=== Todays Toon ===
Air Marshal Sir James Anthony Rowland, AC, KBE, DFC, AFC (1 November 1922 – 27 May 1999) was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, serving as Chief of the Air Staff from March 1975 to March 1979. He was later appointed Governor of New South Wales from 20 January 1981 to 20 January 1989.
=== Bible Quote ===
“All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.”- Psalm 119:160=== Headlines ===
'Honor Killing' Dad Secretly Taped Girls Before Murders
For two years, Fox News has been investigating the violent deaths of Texas teenagers Amina and Sarah Said. The sisters' bullet-riddled bodies were found in their dad's borrowed taxi cab on New Year's Day 2008. Tonight, in a special Fox News Report — "Honor Killing in America" — Bill Hemmer reveals never-before-broadcast video of the sisters, secretly taped by their father before they were murdered and he disappeared.4 Dead in 'Horrific' Trash-Strewn Home
Maryland police are hunting for a killer after discovering the bodies of two women and two children in 'disgusting' house unfit for humans
Va. Official Wants Info on Freed Illegals
Official calls on Congress to subpoena ICE records on how many criminal illegal immigrants referred for deportation are released, as Bolivian faces charges of killing nun while drunk driving in Va.
Bailed-Out Firms Spend Millions on Politics
Several companies rescued from financial failure by massive taxpayer-funded bailouts now spending millions on political causes, lobbying
Could Chinese 'Carrier-Killer' Missile Reshape Sea Combat?
China is developing an unprecedented new missile, sources say, designed to be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 900 miles.Breaking News
HP CEO resigns after harassment probeHEWLETT-Packard says CEO Mark Hurd is stepping down following a sexual harassment probe that found other violations of company standards.
US shares bounce back after heavy losses
WALL Street shares bounced back overnight from steep losses stemming from a weak jobs report.
Eight hurt in multi-vehicle freeway crash
EIGHT people have been injured in a multi-vehicle crash north of Sydney.
BlackBerry services back online in Saudi
BLACKBERRY users in Saudi Arabia say their messaging services went down only briefly yesterday despite a ban.
Fifty trapped in China gold mine fire
AT LEAST 50 people are trapped underground after a fire engulfed a gold mine in east China.
Princess Mary says she is expecting twins
DANISH Crown Princess Mary is pregnant with twins, and is expected to give birth to them in January.
Man who felt for workplace shooter charged
WORKER allegedly said he understood the mindset of a gunman who killed eight of his colleagues.
American Psycho has designs on Delta
BRIAN McFadden beware - the man who wrote "I like to dissect girls" is hot for your girl.
Voters not listening to the real Julia
ATTEMPT to revive campaign is falling flat as poll shows Labor continuing to trail the Coalition.
Dutch mother arrested over baby murders
YOUNG mother is being questioned on suspicion she killed as many as three of her babies.
NSW/ACT
Cop took booze test for mate's sonA POLICEMAN who took an alcohol breath test to protect the son of a colleague has been put on a two-year good behaviour bond.
Sydney on the menu for Adam
MASTERCHEF winner Adam Liaw looks set to open a restaurant in the Harbour city - not Adelaide.
Free rail taking us for ride
TRAIN commuters will travel for free on Monday as a goodwill by unions before they order train drivers and guards off the job.
Pollie turned failure into top job
THE pollie who suffered the biggest swing against a government in NSW history has been rewarded with a new, six-figure job.
Della's blast on ALP officials
JOHN Della Bosca launched an extraordinary attack on the Labor officials running the party.
Burton refused to give breath sample
FORMER minister Cherie Burton was charged with refusing a random breath test.
Mystery of elusive Mountains cat
WITH sightings exploding in the past decade, we've decided it's time to track down the elusive Blue Mountains panther. Video
Harbour is no haven for barra
IT is the Great Sydney Harbour barramundi mystery - and some well-meaning but misguided Buddhists are responsible. Video
Families on an Odyssey of hope
PDYSSEY House is a residential rehab centre, one of few that can accommodate parents, allowing them to live with their children.
How did Katrina die?
A CORONIAL inquest has found that Katrina Ploy did not die by falling or jumping from The Gap- but exactly how the young Parramatta woman died remains a mystery.
Queensland
Buyers embrace unit livingBRISBANE residents have embraced apartment living with the number of owner-occupiers buying units in the inner-city jumping 25 per cent in the past five years.
Bianca kill accused 'psychotic'
A MAN charged with the murder of his girlfriend at a popular lovers' lane haunt has been described in court as "grossly psychotic".
Man who hired Patel 'valuable'
THE man who hired and promoted Jayant Patel is still working as a "valuable" Queensland Health manager despite criticism by an inquiry into Patel patient deaths.
Traveston man tapped for top job
THE man who championed the State Government's ill-fated Traveston Dam is in charge of the future of the state's multibillion-dollar infrastructure investment.
Rush no drug kingpin - AFP
IN evidence that could save Scott Rush's life, federal police will tell a court he was a low-ranked drug courier with no knowledge of the scale of the operation.
Lead victims driven out of town
A FAMILY affected by alleged lead poisoning in the mining centre of Mount Isa claim they have been hounded out of town by pro-mine residents.
Qld's school building anger
ONLY 60 per cent of Queensland school projects were completed in the required timeframe in the Building the Education Revolution rollout. See which schools complained
Flo's recipe for a long life
TURNING 90 next week, Flo Bjelke-Petersen still drives her car and follows politics. She was thrilled to have her driver's licence renewed this week
Clem7 traffic camera-shy
THE four fixed speed cameras installed in the Clem7 tunnel are catching fewer than 20 drivers a week – compared with more than 300 at other sites.
Man survives 12m cliff plunge
A 20-YEAR-OLD man is lucky to have escaped serious injury after falling 12 metres from a cliff at Tamborine.
Victoria
Passenger steals, torches taxiA passenger lashed out at his cab driver, assaulting him and torching his taxi in St Kilda this evening.
AFL deal on police files
A SECRET deal between the police and the AFL to share information about players and coaches has stunned the footy world.
High income, low sugar
SHOPPERS in Victoria's richest suburbs are snapping up diet soft drinks to dissolve their waistlines.
Secretive agents
ROGUE estate agents have been forced to return hundreds of thousands of dollars after consumer watchdog investigations.
'Jim only helps rich kids'
LES Twentyman has criticised Jim Stynes' charity for gaining millions of dollars in funding for "middle to upper class kids".
Fire survivors struggling
RED tape and bureaucratic bungling has meant only 294 out of the 2029 homes destroyed on Black Saturday have been rebuilt.
Unfinished business
SHE is now Alex Summers. But to those who know her well, she is also the daughter of Peter Brock.
Hunting for treasure in the trash
EACH year the weight of stuff plundered from hard rubbish collection piles is the equivalent to four Eiffel Towers.
Students turn poultry sum into $1m
A COUPLE of charity-driven students are on a mission to turn an egg, laid by one of their pet chooks, into $1 million for charity.
Bikies to lose homes
BIKIE clubhouses would be dismantled and sold in a crackdown under tough new laws proposed by the State Opposition.
Northern Territory
Nothing NewSouth Australia
Police open player records to AFLVICTORIAN Police have struck a deal with the AFL to share any data it has gathered on AFL players, coaches, board members and even staff.
Aussie wheat bonanza
AUSTRALIAN wheat farmers are set to grab a rich stake of the world's wheat supply with Russia dramatically halting all wheat and grain exports until next year.
Playing the name game
Teachers are learning that reading and writing student names is a whole lot harder these days.
Riverland farmers' property blowout
RIVERLAND farmers have had $163m wiped off the value of their properties in three years, revealing the true economic extent of the Murray River crisis.
Fighting for future of our Murray
SOUTH Australians react with more passion to one issue above all others - management of the River Murray.
Nurses give Government pay deadline
NURSES and midwives have threatened to strike if the State Government fails to respond to their calls for a new enterprise agreement within 10 days.
From war zone to wedding bells
LEAH Scott and her two sons waited four months for this moment - to give a big hug to their RAAF flight lieutenant husband and father, Daniel.
Top tale from the schoolyard
A POIGNANT schoolyard tale with a tragic twist has earned its author a prize in an annual writing competition.
Two bidders in fight over fate of the Chelsea
THE fate of the historic Chelsea Theatre may be sealed in less than a week, with the landmark building likely to be sold.
What can we learn from our expats?
SOUTH Australians who have moved away will be asked for their views on what is wrong with the state at the Civic Trust's annual brickbats and bouquets awards.
Western Australia
V8 Supercars back on trackBARBAGALLO Raceway expected to receive State Government cash injection in bid to resurrect WA's instalment of the V8 Supercars series.
Pluto workers allowed to strike
CRANE drivers at Woodside's $13 billion Pluto gas project are allowed to go on strike again after a workplace relations tribunal ruled in their favour.
Appeal to locate runaway teens
POLICE are trying to locate two teenage runaways failed to return home from school yesterday.
Hero sailor Jess heads to WA
HERO teenage solo sailor Jessica Watson heads to WA next week to help launch her new book.
Horse kick puts man in hospital
A MAN was airlifted to hospital this afternoon after being kicked in the chest by horse on a Chittering farm.
Pensioners victims in $4m fraud case
A WOMAN has defrauded Perth residents of more than $4 million by selling shares in a bogus land development, police say.
Vehicle examiner jailed for three years
A FORMER State Government vehicle examiner who accepted bribes to provide inadequate inspections on cars has been jailed.
Miner's death prompts political stoush
MINES Minister Norman Moore has accused the opposition of politicising the death of a 60-year-old worker at a WA gold mine yesterday.
Price plunge for WA property
WA'S property market has swung back in the buyer's favour as the median house price in Perth and regions fall 2 per cent and 6 per cent respectively.
MP3 players back for detainees
ASYLUM-SEEKERS can again buy MP3 players while in detention on Christmas Island.
Tasmania
Nothing New=== Journalists Corner ===
Fox News Reporting: Honor Killing in AmericaSisters allegedly murdered by their father for disgracing the family. Honor killings - through exclusive interviews & never-before-seen footage, we expose one shocking case.
A Fox News Reporting special, hosted by Bill Hemmer.
===
Border Wars
A border war erupts as customs agents call out Washington, D.C.! Dana Perino and Leslie Marshall react! Plus, get your weekend started with a "Best of Beck!"
===
Guest: Tony Dungy
His strategy on and off the field! Dungy: "I felt it was my job to help them not only be better players, but be better men." NFL great Tony Dungy on his unique approach to life.
===
On Fox News Insider
Man's Best Friend Saves U.S. Soldiers20 States File Suits Against New Health Care Law
Common Sense, By Oliver North: Snakes
=== Comments ===
Why Won't the Left Defend Christians As Fiercely As It Defends Muslims?By Andrea Tantaros
The battle over the proposed mosque and community center near Ground Zero has sparked outrage and fury.
The argument from those who oppose it: it’s an incredibly insensitive move designed to deliberately provoke the nation from a radical Imam who says the U.S. is culpable for the attacks of 9/11. They’re correct.
What’s surprising is the level of outrage from the other side -- mostly those on the left – who argue we must allow the building of the mosque and community center in the name of tolerance of Islam. Where are these shrieking voices in defense when other religions like Christianity and Judaism are under attack?
There has always been a double standard when it comes to understanding and explaining the Muslim religion verses Christianity.
While many Muslim countries ban women from voting, driving a car, and threaten to kill anyone who speaks of Christ within their borders, you rarely hear those on the left invoke sharp criticism or shake their finger in fury.
Instead, they save the attacks and their selective attention span for the random “Christian” who blocks an abortion clinic.
When the radical Islamic Fort Hood shooter claimed the life of twelve soldiers, the media dubbed him “troubled.”
A CNN.com article, along with many others, only identified him an “Army psychologist” and failed to make any reference to his ties to radical jihadism or make initial references to his religion – even after e-mails were found detailing his extremist views.
But when a Michigan-based militia group was indicted in an alleged plot to kill law enforcement officers with improvised explosive devices they were quickly – and inaccurately – labeled as a “Christian militia group” – not just in the body of an ABC News.com article, but in the headline, too.
In his book “Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity," David Limbaugh details the double standard: The media portrays Christians as unreasonable and violent, charging them with violent acts against abortionists, abortion clinics or homosexuals while at the same time both Hollywood and the press downplay injustices and violent acts committed against Christians.
A favorite media tactic is the use of the pejorative term "religious right" to describe Christian conservatives, implying such believers are "intolerant” and “backwoods fanatics.”
It’s no big deal when newspapers dub Christians “The American Taliban.” And it’s okay for Ted Turner to call Catholics with ashes on their head “Jesus freaks.” But God forbid you refer to the guys crashing the planes into building as Allah freaks.
Comedian and commentator Dennis Miller offered an accurate explanation for why the left and the mainstream media seek to appease the Muslim community and have been defending the Ground Zero mosque so ardently on an August 4 episode of "The O’Reilly Factor": “People are afraid to say anything about radical Islam because they get blown up.”
Instead of staying true to our values so that we don’t let the terrorists win, many Americans (the president included) are shackled by fear or a belief that the nicer we are, the less they’ll come after us. They speak out on discrimination and freedom, except when it comes to defending Christianity.
That’s why the fervent defense of the Ground Zero mosque by those on the left was so unsurprising, and so nauseating. We are a nation of all religions, they chanted. We must stay true to our values, they screamed. Both of these statements are accurate. But why not defend Christianity or Judaism with that kind of passion?
If the Muslims who want to build the mosque for “bridge building” and an “interfaith dialogue” truly wanted to practice what they preach then they will move it or make it an actual interfaith center. Until then, the only bridge I see is the one that’s burning.
As Steven Schwarz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, wrote in the August 3rd edition of the New York Post, “Traditional, moderate Islam teaches Muslims living in non-Muslim-majority societies to obey the laws and customs of the country in which they reside. They must avoid conflict with their non-Muslim neighbors whenever possible.”
You see, tolerance isn’t a one sided thing. For the extremists that want to blow us up, it doesn’t matter what we say or do. They’ll still plot to destroy us. For the many millions of peaceful Muslims, they’ll respect us more if we equally defend and apply the same standard of tolerance to all religions that we do theirs.
Andrea Tantaros is a conservative commentator and FoxNews.com contributor. Follow her on Twitter @andreatantaros.
===
Five Myths About the GOP That Just Won’t Die
By Richard Bernstein
Many Americans today are unhappy with the Democratic Party.
Yet according to a Gallup poll conducted in July 2010, Democrats were still ahead of Republicans, 49% to 43%, in voters’ generic ballot preferences for the 2010 congressional elections.
Why? A big part of the reason is voter dissatisfaction with the Republican Party. And a major reason for that dissatisfaction is that over the years voters have been fed numerous lies by Democrats and the mainstream media to discredit the GOP.
Here are five of those lies:
1. The Bush administration lied about the intelligence leading up to the Iraq War.
Two bipartisan investigations demanded by Democrats refute this myth. In 2004, the Robb-Silberman Report, along with a separate Senate Intelligence Committee report, both concluded that there was no evidence that administration officials manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq.
2. Republicans caused the mortgage crisis.
In reality it was the Democrats who caused the mortgage crisis and stifled Republican efforts to prevent it.
First, Bill Clinton broadened the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), bypassing the Republican-led Congress and ordering the Treasury Department to rewrite the CRA rules to force banks to fulfill loan “quotas” in low income neighborhoods.
Eventually, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were required by HUD to show that 55% of their mortgage purchases were to low and moderate income borrowers, and lending standards were lowered to meet those goals.
Intense competition caused by Fannie and Freddie’s increasing appetite for loans caused investment and commercial banks to compete for borrowers, and the looser lending standards eventually spread to higher-income and prime borrowers as well.
Then came Clinton’s most disastrous decision: he legalized the securitization of subprime mortgages that allowed the market to soar from $35 billion in risky loans in 1994 to $1 trillion by 2008, thus poisoning the entire mortgage industry.
Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie’s purchases of subprime mortgages. In both 2003 and 2005, they introduced legislation that would have required Fannie and Freddie to eliminate their investments in them. Both times their attempts were opposed by the Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, so the bills never made it to Senate floor.
3. Eight years of Republican deregulation caused the financial crisis.
Some myths die harder than others. This is certainly one of them. Financial services were not deregulated during the Bush administration.
The repeal of the Depression-era Glass–Steagall Act in 1999, allowing banks and securities firms to be affiliated under the same roof, was supported by the Clinton administration and signed into law by the president.
Moreover, that was not the cause of the financial crisis. The crisis was caused by banks and investment firms purchasing vast numbers of bad mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.
What contributed to such a high volume of purchases? In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Democrat Annette Nazareth, who ran the market regulation division at the time, unanimously adopted a rule change known as Basel II.
Adopted by all of the world’s central bankers, Basel II was an attempt to provide greater regulation of investment firms by more accurately evaluating the types of assets they held.
Unfortunately, AAA-rated mortgages were incorrectly considered to be some of the safest assets an institution could own. As a result, Basel II allowed investment banks to leverage their assets of mortgage-backed securities at a ratio as high as 30 to 1. Thus, although Basel II wasn’t the cause of the financial crisis, it certainly contributed to the size of it.
4. Republicans are the “party of Wall Street, big business and special interest groups.”
In the 2008 national election cycle, more campaign donations from the largest banks and Wall Street firms went to Democrats, not Republicans.
Ninety of the top one hundred corporate donors leaned Democratic, and nearly 75 percent of all hedge fund donations in that same period went to presidential candidate Obama.
Furthermore it is the Democratic Party which has deep-rooted unholy alliances with special-interest groups—labor unions, teachers unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, community organizations such as ACORN and welfare beneficiaries—that often places the interests of those groups ahead of what’s best for the country. Their alliance with trial lawyers, for example, is why tort reform, an effective way to lower health care costs, was not included in the health care bill.
5. Democrats have always stood up for black Americans—and Republicans are either uncaring at best, or overt racists at worst.
Many Americans would be surprised to know that Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced conservative ideals.The fact that most Americans still believe these five myths is a stark reminder that voters can be manipulated by a mainstream media and a Democratic Party who believe “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.”
Yet King’s choice of political affinity made perfect sense: it was Republicans, not Democrats, who consistently fought for freedom and civil rights for blacks since their founding in 1854—as the anti-slavery party.
In fact, the Democrats tried to filibuster and stop the 1964 Civil Rights Act from passing.
Republicans also established the NAACP and founded and financed all the earliest black schools and colleges.
Richard Bernstein, a former life-long Democrat, is the author of "Duped America: How Democrats and the Mainstream Media Have Duped the American People and Are Harming Our Country" (Forrester, 2010).
===
Why Black and White Americans Differ Over Obama
BY BILL O'REILLY
A new Gallup poll says 88 percent of African-Americans continue to support President Obama, but just 38 percent of white Americans feel the president is doing a good job. That is a 50-point differential in the president's job approval rating, which is stunning. So what is going on?
Let's take the white situation first. According to the polls, most white Americans don't like the huge expansion of the federal government. They also oppose the big spending increases that the president has imposed. It's simple. White Americans fear government control. They don't want the feds telling them what to do, and they don't want a bankrupt nation.
That attitude was on display in Missouri this week when 71 percent of the voters approved a state statute blocking the federal government from forcing them to buy health insurance. Seventy-one percent said no to that. Since Obamacare is the centerpiece of the president's domestic strategy so far, you can see he's in some trouble.
But black America has a totally different view. For decades, African-Americans have supported a bigger federal government so it can impose social justice. A vast majority of blacks want money spent to level the playing field, to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts, and to provide better education and health care at government expense. So the African-American voter generally loves what President Obama is doing.
As for Hispanic-Americans, 54 percent now support Mr. Obama, but that is down nine points since April. The social justice component is there as well.
There's no question that there are now two Americas. The minority community continues to believe that society is not completely fair to them, and they want a huge government apparatus to change that. And while the white community may sympathize with the minority situation, they apparently believe that more harm than good is being done to the country with the cost of social justice programs.
My own belief is that President Obama is well-intentioned, but if the wild spending continues, this country will be gravely damaged. As far as social justice is concerned, strict oversight on fair rules, but not the imposition of expensive entitlements, is the answer.
The USA is the strongest country on Earth because of self-reliance and the industry of honest, hardworking people who don't want to be told how to live. Independence and self-reliance is what has made this country great, powerful and generous.
===
SUPERLOVE SATURDAY
Tim Blair
The story so far: Julia dumped Kevin because Kevin had no friends. Julia said everything that went wrong was Kevin’s fault. Kevin ran home in tears and Julia became the most popular girl ever. Julia wore fancy makeup and everybody loved her.
Then Kevin’s neighbourhood felt sad for Kevin and somebody (not Kevin) told everyone that Julia didn’t like old people. Suddenly everybody thought Julia was mean especially when Kevin got sick and went to hospital.
But no! Julia wasn’t mean at all. An evil fake Julia had taken her over and made her do the bad things. Real Julia came back and promised to be nice. Julia sent a text to Kevin saying hi. Kevin felt better and said everything was OK.
And now Julia and Kevin will meet and possibly even talk for the first time in more than a month.
Believe it or not, an actual federal election result may depend on today’s pretendy-friendy antics of these two complete idiots.
===
END TO BRUTALITY
Tim Blair
Habiba Sayed is among 29 women who’ve recently joined the Afghan army. Why?
Sayed has a strong personal reason for joining up. “Three years ago, my 15-year-old cousin was playing with some friends in the street. I don’t know why, but the Taliban killed them all. Their bodies were so mutilated that he could be identified only by a scar on his hand. Putting an end to such brutality is why I wanted to join the army. It is something in my heart.”The Taliban killed them all. In search of a reason, recall Peter FitzSimons’s apology to the architects of 9/11:
We accept that such hate as drove the planes into the World Trade Centre towers can only have come from incredible suffering and we are desperately sorry for that suffering, even if we are yet to come to grips with its specific cause.Presumably those teens also caused “incredible suffering”, leading to their slaughter. Sorry again, murderers.
(Via Brat)
===
PEACE IN MANHATTAN
Tim Blair
Iowahawk solves two problems at once:
Approve Ground Zero mosque only if they agree to perform gay marriages. WEDGE-AGEDDON
===
BATTERIES DOWN
Tim Blair
Electric car evangelist Barry Bernsten quits the green buggy business:
“I am exhausted and throwing in the towel,” Bernsten said. “I’m going back to selling steel.”
This calls for a celebration.
(Via Dan F.)
===
Abbott starts negoiating as a PM
Andrew Bolt
A nice demonstration of how easy it could be to set up an off-shore detention centre again - if Julia Gillard was truly serious about stopping boats:
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will meet Nauru President Marcus Stephen in Brisbane this afternoon to ramp up his push for a Pacific solution on border protection and his political attack on Prime Minister Julia Gillard…
“What I want to explore with the President of Nauru is just how quickly they can get their offshore processing centre open. Plainly they want to reopen it, plainly they are happy to reopen it, plainly they are happy to help Australia in this regard,” Mr Abbott said today.
===
Orgill is the watchdog a Lefitst PM like Gillard would love
Andrew Bolt
Brad Orgill was appointed by Julia Gillard to tidy up the mess of her mega-rorted Building the Education Revolution. He’s been painted as an ”independent” watchdog.
Yet his report yesterday, while admitting there were hundreds of formal complaints and claims of rorts, went a long way out of its way to minimise the political damage.
Most importantly, Orgill noted the 254 complaints amounted to just 2.7 per cent of the BER school projects - but without pointing out that this is likely to severely underestimate the scale of the rorting, since:
- the complaints are limited to those from schools, most of them state ones led by principals who might well feel it not in their interests to make a fuss - not least because the vast majority of them serve under state Labor governments.Orgill also upheld the stimulus claims of the government, although half the spending was actually allocated after the threat of recession was gone, and work on many projects is yet to be completed or even started:
- state school principals in states such as Victoria have not been given the costings of their projects, and are not in a position to judge value for money.
- principals are naturally more interested in (and grateful for) getting a new building than in worrying about whether taxpayers paid too much for them.
We’ve found that the primary objective, which was economic stimulus, every suggestion is that that’s been achieved and is being achieved.Gillard herself is excused the blame for a program over which she had formal oversight:
The report lays blame for much of the waste in the program on the states, noting that “while the Commonwealth provided the funding and developed the guidelines, implementation and delivery was the responsibility of Government and non-government education authorities in each state and territory”.You may well believe these are the honestly held views of an impartial businessman, having cast a sceptical eye on the government’s claims. But how impartial - or politically neutral - is Orgill in truth?
From the following Q&A with Orgill, we find the former chairman and CEO of UBS Australia has great admiration for far-Left writers, sympathisers of terrorists in Iraq and deep-Green protesters, and is committed to “affirmative action” for women in executive positions:
Those who are performing well, those who are seen as potential leaders of the firm and there is still a bias towards women in that we still feel we don’t have enough senior women in our ranks…For Roy’s views on supporting terrorists in Iraq and Marxists in India, go here.
But if you could choose a mentor from anywhere in the world, who would you choose today and why?
I think I would choose Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things.
Why?
I think her perspective on life, post colonialism and her appreciation of things that I’m interested in but don’t have as good a perspective on as she does.
Orgill continues:
People I admire like Richard Flanagan, I think he is fantastic. Have you read his book, The Unknown Terrorist? He also wrote the article in a magazine that got Geoffrey Cousins concerned about the Tasmanian pulp mill. His book is just fantastic, it’s about this woman from the western suburbs of Sydney who really has a pretty tough life. It’s a novel that preceded but paralleled (anticipated really) the Haneef case. People like that I like to read.Here’s a bit about that book that Orgill so admires, from a column I wrote at the time:
Richard Flanagan, another prize-winning and taxpayer-funded author, also has a new novel that Australian Bookseller and Publisher hails as “an important book in dark times” inspired by a “disgust with Howard’s Australia”.UPDATE
As Flanagan told the ABC’s 7.30 Report: “There is something else that’s going on in Australia, a sort of spiritual malaise that I find sickening, in a word.”
And to counter this “spiritual malaise” he’s written The Unknown Terrorist, a tale of a brutal government and lying media, which his publisher promotes with a video that lingers long on the spiritually uplifting breasts of a topless dancer.
This book doesn’t simply demonise Australia. It also gives one of the sweetest excuses for suicide bombers in its preface, written in the author’s own voice. Writes Flanagan: “In his understanding that love was not enough, in his acceptance of the necessity of the sacrifice of his own life to enable the future of those around him, Jesus is history’s first, but not last, example of a suicide bomber.”
Michael Stutchbury says Orgill is making bogus claims to puff Gillard’s scheme:
BRAD Orgill’s report card gives Julia Gillard’s $16 billion Building the Education Revolution stimulus a tick. This is for delivering both “much-needed” school infrastructure and “economic activity across the nation”.
Wrong on both counts. In particular, the BER could not have “saved” Australia from recession, as Gillard claimed yesterday, because we’d already dodged the bullet by the time it ramped up.
The damning evidence is relegated to a single chart, presented with no explanation on page 75 of Orgill’s report. This shows that BER construction for the nation’s 7900 primary schools only seriously got going by October last year—eight months after it was announced—when cumulative actual spending first topped $1bn. But, by then, it was clear Australia had escaped the global recession, thanks to Labor’s initial cash splash, the Reserve Bank’s big interest rate cuts and the momentum behind our China-fuelled mining and population boom… BER delays mean that only $6.7bn had been spent by June this year, even though the jobless rate had fallen to 5.1 per cent, employment had risen by 350,000 in the past 12 months and the Reserve Bank had lifted interest rates six times…
Orgill’s report provides no evidence that the infrastructure built by these stimulus workers is “much needed”.
===
The impressive secret to Abbott’s success
Andrew Bolt
Peter Hartcher says the swing against Labor isn’t just a self-inflicted wound:
Abbott has built Liberal support in two clear phases… As soon as he took the leadership and destroyed any hope for the Rudd government’s climate-change legislation on the same day, the Liberal primary vote gained 4 to 5 percentage points. That means somewhere between 500,000 and 650,000 voters moved to support the Coalition almost instantly.There’s also one other tremendous success Abbott has had - one virtually unrecognised among commentators - that destroys the idea that he’s some bull-at-the-gate hothead with zero “people skills”.
The second phase came during the second week of the campaign. Abbott added another 2 to 3 percentage points, or another 250,000 to 390,000 people, taking the Coalition primary vote to about 44 to 45 per cent…
How has Abbott won over these votes? He is offering the electorate two vital qualities that have eluded Labor - clarity and certainty… He has not sprung out of a campaign backroom with a sudden new persona. He has not sprouted jarring new ideas or implausible new promises…
What does Julia Gillard stand for? It’s a simple question, but it’s surprisingly hard to answer, isn’t it?
He was elected head of a bitterly divided party by just a single vote. He had to deal not only with the embittered and disloyal Malcolm Turnbull, but the defeated Joe Hockey. Several in the party even crossed the floor to vote for the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme - and had a few more done so it would have got through, and Abbott would have been finished before he started.
But since then? Abbott has kept the party together and united, despite tweaking it to a more conservative position. He’s also done it by showing grace and refusing to respond to public jibes, yet without changing his course. This, in fact, is the greatest part of his success, and perhaps even his greatest qualification for becoming prime minister.
After all, contrast this to Julia Gillard’s inability to keep together the party that made her leader - and not by one vote but unanimously.
UPDATE
Laurie Oakes tries to hang Abbott for what he said 31 years ago. Oakes shows no interest in what Gillard was doing with the Socialist Forum some 25 years ago, and, more importantly, the deceits she’s spread about it in just the past couple of years.
UPDATE 2
Gillard really does seem sensitive about the Socialist Forum:
THE Labor Party has been caught posting an incomplete transcript of a recent Julia Gillard interview on her official website. It excised its references to her youthful involvement in the Socialist Forum.(Thanks to reader A.)
The party also excluded from its official record criticism of the Prime Minister’s proposal for a citizens’ assembly to seek a consensus on climate change policy, along with questions over whether Labor had made deals with the Greens in return for electoral preferences.
The Australian has established that a transcript on Labor’s website purporting to reflect an interview the Prime Minister gave on Sydney’s 2GB on July 27 excludes several minutes of the interview, the equivalent of seven pages worth of transcript…
A Labor campaign spokesman said last night the omission—the exclusion of a single chunk of about a third of the interview—was the result of an oversight in the transcribing process.
===
Bolt Finds Good News for ALP
Andrew Bolt
Newspoll has mixed news for Labor, suggesting the swing against Labor in NSW marginals is bad - but not as bad as it was under Kevin Rudd:
The Newspoll survey, taken between Tuesday and Thursday evenings in Lindsay and Dawson, shows the Coalition ahead on primary votes at 45 per cent to Labor’s 41 in Lindsay, and 44 per cent to the ALP’s 42 in Dawson. On a two-party-preferred basis, after distributing preferences based on the 2007 election, the Coalition was ahead 51 per cent to 49 per cent in Lindsay and the parties were dead even in Dawson.If Lindsay (NSW) is the measure of the swing, Labor is toast. If Dawson (Qld) is, Labor will cling on. But bear in mind that NSW is meant to be where Labor most trashed its brand.
The two-party-preferred swing from Labor in Lindsay since Labor won the seat at the 2007 election is seven percentage points. If the election were held now, Labor would lose Lindsay, held by 6.4 per cent, and about a further eight seats in NSW if the swing were uniform against the party.
The swing of two percentage points against Labor in Dawson since the election would cost it five or six seats in a uniform swing.
However, compared with a Newspoll survey taken in Lindsay from June 18-20, the weekend before Ms Gillard challenged Mr Rudd for the leadership, Labor’s support is up seven percentage points on primary votes, from 34 per cent, and five points up on a two-party-preferred basis, from 44 per cent.
UPDATE
But Nielsen still makes grim reading for Gillard:
Despite a shift in campaign strategy by Julia Gillard and the re-emergence of Kevin Rudd, Labor is stuck in a losing position only two weeks before the federal election, trailing the Coalition on a two-party-preferred basis by 49 per cent to 51 per cent.UPDATE 2
Last week’s poll had the Coalition leading 52-48 and the change this week is not regarded as statistically significant.
Labor’s desperate attempts to use union money to keep in the race has some pips squeaking angrily:
A DISPUTE over a $500,000 union donation to the ALP is headed for the Federal Court next week in a blow to Labor’s efforts to place the election focus on Tony Abbott.UPDATE 3
The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union handed over the money yesterday after a personal plea from ALP secretary Karl Bitar for more cash to boost the party’s faltering election campaign.
But the donation is being challenged by renegade unionist Dean Mighell, who leads the union’s electrical sub-branch. Mr Mighell was granted an injunction against the donation late yesterday.
Thousands would buy tickets to watch this:
Ms Gillard will fly to Brisbane today for her first meeting with Mr Rudd since she deposed him just over six weeks ago. So far, they have communicated only by text message.
===
Why would our alies entrust their secrets to Gillards’ bodyguard?
Andrew Bolt
American experts aren’t impressed by Julia Gillard’s bodyguard:
US experts expressed dismay that the Prime Minister regularly sent a junior staff member to sit in for her at meetings of cabinet’s National Security Committee...(Thanks to reader Robert.)
Patrick Cronin, senior adviser with the Centre for a New American Security, said the US and Australia shared a close security relationship but it assumed a great deal of high-level trust…
Steve Yates, a former national security adviser to US Vice-President Dick Cheney, said Ms Gillard had made an odd judgment. He said it would be more normal to send a dedicated senior staffer if she could not attend.
“My experience is that if you limit attendance to a very high level it conveys respect for the relationship and the agenda,” Mr Yates said. “It is unclear to me what his portfolio was. He sounds out of his field.”
===
Islam is an ideology, not a race
Andrew Bolt
A very sane decision by the Equal Opportunity Division of the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal:
53 First, vilification of Muslims does not fall within section 20C(1), because Muslims are not a ‘race’ as defined in section 4 of the Act. The reason, as the Tribunal said in Khan [i.e., Khan v Commissioner, Department of Corrective Services & anor [2002] NSWADT 131] at [18], is that Muslims ‘do not share common racial, national or ethnic origins’ and are therefore not an ethno-religious group such as the definition embraces. In so ruling, we follow the decisions, commencing with Khan, that are listed above at [44]. We are unaware of any recent authority to the contrary. It follows that any statements broadcast by the Respondents that generated negative feelings towards Muslims generally, or any group of Muslims, on the ground of their being Muslims could not amount to unlawful racial vilification.(Thanks to readers Rachel and Michael.)
UPDATE
Julia Gillard, perhaps with a close election to consider, says a court’s witness box is no place for a burqa:
BURQAS should be removed when the public interest overrides personal choice, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says…
An Islamic studies teacher due to give evidence (in a fraud case in Perth) ... has said she wants to wear a burqa when she does so…
Ms Gillard, who practised law for eight years, said it would be “impossible” to judge a witness without seeing facial expressions…
“In my view, testing the veracity of evidence in court is one example where the public interest - getting to the truth - overrides individual choice...”
No comments:
Post a Comment