=== Todays Toon ===
===Bible Quote ===
“For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you.”- 1 Peter 1:24-25=== Headlines ===
PC REVOLUTION: Google OS Aims to Kill Off Your Hard Drive
Google moves to make Windows and Macintosh obsolete with its new operating system Chrome OS, which enables users to access, operate, and edit all their files on the Internet.Is Health Care Law Doomed After Election?
5 DAYS TO DECIDE: Republicans are touting the backlash against Obama's signature legislation, but Dems warn an election victory wouldn't mean a mandate to repeal
Ah, Now It All Makes Sense...
The Right might want to be a bit more forgiving of the Left as a new study reveals the existence of a 'liberal gene' — proving it really is in their blood
NYPD Issues Terror Memo After D.C. Plot
NYPD says in a memo that public transportation is a 'highly attractive' target for terrorists after feds arrest a Virginia man who thought he was aiding an Al Qaeda attack in Washington, D.C. area
Mariah Carey confirms pregnancy
MARIAH Carey confirmed the worst-kept secret in Hollywood in an interview airing overnight, revealing, "Yes, we are pregnant - this is true".
ASEAN leaders tackle regional issues
SOUTH-EAST Asian leaders are tackling issues buffeting the region, including currency tensions, territorial disputes and Burma's flawed election plans, at a summit in Vietnam's capital.
McDonald's fined for obese employee
A BRAZILIAN court has ordered McDonald's to pay a former franchise manager $US17,500 ($18,000) because he gained 29kg while working there 12 years.
Global warming 'due to humans'
GLOBAL warming exists and is unquestionably due to human activity, the French Academy of Science has said in a report written by 120 scientists from France and abroad.
Militants publicly execute teen girls
SOMALIA'S al-Qaeda-inspired Shebab group has publicly executed two teenage girls in the central town of Beledweyne on charges of spying, witnesses say
Smoky Dawson's widow dies at 104
DOT Dawson, one of the first women broadcasters to work for the ABC during World War II, has died at her Sydney nursing home.
New deal pushes childcare up $9
THE price of childcare for children under two will need to increase to pay for new rules requiring centres to hire more staff, report says.
The great Sydney ibis drought
THE end of the drought might provide Sydney with another benefit besides cheaper food - the exodus of the city's most hated bird.
New trial granted for mercy killer
SHIRLEY Justins, the woman who killed her partner of 18 years with a euthanasia drug, had her manslaughter conviction quashed.
Police go bush for Matthew
THE search for a missing teenager whom police gave up for dead was resumed after several reported sightings of the boy.
Greens back law for Labor
A GREENS MP has done a deal with Premier Kristina Keneally to pass political donations laws.
Patchy effort or repaired pothole?
READERS have inundated us with pothole problems, asking that we pursue local authorities.
Giant monsters in the water
GIANT sharks are stalking Sydney beaches, hunting whales and large schools of bait fish.
Westfield Sydney brings opening bargains
SHOPPERS have been going crazy today after Westfield opened its next flagship shopping centre in Sydney.
All-clear for abortion drug
TWO Queensland public hospitals are about to begin prescribing the abortion drug RU486 for the first time as doctors renew calls for terminations to be decriminalised.
Two seriously hurt in car crash
TWO people have been flown to hospital with life-threatening injuries after a car smashed into a power pole near Gatton, west of Brisbane.
Election puts murder trial in limbo
MID-TERM elections in the US will offer a potential lifeline to ''Honeymoon Killer'' Gabe Watson if Alabama's new attorney-general opposes his murder trial.
Retail fury at 5-day long weekend
QUEENSLAND will get a once-in-a-generation five-day long weekend early next year. - but retailers are not happy.
Backflip over paper ticket move
A PLAN to phase out the popular paper tickets on southeast Queensland's public transport network has been scrapped by the State Government.
Daniel family want crim's evidence
A CRIMINAL jailed for abducting and sexually assaulting a young boy is the "person of interest" the Morcombe family most wants to give evidence.
Affordable housing boost
AT least $5000 could be slashed from the cost of building a new one-bedroom unit under council plans to speed up development and boost affordable housing.
Fire crews put out salon fire
FIRE crews rushed to New farm hairdresser Aquae Sulis after a dryer caught fire about 6pm.
Journalist's work up for AFI gong
A DEBUT screenplay about a young man's chance encounter with God has bagged Courier-Mail QWeekend writer Trent Dalton an AFI nomination.
Soldiers return from Afghanistan
EIGHTY Australian soldiers have reunited with family and friends as they returned from an eight-month stint in Afghanistan.
Airborne car lands on bed
A MAN'S life was saved by a late night after a car crashed into his house and landed on his bed early this morning.
Hunt for knife-wielding carjacker
A KNIFE was used in a car jacking in Collingwood last night, which saw the victim hit in the head, held and robbed.
Thanks Mummy, you're a lifesaver
FOR Traralgon mother Dee-Anne Mohi, repeatedly rushing back into a burning building to save her sons wasn't brave - it was simply instinct.
Triple treat as students start exams
ALMOST 50,000 VCE students cleared a major hurdle when they completed the first of their written exams, English.
Metro a hub of underground activity
MELBOURNE'S City Square is set to make way for a massive underground railway station that will transform Swanston St.
Save energy, save cash
HOUSEHOLDS will get price discounts on energy-efficient appliances that could cut power bills by up to $500 a year.
Spray before fatal shots on Tyler
POLICE sprayed Tyler Cassidy with capsicum foam before he ran into a skate park where he was shot dead, a court has heard.
Drunken thugs staying at home
POLICE say they have won the opening battle, but the war is not over on alcohol-fuelled thuggery in our city.
Nothing new
I'm not out of Cup yet
DON'T write me off for the Melbourne Cup just yet. I'm still a chance to be there. I've had a couple of ordinary days due to the bloody Melbourne weather, that's all.
Who are these men anyway?
THE race for the position of Lord Mayor of Adelaide has stepped up between Ralph Clarke and Francis Wong - but it appears city centre people don't know who they are.
Mt Barker gridlock traffic fear
DOUBLING the size of Mount Barker will lead to traffic gridlock in the eastern suburbs from the tollgate to the CBD, a public meeting at Parliament House was told yesterday.
Getting a kick out of exercise
THE moves have been tamed and the music altered but these children, some as young as four, are the latest to embrace Latin dance craze Zumba.
Pink man's brush with fame
THERE is a great divide in Ginger Wikilyiri's painting, Kunumata, which goes on show at the Art Gallery of South Australia today.
Grille marks Muriel's fight for rights
AN OTHERWISE unremarkable ironwork grille commemorates one of the most significant moments in the women's suffrage movement.
Sex industry won't give up
SOUTH Australia's sex industry will keep fighting until prostitution is decriminalised, they say.
Hajib ruling must be made
AN Islamic woman has fled Question Time in tears after a botched publicity stunt sparked a row over whether Muslim headwear was forbidden in Parliament.
Clipsal 500 must appeal to all
THE Clipsal 500 must continue to create new attractions to maintain and increase its success, the event's new boss Mark Warren says.
I cannot forgive him at the moment
THE grieving husband of a road crash victim has accepted an apology from the driver responsible but admits he can't yet move on from the tragedy
Wildlife officers can't get shot of croc
WILDLIFE officers have tried to shoot a crocodile that keeps returning to Broome's Cable Beach after failing to scare it away or capture it.
Pilot cops broken bottle in face
A YOUNG pilot was lucky to escape without serious eye damage after he was struck with a broken bottle in an unprovoked attack in Leederville.
Man, 21, charged over head-kicking
A 21-YEAR-OLD East Victoria Park man has been charged with assault over a vicious attack in the carpark of the Burswood Dome in the early hours of Sunday, October 17.
Two hurt in bottle attacks
TWO men were injured overnight when they were hit over the head with bottles in separate incidents in Mandurah and Leederville.
Motorcyclist killed in collision
A MOTORCYCLIST has died in hospital after a crash in Forrestfield yesterday afternoon.
Nothing new
=== Journalists Corner ===
Commander in Chief Turned Comedian!'The Factor' analyzes President Obama's 'Daily Show' performance.
Plus earlier today, Karl Rove weighed in on the president's appearance, saying he had a "self-pitying" tone:
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This Week on 'Special Report'
Tonight, it's the final midterm strategy from Tim Kaine. Then Friday, Michael Steele takes the floor.
===
Fox News Channel's Election Night Coverage!
During these midterms, only Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and the most powerful political team have fair and balanced coverage! Plus, insight from Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren.
On Fox News Insider
Best and Worst Campaigners of the 2010 Election SeasonPolls Show Women Voters Have Shifted to GOP
Video: Tim McGraw Gives Gwyneth Paltrow Advice on Performing Live
Michelle Malkin on Obama's Serious Side on the 'Daily Show'
=== Comments ===
Why NPR and PBS Do Not Deserve Our MoneyBY BILL O'REILLY
A few months ago, far-left bomb-thrower Bill Moyers gave up his weekly news analysis program on PBS, an exposition that often enraged conservatives because it was so one-sided. Moyers was the biggest name on PBS for almost 40 years, and there were few right-wing voices there to counter him.
One of the reasons the Democratic Party is in so much trouble this year is the massive federal spending. Since Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House in 2007, almost $5 trillion has been added to the national debt.
And what do we have to show for that? Well, Mrs. Pelosi does ride home to San Francisco in a taxpayer-funded private jet. That's one thing.
This year the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will receive $420 million taxpayer dollars, almost a half-billion in federal funding. Some of that money will go to NPR, the committed left-wing radio network that recently fired Juan Williams.
"Talking Points" has analyzed both NPR and PBS to see how their analysts break down. Of the 18 names we looked at, 17 are liberal-leaning individuals. One, David Brooks, is a moderate. There are no conservative analysts on NPR or PBS.
So is that fair?
Forty percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative; just 20 percent as liberal. Yet we have almost a half-billion taxpayer dollars flowing into a liberal media outfit. Come on.
With cable TV and satellite radio nearly everywhere, there is no need for government-funded media, especially if the presentation is blatantly unfair. Cable TV needs product. If the PBS programs are strong, privately owned networks will buy them.
NPR is another story. It's in big trouble. Some of their affiliates are revolting after the brutal treatment Juan Williams received. But the NPR brass is actually saying the controversy is good because their fundraising is up.
Maybe that means radical-left guy George Soros is giving them even more than the $1.8 million he recently dropped on NPR. Maybe Soros will pony up another million or two. After all, NPR is in his far-left wheelhouse, is it not?
"Talking Points" actually wants NPR to get private funding because public funds should be denied. We understand legislation to defund Public Broadcasting will be introduced shortly.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is also thinking about pulling state funds from Public Broadcasting. Other states should consider that as well.
This is not a vendetta against Public Broadcasting. I look forward to competing with them in the marketplace. This is a call for sanity. The wasteful and unnecessary federal spending has to stop.
===
STUDYING AL
Tim Blair
A quick column, written on the road. Well, in a hotel room.
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What’s the green spin this time?
Andrew Bolt
Last year it was an environmental scandal, and our fault, that Murray cod were dying in their thousands. The answer was to take yet more water off farmers:HIGHER temperatures and a lack of constant water flow in the Murray River are killing scores of “priceless” Murray cod…This year, colder and wetter, Murray cod are again dying, yet the news has raised barely a ripple in the big-city newspapers. The problem this time: too much run-off from leaf-littered forests from which foresters have been evicted:
Liberal MHR for Farrer Sussan Ley said the problem illustrated the intensity of the drought and “there’s no greater environmental vandalism than a mass fish kill”....
A spokeswoman for Senator Wong said the Government was well aware of the critical situation in the Murray-Darling Basin. “We have committed $3.1 billion to purchase water to put back into the basin’s stressed rivers and wetlands,” she said.
THE plight of the Wakool River system has made national television and landholder Tim Betts hopes the issue won’t “just blow over like it normally does”.Reader Trevor:
Mr Betts featured on Tuesday night’s ABC News program in a report about the third and most recent fish kill in the Wakool.
He predicts that every fish in almost 300 kilometres of Wakool River has died since “black” flood water from the Perricoota and Koondrook forests flowed in.
Mr Betts estimated 100s of 1000s of fish have been killed in this latest fish kill. This black water contained accumulated leaf litter, which reduced the river’s oxygen levels to the point that the fish could not survive.
I have just returned from a couple of days meeting displaced timber industry workers at Cohuna, Koondrook and Barham. The Murray River is running a banker at Koondrook (the highest it has been since 1996) and the forests of Gunbower Island, Campbells Island and Koondrook - Pericoota forest are in flood.===
This unfortunate event, for the Victorian and NSW governments that is, has occcured just after both Governments have changed the status of most of the river red gum forests in the Goulburn-Murray and Riverina to National Park.
This has reduced the size of the timber industry in these areas by 80% although many towns have seen a complete closure, eg, Deniliquin, Mathoura, Darlington Point and Merbien. Major processors at Barham have also closed…
The NSW Natural Resources Commission handed down its findings in January. Water was the number one concern, as the NRC’s recommendations were based on the fact that climate change would cause “significant loss of winter rainfall with small increases in summer. Possibly outside historical variation” in the Riverina and the Murray Valley. How inconvenient that the region has had, since mid-February, consistent rainfall and repeated flooding of the rivers and forests that the NRC warned were “unlikely to flood again in our lifetime"…
It seems nobody truly cares about the environment when it matters. WIth the Murray running at the top of its banks, the Hume Weir 99.1% full (as of last night) and Burrinjuck and Blowering dams full and a major flood on Billabong Creek - don’t you reckon someone at the MDBA might have thought it was a good idea to let an “environmental flow” go down the Wakool?
Just give in, Europe told
Andrew Bolt
Blaming the reaction, not the action:
Demands that Muslim groups do more to assimilate in Europe are worsening ethnic tensions and aggravating the problems they are meant to solve, a top human rights official said on Thursday in a veiled warning to Germany and the Netherlands…And again with that chicken-or-egg stuff:
“The diverse groups of Muslims are now blamed by politicians in some countries for not ‘assimilating’.
“However ... anti-Muslim bigotry has in fact become a major obstacle to respectful relationships,” Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg wrote.
“The Islamophobic atmosphere has probably been a factor enabling extremists in some cases to recruit young and embittered individuals who lack a sense of belonging,” he added.So the presence of Muslim terrorists and extremists is blamed on “Islamophobic” Europeans rather than the other way around. Which explains, I guess, why these extremists and terrorists are found only in Europe and not in, say, non-European Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya…
Somehow I think Hammarberg was never going to let the locals win this debate. Still, it’s one way to end a conflict - by forcing the unilateral surrender of one side. But what if they refuse to agree?
(Thanks to reader Watty.)
UPDATE
A different version of the same deceitful syndrome, this time from Age cartoonist Michael Leunig, a favorite of Iranian fascists:
There is no possible way - no possible honest way - to make the claim Leunig does here, even if we counted the Iraqis killed by terrorists as victims of “counter-terrorism” instead. Leunig’s propoganda is about as honest and sophisticated as a cartoon from Der Sturmer, and as attractive to much the same demographic.(Thanks to reader John.)
===
The great Aussie Halloween
Andrew Bolt
Apologies for having missed this story of a significant cultural shift:
THE idea that a group of adults will take a day to protest Halloween not being a public holiday in Australia might suggest they have too much spare time as it is…My own kids are raring for Sunday.
In all, 17 members of the newly-formed Halloween Institute kicked off a protest march yesterday that stretched from Sydney’s Martin Place to Parliament House…
The practice is fast gaining traction in Australia, to the point Woolworths has this year begun selling orange pumpkins, Aldi is selling cheap costumes, while some retailers are said to be considering stocking the Julia Gillard fright wig.
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Headline of the day
Andrew Bolt
Woman picks up own head after horror horse-riding accident
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The Greens are eating Labor alive
Andrew Bolt
YOU’D think Victorian Labor would have twigged that the Greens are eating it alive.You’d also think Labor would have figured if it doesn’t fight the Greens as the Liberals once fought One Nation it could be destroyed.
But no. Too timid to resist, too awed to protest, Labor has meekly handed the Greens a third of its voters—and possibly a share of the government at next month’s election.
Newspoll yesterday confirmed Victorian Labor’s fatal drift.
Just 35 per cent of voters said they’d vote Labor this time, and 19 per cent said they’d choose the Greens.
Amazing. For every two Labor voters there is now one Green. Almost all those Greens voters belong on the Left side of politics that Labor once had almost to itself.
At this rate it could be just 20 years - even as few as 10 - before the Greens take over from Labor as the main party of the Left, warns Newspoll’s chief executive, Martin O’Shannessy: “If the trend we’ve observed in the last two election cycles continues at the pace it continues, that is highly likely and it will happen first in Victoria.”
Already the Greens have forced Labor in Tasmania into a coalition Government, even though Premier David Bartlett admitted before the election “a backroom deal with the Greens is a deal with the devil” and to join them in government would be “to sell my soul”.
Hmm. Wonder what price he got?
Now even Prime Minister Julia Gillard needs the vote of the lone Green in the House of Representatives to stay in office, and the votes of Greens senators to get anything past the Opposition.
Worse, she’s in such a policy vacuum that she’s surrendered much of her leadership to the Greens. Most notoriously, she’s promised to consider their tax on carbon dioxide emissions, which she ruled out before we all voted.
So there have been lots of warnings that Labor has for too long indulged what it should have fought.
Yet see Victorian Premier John Brumby suddenly panic as the polls confirm he not only needs Greens preferences to win the election, but may even need Greens MPs’ votes as well.
The Greens could win up to four inner urban seats - Melbourne, Brunswick, Richmond and Northcote - if the Liberals’ leader, Ted Baillieu, gives in to his worst instincts and gives them his party’s preferences.
Yet even now, Labor lacks the guts to fight the Greens tooth and organic nail.
===
The Wilders warning
Andrew Bolt
ON May 3 this year, Prof Hans Jansen went to an Amsterdam dinner party and got into an argument.
Its echoes have now destroyed an attempt to silence Europe’s leading critic of Muslim immigration. But it’s also warned all free societies of the danger in giving any citizen the right to shut up another.
Jansen is a distinguished Arabist and was listed as a defence witness in the trial of the politician Geert Wilders, head of Holland’s third-biggest party.
Wilders is famous for making Fitna, a film in which quotations from the Koran are interspersed with footage of atrocities they allegedly inspired.
He’s also likened the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and equated Islam with fascism. For this he was damned as a racist, yet his popularity among voters steadily rose, in part because what seems extreme speech here struck many Dutch as a frank explanation for the growing tensions in trying to integrate a million Muslim immigrants.
Holland has already had one film director and Islam critic, Theo van Gogh, murdered by a Muslim extremist.
Two-thirds of the growing number of attacks on gays in liberal Holland are now suspected of being by Muslims.
In 2008, 10 Muslims dragged a gay model off the stage at a fashion show and broke his nose. Last year the organiser of Amsterdam’s gay pride parade was bashed.
It’s such concerns that Wilders has raised through his Party for Freedom, now part of the ruling coalition.
In doing so, he’s had to live under heavy police guard for years, the target of death threats and plots. And now he’s been hauled before an Amsterdam court on charges of racial vilification, for which he faces two years’ jail.
You may wonder why the mere expression of an opinion should be a crime, to be rebutted not with argument but state power.
Indeed, in June 2008, prosecutors refused a request by Muslim activists to bring charges against Wilders, but an appeals court led by judge Tom Schalken overruled them, and ordered Wilders tried for “sowing hatred”.
That trial predictably turned into such a farce that even the public prosecutors this month told the judges Wilders was not guilty. He’d spoken out not against Muslims, but against the threat to Dutch society from a growing assertiveness of Islamic ideology.
Even then the judges insisted their show trial continue.
But then Jansen wrote at last on a blog about his dinner party, held by a pro-Palestinian activist who’d asked him to drop in to “talk a bit about Islam, and yes, also about the Wilders trial” at which Jansen was to appear three days’ later to explain to a sceptical court that “the things Geert Wilders claimed to be in the Koran, were actually in the Koran”.
===
Making Joe the issue won’t help the Liberals
Andrew Bolt
Whether you blame Hockey for going too far or Malcolm Turnbull and others for putting in the knife, the fact is that Liberals are managing to make themselves the issue:
SENIOR Liberals have warned that Tony Abbott must put an end to the white-anting of Joe Hockey after the head of the ANZ Bank upbraided the shadow treasurer as a bank-bashing populist who was eroding the Coalition’s economic credibility.And a confrontation that invites this kind of response from ANZ chief executive Mike Smith is not a good look:
Peter Costello was a very good treasurer, people like Malcolm Turnbull understand this stuff and are very creditable… ‘But the Liberals’ economic credentials have been hijacked by out-there proposals. Mr Hockey seems to be on some kind of personal vendetta. It would appear he has been taking economics lessons from Hugo Chavez.Mind you, the proposals that Hockey actually released this week do not seem so drastic as to deserve this monstering. And given the size of ANZ’s profits, I rather think the public would lean to Hockey’s side of the debate:
This week Mr Hockey released a nine-point plan to put pressure on the banks as they unveiled record annual profits. Mr Hockey went after the ANZ yesterday when it announced a $4.5 billion profit, a 53 per cent increase.===
Even the Greens may soon outpoll Labor in NSW
Andrew Bolt
Not only the worst, but note how the Greens’ support threatens even to overtake Labor’s:
THE Keneally government is officially the most unpopular Labor government there has ever been in Australia.===
Labor’s primary support in NSW has sunk to a disastrous 23 per cent of voters, according to the latest Newspoll…
The only lower figure recorded by Newspoll was the National Party government of Mike Ahern in Queensland, which recorded 22 per cent support in 1989 in the aftermath of the Fitzgerald inquiry into police corruption.
The NSW Coalition has double Labor’s support at 46 per cent, while the Greens are performing strongly on 17 per cent.
Why doesn’t the ABC next run a recruiting drive for al Qaeda?
Andrew Bolt
Now ABC Online uses taxpayers’ money to publish the rantings of a spokesman for an Islamist group which is so radical that it is banned or restricted in several countries and brands our soldiers as ”terrorists”.
Has the ABC lost its mind? It even fails to identify just what Hizb ut Tahrir is and stands for, describing it only in the most flattering terms: as the world’s “largest global Islamic political party”.
(Thanks to reader Stanley.)
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