=== Todays Toon ===
William George Hayden, AC (born 23 January 1933) was the 21st Governor-General of Australia. Prior to this, he represented the Australian Labor Party in parliament; he was a minister in the government of Gough Whitlam, and later became Leader of the Opposition, narrowly losing the 1980 federal election to the Malcolm Fraser-led Liberal Party of Australia.
=== Bible Quote ===
“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”- 2 Corinthians 13:14=== Headlines ===
Defense Authorization Bill Fails to Pass Senate Hurdle
Defense Authorization Bill — containing 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and abortion provisions — fails to pass Senate hurdle, resulting in defeat for gay rights groups who saw the provision as their last chance anytime soon to overturn the law.Counting Down Reid's Many Blunders
The gaffe list for Sen. Harry Reid just got a little bit longer after calling one Senate candidate his 'pet' and his colleague one of 'the hottest' senators
Arrests in California City's Salary Scandal
At least eight officials reportedly have been arrested from the California city of Bell, where the local government has come under fire over the exorbitant salaries paid to some employees
Offensive in Yemen to Find Wanted Terrorist
Yemeni official confirms to Fox News that there is an ongoing offensive where U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — who is suspected of being connected to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber — is believed to be hiding
Breaking News
Sydneysiders urged to shift inlandSYDNEYSIDERS are being urged to ditch their urban lifestyles and shift inland, and it appears not all city slickers are dead against the idea.
US stocks mixed at close
US stocks are closing mixed after the Federal Reserve says it is ready to provide more help to the economy if necessary.
Family escapes hail of gunfire
A FAMILY of six narrowly escaped a hail of gunfire while inside their home in Sydney's southwest, police say.
Teens charged with descrecrating remains
THREE teenagers have been charged for ransacking a Sydney woman's home and desecrating the ashes of her late son.
Stalin grandson loses defamation suit
A MOSCOW court today rejected a case by Joseph Stalin's grandson alleging Russian archives were falsified to show the Soviet dictator ordered the 1940 killing of Polish officers at Katyn.
US military gay ban stays
US Senate Republicans have blocked an effort to repeal the law banning gays from serving openly in the military.
Mining industry open to super plan
THE resources industry says the union movement would have to rein in exorbitant wage claims before a plan to increase superannuation contributions could be considered.
Hundreds of crocs escape breeding facility
SOME 280 crocodiles escaped a breeding facility in the Mexican state of Veracruz officials said overnight, after weekend flooding following torrential rains from Hurricane Karl.
Games complaints 'due to Western hygiene'
A TOP Commonwealth Games official suggested today that complaints about hygiene and cleanliness in the Delhi athletes' village were due to the exacting demands of Western countries.
'World's oldest man' turns 114
AN American believed to be the world's oldest man is celebrating his 114th birthday.
NSW/ACT
Lucky escape for bus passengersPASSENGERS escaped just seconds before a bus burst into flames, after the driver saw smoke coming from the engine.
Another electric shock to users
ELECTRICITY prices are set to rise yet again, as consumers will have to pay for a solar-power scheme.
Liberals cry foul over donations
KRISTINA Keneally's proposal for donations reform appears doomed after news up to $23 million could be donated by unions.
It's not over yet, says Water Rat
STEVE Bisley urges people not to judge him until after an appeal against assault conviction finalised.
Villawood rooftop protest ends
IMMIGRATION denied any "special deals" were made with the Villawood detainees who finally ended their rooftop protest.
Timing off track for Dragons fans
NRL and tourism chiefs urge RailCorp to delay weekend trackwork on the Illawarra line to avoid disrupting thousands of Dragons fans.
Tennis champions netted for November
TENNIS fans can relive some of the sport's greatest match-ups after confirmation the Champions Tour is coming to Sydney.
Policewoman 'drunken and abusive'
AN allegedly foul-mouthed probationary constable has pleaded not guilty to drink-driving after she and another police officer were tossed out of the Kincumber Hotel.
Gridlocked drivers clog fast lanes
SYDNEY'S rat runs are so popular they're more gridlocked than the main roads they're meant to avoid.
We try the other red meat
HORSE is lean with a subtle taste. But only one person in Australia can sell it - and anyone who serves it fears receiving death threats.
Queensland
Cambodia tries Qld man for child sexA 53-YEAR-old Australian man has gone on trial in Cambodia for allegedly sexually abusing young girls.
Floods blamed for rise in drownings
RECORD rain and widespread flooding has been blamed for a dramatic increase in drownings in the last 12 months.
Private doctors push for caesareans
MOST caesarean deliveries in Queensland private hospitals are scheduled before women go into labour, a survey has found.
Son's poignant link to Centaur
AN Auchenflower woman will spread her husband's ashes at the site of the sinking of the AHS Centaur as part of a memorial service on Friday.
Northern Busway homes in limbo
DOZENS of properties in Brisbane's north have been placed in the firing line for the city's next big transport project, the Northern Busway extension.
Pensioners 'paying to go to work'
AGED pensioners are being penalised for accepting short-term work to top up their meagre retirement incomes.
Brisbane's first 'Botox' bar to open
BRISBANE is becoming more Hollywood than Hollywood. The latest in boutique beauty treatment has arrived in the form of a "medical cosmetic injectable bar".
Top cop wants end to 'freebies'
THE days of police officers getting free drinks in licensed venues could be at an end, after the Police Commissioner declared the practice "unacceptable".
Threat to kill on Singhs' phone
A CHILLING telephone message was left at the home of the murdered Singh siblings in which an anonymous caller threatened "both will die".
We're not slack, says top Coast cop
A POLICE boss has mounted a passionate defence of his troops after evidence of drunken officers vomiting in and urinating on police cars being used as blue-light taxis
Victoria
Cats star to cop fine for brawlGEELONG Cats star Paul Chapman faces a fine for his part in a drunken weekend brawl.
Caravan to help solve shooting
HOMICIDE detectives will today set up an information caravan appealing for public help into the killing of Steve Tosevski.
Fat cats travel in 5-star style
HIGH-flying fat cats cost taxpayers $30,000 a week in the past year for business class flights, five-star hotels and overseas junkets.
M1 speed 'should be 100 km/h'
SPEED limits on the Monash Freeway should be restored to 100km/h, according to the RACV.
Time to trim car fleet
TAXPAYERS are paying $500,000 a year to offset the State Government car fleet's carbon emissions for more than 8,000 vehicles.
Ashes to sashes is breeder's hope
Vivienne James is hoping to move from ashes to sashes today when her new generation of dogs are judged at the Royal Melbourne Show.
Damien Oliver quizzed
CHAMPION jockey Damien Oliver's Spring Racing Carnival is under a cloud, with police questioning him over a criminal matter.
Crushed under dad's car
A SICKENING crunch and the screams of their baby daughter are sounds that will never leave Stephen and Victoria Weeks.
Licence to make a killing
A SAINTS fan is selling what he hopes will be a priceless piece of memorabilia so he can attend this Saturday's grand final.
Crash causes traffic chaos
A MULTI-CAR pileup stretching around a half kilometre is causing chaos for motorists travelling on the Monash Freeway tonight.
Northern Territory
Residents leave Yuendumu after riotRESIDENTS in the embattled central Australian community of Yuendumu have acted against police advice by migrating into Alice Springs, police say.
South Australia
'Bronx' crime wave scares shopkeepersLAWLESSNESS and anti-social behaviour is rising in Port Lincoln's version of "The Bronx" and shopkeepers are scared to be in the stores alone, one claims.
Six line up for City Mayor race
ADELAIDE'S lord mayoral contest is a six-person race. The final field was confirmed yesterday after nominations for this year's local government elections closed.
Freshen up city life - ban polluting vehicles
ADELAIDE should ban polluting vehicles from the CBD and open the window to a cleaner and greener city, our new professor of sustainable design says.
Young talent is key to survival, Libs warned
THE Liberal Party has been warned it must bring some fresh faces into its parliamentary line-up if it wants to win the 2014 election.
$30,000 for sacked MPs
MEMBERS of Parliament sacked by their parties will receive $30,000 under the Government's lucrative new superannuation deal.
Budget's $44m projects blowout
TAXPAYERS will have to fund an extra $44 million for projects that have blown out from last year's cost estimates.
Family unit splits school community
ROSE Park Primary School parents want the Education Minister to investigate if the department deliberately altered a report.
Hospital waiting-list admission
THE state's public hospitals are far from being able to meet waiting-time targets, the latest SA Health figures show.
Water to flow as lake rises
THE controversial Clayton dam will be partially removed at the end of the month, restoring a natural connection between Lake Alexandrina and the Goolwa Channel.
New SES chief appointed
A TASMANIAN has been appointed as the new chief of South Australia's Emergency Services.
Western Australia
Machete threat in fiery siegeA MAN has been taken to hospital after a siege and fire at Quinns Rocks in which police were allegedly threatened with a machete.
Perth shops get 9pm go-ahead
NEW laws allow major retail stores in the Perth metro area to stay open until 9pm on weeknights.
WA MPs oppose euthanasia bill
WEST Australian MPs from both major parties say a bill that would legalise euthanasia in the state does not go far enough to prevent malpractice.
Woman 'smashed puppy against wall'
MAN accused of trying to drown dog on leash as woman charged with throwing puppy against wall.
Refugee rooftop protest worries Barnett
WEST Australian Premier Colin Barnett fears some of the hundreds of asylum seekers housed in the state's detention centres will copy Sydney's Villawood detainees.
Balga man's death 'suspicious'
PERTH police are investigating the mysterious death of a man who was found dead in his home.
Police assaults raise concerns
A SENIOR police officer has raised concerns about the level of violence being directed at country officers following three separate assaults last week.
Police clueless on washing machine death
DETECTIVES hope to know within days how a toddler found in a washing machine at his Hilton home on Monday died.
House sale scam sparks new warning
FIVE government agencies will probe the sale of a Karrinyup home without the owner’s knowledge though a Nigerian scam.
Police hunt city bank robber
POLICE are seeking help to identify a man who robbed a city bank yesterday afternoon.
Tasmania
Nothing new=== Journalists Corner ===
Join us this Saturday, September 26, 2010, for a special commemoration of Saffron Revolution of 2007.We will join forces with prominent monks, former political prisoners, and Burmese and American democracy activists to honor the courageous efforts of non-violent demonstrators, who put their lives on the line to demand freedom, justice, and democracy in Burma.
The Saffron Revolution was led by Buddhist monks, and joined by tens of thousands of local residents and democracy activists. Monks held their alms bowls upside, a revolutionary gesture known throughout the history of Burma, indicating their protest against Burma's authorities. The military regime brutally crushed the peaceful protesters. Not sparing even the sons of Buddha, the soldiers beat and killed scores of monks, nuns, democracy activists and innocent citizens. To this day, hundred of leaders and protesters of Saffron Revolution remain behind bars, serving sentences up to 60 years or more.
Event Details
Date: Sunday, September 26, 2010
Time: 4:00pm - 6pm
Place: Bryant Part - 42nd street, between 5th & 6th Avenue
The event is sponsored by the International Burmese Monks Organization (IBMO). For more information, contact IBMO office at (718) 426-3959.
Please pass along this event information to friends and family. Join us for a powerful evening as we remember and honor the heroes of Saffron Revolution.
Looking forward to seeing you there,
Christine O'Donnell Sets the Record StraightDelaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell speaks to Sean about the latest challenges facing her campaign and the truth behind the attacks on her image.
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Rep. Jim Himes Sits Down With Neil
They're calling for tax cuts and they're NOT Republicans... Why are these Democrats going against their party and pushing for extensions across the board? Rep. Jim Himes (D) has answers.
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Politics Un-Usual?
Who's up? Who's down? And what does the fallout mean for you? Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove have expert analysis!
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On Fox News Insider:
Video: Bleacher Collapse in BrazilBig Interview: Tony Blair on America's Place in the World
Why Public Schools Are Failing
Fighting Terror: New Ship to Scan for Bio Weapons
Tea Party Expecting a Large Donation
=== Comments ===
President Obama Takes on the Tea PartyBY BILL O'REILLY
FRONT-PAGE HEADLINE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES ON MONDAY SAYS: "Obama Advisers Weigh Ad Assault Against the GOP, Focusing on Tea Party"
Does that mean the president is gearing up for a fight against the populist movement?
ONE PROBLEM: The White House told Fox News that headline, and indeed the entire story, is not true. The Times says it is true.
But there is no question that the Tea Party has rattled President Obama. And not only him, it has rattled the Republican establishment as well.
Whenever millions of folks get upset, those entrenched in power get nervous. And the folks are upset.
On Monday in a town hall meeting, the president was challenged:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm one of your middle-class Americans, and quite frankly, I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle (ph) of change that I voted for and deeply disappointed with where we are right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Although that woman may not be a member, the Tea Party reflects her disenchantment. And the Tea Party people don't have to define policy. All they have to do is vote against politicians who believe in big, expensive government.
The Tea Party is a philosophical movement. These folks want small government, fewer taxes and more individual freedom, while President Obama and many Democrats want big government, enormous entitlement spending and control over what happens in the marketplace.
That's the choice this November. It's all about what kind of country you want.
I like the Tea Party. As I write in my new book "Pinheads and Patriots," just the fact these Americans are investing their time trying to change things is a patriotic act. That's what we all should be doing: following our conscience and trying to make the country a better place.
The USA needs to be run in a responsible way, not in an ideological way. More personal freedom, lower taxes and more local control: that's what the majority of Americans now want according to the polls.
The president is really up against it.
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GLOOMBAT
Tim Blair
The process – the precious, wonderful process – is dead. George Monbiot mourns:
The harsh reality we have to grasp is that the process is dead.Indeed. Monbiot himself even abandoned years of non-driving and bought a car.
In 2012 the only global deal for limiting greenhouse gas emissions – the Kyoto protocol – expires. There is no realistic prospect that it will be replaced before it elapses: the existing treaty took five years to negotiate and a further eight years to come into force. In terms of real hopes for global action on climate change, we are now far behind where we were in 1997, or even 1992. It’s not just that we have lost 18 precious years. Throughout the age of good intentions and grand announcements we spiralled backwards.
Nor do regional and national commitments offer more hope. An analysis published a few days ago by the campaigning group Sandbag estimates the amount of carbon that will have been saved by the end of the second phase of the EU’s emissions trading system, in 2012; after the hopeless failure of the scheme’s first phase we were promised that the real carbon cuts would start to bite between 2008 and 2012. So how much carbon will it save by then? Less than one third of 1%.Don’t despair, mate. Every little bit helps. And don’t forget the spectacular triumph that is U-Haul’s $5 environmental fee.
If Congress couldn’t pass a climate bill so feeble that it consisted of little but loopholes while Barack Obama was president and the Democrats had a majority in both houses, where does hope lie for action in other circumstances? Last Tuesday the Guardian reported that of 48 Republican contenders for the Senate elections in November only one accepted that man-made climate change is taking place. Who was he? Mike Castle of Delaware. The following day he was defeated by the Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell, producing a full house of science deniers.Change!
What all this means is that there is not a single effective instrument for containing man-made global warming anywhere on earth. The response to climate change, which was described by Lord Stern as “a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen”, is the greatest political failure the world has ever seen.Just a guess, but this could be because it was led by the greatest political failures the world has ever seen.
Where does this leave us? How should we respond to the reality we have tried not to see: that in 18 years of promise and bluster nothing has happened? Environmentalists tend to blame themselves for these failures. Perhaps we should have made people feel better about their lives. Or worse. Perhaps we should have done more to foster hope. Or despair. Perhaps we were too fixated on grand visions. Or techno-fixes. Perhaps we got too close to business. Or not close enough … So what do we do now?I do! Buy a new car! The Golf R looks nice, and has the cutest little quotation-mark taillights.
I don’t know.
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HOLY PIES
Tim Blair
Currently preparing a religious vilification case against David Penberthy. A proper sentence would see David incarcerated with murderers and perverts, but if returning to Adelaide doesn’t work we could always jail him. An antidote to his vileness may be found here. Also, although it isn’t mentioned at their site, St Michael’s Anglican Church in Surry Hills will present Saturday’s sacred Grand Final on the big screen. Testify!
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FARM AID
Tim Blair
Jo Nova’s coverage of Matt and Janet Thompson’s farm crisis has been previously linked (in passing). Their story: the Western Australian state government is using various environmental regulations to shut them down. Jo’s pursuit of this case is thorough and convincing. Here’s the latest. Please hit that link and, should you feel similarly convinced, donate.
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CLIVE ISN’T HAPPY
Tim Blair
Leftism is driven by envy. Someone else doing better than you? Cut ‘em down! Here’s how to get over it: move ahead with your own life and stop feeling bitter about the success of others. Which Australia is doing, to the distress of Clive Hamilton:
Australia’s growing acceptance of inequality is partly to blame for the controversy over the Federal Government’s proposed mining supertax, an ethics professor says …This is brilliant. Hamilton can’t understand it:
Clive Hamilton, professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University, says the controversy is indicative of a belief among Australians that people’s circumstances are a result of their own efforts, and that rich people deserve to be rich.
“Never before has there been a more economically justified tax than the mining tax, and yet more than half the population thought it was somehow wrong to tax the huge profits of vastly wealthy mining companies,” Professor Hamilton told a Happiness and Wellbeing at Work conference in Sydney.Forty years ago people voted for the likes of Whitlam. We’ve grown up since then.
Forty years ago, the tax “would have enjoyed 90 per cent public support”, he said.
But it had less support today because “we are much more tolerant of inequality than we used to be”.So give your professorship and your book profits to a street kid, Clive. End the inequality! Also, consider the apparent contradiction in Hamilton’s theory: Australians are at the same time happy about people getting rich but unhappy that everyone isn’t on the same economic level.
“Australia is a very unequal society,” Professor Hamilton said.
But societies that were more equal were happier, he said.
(Via Andrew P., who lived for a time under in Ceaucescu’s Romania, where he didn’t observe a great amount of happiness)
UPDATE. Janet Albrechtsen on old-school leftist losers.
UPDATE II. Janet writes:
After the 2007 election, progressives within the media were calling for a “cleansing” of conservatives from News Limited newspapers under the ruse that such voices were no longer required in the new left-wing era under Labor and Kevin Rudd.Just in case anybody has forgotten: Guy Rundle. Jon Faine. Rodney Tiffen. Robert Manne. There’s a whole wrap-up here.
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AUSTRALIANS AND BEER
Tim Blair
Mr Bingley alerts us to a fine Australian presence in Bavaria.
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OBSESSIVE CONFESSIONS
Tim Blair
Revealed in Natalie Tran’s latest YouTube video …
… is a special secret video. Subject: neurotic button touchiness.
Readers are invited to confess their own OCD-style minor obsessions in comments. Personally, I have none at all. Apart from always wearing green socks when I fly. And saying goodnight to the security guards at work. Also, I bought a new TV on Sunday because the old one had bad luck inside of it. There may be one or two others.
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DOGPOP
Tim Blair
The OK Go guys – you’ll remember them from this – now present:
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