Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Tue Jun 18th Todays News

Happy birthday and many happy returns Vy Vy Huynh. On your day in 618, Li Yuan became Emperor Gaozu of Tang, initiating three centuries of the Tang Dynasty in China. In 1053, Humphrey of Hauteville led the armies of the Normans in the Battle of Civitate against the combined forces of Pope Leo IX and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1858, Charles Darwin received a manuscript by fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection, which prompted Darwin to publish his theory of evolution. In 1983, Aboard Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. It says so much that on your day you can meet a challenge, fight the battle and establish a dynasty with everlasting truth. Sounds fancy, written that way.
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This NSW Budget isn’t sexy but it’s nice and gentle

Piers Akerman – Tuesday, June 18, 2013 (6:12pm)

IN the arid world of economics, surpluses (when did we last see one of those?) and deficits, the NSW Budget is a sexy beast.

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Gillard sex assault flops

Piers Akerman – Tuesday, June 18, 2013 (2:24am)

JULIA Gillard obviously think sex sells in politics.
Forget the drowned boat people, the busted Budget, the never-never promises of the national disability scheme and the Gonski “reforms” – concentrate on the gender wars.
Like the student politician she was and remains, Gillard is still firmly fixed on below-the-belt issues.
Last week she assembled a small band of feminist activists to launch Women for Gillard.
The idea was stolen from the Us where a group was brought together to give US President Barak Obama a feminine cheer squad – he had so few women in any power positions around him.
The Australian version held a closed meeting with Gillard which was filmed by a hand-picked crew – nothing unscripted here – and the vision later distributed to the media.
So much for openness and transparency.
But it now emerges that Chloe Bryce, daughter of Governor General Quentin Bryce and the woman Labor Minister Bill Shorten left his first wife for, if to be president of the new Labor wimmin’s front group.
What a dumb idea.
No matter how beguiling Ms Bryce Jnr may be, there is no escaping the perception that one of the really rotten things about Gillard Labor and Gillard’s own political life is the constant reminder of the incestuous nature of her relationships.
When the AWU scandal hit the press – and it has not gone away by any means despite what Gillard has said – it became clear that the senior law figures she was closest to or answered to at her former Labor law firm Victoria’s Slater & Gordon had been promoted to high-paying federal government jobs.
Nothing wrong with promotion on merit but senior public servants claim that Cabinet appears to have been unaware of the candidates’ prior association Gillard when their names were put forward.
Then there is the slush fund she set up for her former union boss boyfriend.
All too cosy, too much family.
Ms Bryce Jnr has apparently responded to Gillard’s claim that “Labor is the party of women”.
That catchcry didn’t resonate too well with Labor men who dropped their support for Gillard, according to the Nielsen poll.
Then Gillard tried to make a political point about abortion – in breach of the long standing convention between the major parties not to politicise what most Australians believe should be a private matter for women.
Gillard sees it as an opportunity to highlight what she claims are Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s views on the topic – though she isn’t above verballing him in the process.
Abbott’s view is the same as former US President Bill Clinton- that abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
Attacking men and bringing abortion into play cost Labor 7 percentage points among men and a 1 per cent increase among women.
Wipeout.
Chloe Bryce may be her own woman but voters will link her to Bill Shorten for the simple reason they are married.
Shorten has said he will agree with Gillard no matter what she says, even when he doesn’t know what she has said.
He was one of the principals responsible for axing former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Cosy, isn’t it?
If Labor thinks the electorate will warm to it over the next 88 days while this monkey shine continues, good luck.
Even the Labor wimmin might follow the outcast Labor men and walk away from the wreckage. 

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Saatchi’s Nigella excuse takes the breath away

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, June 18, 2013 (6:16pm)

NIGELLA Lawson’s husband Charles Saatchi now claims he wrapped his hand around her throat while they were arguing in public last week just to “emphasise a point” during a “playful tiff”. I’d like to see what he does when they’re having a full-blown argument. 

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WILD TIMES AT THE OLD BLAIR HOUSE

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 18, 2013 (3:28pm)

Last night we built an elephant out of towels:

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THE GUILTY PARTY

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 18, 2013 (12:40pm)

Eco-guilt is the new original sin, writes Pascal Bruckner: 
For the past half-century we have, in fact, been witnessing a slide from one scapegoat to another: Marxism designated capitalism as responsible for human misery. Third-worldism, upset by the bourgeoisification of the working classes, substituted the West for capitalism as the great criminal in history and the “inventor” of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism.
With ecologism, we move up a notch: The guilty party is humanity itself, in its will to dominate the planet. Here there is a return to the fundamentals of Christianity: Evil is the pride of the creatures who are in revolt against their Creator and who exceed their prerogatives. 
On a related note, listen to former Defence Force chief Admiral Chris Barrie releasing the Climate Commission’s latest doomist report: 
“There’s a one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet. The planet will exist, but it’s just that my granddaughter won’t be part of it. And I think that’s a pretty alarming statistic, probability, one in two chance if we don’t correct our behaviours.” 
(Via Brat)

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PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 18, 2013 (12:20pm)

They’ve gone full Strangelove: 
The New South Wales Greens will press the state government to hold a public inquiry into the safety of fluoridated water … 
Only pure grain alcohol is good enough for our children:



(Via PWAF) 

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Legal Service Board confirms police on the Slater and Gordon case

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (6:59pm)

The Legal Services Board of Victoria has confirmed that police are investigating Slater and Gordon lawyers over the AWU scandal.
(Julia Gillard insists she did nothing wrong as a Slater and Gordon lawyer in regard to the AWU scandal involving her then boyfriend.)
Michael Smith had complained to Board about the actions of lawyers at Slater and Gordon.
The Board told Smith it had commenced investigations, but now has told him those investigations have been put on ice.
The Legal Services Board of Victoria confirmed its investigation “falls within the scope of an ongoing investigation being conducted by Victoria Police” and to “avoid duplication of effort” and interference it would allow the police criminal enquiry to take precedence.
Read the correspondence here.

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Robert Manne blames Murdoch for making Australians agree with him

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (3:49pm)

Professor Robert Manne, voted our “most influential public intellectual” by his peers, detects another Murdoch conspiracy. The weird thing is that it’s a conspiracy to make Australians agree with ... Robert Manne:
ROBERT MANNE:  I think the misogyny speech that Julia Gillard, I think, made spontaneously when something unexpected happened in the Parliament, I think undoubtedly will be regarded as her best moment. I think it was a wonderful speech… I think the reason that I thought the misogyny speech last week was a mistake, or the blue tie speech I suppose it will be known as, was a mistake because it seemed like normal politics manipulation, opportunism, what I think it was Simon Crean said tinea for politics. I do think it was ill-advised. There is one thing I do want to say. In my view, the biggest mistake made by a politician I most admire in Australia, Paul Keating, was to allow the Murdoch press to have the kind of control it has over the way we look at things, and I do think the - surprise to Paul - and I do think that the way in which a sort of line emerges and an outrage that abortion is raised and so on and so forth, everyone says the same thing, I think we don’t realise how much that is - what has happened to this country. That the picture we’re getting of the world is coming through a much larger control over the press than is healthy.
Wow.
If I follow Manne correctly, Murdoch writers collectively damned Gillard’s speech, and gullible readers all adopted those writers’ opinions, having no mind of their own or alternative source of information.
Some obvious flaws in Manne’s paranoid conspiracy theory:
- Murdoch’s News Ltd owns only a third of newspaper titles in this country. People tend to like them, however, and buy more of them than the alternatives.
- Newspaper sales are actually in decline. Fewer Australians than ever - despite our growing population - read newspapers, excluding on-line traffic.
- Many more people are reading alternative media as well as - or instead of - newspapers. There are now on-line newspapers (The Guardian Australia, the Global Mail) as well as blogs and news aggregators. Then there are free-to-air television news programs, cables news networks and radio news services. Add the Internet, and never has there been such an incredible diversity of news sources, which is precisely why newspaper sales have fallen. Manne’s analysis is so last century.
- Many, indeed most, news sources lean to the Left, including The Monthly, the magazine and on-line site for which Manne writes. If the public like these offerings, it will buy them. If the public prefers the balance offered by Murdoch titles, those titles will instead prosper - as they do. Manne, in fact, is berating the choice made by the public.
- The real danger to media diversity is the ABC on which Manne made these comments. If offers free what its rivals must sell to survive. it has expanded from TV and radio into de facto on-line newspapers, Twitter and blogs. It is a government broadcaster with enormous reach, and leans hard to the Left.
- Murdoch papers embrace a diversity of opinion not matched by the ABC. Its on-staff columnists of the Left include Paul Syvret, Susie O’Brien, Phillip Adams, Malcolm Farr, David Penberthy and many others.
(The ABC, however, has every main current affairs show presented by someone of the Left.) There is no Murdoch monopoly of opinion, not even in his own papers, and certainly not one that explains why so many Australians reached the same view of Gillard’s speech that Manne himself did. Other Q&A panellists were astonished by Manne’s conspiracy theory and the implicit call for state censorship of conservative thought:
BARNABY JOYCE: That’s crazy.
PAUL KELLY: Robert, just look at the vote. Just look at the vote.
BARNABY JOYCE: That’s just saying that you’ve got a big problem because a whole heap of people choose to buy a paper. Well, if they choose to buy a paper, it’s because they actually like what’s in it. If they didn’t like what was in it, they wouldn’t buy it. You can’t say I blame that media stable because people enjoy reading it
ROBERT MANNE: There is no Western country or civilised country that has anything like this monopoly of a single figure who is highly ideological figure. I don’t think we realise…
BARNABY JOYCE: It’s not our fault if alternate venues are not popular.
ROBERT MANNE: Well, most countries just don’t allow one corporation to owner 60 or 70% of the press.
BARNABY JOYCE: So what do we do? Do we just sort of segue that and say, “Well, even though nobody wants to buy all these things, we’re going to demand that they buy them?
ROBERT MANNE: Barnaby, if someone else had bought the Herald and Weekly Times in the mid-80s, people would still be reading those newspapers.
BARNABY JOYCE: I don’t think (indistinct)
Actually, Robert, even Murdoch couldn’t save The Herald, for which you wrote a weekly column, edited by me. It folded. But he saved The Sun, now called the Herald Sun. Your complacency about newspaper sales and survival is unwarranted.

TONY JONES: I would like to round this section off by hearing from Paul Kelly on this issue, since you are representing News Limited tonight.
PAUL KELLY: Well, I think Robert has conflated a lot of issues here. If we go back to what happened last week, there is no conspiracy here. I mean individual papers just responded in terms of what happened on the day. Individual journalists were making their own assessments and some were more critical than others. But the point about this is the Labor Party was gobsmacked. There were Labor MPs who couldn’t believe what the Prime Minister had said. Now, forget about the Murdoch press, I mean, what do we think explains…
ROBERT MANNE: I wish I could!
PAUL KELLY: Well, hang on. How can you explain the public opinion poll…
BARNABY JOYCE: Maybe you should. Maybe you should.
PAUL KELLY: We have to be very careful - we have to be very careful in this country about creating this idea that everything is a conspiracy. If we look at the public opinion poll published in the Fairfax Media about the events of last week, I think it demonstrates fairly clearly that the Australian public reacted very badly to Julia Gillard. Now, I think it is a mistake for the Labor Party or for anybody else to turn this around and start saying, “Aha, this was a Murdoch conspiracy.” I think that is…
ROBERT MANNE: No-one is saying that.
PAUL KELLY: Alright. Well, I thought you were, Robert.

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Climate Commission’s dupe: “one in two chance” of no humans by 2100

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (3:00pm)

Retired admiral Chris Barrie is disturbingly prone to alarmism. He tells the ABC he’s read a book, Lord Rees’ Our Final Hour, which he says warned we’d be wiped out if we didn’t face “the climate change consequences and some other behaviours that are not so good”:

There’s a one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet. The planet will exist, but it’s just that my granddaughter won’t be part of it. And I think that’s a pretty alarming statistic, probability, one in two chance if we don’t correct out behaviours.
Referring to the Climate Commission’s report he “assisted” in launching, Barrie adds:
If anybody reads through this report and gets to the alarming conclusion that if we don’t correct our behaviour by the end of the decade, that is in seven years time, then our future looks pretty bleak.
The Climate Commission presents Barrie as some kind of global warming expert, and had him help launch their latest scare report. The ABC did not question Barrie’s credentials or his absurd claims.
Can they explain why?
Incidentally, since Rees wrote his book in 2003, the planet’s atmosphere has, if anything, cooled.
UPDATE
Reader Michael O says Ress is being misrepresented by Barrie:
Lord Rees’s prognosis was that there was a high risk of human extinction as a result of the runaway effects of new technology (e.g. nanotechnology) or uncontrolled scientific research; terrorist or fundamentalist violence; or destruction of the biosphere. Barrie (LEGAL SNIP) implies that Rees’s forecast related to global warming.
UPDATE
How does the Climate Commission’s ludicrous and emotive propaganda, featuring a bathtub of sharks, fit in with the promise Tim Flannery made when appointed Chief Climate Commissioner in 2011:
Professor Flannery said the commission would communicate the basis of climate science to the Australian community over the next two years, as well as the state of international negotiations and possible mechanisms to reduce pollution.
He stressed the commission would not be dealing with policy questions or trying to convert climate sceptics, but would establish a “proper dialogue with people”.
(Thanks to readers Phil and Peter.) 

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The ABC does to Joyce what it denounced when done to Gillard

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (2:24pm)

Media
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ABC managing director Mark Scott claims there’s no bias at the ABC, despite every one of its main current affairs shows being helmed by people of the Left.. Last night he got yet another opportunity to reconsider his complacency.
Can Scott explain why the ABC’s Q&A broadcast this offensive and deceitful text? There is no suggestion at all that any National or Liberal MP endorsed or was party to an offensive question put to Julia Gillard by 6PR’s Howard Sattler. Incdeed, Coalition MPs denounced it, as did ABC presenters.
So why was this equally offensive text sliming Joyce and his wife broadcast by the ABC?
Once again, for many on the Left it is not the principle that counts but the side.
Once again, the ABC betrays its bias. Would it have aired this text were its target a Greens MP? 

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Have fun. Be part of a dangerous and successful group of “extremists”

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (1:50pm)

Become a plotter. Become part of a sinister group of powerful capitalists and free-marketeers. Join the secretive “extreme-Right” cabal blamed for destroying so much of what the unions and Labor imposed on us for our own good.
A secret missive from the HR Nicholls headquarters arrives::
The HR Nicholls Society is currently running a special promotion for new members to promote the IR issue in the leadup to the next election.
New Members who apply to join the society will have their joining fee waived, and receive a 50% discount off the cost of the 2013 annual conference to be held in Melbourne on July 8th on the title of Unions in Control. This works out at a saving of $120 and is an excellent deal.
As many of your readers are interested in the issues of union corruption and a free and fair industrial relations system, if you could please post a link to this it would be most appreciated. 

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What duty to we owe to a visiting drug trafficker?

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (1:47pm)

Boat people policy
The Opposition’s new policy to return non-Australian law-breakers to their home country would end this kind of thing:

A FORMER Chinese student who served six years in prison for his part in a drug-trafficking and money-laundering syndicate can stay in Australia after a tribunal overturned his visa cancellation.
If sent back to China, Xin Liang might face the death penalty; his risk of reoffending in Australia was very low; and he had been a model prisoner, said Administrative Appeals Tribunal deputy president Stephanie Forgie in a ruling this month.
UPDATE
More members of a troubled minority who have forfeited their right to our protection. 

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Gillard’s activists don’t represent us and don’t deserve this access

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (12:01pm)

The Gillard Government has a strange view of Australia if this gaggle of activists is meant to represent us to world leaders. Gary Johns:

WHILE the Prime Minister (pro tem) was indulging in misogynist fantasy games and batting off Kevin Rudd, she also was selling Australian democracy down the river by appointing a C20 committee to organise the civil society part of the G20 conference in Brisbane next year.
Apparently, the Australian C20, headed by “justice campaigner” Tim Costello, will help the G20 gather the views of civil society and convene a C20 summit to develop recommendations for G20 leaders’ consideration....
Costello welcomed his “fellow committee members who have been drawn from across the breadth of Australian civil society”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
None of Costello’s committee would stand a chance of being elected to an Australian parliament, except under the Greens banner or as an independent in one or two inner-city seats in Melbourne or Sydney, and then as a fluke. With few exceptions, one being Bill Scales who would qualify as a member of my old friend Christopher Pearson’s “club sensible”, would any survive a real vote of confidence of the Australian electorate? Yet Julia Gillard chooses to give their views privileged access to G20 leaders.
The committee members are, in effect, professional lobbyists for multiculturalism, Aboriginal separatism, church progressivism, neo-feminism of the type that supported Gillard’s misogyny follies, nanny state - anti-smoking, eating, drinking campaigners - greenies and anti-development anti-free trade foreign aid lobbyists.
Nowhere on this committee is to be found a Meals-on-Wheels representative, the Salvation Army or someone from Lifeline or a St Vinnies shop, or Rotary. The latter are civil society, not the leftists who, in the past decades, have assumed positions as spokespeople for civil society, without any authority or legitimacy. These are people who rely on the inclusive institutions of the Western liberal democracies, institutions that encourage the creation and redistribution of wealth, to argue for its antithesis.
Johns is right. How many of these people could win a seat in Parliament on their agenda?:

The Group will also include 13 Australians who are leaders in their field:

· Mr Joseph Assaf AM – Ethnic Business Awards
· Ms Jody Broun – National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples
· Reverend Tara Curlewis – National Council of Churches in Australia
· Dr Cassandra Goldie – Australian Council of Social Service
· Ms Julie McKay – UN Women Australia
· Professor Rob Moodie – Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
· Mr Dermot O’Gorman – World Wide Fund for Nature Australia
· Mr Marc Purcell – Australian Council for International Development
· Mr Bill Scales AO – Swinburne University of Technology
· Ms Sally Sinclair – National Employment Services Association
· Judge Rauf Soulio – Australian Multicultural Council
· Dr Helen Szoke – Oxfam Australia
· Mr Greg Thompson – Transparency International Australia
More evidence that this Government lives in a bubble, listening only to journalists it likes and confusing the Twitterverse with the real Australia:

Julia Gillard’s minders are living in a “bubble world of Twitter delusion”, according to a public relations expert.
Mercer PR principal Lyall Mercer says the prime minister’s office appears to be using social media to plan her political strategy …
“The Twittersphere was quite happy about the blue-tie comments but when you look at the polling that’s come out [yesterday], it’s clear they’re on the wrong track.
“If you talk to everyday people, they think the blue-tie attack was ridiculous.” 

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Activists taunt hungry pigs

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (11:53am)

Another Animal Liberation stunt, in which the camera lies:
IMAGINE what would happen if pro-meat campaigners staked out a vegan commune and waited until the simple creatures were tucked up in their koala-suit peejays before bursting through the door with the cameras rolling.
Picture the startled tofu munchers with the lights in their faces, blinking, squealing and thrashing around in the air.
They would look something like Ean Pollard’s pigs in an 8 1/2-minute clip posted on YouTube. Mr Pollard told The Land last week that animal rights vigilantes had broken into his piggery near Young, NSW, in the early hours of the morning. “The sows have got up thinking they’re going to get fed, but they’ve become agitated because there’s no feed - only people running around with flashlights, filming.”
Let us hope Joe Ludwig doesn’t Google this stuff, or he’ll shut the industry down in a flash.
Pollard puts it well:
EAN POLLARD: So these guys have gone into my shed, early hours of the morning, and you can tell, you can see that it’s dark. And these sows have stood up, thinking that they’re going to get fed. And what’s actually happened is that, when they’ve turned the video on and started recording, my animals are already agitated, because you can see that they’re frantic, so I don’t know how long they’ve been stirring these animals up for.
And the video itself, the footage, runs for eight and a half minutes. And then they obviously haven’t fed these sows and they’ve just left the premises, and my poor girls are in all sorts of stress.
Maybe they were running up and down there, rattling the bars and that, but certainly by the time they started taking footage, these girls, they were stressed.
Bit cruel. Someone should report the activists to the RSPCA. 

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Boris rules

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (9:58am)

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Iain Martin says this picture shows why London mayor Boris Johnson could be Britain’s next Prime Minister:
Boris Johnson was at the tennis yesterday, at The Queen’s Club. Rather than sitting watching, he was wielding a racquet on court, surrounded by various celebrities. I presume it was for charity.
What makes the photograph so instructive, and in its way captivating, are the expressions on the faces of the others. They are all, in their assorted fields, famous, or even very famous. But they are trailing in the wake of Boris. They are clearly being eclipsed.
Look, also, at how Boris is clutching what looks like an old wooden racquet, as if to emphasise to the crowd that he has walked straight from the pages of a PG Wodehouse story. I bet he has a better racquet than that at home. Some voters say they like the authenticity of Boris while seeming to be simultaneously aware that it is all a clever act. This is quite a trick for a politician to pull off.
Richard Branson, used to being at the centre of pictures, is grinning, but gazing at the star of the show, with what appears to be a slightly perplexed expression. Equally, Jimmy Carr (a comedian) is behind Boris and staring at the Mayor in a quizzical manner. Jonathan Ross (he of the offensive phone-calls to Manuel from Fawlty Towers) looks amused, lost, or perhaps embarrassed.
In that picture Boris is simply the star, which, although we have all got used to it in the last few years, is extraordinary. Remember how hated politicians are. Yet here is a front-line politician outshining the multi-millionaire celebs.

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Police won’t complete AWU case before Gillard goes to polls

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (9:22am)

Mark Baker of The Age - not the satanic Murdoch media:

Victoria Police will seek to use documents taken from prominent law firm Slater & Gordon in framing potential criminal charges over the Australian Workers Union slush fund scandal…
But sources close to one of the biggest Victorian fraud investigations in recent years said it appeared unlikely any charges would be laid before the end of this year, well after the September 14 federal election.
The investigation focuses on the 1993 purchase of a Fitzroy house involving some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly misappropriated from the AWU Workplace Reform Association by former senior AWU official Bruce Wilson, who was then the boyfriend of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Ms Gillard, then a partner at Slater & Gordon, gave legal advice in relation to establishing the association - ostensibly for promoting work safety and training - which she later confirmed to be a ‘’slush fund’’ to bankroll union elections.
She later created a power of attorney to enable Mr Wilson to buy the property in Kerr Street, Fitzroy, in the name of union crony Ralph Blewitt.
Mr Blewitt has confirmed in a statement to police that he was involved in fraud but both Ms Gillard and Mr Wilson have vehemently denied any illegal or improper conduct.
Voters deserve to knew before the election whether the Prime Minister has a legal case to answer. But I accept Victoria Police is letting the investigation follow its natural course. Indeed, we have to applaud the determination of the police to get to the bottom of this matter, given the political sensitivities involved - sensitivities that have already cost the jobs of two journalists to whom apologies are surely owed. 

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Do not vote for Clive Palmer. We deserve better

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (9:09am)

A man campaigning to become prime minister should:

- not have a business in alleged difficulties.
- not say things that appear to be untrue.
- not threaten legal action against journalists exploring his suitability for high office. 
- not peddle outlandish conspiracy theories.
But:
A MAJOR Chinese resources company with close ties to Beijing’s political leadership has emphatically rejected a claim by Clive Palmer that he is being paid $500 million a year in iron ore royalties…
A spokesman for the Chinese company told The Australian yesterday: “CITIC Pacific is not currently paying $500m per year in royalties to Mineralogy, as claimed by Mr Palmer, and we do not know the basis for this claim.”
The company, based in Hong Kong, said that legal action over royalties from the incomplete Pilbara iron ore project into which it has so far sunk about $7 billion “are currently before the Australian courts, where we believe these issues will be dealt with in a fair manner”.
In a confidential legal letter leaked to The Australian, Mr Palmer warned the Chinese company in March that “the livelihood of over 1000 employees (of his) group and associated companies depends upon” receiving an urgent payment from CITIC Pacific…
Mr Palmer’s ... major business, a Townsville nickel refinery, carries major safety and environmental risks including a huge tailings dam on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef… The Australian yesterday obtained a sworn affidavit from late April, in which Mr Palmer raised the prospect of being forced to close the nickel refinery and sack its staff because he faced running out of cash to operate it…

Asked on Sunday how he sustained losses at the refinery, Mr Palmer said: “Because I earn $500m a year in royalties in Western Australia from the Chinese."…
Yesterday, he instructed his Brisbane-based lawyers, HopgoodGanim, to threaten to sue The Australian and attempt to force the newspaper to identify its sources… HopgoodGanim’s special counsel demanded… “an undertaking to cease and desist from publishing any other confidential information concerning Professor Palmer"…
“The reason The Australian continues to attack Clive Palmer is a result of News Corp promising Tony Abbott that he will be the next prime minister.” 

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Worst excuse of the week

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (7:17am)

image
Most pathetic excuse of the week:

Art collector Charles Saatchi says images of him grasping his wife, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, by the neck show “a playful tiff"…
“About a week ago, we were sitting outside a restaurant having an intense debate about the children, and I held Nigella’s neck repeatedly while attempting to emphasise my point.
“There was no grip, it was a playful tiff.
“Nigella’s tears were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt...”

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How the ABC’s AM hyped the Climate Commission’s scare. Did Mark Scott listen?

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (8:05am)

Global warming - propaganda, Media
ABC managing director Mark Scott claims there’s no bias on the ABC and pretends his former chairman never complained about ABC groupthink on global warming.
Yesterday he got yet another opportunity to reconsider his complacency.
ABC AM reported the latest hysterical global warming claims of the Climate Commission and - as usual - did so without any attempt at balance or fact-checking:
It quoted Climate Commissioner Will Steffen offering a rag-bag of weather events to suggest the planet was continuing to warm dangerously:
Heatwaves in Europe, heatwaves in Russia, heatwaves in the US during the last decade. Heavy rainfall, a warming climate, more evaporation from the ocean, more water vapour in the atmosphere and more rain. What did we see? Convincing evidence, not only globally, but now in Australia.
This alone should have made AM suspicious.
First, why did Steffen not mention other recent weather anecdotes suggesting cooling? Why did he - or the ABC - not add that England had just had its coldest spring in 50 years or in many areas the coldest in 122 years? Why not mention France had its coldest spring in 26 years and the US its coldest in 17 years?
Second, why did Steffen - or the ABC - not give listeners the most obvious measure of global warming - not anecdotes about some heatwave somewhere but the actual temperature of the planet? 
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Why did AM not mention this temperature record, showing no statistically significant warming for more than 15 years, or quote one of the world’s leading climate scientists - like, for instance, Judith Curry?
You see, Professor Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says the real question now is not whether global warming has paused for the past 15 years, but whether the next 10 years will see a global cooling as well.

Attention in the public debate seems to be moving away from the 15-17 yr ‘pause’ to the cooling since 2002 This period since 2002 is scientifically interesting, ...  and provides a rationale for inferring a slight cooling trend over the next decade or so.

But instead of interviewing a top climate scientist or a sceptic for balance, AM interviews a retired navy officer whose credentials seem to be merely that he, too, happens to believe in the warming scare:
SARAH CLARKE:  Admiral Chris Barrie is the former defence chief. He agrees there is an urgency…
CHRIS BARRIE: We only have this little period of 10 years in which to adjust human behaviour to give us a more acceptable outcome for the rest of the century.
Also not mentioned by AM is that the climate commissioners are alarmists who have a terrible record of making dud predictions. In fact, this latest claim that global warming is bringing us lots more rain seems at odds with a previous warning issued by Tim Flannery himself, in 2007:
Even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems.

AM does not even challenge the crazy conclusion from another climate commissioner, Lesley Hughes, that to stop dangerous warming we must virtually close down our coal industry:
LESLEY HUGHES:  ... We simply have to leave about 80 per cent of the world’s fossil fuel reserves in the ground. We cannot afford to burn them and still have a stable and safe climate.

Cost of closing our coal exports? About $50 billion a year. Cost to Australians: lost jobs, lost royalties, lost taxes, lost investment, massive increases in power bills, energy-intensive businesses made broke, vast economic dislocation. More people will be poor, and few of them will be able to afford to heat their homes in winter or cool them in summer.
Is this sacrifice really worth the benefits - if any - of any warming averted?  Consider: the difference Australia’s planned cuts to emissions by 2020 will actually make to the world’s temperature, even assuming the warmist models are correct, is just 0.0038 degrees by 2100.
What’s more dangerous? Global warming or the catastrophic cost of attempts to “stop” it?
That’s another basic question AM never even thinks to ask.
And Mark Scott claims to detect no bias. No groupthink.
UPDATE
Contrast the ABC’s credulity to the doubt now expressed even by Leftist media outlets overseas:

Cold, cold, cold. Leo Hickman, The Guardian, Friday: 
WASHOUT summers. Flash floods. Freezing winters. Snow in May. Droughts. There is a growing sense that something is happening to our weather . . . To try to answer the question the Met Office is hosting an unprecedented meeting of climate scientists and meteorologists next week to debate the possible causes of the UK’s “disappointing” weather over recent years . . . The “roundtable workshop” will attempt to outline the “dynamical drivers of the cold spring of 2013”, but attendees are expected also to debate the “disappointing summers of the last seven years” . . . The meeting will also discuss the washout summer of 2012 and the freezing winter of 2010-11. 
Not getting hot, hot, hot. Justin Gillis, The New York Times, June 10:

THE rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace. The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists . . . given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.
Never mind the facts. ABC radio’s AM yesterday:
TONY Eastley: What were once considered risks are now a reality, according to the Climate Commission’s latest major update on how the planet is tracking. The report says the “scientific consensus” has become stronger, as greenhouse gas emissions reach record levels.
Sarah Clarke: Two years ago, the Climate Commission released its first major report called The Critical Decade. A quarter of the way through that 10 years, it says those forecasts are now a reality and the scientific consensus is stronger.
Will Steffen: Heatwaves in Europe, heatwaves in Russia, heatwaves in the US during the last decade. Heavy rainfall, a warming climate, more evaporation from the ocean, more water vapour in the atmosphere and more rain. What did we see? Convincing evidence, not only globally, but now in Australia.
UPDATE
Reader Bruce:

“Heatwaves in Russia”. Dr Steffen is alluding to the big Moscow heatwave of 2010 and the accompanying Pakistan floods.
Prof Mike Lockwood, who is a well regarded IPCC contributing climate scientist (who is not a climate sceptic) pointed out that low solar activity was linked to the jet stream blocking which caused the very cold UK winter that year. Jet stream blocking also caused the Moscow heat wave a few months later in the same year.
We had a very similar period of low solar activity during the latest very cold northern winter, as measured by the Ap Progression index, which reached the same low level as in 2010. There was lots of jet stream blocking occurring, again causing cold air to persist over Europe. Dr Steffen is scientifically wrong, and proved so by Prof Lockwood. Digging coal is no threat to anyone, except the green ideologues who want to enslave us.

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Sure, Rudd’s popular. But how will he fix his worst mistake?

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (6:59am)

Forget the irresistible bit. Labor’s problem is that it’s an immovable force that’s not meeting an immovable object:

KEVIN Rudd’s supporters have declared that, for the first time since he was deposed as prime minister three years ago, he has the numbers in Labor caucus to topple Julia Gillard as leader, but they claim there will still be no leadership change until there is overwhelming support within the party for the former prime minister.
Rudd isn’t keen on risking defeat:
A senior government source provided Fairfax Media with a list of six leadership ballots since 2003, claiming Mr Rudd had declined to stand in four of them.
The source rubbished claims by Mr Rudd’s backers that he now enjoyed the support of the majority of caucus, telling Fairfax Media that the ‘’blokes doing [Rudd’s] numbers couldn’t add three oranges and a pear together’’.
The big question if Rudd did take over is: what’s his campaign pitch? It had better be something better than this:

My purpose in being here this week and travelling around the country in support of Labor members and candidates is very basic it is to do everything I physically can to stop Mr Abbott from becoming the next prime minister of Australia.
That’s it? Nothing about the national interest? Putting more Australians in work? Getting business going? Stopping the boats? Preventing the fall in living standards the some economists warn we now face?
It’s just stopping the AbbottAbbottAbbott?
I’m not convinced that demonising Abbott will work for Rudd any better than it’s worked for Gillard:
He is the single most extreme right-wing political leader that the Liberal party have ever thrown up.
Really? “Extreme right-wing”?
Abbott (rather unfortunately, in my opinion) is a big fan of multiculturalism and the constitutional recognition of Aborigines. He is suspicious of much liberalising of workplace laws and was against WorkChoices. He is against the privatisation of the ABC, and he is for car industry assistance. His proposed cuts to spending and the public service are way too little, and his rhetoric on such cuts are, if anything, milder than Rudd’s in the 2007 campaign, when he vowed to take “a meat axe” to the public sector. Even on global warming, he refuses to express scepticism about the theory that man is causing dangerous warming, and promises to waste billions on trying to “stop” it. Indeed, Abbott has nursed along an Opposition which includes Malcolm Turnbull and Christopher Pyne, and kept it incredibly united.
I really don’t think voters would see that as the CV of an “extreme: right-winger, and Rudd’s claims will sound as sincere as Gillard’s.
So apart from a plainly false and ludicrous scare-campaign about Abbott, what is Rudd offering?
Yesterday in Question Time the Opposition asked Gillard whether she now realised that Rudd’s decision to scrap the Howard Government’s boat people laws was a mistake, given the flood of boats that has since come.
Good question. And it’s really one for Rudd himself. Does he admit his mistake, and what would he to do to fix the crisis that he as Prime Minister unleashed, with more than 100 boat people arriving every day and more than 1000 people so far lured to their deaths at sea?
This will be an albatross the Opposition plans to hang around Rudd’s neck - responsibility for one of the Government most electorally devastating blunders - and Rudd gives no sign of having thought up any answers:

Concerns are also being raised that Mr Rudd is taking a softer line on boatpeople, citing his comments in June 2010 on the eve of the leadership coup that ousted him when he declared he would not be “lurching to the Right” on asylum-seekers.
Last week Mr Rudd said: “I believe that Australia has always been decent in opening up its arms to people from around the world, whether they come here as migrants or whether they come here as refugees. The reason we have done that, also, is because we learned from the Holocaust in the Second World War that you don’t say no to people who are fleeing persecution. I believe that is also the position of our government now under the Prime Minister’s leadership.”
A Rudd supporter hit back, defending his record against Ms Gillard’s by pointing out that many more boats and people had arrived under Ms Gillard as PM than Mr Rudd’s term as leader.
Saying Gillard was worse and pretending boat people are fleeing dangers akin to Hitler simply won’t wash. As Labor backbencher Laurie Ferguson noted yesterday:

Look, quite frankly, I think that five minutes after he’s elected leader, the Opposition would stressing the immigration changes that he engineered, and that’s western Sydney.
Rudd will need more than a smile to deal with his biggest mess. He needs policy.  

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ABC: its stickers tell you what its boss won’t admit

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (12:15am)

image
Reader Paul notices - finally - some truth in advertising at the ABC.
The truth it advertises is this, revealed in a University of the Sunshine Coast survey:
However, 41.2% of the 34 ABC journalists who declared a voting intention said they would vote for the Greens, followed by 32.4% for Labor and 14.7% for the Coalition.
Remember ABC boss Mark Scott’s denials of bias?

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The politics of moral outrage

Andrew Bolt June 18 2013 (12:01am)

Nick Cater on this new wowserism - which is really about gaining power:


As a Brit looking wistfully at Australia in the early 1980s, my vote for prime minister would have gone to Bob Hawke rather than Margaret Thatcher. I encountered him fleetingly at a press conference in Brussels when, if I recall correctly, he used the word “bugger”.
It seemed the appropriate word to use when answering questions about the European Economic Community, the institution that became the European Union. Hawke’s no-nonsense rhetoric was a perfect advertisement for a nation that refused to stand on ceremony.
Thirty years later, the prissy self-righteousness Hawke eschewed has descended like a cloud over Australian politics. Prudery, moral outrage and manufactured affront are now the standard currency of debate.

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duplication is ok. It happens throughout school and after. For example Algebra in Australia is introduced in year 7 and broadened through year 12 .. but it is still Algebra. I have tutored people at university and note that individual courses introduce Algebra again .. from about a year 9 level. The university has, at a department level, ascertained that that addresses their student needs in the curricula. Nothing sinister in that. It is more efficient than blocking students from progressing on pre-requisites. - ed
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Spring in Manhattan

An image from the start of my tour while on assignment with Yahoo! back in May. — withDeepak Taneja at Central Park Upper East Side
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4 her
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If you're ever in Cornwall in the UK make sure you visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan where you can find some amazing structures in the beautiful gardens..
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Wyatt Roy
My question to the Treasurer- not appy with Labor’s spiraling debt, deficits and faulty accounting http://youtu.be/5bIPYqDtnCs — at Australian Parliament House
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I get the emotion, but the negativity of it is odd. One way Daddy can protect his daughter from predators is to raise them well. - ed
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Malcolm Turnbull & I launching our local community initiative - Do Something Near You! Fight back against declining volunteerism, typing in your postcode reveals the latest range of community organisations, events and activities in your area. http://bit.ly/15egXGs Let’s get the word out:
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The hunt for coffee is over. #FoxStudios #buggy#kitchenwhiz #cruisin
Your coffee has been confiscated by bother Fox .. (Looks at the side of screen). I can imagine some official staring at their hand saying "Where did my coffee go" and that is a silent, electric motor .. right? - ed
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Zaya Toma
I know it. The budget is responsible. For 16 years we missed those. No money being tossed on bad policy, this builds NSW and allows growth. I applaud it. - ed
Today in question time, the NSW Oppositon did not ask any questions about the budget. I guess they know the Libs did a good job

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Assyrian Australian Association - Assyrian Diqlat School will be holding an Arts and Crafts fair to showcase the artistic talents of our students. Come along and see for yourself. There will also be an opportunity to view and buy artworks by some of our community's prominent artists
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Bigots .. never give them a chance .. they can beg to 'prove themselves' but once they show themselves .. they don't change. - ed
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I shot this image from outside my driver's side window while driving a little fast in order to try and get ahead of this large shelf cloud system while traveling from Chickasha to Newcastle Oklahoma on May 21st in the pre noon hours.
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This soldier used CPR learned in an #IDF first-aid course and saved her young neighbor’s life - just another way the IDF saves lives. Read the full story here: http://goo.gl/ley60
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Why would they do such a thing? To read left wing newspapers? - ed
“We are raising a generation of young Americans who are historically illiterate.” Historian David McCullough

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Holly Giesbrecht is loving her new fuzzy hoody! Keeping the Manitoban warm in chilly Melbourne. Pencil, fingerpaint, fluro maker and correction fluid.
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WHAT THE MEDIA DON'T TELL YOU...LIVE FROM ISTANBUL: Today, after the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's extremely sectarian, separatist, and fictitious speech in Ankara, around 9 PM, the Turkish police began to attack thousands of people who were at the Gezi Park and Taksim square, having dinner. There are children under 4-5 years old, mothers, and old people, among those who were under gas and pressurized water attack. According to reports, police doesn't allow journalists to report or to take pictures from Gezi Park. They are also attacking with pressurized water businesses such as famous Divan Hotel... that opened its doors to protesters, running away from brutality. People are saying, there are thousands of wounded inside of the hotel. People formed a human chain in front of the hotel to prevent police to attack. Another report says that people cannot leave the hotel because police are arresting whoever leaves. There are also unconfirmed reports that police shut down the metro and boats between Asia and Europe to stop people coming and joining the rest. Another report says that there is a jammer in the area to prevent TV stations' broadcast. There are hundreds of wounded. There are a lot of missing children, or children who are separated from their families. Protesters are fighting with police.
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Open borders mob descends on home of Kansas Secretary of State ==> http://twitchy.com/2013/06/15/open-borders-mob-descends-on-home-of-kansas-secretary-of-state/
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John Wayne – The Comancheros – Theme
- Music Video -

At this ink:
http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/john-wayne-the-comancheros-theme/
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If you want any of your friend's songs or your own to be played on Makena Monk's Tuesday Session then please leave your link here. Make sure it's downloadable. If you don't want your song to be downloadable to the public then please send your song to: the.sun.loves.you@gmail.com
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John Wayne Adventure Comics #21

http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/john-wayne-adventure-comics-21/

John Wayne Adventure Comics was a series published by Toby Press in the late ’40s-early ’50s. Issue 21 features the stories Bloody Oil, Death Boiled Over, and Ghost Guns, as well as several 1 page mini stories.
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Madu Odiokwu Pastorvin
Try To Redeem the Time.
So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days (Ephesians 5:15–16)

Time is the most valuable commodity that we have in life. It’s more valuable than money. You can make more money, but you can’t make more time. When you woke up this morning, God gave you a present called “today.” And with that gift comes a responsibility. The Scripture tells us to redeem the time, to make the most of every opportunity. That simply means don’t let it go to waste. Don’t live this day unfocused, unhappy, negative or defeated. Make the most of every day. God has entrusted you with His life. He has breathed His very breath into you. He has put gifts and talents on the inside of you. You have seeds of greatness deposited in you. You’re a person of destiny, and you have an assignment and a purpose to fulfill.

I encourage you today to evaluate how you are spending your time. Refocus your life. Let go of any distractions. Shake off any self-pity, any discouragement, any disappointments of the past and run your race with purpose. Be careful how you live and redeem the time so that you can fulfill the destiny He has prepared for you.God bless you.

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4 her
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Their safety vests don't make me feel safe. - ed
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
"Little things we give away surely come back to us some other day, because GOD never forgets to give rewards for those who share their unselfish hearts.

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Madu Odiokwu Pastorvin
The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.
(Proverbs 28:1, NKJV)

As a believer in Jesus Christ, you are called to live a bold, confident and overcoming life. You don’t have to live under the weight and pressure of fear. You don’t have to live with daily anxiety. Because of Jesus, fear, worry and uncertainty are beneath you. When you rise up in faith, knowing that God is with you and for you, all doubt and fear has to leave your life.

Notice that today’s scripture says that the righteous are as bold as a lion. Righteousness is God’s way of doing things. When you do things His way, when you are submitted to His plan for your life, He will empower you with boldness and strength. He will equip you to walk in His victory.God bless you.

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Hi everyone! Here's the MichelleMalkin.com newsletter for June 17th. Enjoy!

From the Blog

Al Gore: Keystone pipeline an ‘atrocity’

Any oil operation that Al Gore can’t capitalize on is inherently eeeevil...

Chris Christie is Republican with highest favorability rating in the party

While it’s true that Chris Christie is the Republican with the highest favorability rating in the party, I should mention that the party I’m talking about is the Democratic Party...

Police report filed for lost and stolen items from Dem convention include $30k iPhone and $75k laptop computer

Is this police report a precursor to the 2012 Dem convention slogan eventually having to be revised to "Yes we can wildly inflate value for insurance purposes"?

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And ... Our Hate Tweet of the Day

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"Spoke too intelligently." Looks like Mr. @LetsGetStupidYo is already well on his way.

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Sally Ride

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