Monday, January 21, 2013

Mon 21st Jan Todays News


Happy birthday and many happy returns Chris Heins,Charmaine LawtonJustin Ly and Anthony Nguyen. Born on the same day, across the years. Remember, birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live
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January 21Feast Day of Saint Agnes (Christianity); Flag Day in QuebecMartin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States (2013)
Concorde

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Events

[edit]Births

[edit]Deaths

[edit]Holidays and observances


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If Koch broke the law, we’re even madder than I feared

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(2:53pm)

I can’t believe how brainless and punitive this country has suddenly become. Take this response to a TV host’s opinion that breastfeeding mothers should be a little discreet when breastfeeding in public, given how some people felt about bared breasts in a public area:
The Australian Breastfeeding Association slammed Koch’s remarks but said it was an opportunity to educate the Australian public about the need to support breastfeeding mothers.

It is an opportunity to say (Koch’s) comments are illegal: you can’t discriminate against any mother at any time,” spokesperson Meredith Laverty said.
David Koch’s comment is now illegal? He is banned by law from expressing his opinion?
That a spokesman of a presumably respectable body such as the Australian Breastfeeding Association should so lightly declare illegal an essentially trivial comment in a trivial debate should scare you.
Did you know it was illegal to say you’d rather not see mothers breastfeeding their babies in, say, a restaurant? What other innocent comment might now land you in court?
Once it was enough to simple disagree with someone. To argue back. Now the first instinct of the activist is to win a debate by calling in the speech police to shut down dissent. Now the Gillard Government wants new laws that may make it illegal for you even to express your religious or political views at work.
Time to fight back.
(Thanks to reader David.)

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Essential: Gillard still in death zone

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(2:20pm)

The latest Essential Research poll doesn’t detect the cliff-hanger Newspoll claims to see.Labor is still stuck on 46 per cent to the Coalition’s 54, 2PP.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will soon be back in the fray, having had time for reflection over the break. He may, with profit, have decided that much as he may wish to respond to Labor’s slimy character assassination, his wisest course is to relentlessly wrench the conversation back to the economy and to trust. What Labor has promised - and is promising - must be contrasted with its actual delivery. Can we believe a word Gillard says? Can we really trust her with our money and our jobs? This reckless spending must stop. The green tape must be slashed. Let’s create wealth before we let government spend it.
And I’d plea for an end to such bitter division and the punishment of dissent. Australians shouldn’t be in fear of criticising their government.  Newspapers shouldn’t be threatened. Journalists should not fear the sack for what they say. Australians shouldn’t be scared to speak their mind, whether at work or at the football. Time for some sunshine.
One thing may have to be fine-tuned. unless Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare has decided to no longer announce boat arrivals, no asylum seekers have arrived by boat so far this year.
UPDATE
How naive of me not to immediately assume the Gillard Government had simply stopped announcing new boat arrivals. In fact:
The latest boat arrival, carrying 78 people, is the second asylum seeker vessel in a row to be transferred directly to the mainland, despite Labor’s promise to implement tough new offshore processing policies, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection Michael Keenan said… “Every illegal boat arrival for 2013 has been transferred directly to the mainland, sending a strong and clear message to the people smugglers that this Labor Government just isn’t serious about stopping them.”
And three minutes ago, this news:
(Thanks to reader The Realist.)

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ReachTEL: Newman needs to work on the charm

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(2:01pm)

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Queenslsnd Premier Campbell Newman has had a lot of financial repairs to make of the scale Jeff Kennett tackled in Victoria. That, and a largely hostile media, has hurt him - as have unforced errors by a man who should learn that being Premier is not just about ordering but persuading. Still, LNP support is up a bit after the Christmas break, as you’d expect, and has largely plateaued over the past half year. Newman should now have the worst behind, and the sugar still to come. 
Among the ReachTEL results:
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How laws against free speech protected the cheat Armstrong

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(10:16am)

Here’s a warning that just the threat of legal action can stifle free speech - and true speech - if the laws are too strict:

IT MAY have taken him 13 years, but today British sports journalist and author David Walsh got the confession he thought would never come. 

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah may have been televised in Britain at 2am but Walsh, 57, didn’t miss a word.
The chief sports writer for Britain’s The Sunday Times has relentlessly pursued Armstrong over his use of banned substances since the American cyclist won his first Tour de France and at that time, and for the next decade, was a lone voice in that claim against the man who was a cycling god to most.

They quite rightly now want the money back - with interest.
Laws to temper free speech tend to cause far more harm than good, in my opinion. Take even the rise of the Nazis. The true problem was not that they were free to publish their vile propaganda, but that others were not free to damn it.

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Green schemes mean red ink

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(10:10am)

Yet another green scheme drowns in red ink:

The $2.4 billion project is a cornerstone of the “water grid” that was constructed at breakneck speed with little expense spared by the state’s Labor governments under Anna Bligh and Peter Beattie, in the teeth of a drought that had threatened to empty dams supplying the Queensland capital.
There is something about the word “green” that makes politicians of the Left think the normal rules of cost-benefit analysis no longer apply.
Note also that like Queensland’s already mothballed desalination plant (one of four already mothballed around Australia), the recycling scheme was built in part by politicians who were persuaded by warmist “experts” that the rains would dry up, making traditional and much cheaper dams no longer reliable. Dams were such a green sin anyway that they were only to glad to be fooled.
UPDATE
A similar disaster with a similar cause in Victoria:
VICTORIA’S multibillion-dollar desalination plant could be in mothballs for years with Water Minister Peter Walsh making it a personal goal never to order water from the plant that is costing Victorians almost $2 million a day.

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The only promises the Greens want kept are to them

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(9:30am)

The Greens didn’t care in the slightest when Julia Gillard broke a promise to voters - to never introduce a carbon tax.
But they are sure cross now that Gillard breaks yet another promise - because this time it’s a promise to the Greens: 

The minor party leader says Ms Gillard “hasn’t been as transparent as she promised she would be” in a letter promising monthly revenue updates, written to then-Green leader Bob Brown when the tax legislation was before parliament.
UPDATE
But what is worse? The dishonesty or the incompetence?
The tax on the super profits of coal and iron ore miners was forecast to raise about $2 billion in 2012-13 but industry sources say the big three miners - BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata - don’t expect to make any payments this week for the December quarter, repeating the reported outcome in the September quarter.
When the Government announced the tax in 2011, it promised the money would go to three great new schemes:
The revenue from the MRRT will:

Secure a boost to the superannuation of 8.4 million workers, increasing their pool of retirement savings by $500 billion by 2035, according to the Federal Treasury;
Deliver a special new tax benefit for 2.7 million small businesses and a cut in company tax;

Fund vital infrastructure to help address capacity constraints, particularly in the nation’s fast-growing mining regions.
The cut to the business tax is already another broken promise, but what of the other schemes? If Labor’s tax raises no money, it should mean that the schemes it promised to buy with that specific cash no longer go ahead.
Or was dedicating the tax to these specific spending plans just more Labor spin?

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Gillard discovers China, but loses Rudd

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(8:27am)

Pardon? Julia Gillard has “identified” the rise of China as a key security issue? 
JULIA Gillard will this week identify the rise of China and a massive escalation in cyber attacks against government and industry as two of the key security issues facing the nation in a major address designed to strengthen Labor’s defence credentials. 
Excuse my surprise, but I thought this challenge had already been identified by a Labor Prime Minister - and many times. For example…
How, therefore, do we, two great Pacific democracies — Australia and the United States — best analyze, anticipate, and act in a manner that positively impacts the future shape of the Pacific Century? The rise of China and later India represents one of the four or five mega challenges of our time ...
Mr Speaker, consistent with this priority, I seek leave to present to the house Australia’s first National Security Statement…

The global and regional order is now changing so rapidly that we must continue to reassess our evolving national security needs… Today we live at the dawn of the Asia-Pacific century. With it comes the potential for fundamental change in the global order, resulting in both economic opportunities and potential security concerns for Australia…

The most crucial relationship, in East Asia and globally, will be between the United States and China. For Australia, the relationships between China, the US and Japan will affect our security ...
China has come from being an impoverished state 30 years or so ago to being one of this region’s great powers and is on track to become a global great power. Therefore, it’s entirely right that the Americans, ourselves and others talk about how these rising powers, including India, contribute to a regional and global rules-based order. And the reason is that provides the stability for the future, and that strategic stability then makes economic growth and jobs possible as well.
China has become the embodiment of the great east Asian transformation… Yet this deep structural shift in the underlying drivers of international relations, a structural shift that is happening before our eyes, is one for which the collective West is woefully unprepared… If this is the case, how will China exercise its power in the future international order? Will it accept the culture, norms and structure of the post-war order? Or will China seek to change it? I believe this is the single core question for the first half of the 21st century, not just for Asia but for the world.
Curious.
So how does Gillard explain why she now needs to do over exactly the same ground covered so often before by Rudd, long touted by Labor as its true China expert? 
Sources familiar with the document described it as a “much more substantial” contribution than then prime minister Kevin Rudd’s 2008 national security statement to parliament, which was criticised for being too vague and wide-ranging and was hastily rewritten in the lead-up to its delivery.
“Much more substantial”? From Gillard? Hmm.
It’s interesting that Labor decides now to disparage the national security statement presented by its own leader less than five years ago. That “vague” and “hastily rewritten” document addressing vital security issues actually represented the position of a government whose deputy leader then was ... Julia Gillard.
Still, she does now promise something better. But what is this “better”?:

The Australian understands Ms Gillard’s statement will contain no new policy initiatives or resource commitments. Instead, the document focuses on Australia’s strategic environment - in particular, the growing economic, political and military clout of China.

“The remarkable growth and opportunity we see in Asia could not have happened without an environment of relative peace and stability,” Ms Gillard will tell her audience. “Continuing and deepening that atmosphere of relative peace and stability is at the forefront of Australia’s national security agenda. Indeed, nothing is more important in Australia’s security outlook.”
Wow. That’s “better”?
Yes, insists Gillard’s staff: 
...the document will be more “strategic” in its perspective than Mr Rudd’s 2008 statement, focusing more on regional flashpoints and potential conflicts.
Like this, perhaps, from Rudd last year?
[Kevin Rudd] , in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs said the rise of China would be a core driver of global change until mid-century at least.China and various states of South-East Asia had long-standing and conflicting territorial, resource and maritime claims in the South China Sea and tensions had been running high, Mr Rudd said.
Sounds like just more waffle from a Prime Minister desperate to hide the real self-inflicted challenge to our security - her grossly irresponsible cuts to the defence Budget Rudd once said needed boosting:
The head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, [last year] questioned whether Australian defence spending had fallen too far below a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation benchmark of 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott backed the accusations, although Prime Minister Julia Gillard insisted the Australia-US alliance had been strengthened under her leadership.

Rudd is alarmed and appalled by the cuts in defence spending. I suspect he’ll be even more ropable to find Gillard now trashing his China analysis for camouflage.

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Snowed by the experts

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(8:05am)

In 2000, scientists at perhaps the world’s centre of global warming alarmism issued this prediction:
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

It’s now 2013 - which surely must now qualify as “within a few years”.

On Friday, Moscow was on a verge of traffic collapse as more than 10 inches of snow fell on the city, which is more than half of January’s average… In the Altai Republic in Western Siberia, 12 Russian settlements were isolated because of the snowstorm…

In the end of 2012, Russia saw extreme winter not witnessed since 1938. The coldest-ever December in Russia led to the evacuation of hundreds of people in Siberia, where temperatures fell below -50 degrees Celsius; Moscow also saw its coldest night ever for the season.
Snow is expected to blanket the UK for the next week, with no end to the freezing conditions in sight.
Snowfalls across western Europe have disrupted travel plans, with cancellations and closures at some major airports.
I really don’t think global warming is working out as the experts predicted.

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Protest now before they shut you up

Andrew BoltJANUARY212013(7:10am)

It is astonishing that Australia has a government so authoritarian - and it is depressing that Australians aren’t united in howling down such an arrogant attack on their freedom to say what they think: 
LEGAL experts have questioned whether Labor’s draft anti-discrimination laws are constitutional, arguing the expansion of federal powers is a step too far into community life that will ensnare students, parents, employees and even sports spectators.

As the Senate inquiry into the bill prepares to hold its first hearings this week, constitutional law professors Nicholas Aroney of the University of Queensland and Patrick Parkinson of the University of Sydney say it could also fall foul of our international obligations and may lead to successful court challenges.

The Greens yesterday joined the chorus of concerns over the proposed legislation, which will make it unlawful to offend or insult others.
Even the Greens think Labor is too authoritarian?
Not just that, even some impeccably Leftist comedians - well, Ben Elton, at least - are astonished to find themselves suddenly so badgered. Elton is yet to defend his free speech, but does draw the line at Government nagging over smoking and drinking:
Complain while it’s still legal, Ben.
UPDATE
Complain about attacks on our right to speak? Forget it. Far easier to give in. Paul Sheehan on the visit next month of Geert Wilders, leader of a political party with 16 seats in the Dutch Parliament: 
Debbie Robinson, a small business operator who describes herself as an ordinary citizen, wants to bring to Australia a Dutch political leader who is a supporter of democracy, freedom of religion, feminism and gay rights. But when she started making arrangements all she encountered was fear.

‘’In Sydney, venues that were initially available were cancelled or would not take the booking when they realised who the speaker was,’’ she told me. She provided a list of rejections: the Hilton Hotel, North Sydney Leagues Club, Sydney Masonic Centre, Wesley Convention Centre, Luna Park Function Centre, the Concourse at Chatswood and the Sir John Clancy Auditorium at the University of NSW. 

‘’I offered a church-based venue in Sydney a donation and their reply was, ‘You could offer $4 million and we would not accept your booking’.’’
Finding venues was not her only problem. ‘’Earlier in the year I approached APN Outdoor to arrange a four-week run of bus ads in Sydney. The artwork was forwarded to them and I was quoted a price for the job … Then I was advised they would not be able to run the ad as it was too political and would result in the buses being damaged and defaced. They would not say who would do the damage.’’

The same happened in Perth, where Robinson lives, when venues declined to take her booking, including the Burswood Casino. When she tried to organise a payments system for the tour, she was rejected by Westpac. The bank, which has been courting the Chinese Communist government for years, wanted nothing to do with this Dutch democrat. 
Wilders’ crime? He warns that Islamism is a threat to freedoms once thought important to the West - like, ha!, free speech. (Check the video.)
And to prove his point - and to whip up the demonisation of this man - is the Gillard Government yet again:
Wilders was scheduled to be in Australia [last year]. The trip was cancelled after it was sabotaged by the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen.

The minister then had the gall to write an opinion piece, published in The Australian on October 2 last year, in which he claimed, ‘’I have decided not to intervene to deny [Wilders] a visa because I believe that our democracy is strong enough, our multiculturalism robust enough and our commitment to freedom of speech entrenched enough that our society can withstand the visit of a fringe commentator.’’

Reality check: Bowen’s department sat on Wilders’ visa application for almost two months, then acted only after the minister received public criticism and Wilders was cancelling his trip.
The truth is that Western freedoms are safer with Wilders than with the Gillard Government. It would be more appropriate for Holland to ban visits from Julia Gillard than Australia to ban Wilders. 
UPDATE
You don’t have to agree with Wilders, or endorse his style. But on our right to hear him - and his right to speak here - there can be no compromise. One way to defend both is by booking a seat at one of his speeches here:
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(Thanks to reader Peter.)

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ROTTEN, BLOODY, POOFTER, COMMO, MONGREL BASTARDS

Tim Blair – Monday, January 21, 2013 (2:21pm)

Freedom of expression in Australia is in grave danger. Or it isn’t. Depends on who you ask.

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HE’D KNOW

Tim Blair – Monday, January 21, 2013 (2:17pm)

Fairfax columnist John Birmingham, June 2011.
Fairfax columnist John Birmingham, October 2012.
Fairfax columnist John Birmingham, January 2013.

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BROKEN RECORD

Tim Blair – Monday, January 21, 2013 (12:27pm)

So NSW last week endured its “hottest day ever”. Well, at least for as long as records exist.
Which isn’t all that long. Our continent began to take its current form around 96 million years ago. Weather records go back only 150 or so years. They therefore represent just 0.00015 per cent of Australia’s entire weather history.
If cricket records were so limited, Ricky Ponting’s career stats wouldn’t list 13,378 Test runs. They wouldn’t list even one run. Instead, Ponting would be just one-fifth of a millimetre towards his first single. 

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THE GIANT CAKE WAS EXCELLENT

Tim Blair – Monday, January 21, 2013 (12:04pm)

New Yorkers review Barack Obama’s second inauguration – one week before it happened:


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SPOKESWOMAN

Tim Blair – Monday, January 21, 2013 (11:59am)

A cyclist-hating pedestrian advocates direct action against the two-wheeled: 
From now on, rain, hail or shine, you will see me walking with an umbrella. Held at right angles.
Let’s hope that Elizabeth Farrelly is prepared to meet the skull-cracking challenge presented by her fellow SMH columnist Jane Caro

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PUT A KNIFE IN HIS BACK AND IT’D BE PERFECT

Tim Blair – Monday, January 21, 2013 (4:00am)

Reader David G. pays tribute to a former Prime Minister:

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In her own sweet way, the current Prime Minister also pays tribute
Julia Gillard will this week identify the rise of China and a massive escalation in cyber attacks against government and industry as two of the key security issues facing the nation …
Sources familiar with the document described it as a “much more substantial” contribution than then prime minister Kevin Rudd’s 2008 national security statement to parliament. 
Could anything be more calculated to hurt Rudd than a Gillard speech about China? Forget Mandarin; she struggles with English. These two should take another walk along Labor’s hallway of friendship.
UPDATE. Previously, the ABC’s John Doyle drooled over Gillard’s negotiation abilities: 
Negotiation is your great skill, isn’t it? Anyone who’s had any dealings with you, they say you’re a wonderful negotiator. Where do these skills come from? 
From nowhere, according to Greens leader Christine Milne
The negotiation skills of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, are not all they are cracked up to be, says the leader of the Greens, Christine Milne, as pressure mounts on the government to release details of the mining tax, which is believed to have raised little revenue so far.
‘’The Prime Minister is always cited as a great negotiator but I have pointed out it’s not about whether you get an agreement, it’s about whether the agreement you get actually delivers,” Senator Milne said. 
Milne ought to know. Her party forced Gillard into the carbon tax … an agreement that delivered nothing, except confirmation of the Prime Minister’s dishonesty.
UPDATE. Further from Andrew Bolt, now returned for the US.

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ALL IN, ONE IN

Tim Blair – Monday, January 21, 2013 (3:40am)

Politically-correct comedian Ben Elton needs pack support: 
‘’If everyone would agree to be a vegetarian, I’d go with it because I know that meat is destroying the world,’’ he says. 
They love a consensus, your PC types. Although the Australian resident breaks ranks over Roxon rules: 
Elton relates how he harangued a government official who was claiming credit for plain cigarette packaging. He doesn’t argue with smoking restrictions, but told the official he was ‘’coming after ya’’ if he started putting pictures of rotting livers on wine bottles. ‘’When did we elect a government to wag its finger at us, at every possible pleasure?’’ 
In 2007. Pay attention, Ben.

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OUT OF CONTEXT = CAUGHT

Tim Blair – Monday, January 21, 2013 (3:07am)

I see Mohamed Morsi, poster boy for the Arab Spring, has now fallen back on the old defense that these touchy over-sensitive Jews have to learn to distinguish between anti-Semitism and legitimate and thoughtful criticism of Israeli policies. Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali now says that Mr. Morsi’s remarks that Jews are “bloodsuckers” and “descendants of apes and pigs” and that Egyptian children must be “breastfed hatred” for them were ”taken out of context.” 
It’s a definition problem. The Macquarie Dictionary should really get on to this.

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We have leaders that are out of their depth and I feel sorry for them. I am sure they mean well. Bad judgement should not be rewarded. I feel when people act tribally, but not rationally, they make great soccer crowds, but lousy political parties - ed
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity” — Martin Luther King

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This one should make us all hopping mad.

It’s just been reported that Federal Labor’s $1.6 billion in cuts to public hospital funding has resulted in the forced closure of one in every six beds at Melbourne's main cancer hospital – the Peter MacCallum Cancer Hospital.

The bed closures follow similar cuts around Victoria including bed closures at the Austin Hospital, Frankston Hospital, Colac Hospital and Ballarat Base Hospital.

And these cuts are on top of the Gillard Government’s recent slashing of funding for private health insurance of nearly $4 billion - as well as nearly $1 billion a year cut from dental health through the closure of the Medicare Chronic Disease Dental Scheme.

This is why Labor’s waste, reckless spending and policy blunders are so detrimental – for ultimately it’s the most vulnerable in our society that end up paying the price.>

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Thrust SSC (Coventry)

This is the fastest land vehicle. The fastest car on earth with the top speed of 1222 km/h! This one is actually faster than a speed of sound and its twin engine horse power exceeds power of 140 formula 1 racer cars combined!
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Tattoo idolises a police killer - ed
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Just another example of Labor’s skills ……………….

When Mr Albanese announced the start of construction of the extra freight line back in February 2009, he put the cost at $309 million. However, the final cost blew out to about $1 billion - more than THREE TIMES the budget.

But hey, what’s a lazy $700 million over spend, when Labor’s combined budget surpluses are $174 billion and counting.

And also back in Feb 2009, Mr Albanese forecast the completion date of early 2010 - about 12 months for the project to be completed. However, it’s only just finished - taking FOUR TIMES longer than forecast.

And that's what Labor call a "success".>

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Yes you would .. until you had told her .. - ed
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Quite so - ed
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Very happy to drop by Andrew Rohan, Liberal for Smithfield's office and discuss important issues with Zaya TomaDai Le was also there and busy. Past to Zaya Uong Nguyen's book I Am a New Creation: The story of Pastor Uong Nguyen. And stirred sibling rivalry ..
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For TMN
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Israel Defense Forces:

Three years ago, an IDF aid delegation departed for Haiti. Israelis treated 1,100 patients, completed 317 surgeries and delivered 16 babies in the earthquake-ravaged country. We're always ready to save lives anywhere in the world.
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Patches of light that sometimes appear beside the sun, called sundogs, are seen in this beautiful picture of a sunrise over Park City, Utah, by Don Brown. But, what causes these phantom suns?http://oak.ctx.ly/r/1xv1
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Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.—Jn 14:27

Beloved, you did not get just anyone’s peace. You inherited the peace of Jesus Himself! The peace that Jesus gives you is the same peace that calmed the boisterous storm.

It is the kind of peace that is not affected by the surroundings or circumstances, but goes forth and affects that very situation for good! With His peace, you can walk victoriously over every storm! You will overcome every challenge! You will reign over every adverse situation!

So take heart and rest easy! You have the peace of the Prince of Peace Himself!
http://josephprince.com/

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