Just one step from top of the world to foot of a cliff
Piers Akerman – Thursday, November 08, 2012 (6:10pm)
THE US presidential election was not about the economy, stupid, it was about demography.
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All Obama offers is more hope
Piers Akerman – Thursday, November 08, 2012 (4:16am)
IT MAY be that US President Barack Obama made the most honest and most hopeful remark of his life yesterday when he told his cheering supporters: “The best is yet to come.”
For the record shows his first term in office was a shocker.
Anything should be better but there is no certainty with Obama as the rising debt and unemployment levels in the US demonstrate.
Certainly, Obama is to be congratulated on his victory, and his clever politics.
But though he took the necessary electoral college votes his popular support has waned.
He controls the Senate but not the House.
The US is a nation divided at a time when unity is needed.
The division is basic – it is essentially the divide between socialism and capitalism.
Obama is the socialist, Romney was arch-capitalist.
The issue which most divided voters was not the extravagantly expensive healthcare system but wealth redistribution.
Obama believes that those who do not contribute to the national wealth should be entitled to a larger share of the benefits of hard work.
He has grown the entitlement rolls, he has increased the numbers of those who believe they are owed a living.
And they voted for him to continue the gravy train.
Sydney University US Studies Centre academic Michael Ondaatje summed up the situation when he said the United States of America might best be called the Divided States of America.
The popular vote has been virtually split down the middle. So much for bipartisanship, Dr Ondaatje said.
Bates Gill, the new CEO of the centre, said he was slightly pessimistic about America’s near-term economic prospects.
It’s possible that America could grow itself out of this, but the economy could continue to be a drag and for Australia that’s a real concern in the near term, said Professor Gill.
He said Obama faced extreme difficulties without a serious mandate.
He faces continuing divisive politics, a divided Congress and a divided America, Prof Gill said.
David Weisbrot, professor of legal studies at the centre, warned: “If the US economy tanks any further it could have a deep effect on Australia.”
That view was supported by Prof Gill, who said despite Australia’s shift of focus from the US to Asia, the US was still the biggest investor in Australia, by a factor of five.
“So don’t write us off as your economic partner,” he said.
Even Treasurer Wayne Swan, who is in Washington for talks with the US Treasury, acknowledged that Obama will have to deal almost immediately with the so-called “fiscal cliff” to prevent the US economy reeling into recession early next year and dragging the rest of the world with it.
Automatic tax increases and spending cuts are scheduled to come in at the beginning of next year, which could see a recession in the US economy if left unattended.
“That would have a dramatic impact and flow-on effect to the global economy, and in turn would impact on Australia,” Swan said.
The best is yet to come is a first-term president’s promise, not that for a second-termer to make.
But when your first term has been disastrous you can only hope, and Obama can really only offer hope.
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GREENS AT PLAY
Tim Blair – Thursday, November 08, 2012 (3:53pm)
Idiots perform a climate song:
The pair previously turned up at a Tony Abbott speech. Fans of their work may enjoy this longer clip.
The pair previously turned up at a Tony Abbott speech. Fans of their work may enjoy this longer clip.
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HAPPY WINNERS
Tim Blair – Thursday, November 08, 2012 (10:07am)
The SMH’s Peter Hartcher believes “Superman” Obama “has just 54 days to save the world”:
Now that he has won a second term, the weight of presidential responsibility again presses on him, and the most urgent threat he confronts is not terrorists from afar but the terrorists who sit two kilometres down the road.
He’s talking about Congress. Meanwhile, a Sandy fan rejoices:
Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore wrote a joyful blogpost this morning celebrating President Obama’s victory.In his post, he thanked a number of people who helped make the president’s re-election possible, especially “Mother Nature.”
More than 80 people were killed in America by Superstorm Sandy, with another 69 dead in the Caribbean. Something about mass death always exposes Mike’s double-wide cheerful side. Also from Moore:
Thanks must be given to the Occupy movement who, a year ago, set the tone of this election year by getting everyone to talk about the 1% vs. 99%. It inspired Obama and his campaign to realize that there was a huge popular sentiment against what the wealthy have done to the country …
Millionaire Moore occasionally forgets his own wealth.
UPDATE. Further one per cent news:
In an election that often focused on debates about class warfare, President Barack Obama was favored over multimillionaire businessman Mitt Romney in eight of the nation’s 10 wealthiest counties …The 10 richest counties accounted for 1,337,700 votes, or about 1.1 percent of the national popular vote.
We are the 1.1 per cent!
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DANGER DODGED
Tim Blair – Thursday, November 08, 2012 (9:33am)
Paul responsible-for-children Howes moves on:
Australian Workers Union secretary Paul Howes and new girlfriend Olivia Wirth, a PR spinner for Qantas, had a hectic day buzzing around Flemington’s Birdcage on Cup day, so no wonder they couldn’t wait to sit down to dinner that night at Neil Perry’s Italian restaurant Rosetta.Emirates and Qantas hosted the soiree in a private room at the Italian palazzo to celebrate their alliance with journalists and PR operatives, but Howes and Wirth suddenly didn’t like the view when two guests introduced themselves: the amiable Mark Hawthorne, business editor of The Age, and Peter Taylor, business editor of the Herald Sun. To ward off indigestion, the couple swiftly got up and found a more comfortable table …
At least Paul is keeping her away from Young Labor camps and other areas of danger.
UPDATE. Ironically, page 22 of the latest AWU magazine doesn’t feature a shot of Howes.
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AFTER WORDS
Tim Blair – Thursday, November 08, 2012 (5:56am)
“There are no ways to get around the facts,” writes Ron Radosh. “For Republicans and conservatives and independents who wanted a new direction for our country, the victory of President Obama is sad — and for many of us, unexpected. Those conservatives who assured us with statistics, theories, and arguments about Romney winning the White House, even in a landslide, should be eating their hats.”
Quite so. Many hat-eaters may be found here. America’s post-election diet includes worse than millinery, however, as Mark Steyn warns:
A lot of the telly chatter is about how Republicans don’t get the shifting demographics: America is becoming more of a “brown country,” as Kirsten Powers put it on Fox. But New Hampshire is overwhelmingly white — and the GOP still blew it. The fact is a lot of pasty, Caucasian, non-immigrant Americans have also “shifted,” and are very comfortable with Big Government, entitlements, micro-regulation, Obamacare and all the rest — and not much concerned with how or if it’s paid for.If this is the way America wants to go off the cliff, so be it.
That welfare cliff, of course, was described by Romney in an off-the-record chat during the election campaign:
“There are 47 per cent ... who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.“They will vote for this president no matter what. These are people who pay no income tax ... I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility.”
Very true, as Andrew Bolt notes. Yet I’m not so pessimistic as many fellow conservatives, despite being among few on the right who expected an Obama win. Democrat vote-harvesting machinery – here’s one example – and the authority of incumbency were always going to be hard to beat, especially by generally mushy Mitt, the second below-standard Republican to run against Obama.
The next four years will likely be extremely damaging for the US, but they needn’t bring doom. As the New York Times reports:
In 2008, Barack Obama drew increased support from nearly every demographic category, and most of the nation shifted to the left.Most of the nation shifted to the right in Tuesday’s vote, but not far enough to secure a win for Mitt Romney.
It isn’t much, but it’s something to build upon for 2016. By then, the cost of Big Government, entitlements, micro-regulation and Obamacare may be clear even to the government-dependent. And if not, well, here’s another post from Steyn.
UPDATE. “Barack Obama wins a second term,” writes Reason‘s Peter Suderman. “Now what?”
The fiscal cliff looms … Entitlement spending remains unsustainable … The tax system remains a mess … ObamaCare stays the law of the land … The GOP will have an internal battle for direction — and possibly a civil war … And then there’s the budget: Senate Democrats haven’t passed a real budget in over three years. They should probably get around to that … Also on the coming (s)hit list: immigration reform, another debt ceiling fight, death by drones, and the unended wars. Four morebeersyears!
UPDATE II. Roger L. Simon defends Romney:
He wasn’t the greatest candidate, but plug in any of the others who were competing and it likely would have been worse. Imagine how Rick Santorum would have dealt with the bogus and repellent “war on women” and imagine an electoral map almost exclusively blue. And that’s just for starters.
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I appreciate the sterling if pitiful efforts of my comrades to clutch at straws these last few hours, but, on this grim morning after, I fear the most salient analysis comes from Sir Richard Mottram, Her Britannic Majesty’s former Permanent Secretary for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, albeitspeaking in another context:
“We’re all f***ed. I’m f***ed. You’re f***ed. The whole department’s f***ed. It’s been the biggest c**k-up ever and we’re all completely f***ed.”Words to ponder.
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Who said Martin Ferguson couldn’t speak well?
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(7:25pm)
The normally word-choked Resources Minister at 2:42 has a very nice put-down of the eco-extremists who disrupt his speech - and wish to disrupt the development that creates the jobs that create the taxes that provide these jerks with an education.
UPDATE
Ferguson, a closet sceptic, manages to give a speech launching a new White Paper on Energy without once mentioning “climate change”.
Good man.
In fact, the references to global warming are largely negative and true:
Domestically, we are facing pressure to move to cleaner fuel sources and at the same time the cost of delivering this energy is increasing.
And, describing the Government’s priorities:
And lastly, an Australia that transitions to cleaner forms of energy over time in a way that does not impede our economic competitiveness.In a way that is driven by the market, so as not to lock in Australia to higher cost technologies than would otherwise be the case.
And there are warnings that all of this is going to take more time than extremists want and will cost a bundle - although that “clean energy generation” claim does look admittedly windy, and the inclusion of gas in there is frankly dishonest - a black mark against Ferguson:
Modelling within the Energy White Paper shows that, while fossil fuels will underpin our energy security for many years to come, clean energy generation could grow to provide over 40 per cent of our electricity needs by 2035 and potentially up to 85 per cent by 2050.If this clean energy transformation were to be realised it will require more than $200 billion in new generation investment between now and 2050, including around $50–60 billion in gas and $100 billion in renewables.But these results are far from guaranteed, and a range of technologies included in the projected energy mix are yet to become commercially available… While there will undoubtedly be calls from some interest groups for a faster or slower rate of deployment of their favoured technologies, the principal policy aim is to meet Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions targets at the least cost while maintaining energy security.
Alas, Ferguson couldn’t remove “climate change” from the White Paper itself, which mentions it 53 times.
But at least the white paper upholds the integrity of the markets in rejecting price controls on power and government restrictions to keep more LNG for domestic use. Given that, it must stick in his craw to have to tick off on the Greens’ $10 billion green energy fund.
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Sedition alleged
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(6:02pm)
Reader Chris recalls the good old days:
You show our Prime Minister no respect whatsoever. Maybe it’s time you found something worthwhile to do with your life, rather than concocting spite-filled shallow columns designed to achieve nothing more than to try to bring down democratically elected Governments.Not too long ago in our history such columns as yours would have led to charges of sedition leading to your death. And there are still many countries in the world like China or Russia where such criticisms would lead to swift imprisonment.Wake up to yourself...
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2GB November 8
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(5:27pm)
On with Steve Price from 8pm. Listen live here.
Last night: US election weeping and gnashing of teeth, Labor’s politicising of Treasury, the new politics of identity and more. With James Morrow and former Treasury secretary John Stone. Listen here. Alternative link.
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Rudd the shock jock
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(1:35pm)
Kevin Rudd is really stirring the pot. 3AW’s Neil Mitchell announces:
We will talk about the issues that matter to people. We will talk about leadership, ideas, what touches you and what needs to be done.You know him well. He used to be Prime Minister.His name is Kevin Rudd.
Rudd today doesn’t say much, but doesn’t have to, he figures. Still, there is a message in here: Parliament seems too much like “kindergarten without the class”, with faults on both sides. We all need to be “working together” on the big challenges and, again, faults on both sides. On the sexism debate, yes, criticise Abbott’s positions but “far better not to whack back” - meaning get so personal.
It’s out of my playbook of Rudd the healer - reuniting Labor and the riven nation after Gillard’s bitter, divisive leadership.
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Column - The politics of identity and the dividing of America
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(11:21am)
BARACK Obama should not have been re-elected President. That he was tells us elections are now decided less by heads than hearts.
Is America better off after four years already of Obama? More Americans - 7.9 per cent - are unemployed. The country is even deeper in debt, now totalling a frightening $16 trillion. Obama’s foreign policy has left America, if anything, weaker.
Obama, who four years ago promised such a transformative presidency that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”, has plainly failed.
Yet he’s back in the White House, and Republican Mitt Romney, the successful businessman and governor is not.
Worse for the US, he’s back with the same deadlock in Congress - Democrats controlling the Senate, Republicans the House - and a smaller mandate.
What the hell happened?
In a victory this narrow almost anything can be said to have made the difference: Superstorm Sandy blowing away Romney’s momentum, the blame-Bush hangover or whatever cause you want to push.
But Obama should have been swept away so comprehensively as to make such if-buts pointless.
Bigger shifts help him, signalling the rise of a new kind of politics that could leave the US weaker, and us, too. This election confirms the suspicion that the politics of seeming is trumping that of achieving. That what counts most in politicians is how voters “identify” with them, rather than what they do. It also suggests that a culture of entitlement is eating at a culture of achievement.
At this point Opposition Leader Tony Abbott should start to worry…
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On using Sandy for a scare
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(8:47am)
Professor Bob Carter and William Kininmonth, former National Climate Centre head, on the alarmist propaganda of the Climate Commission:
Many scientists, and now the Climate Commission, have suggested that in a warmer world tropical storms will be more frequent or more dangerous than those previously experienced. This assertion is contentious, and evidence for it is lacking.As has already been stressed by senior scientist Martin Hoerling from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and many other scientists, no evidence exists for any influence of global warming, let alone human-caused warming, on the intensity of hurricane Sandy..In a broader context, the lack of recent global warming is also an impediment to those who argue that Sandy was influenced by industrial carbon dioxide. There has been no significant atmospheric warming since 1996 and no ocean warming since the Argo buoy network was deployed in 2003. In consequence, global atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are now close to their average over the past 30 years.Suggestions that higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide have somehow influenced the formation and development of Sandy are therefore simply untrue.The Climate Commission appears to consider it opportune to use the harrowing Sandy event, with its loss of lives and immense destruction, to push its political agenda. But in favouring action to try to “prevent” global warming, the commission is propagating a wrong and costly message.
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Turnbull would be the Romney of the Liberal Party
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(8:20am)
Reader Ant:
There’s a lesson in yesterday’s US election debacle for Malcom Turnbull, nicely summed up in this piece:The only one who seemed to miss his own special episode of When Journalists Attack (during the Republican primaries) was Mitt Romney. But when he emerged as the nominee, all bets were off.Romney was a picture perfect, moderate conservative candidate with a squeaky clean, highly credentialed and successful background. Yet he still got pummelled by an incumbent who built a campaign, not on a record of success or of any particular strong idea or any other such noble cause, but on fracturing his nation into specific target groups which he then ruthlessly exploited with fear and demagoguery and a billion dollars worth of print and electronic marketing straight out of a slop bucket.All with the rich blessing of their vast leftist mainstream media complex. No doubt the strategy is one our very own media tools and Labor Party feel right at home with.
At home with? They’ve invented it, Ant. From the piece you linked to comes a paragraph that reminds me of some much-alleged wall-punching by someone who was just 19:
The only one who seemed to miss his own special episode of When Journalists Attack was Mitt Romney. But when he emerged as the nominee, all bets were off. The Washington Post published a 5,400-word “expose” documenting the shocking revelation that teenaged Romney just may have pinned a boy down and cut his hair. In 1965.
Turnbull would be cheered into the Liberal leadership by the mainstream media. Then would come come the attacks on a man too rich, too out of touch - and how dodgy can we make all his business deals seem?
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Treasury denies leaking. Which makes Emerson look bad
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(7:49am)
Treasury’s reputations is being trashed by Labor:
TREASURY secretary Martin Parkinson has been forced to defend the political impartiality of his department and declare that it did not leak advice, amid opposition outrage that Wayne Swan’s office released Treasury figures costing Liberal tax policies.Dr Parkinson’s comments, in a letter to opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey, came as Peter Costello said he had “certainly never leaked” a Treasury minute…Mr Hockey said Dr Parkinson’s letter, in response to his complaint over the leak, had proved that Treasury was “being used as a tool by a government desperate to score political points”.He said it showed Trade Minister Craig Emerson “misled the Australian people when he said on Monday, ‘Treasury has done these costings and they have made available the results of those costings’."…Dr Parkinson said Treasury had provided advice to Mr Swan on the opposition policies at the request of the Treasurer’s office but did not provide the advice or the underlying analysis to anyone outside government.He said… it had long been the case that Treasury was periodically asked by the government of the day to cost or analyse alternative policies.
But analyse them for possible adoption, or for political purposes?
And, by the way, the Treasury did not undertake this work off its own bat, as the Fairfax press had implied…But, according to Parkinson, “it has long been the case that Treasury is periodically asked by the government of the day to cost or analyse alternative policies, some of which are already in the public domain. These can include policies proposed by non-government political parties.”But here’s the rub: the two key words are “alternative policies”. There could be no pretence that the government was considering these alternative (Coalition) policies, which were costed by the Treasury.
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Is that a denial?
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(7:42am)
While not exactly addressing it head on or denying the rumors, the veteran journalist did take to her Twitter account to comment on it…“Read your tweets the good, the bad, and the funny. See you on @ABCWorldNews,” she said.
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China holds its own “election”
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(7:27am)
Vice President Xi Jinping ... will succeed President Hu Jintao as the general-secretary of the 82-million-strong Communist Party at its 18th congress, which starts on Thursday in the Great Hall of the People on Beijing’s vast Tiananmen Square.The heir apparent has been number two to Hu since 2008, and his appointment to head the all-powerful party will make his promotion to president of the world’s most populous nation, expected in March, a formality…In China’s one-party state, the five-yearly communist congress is far more important than the national parliament, which convenes once a year in March.The roughly week-long congress will see more than 2,000 delegates appoint a new Central Committee of about 200 people. In turn, they choose the party’s 25-strong Politburo from their ranks and the elite Politburo Standing Committee.The congress will climax with the standing committee members, including Li Keqiang, due to succeed Wen Jiabao as premier in charge of day-to-day administration in March, trooping out together.
So much tidier than democracy. So appealing to those with the power.
IF you can’t scare them ... Peter Hannam, The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:THE next United Nations climate report will “scare the wits out of everyone” and should provide the impetus needed for the world to finally sign an agreement to tackle global warming, the former head of the UN negotiations (Yvo de Boer) said.... insult them. Catherine Armitage, SMH, Tuesday:IN 40 “deeply demotivating years” in academia, (Jorgen Randers,) the professor of climate strategy at the (BI) Norwegian Business School, has lived every failed phase of the effort to inspire action to head off climate change and resource depletion. Even Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and, he predicts, “super storm” Sandy, have failed to deliver the necessary jolt. Now, as his time on earth runs out, the professor is resorting to insults. He spent 1000 hours writing the book to deliver a “final kick in the arse”. “You are going to make all the wrong decisions and as a consequence, all your grandchildren are going to suffer.”... or just dictate to them. Catherine Armitage, SMH, Tuesday:PROFESSOR Randers supports “eco-dictatorship” in the form of a global executive body with the authority to tell nations how much greenhouse gas they are permitted to emit.What he’d dictate. Jorgen Randers, Limits to Growth II, 1992:(A WORLD with “enough” would) aim for an average industrial output per capita of $350 per person per year - about the equivalent of that in South Korea, or twice the level of Brazil in 1990 ... If this hypothetical society could also reduce military expenditures and corruption, a stabilised economy with an industrial output per capita of $350 would be equivalent in material comforts to the average level in Europe in 1990.
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Hide the decline
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(7:07am)
A rogue Newspoll that puts Labor 50-50 with the Coalition triggers massive opining about the pressure on Tony Abbott to perform, with glad declarations that his attack on the carbon tax is “out of puff”.
Michelle Grattan devoted a column to it:
But when Essential Media confirms what sense, Nielsen, Galaxy and Roy Morgan all agree, it is literally just a footnote to another Grattan column on alleged Coalition controversy:
- Labor’s primary vote has risen one point to 37 per cent in the Essential poll.Labor trails 47-53 per cent on a two party basis.
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No Prime Minister is a victim. Stop whinging
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(6:56am)
In late March she reportedly told a private fundraiser: “I’m good mates with Barack Obama. I tell him, ‘You think it’s tough being African-American? Try being me. Try being an atheist, childless, single woman as prime minister.’ “Obama wrote about the Audacity of Hope. Surely this was the Audacity of Ego. Or the Audacity of Fantasy. It became the template for her speech to parliament last month when she defended her sleazy Speaker, Peter Slipper…[Her] speech deserves to stand as an affront to women who have suffered harm from sexism and misogyny…Gillard’s career has not suffered because of her sex and it is demeaning to pretend it has… Gillard should heed what Hillary Clinton said recently about people who complained about their life choices: “I can’t stand whining.”
Column - A storm of hypocrisy
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(6:44am)
Superstorm Sandy sure brought out the hypocrites and fearmongers. I refer, of course, to Professor Tim Flannery’s Climate Commission.
When we sceptics point out the world has not warmed for 16 years, global warmists remind us “weather is not climate”.
Sixteen years is too soon to doubt man is heating the world to hell, they insist.
But when a single freak storm hits the American coast, these same alarmists cry: Proof!
You’d expect this from the Fairfax press and the ABC, of course.
Sandy was “climate change”, insisted an economics writer in The Age. It made “climate change the elephant in the room”, asserted ABC Sydney host Katya Quigley.
You’d also expect backside-covering politicians to exploit the global warming excuse.
Sure enough, Mayor Michael Bloomberg piously preached “the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City ... should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action”.
Brilliant. Rather than face nasty questions why he left New York’s subway stations vulnerable to the kind of storm surges already seen five times in New England since English settlement, Bloomberg is praised as a climate change evangelist.
But far worse is that even our taxpayer-funded Climate Commission rushed out a report blaming global warming for making Sandy so bad.
Continue reading 'Column - A storm of hypocrisy'===
A meeting of the tribes
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(5:41am)
A COMANCHERO bikie gunned down outside a Sydney shopping centre yesterday was the prime suspect in the murder of a wedding guest 48-hours earlier.Just hours after the gang gathered at a wake for slain member Faalau Pisu, 23, another comrade - a 28-year-old man - lay bleeding in a gutter at Rhodes with four bullet wounds in his stomach…The critically injured man, described as being of Middle Eastern appearance, left a trail of blood as he stumbled more than 600m before collapsing in front of a construction site on Rider Blvd just before 5am.
Faalau Pisu, 23, was shot twice in the head as he left the wedding reception at a Serbian function centre at Canley Vale, in Sydney’s southwest… Shocked guests spilled out on to Bareena Street after the shooting at the Serbian National Defence Council function centre.
Divisive and divided: the US the morning after
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(5:34am)
Romney never quite closed the deal and Obama’s efforts to paint him as an out-of-touch plutocrat eager to conduct a “war on women” succeeded.
I’m so glad we had that storm last week because I think the storm was one of those things. No, politically I should say. Not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics.
Stocks remained deeply in the red in a post-election selloff Wednesday, triggered by worries over the looming “fiscal cliff” and as fears over Europe’s economy reemerged. The Dow [above] tumbled below 13,000, while the S&P 500 broke 1,400, both for the first time since early September.
Barack Obama may consider introducing a tax on carbon emissions to help cut the U.S. budget deficit after winning a second term as president, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.
Mr. Obama, 51, faces governing in a deeply divided country and a partisan-rich capital, where Republicans retained their majority in the House and Democrats kept their control of the Senate. His re-election offers him a second chance that will quickly be tested, given the rapidly escalating fiscal showdown.
Chris Christie has been under fire from Republican insiders ever since he he performed a U-turn and started praising Barack Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy last week.And now the governor of New Jersey has lashed out at anonymous aides to Mitt Romney who have criticised him for refusing to attend fundraising events for the GOP presidential candidate.The outspoken figure, a strong supporter of Romney over the past year, described his critics as ‘know-nothing, disgruntled Romney supporters’ who did not respect the duty he owed to the people of his state.
Obama managed to win again, despite securing only 39 percent of white voters--who still represent the nation’s largest voting bloc at 72 percent. .
Reviewing the 2012 presidential campaign, here are five ways the media elite tipped the public relations scales in favor of the liberal Obama and against the conservative challenger Mitt Romney… But taken together, these five trends took the media’s historical bias to new levels this year, and saved Obama’s presidency in the process.
UPDATE
Blown away:
I’m not so pessimistic as many fellow conservatives, despite being among few on the right who expected an Obama win. Democrat vote-harvesting machinery – here’s one example – and the authority of incumbency were always going to be hard to beat, especially by generally mushy Mitt, the second below-standard Republican to run against Obama.
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Is something rotten in NSW Labor?
Andrew BoltNOVEMBER082012(5:25am)
Add Craig Thomson and Michael Williamson, and the NSW Labor Party looks like an outfit in bad need of a cleansing:
Mr Roozendaal has denied allegations he inappropriately received a $10,800 gift from former fellow MP Eddie Obeid and his son Moses through the purchase of a Honda CRV.
Opposition Leader John Robertson rang Mr Roozendaal yesterday afternoon to tell him he wanted him suspended and then wrote to Labor’s general secretary Sam Dastyari requesting the upper house backbencher’s suspension pending an outcome of the ICAC hearings.
It’s understood Mr Robertson told Mr Roozendaal “serious allegations remain unresolved” and his mind was made up he had to stand down.
Mr Roozendaal will now sit as an independent MP in the upper house.
He ran the Labor Party as general secretary from 1999 to 2004 and served as roads minister and treasurer.The suspension follows the decision by Mr Robertson to suspend former minister Ian Macdonald from Labor after public hearings at ICAC alleged Mr Macdonald was given the services of a prostitute in return for organising a meeting between energy executives and the businessman Ron Medich.
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