Dolphin spin a Kona welcome
Piers Akerman – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (03:51 am)
Surfing may be great in the Hawaiian islands but what is good for the Beach Boys has not been so pleasurable for the four-man crew of Van Diemen III.
Vale Lionel Rose
Miranda Devine – Monday, May 09, 11 (09:03 am)
Vale Lionel Rose, a gentleman inside and outside the boxing ring.
My father, Frank Devine, was Rose’s corner man in his legendary 1968 Tokyo fight, when the great Aboriginal boxer beat Fighting Harada to win the world bantamweight title. Then a foreign correspondent for the Herald and Weekly Times, my father met Rose at the airport, invited him home and mopped his brow between bouts. In the locker room after the fight, as Rose was being cleaned up, he got the first exclusive interview.
They kept in touch and I remember Rose visiting our house in New York many years later.
Jubilant boxer Lionel Rose with trainer Jack Rennie and handlers Frank Devine (L) and Kevin Hayes (R) after Rose’s defeat of champion fighting Harada in bantamweight title fight in Tokyo 28/02/1968.
BOB BUDGET
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (03:45 am)
Has anybody received their Bob Ellis economic stimulus payments yet? I’m going to spend mine on fries from McDonald’s. Or maybe carbon credits.
Depends on the exchange rate.
421 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S MEGA CONSULTANCY FEE TAX
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (03:35 am)
They’re throwing money around like crazy:
A fresh investigation will be launched into the impact of a carbon price on the coal-fired power industry under a series of commitments made by the federal government to electricity company bosses.
It is understood Energy Minister Martin Ferguson and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet will ask three firms – KPMG, Mallesons Stephen Jaques and Lazard – to examine the impact of a carbon price on the security and reliability of the energy supply.
These joints don’t do things for free. Isn’t the government big enough to check the numbers itself? And, excuse me, but three legal, investment and accountancy firms? BMW dealers are drooling.
Others aren’t signing up. Thus far the roster of carbon tax doubters, delayers, deal-seekers and outright rejecters includes Hafda’s Butchery, Labor senator Doug Cameron’s working people, Rio Tinto, Alcoa, dairy farmers, barley growers, insurance companies, local councils, state governments, CFOs, food and grocery producers, miners, union members, Gerry Harvey, G&S Engineering, Sam Gadaleta, BHP, Queensland Labor members, the Noosa Chamber of Commerce, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Northern Territory parliament, Santos, the Australian Taxi Industry Association, Alumina Limited and an industrial group representing Amcor, Bluescope Steel, Boral, CSR, Sucrogen, Sugar Australia, Rheem, Vicpole and Dexion. Chuck in a few more: Australia’s largest fertiliser maker Incitec, the Taxi Council of Queensland and, once again, BHP.
DEATH SQUADS USED TO BE BAD
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (12:46 am)
In 2009, leftoids Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Alter were shocked by Seymour Hersh’s claims that Dick Cheney ran assassination squads using military personnel to take out enemy targets – you know, just like the current President:
“There’s a lot more that happened in that Bush administration, directly out of the vice-president’s office, that we don’t know about yet,” warned Alter, adding that once the full details become known, they “will curl our hair.”
That last line would carry greater power if Alter weren’t bald. And also a screaming hypocrite. Now that Barack Obama is running an assassination squad – directly out of the President’s office – using military personnel to take out enemy targets, Alter is delighted. As for Olbermann, he pursued further Hersh’s claims that, as Olbermann put it, a “secret commando unit officially called the Joint Special Operations Command” (the very outfit that killed bin Laden) had operated under Cheney’s direction:
Two years ago, Olbermann described the existence of the JSOC as “shocking”, “egregious” and “terrifying to the nature of democracy”. He also wondered if Obama should dismantle the shadowy Bush-era terror machine. But now, however, Olbermann is happy as a clam:
Barack Obama got Osama Bin Laden. And every other political calculation, every strategy that suggests Democratic weakness or liberal uncertainty is ... as dead as Bin Laden.
We now know that the likes of Olbermann and Alter only support action against terrorists if it is conducted by their party allies. That must be what Olbermann means by the death of “liberal uncertainty.”
(Via Currency Lad. Previously covered by RWNW and Real Clear Politics)
ALLODOXOPHOBIA ALL OVER
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (12:06 am)
Jim Treacher’s rule demonstrated anew: Conservatives want left-wingers to keep talking, left-wingers want conservatives to shut up. In this case, the Phobic Facebook Five Hundred might be slightly outnumbered.
(Via s_dog)
UPDATE. Via RWDB, the ballanced view of a superior Age reader:
I have a close relative who is a journalist and he speaks of ballance and ethics in reporting, Boltcouldn’t spell the words let alone get them into a sentence ...
JUDGMENT OUTSOURCED
Tim Blair – Monday, May 09, 11 (11:44 pm)
“They are blind to how ugly they are.”
IMMELT DOWN
Tim Blair – Monday, May 09, 11 (11:38 pm)
Green is bad for business, as Wal-Mart previously discovered. Now General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt regrets his green phase:
“If I had one thing to do over again I would not have talked so much about green,” Immelt said at an event sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Even though I believe in global warming and I believe in the science … it just took on a connotation that was too elitist; it was too precious and it let opponents think that if you had a green initiative, you didn’t care about jobs. I’m a businessman. That’s all I care about, is jobs.”
From WUWT, now featuring outstanding dog-teasing.
(Via Garth Godsman)
UPDATE. “It’s about time,” emails reader and stockwatcher Smike. “When this guy took over as head of GE in 2001, the stock was trading in the $50s. Today, it’s around $20 per share. He should have been axed long ago, or at least had a good heart-to-heart with the directors about his idiotic green direction and its negative effect on shareholder returns.”
Leftist ashamed of Left’s tears for bin Laden
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (07:07 am)
Nick Dyrenfurth is embarrassed by fellow Leftists - especially on the ABC’s Drum - who rage at the killing of Osama bin Laden:
LAST week the world learned of the death of a misogynistic, homophobic, racist mass murderer who supported a theocratic, neo-fascist ideology posing as a liberation movement....
To be sure, bin Laden was opposed to every tenet of modern progressive politics; secular democracy, representative government, a hatred of feudal or class-based inequity, equality of the sexes, anti-racism and the core values of the Enlightenment itself.
No self-respecting social democrat mourned his death. And yet, had one’s daily reading habits been confined to sections of so-called “progressive” opinion, bin Laden’s death was a matter of profound regret. The extra-judicial killing was a denial of due process, celebrity lawyer Geoffrey Robertson protested, oblivious to the impossibility of capturing or trying bin Laden. “[It’s] hard to celebrate one more corpse,” opined Jeff Sparrow, a devotee of the violent Bolshevik thug, Leon Trotsky, on ABC’s The Drum. Not to be outdone, Crikey’s Hunter S Thompson-wannabe, Guy Rundle, downplayed bin Laden’s crimes claiming that: “Morally speaking, 9/11 was no worse than a B-52 run over Vietnam."…
Perhaps the most disturbing local contribution came from another Drum regular, anti-Israel activist Antony Loewenstein, who announced that “the West has much to learn”. Bin Laden’s “[terrorist] tactics were abhorrent and failed to attract huge numbers of followers” Loewenstein surmised, nonetheless the West’s subjugation of Muslims meant that the “arguments for his organisation’s force have only strengthened since 9/11”.
In other words, Osama was a nasty piece of work but fighting the good fight against imperialist crusaders. (Never mind that the majority of al-Qa’ida’s victims have been Muslim.) Loewenstein concluded by offering a paean of praise: “Bin Laden died a man who profoundly changed the landscape of the world.”
Well, yes, he certainly changed Lower Manhattan’s landscape.
BHP getting nervous, too
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (06:54 am)
A belated pull-back from a company which should have been more responsible:
BHP Billiton chairman Jacques Nasser has turned up the pressure on Julia Gillard to abandon plans for a carbon tax, calling for a “go-slow” approach to tackling climate change and warning that the rest of the world is unlikely to follow Australia’s lead…
Mr Nasser yesterday told a Melbourne Mining Club lunch that BHP Billiton still supported Australia moving early on climate change, but questioned the government’s plans and stressed the nation needed to remain competitive with other countries.
“In terms of a carbon tax, most countries around the world have decided to go in some other direction,” the BHP chairman said.
“Particularly in the larger economies, there’s been a trend towards regulation, rather than changing behaviour through taxation or policy changes.
“We’ve got to be careful we don’t get into the trap of really believing our behaviour is going to influence other countries; I don’t think that will be the case.”
The comments will be seen as a shift in the mining giant’s stance from when Mr Kloppers late last year called on Australia to act before any international agreement to protect the nation’s long-term economic interests
Six months of let’s-see as the force simmers
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (06:24 am)
To me, this response to the Chief Commissioner effectively sacking his popular deputy, Sir Ken Jones, seems indecisive and weak - traits which increasingly threaten to become characteristic of the Baillieu Government:
The decision to commission a six-month review of the force’s command structure will be interpreted by many as a means of putting off a decision on whether Simon Overland needs to be replaced as Chief Commissioner and, if so, how?…
Before yesterday’s marathon Cabinet meeting came up with a Clayton’s Royal Commission to tackle the problem, the Coalition was probably hoping Ombudsman George Brouwer could be the one to do the hatchet job.
The Ombudsman’s report on whether there was any impropriety, or collusion with the previous government, in the apparently selective release of assault statistics before the last state election is due for release next month.
If Mr Brouwer made any finding that the Chief Commissioner or any of his senior staff was complicit in cooking the books, the Government would no doubt feel justified in asking him to step down.
How distracted and effective will force command now be for the next six months?
Harder to earn than for Labor to spend
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (06:12 am)
Wayne Swan’s budget is savaged by the loss of a familiar amount of money:
… a budget that has been smashed by a $16 billion collapse in revenue
Last year:
JULIA Gillard has declared she has no regrets about her $16 billion Building the Education Revolution scheme ...
Interesting, how $16 billion seemed no big deal when Labor spent it, but a monstrous amount when it lost it.
Raining money
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (06:07 am)
Can this many people truly have deserved and needed that handout from other taxpayers?
Government assistance payments for people hit by last summer’s natural disasters have soared to more than $880 million… Centrelink yesterday confirmed that more than 705,000 people had claimed the government’s one-off relief payment of $1000 for adults or $400 for children since December…
Another 60,000 people have received the Disaster Income Recovery ...
Naturally, when there’s free money on this scale, there’s rorting, too:
A spokeswoman for Centrelink said almost 10,000 grants under the Australian Government Disaster Relief Payments have been identified for review.
Of the 9977 questioned cases, a total of 4821 have been processed and Centrelink has called for about $2.7m in grants to be repaid by people who have deliberately or inadvertently claimed the grant when they were not entitled to it.
Brown demonises immigrants who work
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (05:56 am)
This symbolises the Greens entire mindset - of the resentful non-productive, spending what others produce.
Greens leader hates the term “queue jumper” when it’s applied to boat people, at least 85 per cent of whom are on Centrelink benefits in their first five years here:
Refugees have been subjected to a disgraceful campaign of vilification and scare-mongering … We are told that that the refugees are “queue jumpers” when in fact there is no queue for people seeking asylum.
But he uses the term “queue jumper” when it’s applied to skilled immigrants needed urgently to fill jobs that create wealth for us all:
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has referred to skilled migrants as “queue jumpers” ...
“We are going to see, I think, in the budget tomorrow night, potentially, queue jumpers being bought in at the interests of the mining corporations,” he said
===
Something in exchange
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (05:48 am)
Fair enough, although I’d like that work to be meaningful:
As part of a carrot-and-stick approach to lifting workforce participation, dole recipients of more than two years’ standing will have to perform at least two days a week of unpaid work for 11 months a year - up from the current six months.
UPDATE
From where has come this exaggerated sense of entitlement that even people who work 29 hours a week can still get benefits for being allegedly too disabled to work?
PEOPLE claiming a disability pension will be allowed to work up to 30 hours a week and still receive part of their welfare payments in a bid to get more people back in the workforce.
This seems to jar with the reason the Government actually gives for paying a disability pension:
So can’t work, but can.
No wonder, with all this free money splashed about by both sides of politics, that we’ve become almost a nation of cripples:
The number of people receiving a disability pension now exceeds 860,000 - or 220,000 more than the number claiming unemployment benefits. It costs the Budget $13 billion. In the past 10 years the number claiming disability pensions has climbed 11 per cent.
I’m glad the Government is taking some steps to cut the spending, even if I question some of its “toughness”. But how out of hand has this got that taxpayers now subsidise welfare lifestyles that can include trips overseas?
In an attempt to stem rorting, the Government will also cut the number of weeks DSP recipients can spend overseas while drawing payments.
UPDATE
Dennis Shanahan says the Government is now so desperate and confused that it doesn’t know whether to sell this Budget as tough or sweet:
All the talk of a tough budget and welfare cuts has spooked Labor MPs, who are reporting alarm from voters at the prospect of a tough-love budget that hits welfare recipients and forces people to work who are on disability pensions, the dole or supporting mothers benefits.
Subsequently, there has been a rash of good news leaks and giveaways from the budget… But trying to address the patchwork economy and meld spending cuts, a new tax and a crackdown on welfare recipients with payments to poor families, tax breaks for small business and free installation of a TV set-top box to more than two million households has ended in total confusion.
UPDATE
A tough budget apart from when its typically spendthrift:
A NEW public waste scandal is looming after it was revealed that up to $400 a time has been allocated to install digital TV set-top boxes that can be purchased for as little as $30 each.
The Federal Government has pledged to give every pensioner a new set-top box in today’s Budget. The package would include installation, any necessary wiring work, a lesson in using it and a year’s access to a technical support helpline…
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s office said yesterday the package cost about $350 per person, but his spokesman declined to provide a breakdown of labour, equipment and administrative costs, saying it was “commercial in confidence”.
(Thanks to reader Grand Wizard.)
The Greens back a Government which sends boat people to this?
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (05:22 am)
Julia Gillard says she’ll be tough and isn’t ruling out sending even children to Malaysia under her one-of-ours-for-five-of-yours deal on boat people:
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has refused to rule out diverting children to Malaysia under her swap deal on asylum-seekers…
“We are not, at this stage, dealing with those kinds of details but I do want to indicate we’re going to take a very tough and rigorous approach,” Ms Gillard said.
Let’s see how tough she is. And let’s see how the Greens will justify backing a Government which will send 800 men, women and children to Malaysian camps run as the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrantsdescribed in its World Refugee Survey 2009:
Malaysian immigration officials continued to sell deportees to gangs of traffickers operating along the Thailand-Malaysia border. The gangs paid from $250 to $500 per deportee. The traffickers demanded fees of 1,400 to 3,000 ringgit (about $400 to $860) to smuggle the deportees back into Malaysia. They typically sold those who could not pay (perhaps 20 percent), the men onto fishing boats, the women into brothels, and the children to gangs that exploit child beggars…Conditions in detention centers remained abysmal, with overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate health care, and abuse all common… In December, SUHAKAM announced that 1,535 detainees had died in prisons, rehabilitation centers, and immigration detention between 2003 and 2007. Lack of medical attention was a major cause of death…
In March (2007), the Prisons Department handed over 11 immigration centers to the Immigration Department. People’s Volunteer Corps (RELA) with its 480,000 volunteers became in charge of management of these centers.
Abuses by RELA continued during the year, with reports of rape, beatings, extortion, theft, and destroying UNHCR documents. RELA raided and burned to the ground the camp of 75 Chin refugees from Myanmar in January. They detained 23 of the refugees, and took everything of value in the camp, including cell phones, crafts made for sale, and money....
On April 21, detainees at Lenggeng Immigration Detention Centre rioted, during which an administration building caught fire. Although Malaysian media reported the riot began when 60 Myanmarese detainees were rejected for resettlement to third countries, the incident actually began on April 20 when immigration officers beat nine detainees (six Myanmarese, two Indonesians, and one Pakistani) while interrogating them about a cigarette butt and tobacco found in the detention center....
In November 2007, the Government announced it was transferring control of the immigration detention centers back to the Immigration Department and that RELA members would be assisting with security in them until it could train full-time staff, perhaps for as long as two years.
What world are these people on? Poor Turnbull
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (12:51 am)
Malcolm Turnbull on Q&A last night was excellent on the tut-tutting and arm-chair general-ing of host Tony Jones, fussily deploring the killing of Osama bin Laden. He was also excellent on the apologetics for Islamist extremism and incoherent blame-the-West vaporising of Nazeem Hussain, treasurer of the Victorian Islamic Council. Listen to Hussain long enough and you’d swear the 20 people jailed here on terrorism-related charges must have been Christians targetting Muslims and not vice versa.
But in the end I shared Turnbull’s frustration with this unrealism so completely that I switched off.
UPDATE
Reader Jicks:
Andrew it got worse. At the end was an ‘obituary’ for the idiot hippy who threw his sandals at John Howard, as the hippy has since died of cancer. Jones declared that the sandals would be auctioned to raise money for Iraq.What the hell is the ABC doing in elevating the denigration of our former PM in this manner?
Sigh. And so a man is made a saint for acting like a boor.
Big Bligh is listening…
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, May 10, 11 (12:05 am)
Surely a coincidence…
CABBIES are planning to deliver a political message to passengers as part of an extensive “word-of-mouth” campaign aimed at unseating the Bligh Government.
With around 10,000 drivers each carrying 30 passengers a day, the cabbies estimate they can reach a wide and captive audience with their message about the lack of taxi reform.
EVERY word uttered in a cab could soon be recorded and stored under proposed State Government changes to the operation of taxi security cameras.
Simply opening the door or starting the meter would activate the recording of trips in an industry that claims to transport 90 million passengers in Queensland each year… Queensland’s Privacy Commissioner Linda Matthews, who was not consulted about the proposal detailed in a Transport and Main Roads’ discussion paper, said there would be no such thing as “an anonymous taxi ride” once audio recordings were introduced.
(Thanks to reader Heather.)
A dollar is only dirty in the hands of a sceptic
Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 09, 11 (05:39 pm)
Global warmist Graeme Readfearn is appalled that mining companies sponsored the Australian tour of sceptic Lord Monckton:
At key stages in Lord Monckton’s 2010 tour of Australia, wealthy and respected mining figures were there to lend a hand, provide a forum and, in some cases, to give cash support....(The) Brisbane Institute ‘debate’ would likely not have gone ahead had it not been for the intervention of mining entrepreneur Bob Bryan. As one organiser stated in an email obtained by this writer, Mr Bryan underwrote the event to cover the $16,000 deposit required by the venue, the Hilton Brisbane.
Wow. A whole $16,000 from a miner? That kind of cash must sure corrupt debate.
Readfearn continues his smear of Monckton:
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, says a recent claim by Lord Monckton that Europe’s emissions trading scheme had doubled the cost of electricity was “utter rubbish”. ...“I am amazed that anybody in Australia takes Monckton seriously,’’ says Mr Ward.
Bob Ward? Of this Grantham Research Institute?”
The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is a research centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science founded in May 2008. The centre is a partner of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College...
Why, yes. And isn’t that Grantham in the title of his institute a tribute to US investment tycoon and warmist Jeremy Grantham??
Why, yes again:
Grantham, who four years ago donated more than $US23 million to establish a climate change institute at Imperial College London, said scientists’ predictions of global warming were ‘’dangerously conservative’’, and the global environment was ‘’deteriorating very fast’’.
Why did Readfearn curiously fail to mention the warmist’s $23 million when damning the sceptics’s $16,000?
(Thanks to reader Paul.)
Extremist language tells us we’re losing
Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 09, 11 (04:58 pm)
London’s Daily Express reports:
HUNDREDS of Osama bin Laden supporters clashed with English Defence League extremiststoday as a “funeral service” for the assassinated terror leader sparked fury outside London’s US Embassy.
Mark Steyn observes:
That’s an interesting way of putting it. Hundreds of people cheer a mass murderer on the streets of London, but they’re merely “supporters”. Those who oppose them are the “extremists”.
...when even a Fleet Street tabloid covering a pro-terrorist-vs-English-nationalist protest reflexively labels the latter as the “extremists”, you know we’re losing the very language in which we can even discuss the issues.
Brown vs reds to control Greens
Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 09, 11 (04:28 pm)
More news from the Greens’ eastern front:
Greens leader Bob Brown is behind a push to completely nationalise his party and pull state divisions into line so that they more fully recognise the national leadership…During a closed-door meeting in Canberra last month, staged by party think-tank the Green Institute, Senator Brown spoke in favour of moving from a federal structure to a completely national party…
Other party sources say Senator Brown spoke diplomatically but was privately outraged at how the branches were embarrassing the Greens brand....
Another party source said mismanagement of the Israel boycott issue had spooked some inside the Greens because it made the party look like a bunch of radicals who were happy to fight with each other.
Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon, who dominates the NSW Greens, had repeatedly spoken in favour of the boycott.
‘’Bob is genuinely concerned about Lee Rhiannon going into the Senate,’’ the source said.
‘’He doesn’t want to see everything he’s worked for collapse and he knows there is one or two of his federal team that could be vulnerable to be people like Lee.’’
Labor essentially drowning
Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 09, 11 (03:50 pm)
No recovery for Julia Gillard in today’s Essential Media poll - with Labor still way behind in the preferred vote, 46 to 54.
(Thanks to reader Good Will.)
Oh, and Mafeking has been relieved
Andrew Bolt – Monday, May 09, 11 (02:31 pm)
It’s a taken a month, but the Fairfax media has finally reported on the Larissa Behrendt tweet - and on yet another possible legal action that should worry advocates of free speech, a subject on which I am advised I must not comment for now.
(No comments for legal reason.)
UPDATE
A very fine piece by Nick Cater, editor of the Weekend Australian, responding to bizarre criticisms of his paper’s coverage of the Behrendt tweet:
By declaring Larissa Behrendt’s “horsegate” tweet a non-story and devoting more than 2,000 words to say so, Chris Graham tortuously destroys his own case. His article on the The Drum merits a response however because, as Graham must know, it was a story, and an important one, but one which Graham lacks the courage to tackle head on....
He employs that wonderful word “inappropriate” to describe the comparison of Bess Price’s appearance on the ABC’s Q&A with televised bestiality. This semantic staple of politically-correct vernacular takes on an ironic quality these days. I thought the tweet was surprisingly offensive and, more importantly, so did Price. That alone would not have promoted the story to page one, but the insight those brief tweeted words afforded into the fractured and bitter divide in indigenous politics did.
That divide is not a conventional political split between left and right as Graham and his cohorts pretend. It is an argument, and a heated one at that, between those who seek an abstracted, intellectual solution to the problems of indigenous disadvantage and people like Price who adopt a pragmatic approach.
It is a contest which boils down to the way in which indigenous progress or regression is measured, between those who judge success by what works on the ground rather than the convoluted moral code which constrains progressive thinkers like Graham.
Read it all here.
UPDATE
Thanks to reader Paul, a historical howler has been corrected.
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