBN taking over responsibility for cabling greenfield developments and getting rid of its universal service obligation. Well, maybe. The Government will be funding USO Co to the tune of $100 million year when the NBN gets up and running. Stephen Conroy must charge a lot for house calls…
And yet to come is Telstra hiring a so-called ‘’independent expert’’ to advise it on whether or not this is a good deal, after which it has to go to the shareholders sometime next year - after the federal election.
Rudd seems to have been in a very sudden rush to get the deal done - and in time to distract media attention from a Newspoll finding that could have killed his leadership. The question is: how much of the $2 billion in sweeteners did Rudd spend just for some poll-day spin?
After more than a year of negotiations, the political pressure on NBN Co and Telstra to get an agreement asap ramped up greatly last week with the plan for an announcement on Friday. This would have been conveniently in time for the Newspoll conducted over the weekend, while also diverting attention from NSW Labor’s inevitably disastrous by-election loss in a state seat on Saturday.But Telstra wanted a few more reassurances, which took the negotations into the weekend:
The $11 billion in-principle deal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has thrashed out with Telstra for the giant telco’s participation in the national broadband project was finalised at close to midnight last night (Saturday).In fact, the haggling over a deal worth billions of dollars went on all night - and you must hope that those representing taxpayers stayed wide awake:
Both the government and Telstra officials continued to trade papers in the early hours of Sunday morning before the Telstra board met at 7am to sign.Is this rush-rush the proper way to run a country? What did Rudd give away in the panic to save his skin? And will Finance Minister Lindsay Tannerhave to excuse any mistakes as he excused the Government’s disastrous insulation scheme, also hatched in a rush:
I don’t think we should have sat back and dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s.(Thanks to reader Burrah.)
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No improving on Pearson’s perfection
Andrew Bolt
At least Hartcher can spot a good argument when someone makes it first:
Christopher Pearson in The Weekend Australian on June 5:UPDATEFROM 1996 to 1998, Abbott was parliamentary secretary to employment minister Amanda Vanstone. He won cabinet approval for the Green Corps, which provided unemployed youth with six months of training and subsidised work experience on environmental remediation projects, encompassing about 17,000 participants by the end of the program. In 1998 Abbott won a promotion to the portfolio of employment services. Abbott’s initial brief was to bed down the Job Network, which had replaced the dysfunctional commonwealth employment service. Another thankless task he undertook was work for the dole. Work for the dole became popular in blue-collar electorates. The Australian Building and Construction Commission was a bete noire for militant unions but it established that industrial thuggery and malpractice were rife and led to extensive reforms. When Abbott took over the health portfolio, his brief changed. He managed the emerging medical indemnity crisis.Peter Hartcher in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday:AS parliamentary secretary for employment 1996-98, [Abbott] proposed and implemented the idea of a Green Corps, where thousands of unemployed people volunteer for paid jobs rehabilitating the environment. It turned out to be a prototype work-for-the-dole scheme and a successful one. As the minister for employment services, 1998-2003, he inherited a failing experiment of the Howard government, the privatisation of the Commonwealth Employment Service, and its reinvention as the Job Network. He also vastly expanded Howard’s early work-for-the-dole scheme. Abbott created the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner to deal with the problems. And as health minister Abbott inherited a crisis in the cost of medical indemnity .
Reader Bigpeteoz blames Wikipedia:
As a Parliamentary Secretary, Abbott oversaw the establishment of the Green Corps program which involved young people in environmental restoration work. As Minister for Employment Services he oversaw the implementation of the Job Network and was responsible for the government’s Work for the Dole scheme. He was also charged with establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission, aimed at lifting productivity. Howard appointed Abbott to the key Health Portfolio in 2003, during a period of contentious Medicare and doctors’ Medical Indemnity reform.[
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Save the planet! Paint a mountain white
Andrew Bolt
Just when you thought the world couldn’t get crazier:
Slowly but surely an extinct glacier in a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes is being returned to its former colour, not by falling snow or regenerated ice sheets, but by whitewash.(Thanks to reader Craig.)
It is the first experimental step in an innovative plan to recuperate Peru’s disappearing Andean glaciers…
The World Bank clearly believes the idea - the brainchild of 55-year-old Peruvian inventor, Eduardo Gold - has merit as it was one of the 26 winners from around 1,700 submissions in the “100 Ideas to Save the Planet” competition at the end of 2009.
Mr Gold, who has no scientific qualifications but has studiously read up on glaciology, is enthused that the time has come to put his theory into practice.
Although he is yet to receive the $200,000 (£135,000) awarded by the World Bank, his pilot project is already underway on the Chalon Sombrero peak, 4,756 metres above sea level…
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Newspoll’s dodgy assumptions may save Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Newspoll does not confirm the last Nielsen results, which had Labor facing a wipeout at just 47 per cent of the two-party preferred vote:
Based on preference flows at the last election, calculated on an 80 per cent flow of Greens preferences to Labor, the government is ahead on the two-party-preferred figure of 52 to 48 per cent. This is based on a Greens primary vote of 15 per cent, down one point in three weeks.A handy lead to Rudd, So what’s the problem?
The problem is that Newspoll presumes the Greens preferences will go the way they did at the last election - almost all to Labor. But in its own poll, Nielsen found out that may be a false assumption:
If preferences were allocated as they fell at the last election, the Coalition would be ahead on a two-party-preferred basis by 52 per cent to 48 per cent. Based on how voters told the poll they would allocate preferences, the Coalition is ahead by 53 per cent to 47 per cent.Would the same be true of the Newspoll results if those polled had been asked for their second preference?
Perhaps. Here’s another clue from Newspoll to the rising anti-Rudd sentiment:
The key for Mr Abbott, and the concern among Labor MPs, is that the Opposition Leader has made ground on Mr Rudd as preferred prime minister. Three weeks ago, Mr Rudd was still well in front of Mr Abbott by 49 to 33 per cent, a lead Mr Rudd held for more than a month.But the bottom line is that the Newspoll finding is too ambiguous for Labor to dump Rudd right now. And this being the last sitting week of Parliament for two months, Rudd will probably be safe. His MPs will not be gathered again to plot against him until the election is called, or it’s all but too late anyway.
Last weekend, Mr Rudd’s rating as preferred prime minister dropped to a record low of 46 per cent, down three points, and Mr Abbott’s support rose four percentage points to 37 per cent.
UPDATE
Simon Benson on Labor’s thrashing in the state seat of Penrith:
While Ms Keneally yesterday tried to play down the implications for the state poll in March, some within Labor fear it could be reduced to 15 to 20 seats in the 93-member Legislative Assembly.One Labor MP said yesterday the problem was that “people think we’re crooks”.Benson gives examples of federal Labor issues being part of this debacle:
At a small polling booth at the Samuel Terry Public school, Labor supporters handing out how to vote cards for the Labor candidate in the Penrith State by-election (also in the federal Labor seat of Lindsay) were wearing Your Rights At Work t-shirts. Why? Because Federal Labor was conducting an under-the-radar test of its message for the federal election campaign – a scare campaign based on the claim that Tony Abbott would bring back Workchoices.But the Liberals aren’t helping themselves to capitalise:
What happened? The swing against Labor was 30.3 per cent. The second highest swing across the seat. Voters weren’t buying the pitch.
Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s election campaign for NSW is in turmoil with the Liberal Party unable to field candidates in three key western Sydney marginal seats.UPDATE 2
If this trend in the Penrith by-election is true of federal seats, then Newspoll is indeed wrong and federal Labor in terrible trouble:
Of greater concern for the ALP was that - in the booths where the Greens vote was the highest - the preference flow to Labor was lowest.Let’s adjust the Newspoll results so that the Greens preferences go only 60 per cent to Labor (but the preferences of “others” still break even). Then Labor is trailing 49 to 51 per cent.
In some of the booths where the Greens got more than 20 per cent, barely half went to the ALP - a much lower figure than the 80 per cent preference flow recorded at the last federal poll and used for a notional allocation in the major opinion polls.
UPDATE 3
Glenn Milne says Penrith voters had a message for Rudd, too:
Every federal Liberal who went to Penrith to campaign reported that voters raised two issues; Rudd and boatpeople. Joe Hockey and Marise Payne both informed the Liberal caucus last week in Canberra about these concerns…(Thanks to readers CA and Michael I.)
Part of the reason I’m writing this column is that there are senior Labor figures who are so frustrated at Rudd’s blind spot on asylum-seekers they see no other way to get the message to him than through the media: “We are bleeding to death on this,” says one prominent backbencher loyal to Rudd. “Everywhere you went in Penrith they were talking about boatpeople.
“And people (read Rudd) don’t seem to understand that over in Western Australia they may hate the mining tax. But they hate the boat arrivals even more.”
Two weeks ago David Bradbury, the federal member for Lindsay, which takes in Penrith, stood in the partyroom… Bradbury warned Rudd just how damaging the asylum-seeker debacle had become for Labor in his electorate. He was followed by the equally respected South Australian member for Wakefield, Nick Champion. The message was the same…
Liberal scrutineers on Saturday reported two recurring themes; voters bagging Rudd in highly personal terms and anger over the federal government’s loss of control over our borders.
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Cad of the Year?
Andrew Bolt
Astonishing:ISOBEL Redmond (right) had dressed to impress and was excited about going to see American R&B star Natalie Cole open Adelaide’s Cabaret Festival.Redmond says she’s rarely been treated more rudely. But rudeness seems what this Labor clique does best:
Her sense of anticipation was heightened after South Australia’s silver-haired new Attorney-General, John Rau (left), invited her to accompany him as his date in the comfort of the VIP government box at the Festival Theatre, overlooking the bright city lights and the Torrens River…
(T)he newly single Rau had, after all, asked the long-time separated Redmond on the date a fortnight earlier, as they chatted at the Cabaret Fringe Festival opening…
But excitement turned to humiliation for the Liberal leader as she cut a lonely figure in the Festival Theatre foyer last Saturday night when the bells rang for the start of the headline show.
Displaying what Redmond yesterday described as a surprising lack of chivalry, the state’s top law officer had stood her up.
But the 57-year-old mother of three went from being inconvenienced to deeply embarrassed.
Upon being escorted all alone to the government box by a theatre staff member, she found the dapper Attorney-General already in his plush seat with an attractive blonde aged in her mid-20s. The young lady had been brought along by Treasurer Kevin Foley and his date, a 28-year-old blonde named Kylie, as a hook-up for Rau.
After the concert, Foley, Rau and the two blondes were asked to leave an invite-only private Foxtel function for the media at the nearby InterContinental cocktail bar. But when an Adelaide Sunday Mail photographer snapped Foley and the blondes, he snapped back.It’s not just Rudd, then. Here’s Foley and the ladies on their big night out:
Foley called the newspaper’s night editor in his capacity as the Acting Premier and unleashed a tirade of abuse, which lasted several minutes. “You are a c . . ., you’re all c . . . s, the paper is a f . . king c . . .,” Foley said.
===Making more from others’ less
Andrew Bolt
No, not satire but South Australian politics in 2010:
THE bureaucrat employed to tell the public service how to do “more with less” had his salary more than doubled to $310,500 when he left Premier Mike Rann’s office to take up the job.(Thanks to reader CA.)
Freedom of Information documents and show Lance Worrall’s salary increased from $146,797 to $310,500 when he quit as the Premier’s economics adviser in late 2008. Also despite telling public servants to be more efficient, the unit he heads has expanded at times from 15 people to 22.
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Rudd’s Tampa coming?
Andrew Bolt
If true, it could be Rudd’s reverse Tampa:
SRI Lankan officials have warned that a vessel carrying up to 200 asylum-seekers could be headed for Australia… The (Sri Lankan) high commissioner said yesterday he had credible information that a boat, believed to be connected to remnants of the Tamil Tigers, had upwards of 200 people on it.
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Kennett not shabby in contrast
Andrew Bolt
I wouldn’t be inviting this comparison if I were Victorian Premier John Brumby:
He urged people to remember what Victoria was like in the ‘’dim, dark 1990s’’ under Liberal premier Jeff Kennett.Some may think these days are a bit dim and dark instead:
VICTORIANS are being forced to wait up to four years just to get an appointment to be treated as a hospital outpatient, health figures reveal.In a snapshot of the wait for outpatient care, the data shows the average wait for a new outpatient appointment at Royal Children’s Hospital was 275 days.A Bendigo Health patient waited 1493 days for an ear, nose and throat appointment, while at Royal Melbourne Hospital a patient waited 1204 days for a neurology outpatient appointment.(Thanks to reader CA.)
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The choice is doom or gloom
Andrew Bolt
Scriptwriter John Collee has talked to both sides of the global warming debate.
On the one hand, there’s the alarmists:
Which leads me, personally, to the bleak conclusion that the human race is stuffed… Our children - forget our grandchildren, I’m talking about my own kids, aged 14, 11 and 9 - are going to live in a world in which major cities are flooded, fertile plains become deserts, populations run out of food and water, rivers run dry, fishing grounds become dead zones, our rainforests and living coral reefs become curiosities of history.And on the other hand, there’s the even more alarmist:
Of course, there is a great problem with declaring that point of view because one immediately becomes labelled as a mad Cassandra spouting visions of the apocalypse. Passionate yet sober scientists like Tim Flannery in Sydney and Steve Schneider in San Francisco have so far avoided this trap, insisting there is still a chance to fix things. I’ve discussed the issue at length with both of these men and I accept their view that to contribute usefully to this debate one has to offer solutions.
I’ve talked also to the other camp: to experts like James Hansen - the doyen of climate change at NASA - who has recently become so frustrated by political inaction that he has almost reached the point of declaring the game over.(Thanks to reader Neville.)
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