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Boats, boats, boats. Border policies in shambles
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(2:45pm)
Australian authorities have intercepted a boat carrying 74 asylum seekers near Ashmore Island.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said HMAS Hervey Bay intercepted the boat carrying 65 people west of Cocos (Keeling) Islands on Thursday.
HMAS Bundaberg intercepted a boat carrying 64 people near Christmas Island on Thursday morning
The Gillard Government’s boat people policies have collapsed completely.
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The Bolt Report on Sunday
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(12:29pm)
On The Bolt Report on Sunday - Shadow Attorney-General George Brandis, Cassandra Wilkinson and former Finance Minister and fellow sceptic Nick Minchin.
Topics: scandals, Rudd, climate change, boats, UN Security Council and Anthony Mundine.
We have also invited Labor frontbenchers Nicola Roxon, Julia Gillard and Chris Bowen etc. Craig Emerson has a standing invitation. We’ll have on as many of them that say yes.
On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am. Some states won’t have the repeat due to some sport thingo. Oops. The sports was next weekend. Yes, there will be a 4.30pm encore on Sunday.
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Redmond challenged
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(11:38am)
OPPOSITION Leader Isobel Redmond faces a leadership ballot on Tuesday after health spokesman Martin Hamilton-Smith today prepared a formal challenge motion to all MPs…
Senior Liberal sources say Mr Hamilton-Smith has 12 solid votes in the 25-person party room. Ms Redmond is said to have seven solid votes and there are six unaligned MPs.
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CNN host gave more time to slow-talking Obama
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(11:14am)
How desperately does the media want Barack Obama to win? CNN’s Candy Crowley deliberately gave Barack Obama three extra minutes in the second debate to help him make his points.
She broke the agreed rules for the debate to give Obama and Mitt Romney equal time. In doing so, she confirmed the bias already made manifest by interjecting (also against the agreed rules) to side with Obama when Romney confronted him over his Administration’s deceit following the Benghazi attack.
CNN Worldwide managing editor Mark Whitaker suggests in a staff memo that Crowley gave Obama the extra minutes simply because he couldn’t get his words out fast enough:
On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We’re going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time.
UPDATE
CNN’s explanation of “why Obama got more time speak” is an admission that Crowley intentionally gave Obama extra time because she thought he hadn’t said enough. It’s also an admission that it doesn’t know whether, objectively, Romney said more than Obama in the same amount of time. CNN hadn’t done a word count when it made the claim, and Crowley certainly hadn’t performed one when she gave Obama more time than Romney.Crowley was, however, watching the time, as she told the candidates several times. As the CNN memo confirms, she wanted to give Obama more time than Romney.
This is just one reason why Crowley should not be permitted to moderate another high-stakes debate. Indeed, assuming the authenticity of the CNN memo, no one from that outfit should be permitted to do so.
Yet another example of how one of the greatest challenges for conservative politicians, whether here or in the US, is to get their message past the media gatekeepers - largely of the Left - and to the voters.
UPDATE
If the President said on day one the Benghazi attack was an “act of terror”, why spend two weeks portraying it as a protest against a video? A timeline (that still omits Obama’s speech to the UN):
UPDATE
What’s the big deal about Benghazi anyway?
UPDATE
‘Governor Romney’s argument is, we’re not fixed, so fire him and put me in,’ said Clinton. ‘It is true we’re not fixed. When President Obama looked into the eyes of that man who said in the debate, I had so much hope four years ago and I don’t now, I thought he was going to cry. Because he knows that it’s not fixed.’
Like, he knows he’s failed.
===
Memo to Age writer: the truth is not racist
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(9:40am)
The super-virtuous Chloe Angyal tells Age readers she’s just heard a racist speak:
The United States is possibly about to grant its first black president a second term in office. And yet, in the nearly four years since he was elected, coded racism has become a part of the national conversation like never before…
Post-racial? Romney stood up in front of a television audience of 60 million people and said that gun violence in America happens because poor black single women are bad mothers. He said it as he stood beside the black son of a single mother.
But let me mention another thing. And that is parents. We need moms and dads, helping to raise kids. Wherever possible the benefit of having two parents in the home, and that’s not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that’s a great idea. Because if there’s a two parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically. The opportunities that the child will be able to achieve increase dramatically. So we can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence and give them opportunity, and bring them in the American system.
Romney said nothing like what Angyal claims. Moreover, if he is racist then so is Barack Obama, who seconds after Romney spoke, added:
I think that one area we agree on is the important of parents and the importance of schools, because I do believe that if our young people have opportunity, then they are less likely to engage in these kinds of violent acts.
Suzanne Olden is astonished it is now racist to speak the truth about the link between the disintegration of families and crime:
The US Census Bureau found that children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor. In 2011, 12 percent of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared to 44 percent of children in mother-only families. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Children’s Living Arrangements and Characteristics: March 2011, Table C8. Washington D.C.: 2011.
When children are born to a single mother, they tend to show higher levels of aggressive behavior than children born to married mothers. Source: Osborne, C., & McLanahan, S. (2007). Partnership instability and child well-being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69, 1065-1083.A study of 1,977 children age three and older living with a residential father or father figure found that children living with married biological parents had significantly fewer behavioral problems than children living with at least one non-biological parent. Source: Hofferth, S. L. (2006). Residential father family type and child well-being: investment versus selection. Demography, 43, 53-78.A study of 109 juvenile offenders indicated that family structure significantly predicts delinquency. Source: Bush, Connee, Ronald L. Mullis, and Ann K. Mullis. “Differences in Empathy Between Offender and Nonoffender Youth.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 29 (August 2000): 467-478. 78, 132–147.Adolescents, particularly boys, in single-parent families were at higher risk of committing crimes against property and against people. Source: Anderson, Amy L. “Individual and contextual influences on delinquency: the role of the single-parent family.” Journal of Criminal Justice 30 (November 2002): 575-587.
The problem isn’t just a problem in the US. In a study of INTERPOL crime statistics of 39 countries, it was found that single parenthood ratios were strongly correlated with violent crimes. This was not true 18 years ago. Source: Barber, Nigel. “Single Parenthood As a Predictor of Cross-National Variation in Violent Crime.” Cross-Cultural Research 38 (November 2004): 343-358.
It is Angyal who imposes on Romney’s identification of a real social problem - and a social tragedy - a racial spin, knowing statistics reveal the breakdown in family structures has been particularly devastating in the African American community:
Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be poor, even after a post-welfare-reform decline in child poverty. They are also more likely to pass that poverty on to their children.
So I guess Bill Clinton must be a racist, too:
In his 1994 State of the Union Address, he announced: ”We cannot renew our country when, within a decade, more than half of our children will be born into families where there is no marriage.” And in 1996, despite howls of indignation, including from members of his own administration… he signed a welfare-reform bill that he had twice vetoed—and that included among its goals increasing the number of children living with their two married parents.
Ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have fifty percent drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. (clapping) No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child (clapping)
Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are [not*] holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. (clapping) In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye (laughing). And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.
I’m talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? (clapping) Where were you when he was twelve? (clapping) Where were you when he was eighteen, and how come you don’t know he had a pistol? (clapping) And where is his father, and why don’t you know where he is? And why doesn’t the father show up to talk to this boy?
In short, the only person who seems keen to peddle negative stereotypes seems Angyal herself, damning Romney as one of the fabled racists of the Right for saying what Obama, Clinton, Cosby and the facts all support.
===
Defend mockery
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(9:26am)
Where we may be headed, too, if we keep pandering to the straighteners demanding laws against giving offence or insulting religion:
Fazil Say, who has played with the New York Philharmonic and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, is on trial for sending tweets that included one in April that joked about a call to prayer that lasted only 22 seconds.Say tweeted: “Why such haste? Have you got a mistress waiting or a raki on the table?"…Prosecutors in June charged Say with inciting hatred and public enmity, and with insulting “religious values"…Say, 42, is a strong critic of the government of the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a devout Muslim who has preached conservative values, alarming some secular Turks who fear the government plans to make religion part of their lifestyle…
The charges against Say also cite other tweets he sent, including one – based on a verse by the medieval poet and wine-lover Omar Khayyam – which questioned whether heaven was a tavern or a brothel, because of the promises that wine will flow and each believer will be greeted by virgins.
Ban literature!
Khayyam’s poem is in the form of a questions to believers: ”You say rivers of wine flow in heaven, is heaven a tavern to you? You say two houris await each believer there, is heaven a brothel to you?”
Just as well Say’s comments did not appear in a YouTube clip by an American Copt.
Rowan Atkinson is demanding a change in the law to halt the ‘creeping culture of censoriousness’ which has seen the arrest of a Christian preacher, a critic of Scientology and even a student making a joke…
Launching a fight for part of the Public Order Act to be repealed, he said it was having a ‘chilling effect on free expression and free protest’.
He went on: ‘The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.’
===
Speaking of double standards and women-haters, Ms Gillard…
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(9:04am)
Looking at a watch makes you a sexist - even misogynist, according to the Prime Minister:
Sexism should always be unacceptable. We should conduct ourselves as it should always be unacceptable. The Leader of the Opposition says do something; well he could do something himself if he wants to deal with sexism in this Parliament…
That’s what I believe is the path forward for this Parliament, not the kind of double standards and political game-playing imposed by the Leader of the Opposition now looking at his watch because apparently a woman’s spoken too long.
And Julia Gillard will always call out that kind of sexism:
”I’M just going to call out sexism and misogyny where I see it,” Julia Gillard told reporters in Canberra...
Any second now, Gillard is going to call out the Indian Prime Minister as a woman-hater.
Any second now…
(Thanks to reader Jules.)
===
Fifteen years of no warming are interesting. Five more could be decisive
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(8:38am)
Five more years of no warming could be a big problem for global warmists, says Professor Michael Asten. In the meantime, ignore the fear mongering of professional alarmists over the Arctic melt:
Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery that the news [of the big Arctic melt this year] was “a significant wake-up call”, and such melting “poses risks for coastal communities, infrastructure and ecosystems right around the world including in Australia”.Another member of the Climate Commission, Will Steffen, has added to the expressions of concern, describing the Arctic melting as a “trigger” and suggesting that the Arctic will be ice-free between 2016 and 2030…We have not yet read statements from Flannery or Steffen to the effect that the ]record] increase in Antarctic ice is a “go back to sleep” signal, or that increasing Antarctic ice presents a risk of falling sea levels on our coastlines.Nor should we; the two phenomena are small parts of a larger picture…Yes, the Arctic is warm this year, but not abnormally so when viewed in a historical context. Meanwhile, the Antarctic is proving contrary… We may be seeing an example of the global “seesaw” of Arctic and Antarctic change…Global temperatures have not increased in a statistically significant sense in the past 15 years. [Actually 16.]
A pause of 10 years in the upward trend of the past 40 years would be unsurprising from existing models. A pause of 20 years would definitely surprise. Changes across the next five years will be watched closely… but with one eye on history and one on current observations, I see no reason for pessimism about our climate...
Read the full article, which stresses the importance of cyclical patterns in climate, including Arctic melts and sea level rises.
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UN bid won - but at what price?
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(7:53am)
A good win for the Gillard Government - but it comes at a high cost:
Australia won 140 votes in a three-round contest competing with Finland and Luxembourg for two Security Council seats…At least 129 votes were needed to secure the position.
Foreign minister Bob Carr said the win proved Australia’s values were respected around the world, and the nation was considered a “good global citizen”.
Gillard will probably be more relieved not to have lost the bid started by Kevin Rudd than triumphant at having won it. After all, I doubt it will wow many voters out in the suburbs, given it’s a prize of little relevance to their lives - and one that hardly puts us in elevated company:
Argentina and Rwanda also won non-permanent seats in this morning’s vote.
But while it gives us marginally more diplomatic clout for a couple of years, the cost and distortion of our foreign policy remains for me the real issues:
The bid for the seat was very costly for the government, prompting the flow of millions of dollars in extra aid money, especially to countries in Africa, as Australia tried to woo extra votes from that continent’s 53 nations…
At least $24 million was spent in sending additional diplomatic envoys to Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and eastern Europe.
Moreover, we seemed to pander to Muslim countries to win crucial votes, diverted billions in aid away to distant Africa and threw Israel under the bus (although Gillard has, to her credit, has been less inclined than Rudd was to sacrifice Israel for our bid).
I fear we’re likely to sell out more than we will win.
UPDATE
The irony is that the UN may have just let a UN sceptic into the nest - and Labor may have handed Tony Abbott a world platform:
UPDATE
About right:
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Karoly throws stone in his greenhouse
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(7:45am)
University of Melbourne climate change scientist David Karoly said Australians were in fact responsible for .45 per cent of total carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ‘’Obviously, we would much rather prefer that the comments of people like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt were, in fact, correct, so it is pleasing to get this ruling from ACMA,’’ Dr Karoly said.
In fact, the most recent howler on climate change I can think of involves the paper on a new “hockey stick” which produced alarmist reports like this, on AM:
TONY EASTLEY: For the first time scientists have provided the most complete climate record of the last millennium and they’ve found that the last five decades years in Australia have been the warmest…
MATTHEW CARNEY: Lead author of the report is Dr Joelle Gergis.
JOELLE GERGIS: Well I think it’s significant for a number of reasons - firstly that it does show that the post-1950 warming is unusual in the Australasian region
The paper’s other lead author was ... David Karoly. And it was Karoly who had to admit to critical bloggers they were right - his paper indeed contained errors, requiring it to be “put on hold”:
An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, which may affect the results. While the paper states that “both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period”, we discovered on Tuesday 5 June that the records used in the final analysis were not detrended for proxy selection, making this statement incorrect. Although this is an unfortunate data processing issue, it is likely to have implications for the results reported in the study. The journal has been contacted and the publication of the study has been put on hold.
The Journal of Climate now says the paper has not just been “put on hold” but withdrawn:
We should tell ACMA about these errors. Maybe it could order Karoly to undergo “factual accuracy” training.
I suspect the reason Karoly wanted to smear me was not for anything I’ve said that was inaccurate, but what I’ve said that was true:
One dry year was evidence enough of man-made warming for David Karoly in 2003:
During 2002, Australia experienced its worst drought since reliable records began in 1910… This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.
Two years of record rain is not evidence enough that he was wrong for David Karoly in 2012:
CLIMATE scientists say Australians shouldn’t be fooled into thinking the world isn’t warming just because much of the country experienced a relatively wet and cool summer. The years 2010 and 2011 set a record of 1409mm of rain averaged over Australia…
The report was written by climate commissioner Will Steffen, University of NSW academic Matthew England and meteorology professor David Karoly.
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Rudd on the campaign trail
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(7:35am)
Phillip Coorey on Kevin Rudd’s campaign for the Labor leadership:
KEVIN Rudd has beat a steady drumbeat this week. He began by tweeting about his sick cat. On Wednesday, he used his considerable popularity to campaign in the marginal seat of Banks, in south-western Sydney. On Wednesday night he conducted a wide-ranging interview on the ABC program Lateline in which he called for an end to personal attacks pervading politics and a return to policy debate.
This morning on Brisbane radio, he lamented the slow pace of reform in the Labor Party, recounted the trauma of losing the leadership, and expressed hope that the mining tax, watered down after he was dumped as leader, would make the revenue it was forecast to make…His supporters freely admit the former prime minister is repositioning himself for the leadership but insist there will be no challenge and the caucus must come to realise it needs him to win the next election…To coincide with the resumption of Parliament the week after next, a book will be released by the former Labor MP and Rudd loyalist, Maxine McKew.Supporters of Ms Gillard believe it has been “ghostwritten” by Mr Rudd and that its release is timed to inflict destabilisation.
They cite highly detailed questions Ms McKew asked of political players during her research.
===
Gallup: seven point lead to Romney
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(7:01am)
If you listened only to the opining on the ABC, you’d think every single person other than a racist would vote for Barack Obama, rather than the stumbling, fumbling, red-fanged capitalist Mitt Romney.
Instead, Gallup has Romney pulling even further ahead of Obama among likely voters after the debate Obama “won”: 52 per cent to 47.
Rasmussen puts Romney’s lead at a more plausible 49 per cent to 47.
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Newsweek gone in print. Who next?
Andrew BoltOCTOBER192012(6:38am)
For print journalists, it’s a scary view of our future:
NEWSWEEK has announced it will end an 80-year run as a print magazine, taking the venerable publication all-digital in another sign of the woes of an industry struggling in the internet age.
Like other US magazines and newspapers, Newsweek has been grappling with a steep drop in print advertising revenue, steadily declining circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.Circulation has fallen from more than four million a decade ago to around 1.5 million last year, and losses were mounting…
The Washington Post sold Newsweek to California billionaire Sidney Harman for one dollar in 2010… Newsweek had piled up more than $US70 million ($A68 million) in losses over the prior two years and had forecast more red ink. After Harman’s death in 2011, his family ended its contributions to Newsweek.
The Internet is a very hard place to earn a dollar. It is also a high-migration place where you can go from big-traffic hero to financial zero in almost the click of a mouse.
Unfortunately, it is a future that may confront Fairfax within just a few years:
Police defend stating "we are not a taxi service' before Caroline Coyne was murdered by Carl Powell
===Craig Thomson paid escorts with our money, unionists say
===
Romney opens up 7-point lead over Obama, as electoral map begins to shift
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Satellite photos of Iran military site bring questions of explosives testing
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Texas judge rules for cheerleaders in Bible banner verse suit
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Star of erotic movie "Emmanuelle," Sylvia Kristel dies at age 60
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