=== Todays Toon ===
Admiral Arthur Phillip RN (11 October 1738 – 31 August 1814) was a British admiral and colonial administrator. Phillip was appointed Governor of New South Wales, the first European colony on the Australian continent, and was the founder of the site which is now the city of Sydney.=== Bible Quote ===
“Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.”- 1 Chronicles 29:11=== Headlines ===
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches in Florida despite snags — potential first step toward commercailly based human space travel similar to Obama's plans for future of NASA.Put a Cap on It — and Hope
BP fixes cap over Gulf oil gusher but crude continues to spew into sea as effort only collects some of the spill
Flotilla Group's Secret Background
Pro-Palestinian Turkish group involved in Israel flotilla reportedly supports radical Islamic networks and is member of a hard-to-access U.N. group
Dow Closes Under 10000
Wall Street takes a hit as Dow drops 323 points in a Friday letdown despite private sector job creation in May
In extra stab at Israeli military, the boat pro-Palestinian activists are sending to challenge Gaza blockade bears name of activist killed by Israeli army bulldozer.President to Announce New Spy Chief
Source says Obama expected to choose top Pentagon official James Clapper as new intelligence director
Too much sex has finished off the once-popular lads' mag, with the current issue of Ralph to be the last as publishers look to focusing on title's digital futureMPs in line for $50,000 pay rise
THE reason they're getting a rise nearly double the minimum wage? So they stop rorting.
Rudd set to lose election on mining tax
POLL backlash against Labor in Rudd's home state could make him one-term Prime Minister.
Facebook urged to ban teen tributes
STOPPING under-18s from setting up memorial pages would prevent cyber-vandalism, say police.
Stosur planning a French revolution
AUSSIE'S love affair with tennis started when she was six. Now all grown up she's ready for history.
Justin Bieber's voice hitting sour note
PUBERTY is wreaking havoc on preteen sensation's voice, making him unable to sing songs on key.
Students busted for 'Beat the Jew' game
SEVEN seniors at a Southern California high school are facing disciplinary action for participating in a game called Beat the Jew, in which losers were subjected to "incineration" or "enslavement", a school administrator says. The game involved some students playing the role of Nazis, who blindfolded and dropped off other students playing Jews who must find their way back to the campus, said Sherry Johnstone, assistant superintendent of personnel for Desert Sands Unified School District. It was not immediately clear exactly how losing players were punished, she said.
Hamas not a terrorist group, says Turkey's PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan
TURKEY'S Prime Minister says he doesn't view radical Palestinian group Hamas, Israel's arch-foe, as a terrorist organisation. "Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land. They have won an election," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday in a speech broadcast live on television. "I have told this to US officials... I do not accept Hamas as a terrorist organisation. I think the same today. They are defending their land." The United States and the European Union blacklist Hamas as a terrorist group despite its victory in Palestinian elections in 2006.
MP desertion leaves premier in crisis
KRISTINA Keneally lost two ministers in the space of just six hours yesterday as her Government descended into full-blown crisis. Major Events Minister Ian Macdonald resigned from the frontbench after he misled Parliament and the Premier regarding an overseas trip, part of which was a delayed honeymoon. The minister had taken leave, but the taxpayer footed some of the bill. And Juvenile Justice Minister Graham West stepped down yesterday after he failed to get funding for his portfolio - a slap in the face to the Premier as she marked six months in the job.Castro claims US sank South Korean ship
FORMER Cuban leader accuses US NAvy commandos of sinking warship in order to keep American troops in Japan.
=== Journalists Corner ===
I wanted to let you know about an upcoming film that is sure to turn heads. Al-Jazeera's English language channel will be airing the Democratic Voice of Burma's new investigative documentary, "Myanmar's Military Ambitions," this week starting Friday, June 4th.
A product of a five-year long investigation, the documentary exposes top-secret information about Burma's nuclear program and its intentions to become the next nuclear-armed North Korea, as reported by defecting Army Major Sai Thein Win. The information exposed in this film will demand that the international community do more to stem the threat that the Burmese military regime has become, not only to the people of Burma, but to the world.Click here for more information. Show times below.
I hope you will tune in!
Mike Haack
Air times are as follows:
Friday, June 4, 01:00 am East Coast Time
Saturday, June 5, 2:00 pm East Coast Time
Saturday, June 5, 10:00 pm East Coast Time
Monday, June 7, 09:00 am East Coast Time
Tuesday, June 8, 12:30 am East Coast Time
Wednesday, June 9, 2:00 pm East Coast Time
Wednesday, June 9, 10:00pm East Coast Time
Support 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma:
=== Comments ===
Talking PointsBy Bill O'Reilly
Point No. 1: The United Nations is telling the United States to end the drone missile attacks on Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
A senior U.N. official said: "The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, [and] how it ensures the killings are legal."
The international community does not know? Good. It's none of their business. Al Qaeda attacked the USA killing nearly 3,000 people here. What did the international community do about that?
This is so outrageous. The U.N. continues to be grossly anti-American. They give quarter and sympathy to the worst terrorists on Earth.
President Obama is absolutely correct in dropping missiles on Al Qaeda strongholds. Period.
Point No. 2, and this is not good news for the president. Apparently another Democratic Senate candidate, Andrew Romanoff in Colorado, was approached about a job by the White House to get out of the race.
On the heels of Congressman Sestak, that makes two apparent violations of U.S. Code 600, which says it is illegal to entice any office seeker out of a race with the prospect of a government job.
In the case of Sestak, it was allegedly Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel involved. In the case of Romanoff, who is running against the incumbent Senator Michael Bennet, it was allegedly White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina who made the overture.
Apologists for the White House say it's business as usual. But the law is the law. We need a federal investigation. Are you hearing me, Attorney General Holder?
Point No. 3: The Los Angeles Unified School District will apparently instruct public school students that the new Arizona anti-illegal alien law is morally wrong.
Can you believe it? The nation's second largest school district is now bringing ideology and propaganda into the classroom using civics and history classes to tell children that law, supported by most of the nation, is morally repugnant.
No spin: The fact that the L.A. educators are ramming one-sided ideology down the throats of kids is the real moral outrage here.
Listen to this quote from board president Monica Garcia: "America must stand for tolerance, inclusiveness and equality. In our civics classes and in our hallways, we must give life to these values by teaching our students to value themselves, to respect others and to demand fairness and justice for all who live within our borders. Any law which violates civil rights is un-American."
So this is great. Monica Garcia is now the decider when it comes to what's un-American. Monica Garcia is the new un-American czar. Are you kidding me?
This is the worst example I have ever seen of indoctrination by a school board. The students in Los Angeles do not deserve this.
===
DEEP SINKER
Tim Blair
“Only recently lauded as the most popular prime minister in Australia’s history,” reports the Times, “Mr Rudd is now watching his support base collapse with all the drama and speed of a Guatemala sink hole.” The incredible sinking Kevin, already down in Western Australia, is now vulnerable in Queensland:
A backlash against Labor’s super mining tax in Kevin Rudd’s home state could make him a one-term prime minister.This won’t calm the famous Rudd temper. Is he angry or frightened? Beats me; having met the bloke only once, I’d go with weird.
A Galaxy Poll – conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail – warns that, if an election were held today, Mr Rudd would lose in his own backyard.
On the crucial two-party preferred vote, the poll has Labor in Queensland on 48 per cent to the Coalition’s 52 per cent.
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BAD LIZARDS
Tim Blair
Having systematically purged long-time supporters who were at odds with his recent leftish conversion, Charles Johnson now discovers who has taken their place:
Evidently, a lot of people out there really think there was a huge need for the supplies being brought to Gaza by the Turkish “peace activist” flotilla. People have even posted comments at LGF complaining about the evil Israelis, whose blockade has been starving women and children to death.They’re your new friends, Charles. Don’t sound so surprised.
UPDATE. White House correspondent Helen Thomas apologises for saying that “Jews should get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland and Germany. She’d forgotten how much more difficult this might be since the formation of oceans during Helen’s childhood.
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OBEY THE CLAW
Tim Blair
The powerful lobster lobby demands action:
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CONFESS!
Tim Blair
A McCarthyist inquisition for Western Australian water minister Graham Jacobs:
“Have you ever either verbally or in writing instructed your departmental staff to remove the word climate change from documents?” exclaimed Mr Logan.Headline on the ABC’s unbylined piece: “Is Jacobs a climate change sceptic?”
“So you have? So you have? You have or deny it?” chimed in Mr Kobelke.
(Via J. F. Beck)
===
HUMANITARIANS vs HYENAS
Tim Blair
Fairfax flotilla funboy Paul McGeogh describes this week’s interception of harmless care-givers by grotesque seagoing predatory mammals:
All that could be seen of the Israelis around us were pin-points of light, as warships sitting a kilometre or more either side of the flotilla inched in – seemingly to squeeze the Gaza-bound humanitarian convoy.Like hyenas? It’ll be interesting to hear what Media Watch says about this, considering how upset the show was when terrorists were described as cockroaches. The old “lag ‘n’ lunge” move complete, McGeogh continues:
Then, the tightening noose. Sneaking up and around every boat, there were bullet-shaped hulks that soon became impossible to hide as the moonlight made fluorescent tubes of their roiling wakes. First one, then two and maybe four could be seen sneaking in from the rear.
They hunted like hyenas – moving up and ahead on the flanks; pushing in, then peeling away; and finally, lagging before lunging.
But as they came alongside the Mavi Marmara, the dozen or so helmeted commandos in each assault craft copped the full force of the ferry’s fire hoses and a shower of whatever its passengers found on deck or could break from the ship’s fittings.Apparently the items simply “found on deck” were quite helpful:
Besides learning about just how much aid is delivered to Gaza, we’ve also learned quite a deal during the past few days about the charming peaceniks aboard the flotilla. Mainly that they weren’t peaceniks. Mike Carlton ignores the evidence:
The Israeli attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla was an act of lethal stupidity.Carlton used to be a satirist, of sorts. Now he’s a joke. It’s a fine line, Mike.
UPDATE. McGeough and photographer Kate Geraghty were surprised when their freedom boat of justice was boarded by Australians:
Commando 1: ‘’Down! Sit down! Get down!’’We’re on ur shipz, underminin ur terrorizmz. Next, an outbreak of passivity:
Geraghty: ‘’Professional journalists!”
Reporter Paul McGeough: “We’re with The Sydney Morning Herald.”
Commando 2: “We know you’re with the Herald.”
Geraghty: “Bloody hell - Aussie accents!”
Commando 1: “No worries.”
As we were herded down the fly bridge, the dozen activists on board resorted to passive resistance techniques – refusing to co-operate, yelling and screaming and seeking to provoke the commandos …They sound more active than passive.
Two of the women, including Arraf, were dragged to the foredeck, where they were handcuffed and forced to sit with bags over their heads.As is customary throughout much of the Middle East. When in Rome …
===
SMALL GOVERNMENT
Tim Blair
The entertainment never ends in NSW:
Kristina Keneally lost two ministers in the space of just six hours yesterday as her Government descended into full-blown crisis.They were among her more attractive ministers, too:
Daily Telegraph editorial: “This Government is Caligula in clown shoes.” Hey, at least Lou Reed is a fan – although he thinks that Keneally is the Prime Minister.===
Rudd is driven not by anger but fear
Andrew Bolt
I think Marr is fundamentally wrong. The anger at being thwarted, mocked or threatened is only a function of Rudd’s essential fear:
KEVIN Rudd’s “angry heart” is the subject of an extraordinary new essay on the making of the Prime Minister, which asks what drives his ambition and comes to a startling conclusion: that he is ”a politician with rage at his core”.This dysfunction is also touched on - one which helps to explain Rudd’s appalling record on delivering what he so hastily promised:
Written by journalist, biographer and leading left-wing intellectual David Marr, Power Trip: The Political Journey of Kevin Rudd, traces the rise of Mr Rudd…
The devastating conclusion of Power Trip, following a barefoot stroll on a beach at Mackay in Queensland with the Prime Minister and the revealing confrontation that follows, is that the secret of his success is his incredible emotional resilience forged in a difficult childhood, but with an angry core....
Power Trip’s powerful conclusion comes after a confrontation with the Prime Minister, detailed in the final chapter of the essay.
Mr Rudd asks Marr what is the thesis of the essay. It being a “man-to-man” question, he tells him. His piece will examine the contradictions in the Prime Minister’s life, the farmer’s kid who runs away to China, the politician unloved by his own caucus but a hit with the polls.
“What follows is a dressing-down which registers about a 3.8 on his Richter scale,” Marr writes. “What he says in these angry 20 minutes informs every corner of this essay… Face-to-face, it is so clear. Rudd is driven by anger. It’s the juice in the machine.”
Backbenchers complain he is harder to get a meeting with than the Pope and cabinet ministers including Stephen Conroy are forced to get on planes with him just to have some time to tell him the tendering process for the national broadband network has failed.UPDATE
China will be charmed by Rudd’s linguistic skills:
Those Chinese f . . kers are trying to rat-f . . k us.And to think that only a year or two earlier Rudd convinced gullible commentators that he could really be an intermediary between China and the West:
The new Australian administration appears to view itself as a potential bridge between its traditional allies, the United States and Japan, and its newer “partner”, China. Rudd has argued that Australia’s strong relationship with the United States means that his government “can play a very active role in the future development of Sino-US relations and help maintain a solid, peaceful, and prosperous future for Sino-US relations.” ...Er, which of those major players now rate Rudd seriously?
Rudd’s ability to work as an intermediary among the major players in the Asia Pacific could be a useful tool for overall regional security.
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Two more
Andrew Bolt
Two asylum seeker boats have been intercepted in northern Australian waters within a day of each other…
The second boat was stopped 10 nautical miles north of Ashmore Island at 8.37pm (AEST) on Thursday. Initial indications are the boat was carrying 54 asylum seekers and three crew, Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said…
The first boat, intercepted on Wednesday night, was carrying 28 asylum seekers and two crew.
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Expect the opposite of what he promises
Andrew Bolt
One more overblown Rudd promise goes sour. Setting targets is no substitute for good policy:
A jump in the indigenous unemployment rate is casting doubt on the Rudd government’s ability to meet its target of halving the employment gap within a decade. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released this week indicate the unemployment rate increased from 14 to 18 per cent over the 12 months between 2008 and 2009.We’ve see this Rudd effect before:
THE Rudd government has conceded the homeless crisis has worsened since the Prime Minister declared war on a problem he described as being a “national obscenity"… This is despite Kevin Rudd promising the country in May 2008 that “we can do better; we must do better” in tackling the crisis and setting an interim target of reducing homelessness by 20 per cent by 2013.(Thanks to reader CA.)
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The tax that’s killing Rudd
Andrew Bolt
THE Rann government has warned Kevin Rudd that four Labor-held seats in South Australia could fall unless changes demanded by mining giant BHP Billiton are made to the proposed resource super-profits tax.Paul Kelly is scared:
BHP, which is leading a mining industry campaign against the tax, is understood to have threatened to delay a planned $20 billion expansion of its Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine in South Australia unless changes are made to the RSPT.
Kevin Rudd is taking Australia on to a new policy trajectory of state intervention, control and faith that “government knows best”.Even Laurie Oakes, while giving the usual kicking to Tony Abbott, must concede:
This looms as the decisive judgment on the Rudd era. It constitutes a break from Australia’s post-1983 tradition of pro-market, middle-ground economic reform. It is not necessarily unpopular but raises the alarm that Australia is marching a false policy path…
The Rudd experiment is in serious trouble. At its heart is a dysfunctional government motivated by good intentions but plagued by its penchant for greater state control by various methods of spending, tax, ownership and regulation, and a focus group mindset that has produced spectacular blunders… It fits into a more personal theme: Rudd knows best.
The message from the latest polls is not just that Rudd has ceased to be a Labor asset - he has become a drag on the party’s vote.UPDATE
This will terrifiy Rudd:
A Galaxy Poll - conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail - warns that, if an election were held today, Mr Rudd would lose in his own backyard.UPDATE 2
On the crucial two-party preferred vote, the poll has Labor in Queensland on 48 per cent to the Coalition’s 52 per cent.
A battleground state, Queensland delivered Mr Rudd victory in 2007 but is home to eight marginal Labor seats.
Galaxy ... also revealed Mr Rudd is in a virtual dead heat as preferred prime minister with Tony Abbott… The poll found a majority of Queenslanders opposed the mining tax, including one-third who were strongly against it.
Measuring sovereign risk under Rudd:
THE market value of local mining companies that operate solely in Australia has plunged 12 per cent since the Rudd government announced its controversial resources tax plan on May 2, as international fund managers reassess their Australian investments. However, the market value of miners that operate mostly overseas only dropped 0.9 per cent over the same period.(Thanks to readers CA and Pronto.)
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Just call an election and be done
Andrew Bolt
At this rate the NSW Labor Government will have sacked itself before the voters get the chance to do it instead:
KRISTINA Keneally lost two ministers in the space of just six hours yesterday as her Government descended into full-blown crisis.- I will reserve my opinion of a fixed term until after the conservatives get a spell in office with a majority. It is a tired old election ploy of the ALP to keep their worst until after the election so as to be able to present a clean slate after .. suggesting renewal. That NSW has shed so many, some 209 since 2005, shows that it is spinning out of control. The last election pitch was “Changing direction” and many had not thought it could be worse .. but it achieved that. - ed.
Major Events Minister Ian Macdonald resigned from the frontbench after he misled parliament and the Premier regarding an overseas trip, part of which was a delayed honeymoon. The minister had taken leave, but the taxpayer footed some of the bill.
And Juvenile Justice Minister Graham West stepped down yesterday after he failed to get funding for his portfolio - a slap in the face to the Premier as she marked six months in the job.
===
Losing Turkey
Andrew Bolt
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk forced modern Turkey to be secular and West-looking. His heirs even make Turkey an Israeli ally and NATO partner, but how dangerously it’s now sliding into another radical Islamic state:
TURKEY’S Prime Minister says he doesn’t view radical Palestinian group Hamas, Israel’s arch-foe, as a terrorist organisation.The Wall Street Journal wonders how much the Turkish Government was behind an Islamist plot to make a pariah of Israel:
“Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land. They have won an election,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday in a speech broadcast live on television.
“I do not accept Hamas as a terrorist organisation...”
The United States and the European Union blacklist Hamas as a terrorist group despite its victory in Palestinian elections in 2006.
Mr Erdogan made the remarks in an angry tirade against Israel after Monday’s raid on a flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of nine Turks.
So the Prime Minister of Turkey calls Israel “a festering boil in the Middle East that spreads hate and enmity,” while his foreign minister compares Monday’s Israeli naval raid on a flotilla of ships headed for the Gaza Strip, in which nine passengers were killed, to the attacks of September 11, 2001…UPDATE
Yet the more facts that come to light about the flotilla, its passengers and their sponsors, the more it seems clear that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Ergodan’s government, far more so than Israel’s, must be held to account for Monday’s violent episode… The Turkish accounting should begin with a full explanation from the government of its relationship with the IHH, an Istanbul-based Islamic “charity” that purchased three of the six boats used in the flotilla from the city government, sent hundreds of its activists along with it, and reportedly has ties to Turkey’s ruling Islamist AKP Party.
The IHH—the Turkish acronym for the “Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief"—has widely reported links to Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza and most directly threatens Israel. Moreover, in the 2001 Seattle trial of Ahmed Ressam, the would-be Millennium bomber, French counterterrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testified that the IHH had played an “important role” in Ressam’s plot to bomb LAX airport on New Year’s Day, 2000, and that there was “a rather close relation” between the bomber and the Turkish group…
Yet knowing all this, the Turkish government made no effort to prevent the flotilla from setting sail. The government also seems unembarrassed that the IHH belongs to a Saudi-based umbrella group of Islamic charities known as “The Union of the Good,” which the U.S. Treasury designated a terrorist organization in November 2008. On the contrary, Mr. Erdogan has been outspoken in his calls for the world to recognize Hamas…
That attitude conforms with the general pattern of Mr. Erdogan’s foreign policy. For all his denunciations of Israel’s alleged brutality in Monday’s raid, he was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his “victory” in last year’s presidential election.
Charles Krauthammer:
The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense.The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, six million — that number again — hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide.For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists — Iranian in particular — openly prepare a more final solution.UPDATE 2
An interview with the sergeant who killed six of the people on board the Mavi Marmara:
Looking to his side, he saw three of his commanders lying wounded – one with a gunshot wound to the stomach and another with a gunshot wound to the knee. A third was lying unconscious; his skull was fractured by a devastating blow with a metal bar...He pushed the wounded soldiers up against the wall of the upper deck and created a perimeter of soldiers around them to begin treating their wounds, he said. He then arranged his men to form a second perimeter, and pulled out his 9 mm. Glock pistol to stave off the charging attackers and to protect his wounded comrades.The attackers had already seized two pistols from the commandos, and fired repeatedly at them. Facing more than a dozen of the mercenaries, and convinced their lives were in danger, he and his colleagues opened fire, he said. S. singlehandedly killed six men. His colleagues killed another three.UPDATE 3
Interesting allegations from the IDF at the above link:
Based on preliminary results of its investigation into the navy’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara, ... the IDF said on Thursday that the commandos were attacked by a well-trained group of mercenaries, most of whom were found without IDs but with thousands of dollars in their pockets.UPDATE 4
The group was well trained and was split into a number of squads of about 20 mercenaries each distributed throughout the upper deck, the IDF said. All of the mercenaries wore gas masks and ceramic bulletproof vests and were armed with either bats, slingshots, metal bars, knives or stun grenades.
The IDF’s understanding is that the mercenaries mainly chose dual-purpose items of this sort rather than guns, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear that they were terrorists and not so-called peace activists.
Nevertheless, the IDF suspects that the group did have some guns of its own. Israeli forensic experts who examined the ship found casings belonging to a weapon that was not used by the commandos, and the Turkish captain of the ship later told the IDF that the “mercenaries” threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel.
IDF video from the raid suggests the soldiers were under fire “from all sides”:
UPDATE 5
Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas shows how well the delegitimisation of Israel has worked:
(Thanks to reader TQS.)
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Throwing Rudd under the bus
Andrew Bolt
Lenore Taylor on who lined up with who in deciding to ditch the emissions trading scheme - and Kevin Rudd’s credibility with it:
...the NSW Right - in particular Senator Mark Arbib and Labor’s national secretary, Karl Bitar - began arguing that after what was then five interest rate rises in a row, Labor was deeply vulnerable to the Coalition’s (scare) campaign. According to senior Labor sources, the pair began to lobby the Prime Minister not just to delay the carbon pollution reduction scheme but to kill it altogether…It’s astonishing to think Rudd could have been going to the election campaigning for not one great big new tax, but two - the “super profits” tax on miners and the green tax on everyone. He’d have been finished.
The ‘’kill’’ option was ferociously resisted by the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, her assistant minister, Greg Combet, the Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, and others on the grounds that it was bad policy and even worse politics, given everything the government had said it stood for…
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, argued that since a delay was inevitable the government had to be clear about it, because it had big ramifications for the budget.
Maintaining a vague commitment to the scheme would complicate the politics of the resources super profits tax the government had recently decided to advocate as its major taxation reform… Even worse, from Swan’s point of view, the way the compensation payments under the scheme are treated in the budget would make it almost impossible for the government to meet its crucial stimulus package ‘’exit strategy’’ - to keep the growth in government spending below 2 per cent… Treasury, and Swan, didn’t own the scheme, or even like it particularly.
In the end the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, agreed with Swan. Tanner, according to sources, did not. Rudd remained torn but finally agreed it should be removed from the budget, a decision which meant it was deferred for at least another three years.
What Taylor doesn’t quite spell out is that Swan is said by some to be a warming sceptic, too.
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More guns, less murder
Andrew Bolt
When the law-abiding are armed, too:Data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation show that America has been on a firearms buying spree since the end of 2005. Meanwhile, the FBI recently released preliminary 2009 crime data indicating that violent crime has been dropping at an accelerating rate since the end of 2006.- this article would never appear in a mainstream newspaper - ed.
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The soundtrack to this week
Andrew Bolt
The audio from Mavi Marmara, as recorded and released by the Israeli Defence Force:
Go back to Auschwitz…(Thanks to a dozen readers.)
We’re helping Arabs go against the US. Don’t forget 9/11, guys.
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