Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Tue Apr 28th Todays News

On Bolt Report an ongoing policy is that any Islam post can only be on the pinned leader. Normal rules apply in that if it is merely foul and abusive it will be deleted. Otherwise comments are welcome.  
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Hours to go before two of the Bali nine are to face the firing squad in Indonesia. The Australian government is attempting a 'hail Mary,' but every reasonable thing that can be done has been. While it is true that there is Indonesian pride which is ensuring the sentence will be carried out, there are other issues too. Myuran and Andrew are both guilty as charged. The penalty is the one assigned for the charge by Indonesian law. A few others who had been assigned the death penalty have had their sentences commuted. There are allegations flying around. One allegation is that the sentencing judges asked for a bribe. Another is that the Australian Federal Police should have waited for the return of the drug dealers before arresting them so as to use Australian law, not Indonesian law. While the behaviour of the judge, were it true, reprehensible, it would be hard to uphold a malpractice case where the judge was not paid any money. But if the judge were paid money, then it would mean that others not assigned a death penalty would have to have their cases examined. The allegation involving the Australian Federal police would lead nowhere too. Police are apolitical and expected to fight crime by direct opposition, not by temporising. The allegation was raised by friends of the ALP who were seeking to make a name for themselves without helping the Bali Nine, and they achieved that end. They have worked to oppose practical steps that might have helped the two who will die tonight. The ALP could have had their lawyers advising the two to help investigators early on. It has been ignored recently, as media try to blame the Liberal Party for the coming executions, but when the Andrew and Myuran could have helped themselves by coming clean to the investigators when they were caught, they stonewalled and threatened others, claiming their colleagues who had not been captured had a long reach. That long reach won't help them. It doesn't help them now, as it is old news. They have no bargaining chip, except a claim they have rehabilitated. But rehabilitation is never a mitigating factor in a death penalty offence. They committed their crimes when they were young, too young to judge the consequences, but old enough to know them. I know people who know them. I don't want them to die. I am angry at the ALP Government for politicising and not helping them when they could have. I hear celebrities outrageously campaigning against those who have worked hardest to save Andrew and Myuran. I note the campaign against Mr Abbott has over reached, and some celebrities have apologised. Too late for two to be executed. Send any flowers to the ABC who have campaigned against the Australian Government against the interests of Andrew and Myuran. Andrew, take courage. You are going home. 

 The executions in Indonesia involve more than the two Australians. Indonesian law is firm on the issue for a reason. After the Tiananmen Square massacre, then Australian PM Bob Hawk speaking with a senior Chinese official pointed out Australia had room, and perhaps she could accommodate some of those pushing for political reform in China. The Chinese official asked "How many millions do you want?" Indonesia is not rich and struggles to pay their public service enough to be impartial. Their solutions are cheap and nasty. Kudos to any who can find a better way. 

On this day in 1192, dope fiend assassins killed the recently elected king of Jerusalem. In 1253, a Japanese monk named Nichiren simplified Buddhism. In 1503, the Spanish fought the French with firearms on both sides, a first in history regarding fire arms. Apparently they were effective, but they took out all the sport. In 1789, Captain Bligh faced Mutiny on the Bounty, and lost. In 1869, Chinese and Irish labourers for the Central Pacific Railroad, laid ten miles of track in a single day, a record never again achieved. In 1887, war with France was avoided when Kaiser Wilhelm I ordered the release of Guillaume Schnaebelé by Prussian secret police. In 1932, a vaccine for Yellow Fever was announced. In 1945, Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the Italian resistance movement. The execution of Clara seemed harsh. She was 33 years old. Her brother was captured at the same time. He wasn't executed, however. Marcello Petacci was shot trying to escape. 
2014
Reading is a joy and it is important to challenge yourself to get the most joy. one such challenge is the Douglas Hofstadter work "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"  which I was given as a textbook in Pure Mathematics in 3rd year university. Gödel, was a mathematician whose contribution rivals any of the greats. His two theorems of incompleteness have been used by idiots to claim God does not exist, and by logicians to show that the consistency of axioms can not be proven within an infinite system. He was born on this day in 1906. As for the book, I have bought it four times and never once finished it or completed many of the exercises, but it is awesome. 

Love and hatred are primal emotions and are often involved in times of war. In the US, the civil war was divisive, and people made choices on conscience with profound consequence. Robert E Lee was head of the US military at the beginning of the schism, and from the south. He chose to fight for the south and so many millions of Americans died in four years of bloody fighting. Brothers were pitted against brother. What value the ethics that had Lee make his choice? And when it was done, an unhappy victor turned Lee's backyard into a cemetery, now called Arlington. Any soldier of the US who dies may be buried there. Powerful is vengeance, yet the West is different to the East. When, in China, a dynasty fell, all the bureaucracy that supported it was burned. When Mohammed died, his entire family was eliminated to the last child by his followers. But in the US, a mourning, angry US allowed Lee and his family to live. On this day in 1926, Harper Lee was born, great grandchild to General Lee. She is 88 years old, and has been given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work To Kill a Mocking Bird, and for her mentoring, including Truman Capote with his work "In Cold Blood." Love has not raised from the dead those who perished in the Civil War, and yet love heals, tends to the wounded and grows to support those who survive. Love is the only answer to hate that addresses the wounds of survivors. 
Historical perspectives on this day 
In 357, emperor Constantius II entered Rome for the first time to celebrate his victory over Magnus Magnentius. 1192,  assassination of Conrad of Montferrat (Conrad I), King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his title to the throne was confirmed by election. The killing was carried out by Hashshashin. 1253, Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, propounded Nam Myoho Renge Kyo for the very first time and declared it to be the essence of Buddhism, in effect founding Nichiren Buddhism. 1503, the Battle of Cerignola was fought. It was noted as the first battle in history won by small arms fire using gunpowder. 1611, Establishment of the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines, the largest Catholic university in the world.

 In 1788, Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the Constitution of the United States. 1789, Mutiny on the Bounty: Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors were set adrift and the rebel crew returned to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island. 1792, France invaded the Austrian Netherlands (present day Belgium), beginning the French Revolutionary War. 1796, the Armistice of Cherasco was signed by Napoleon Bonaparte and Vittorio Amedeo III, the King of Sardinia, expanding French territory along the Mediterranean coast. 1869, Chinese and Irish labourers for the Central Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad laid 10 miles of track in one day, a feat which has never been matched. 1881, Billy the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico. 1887, a week after being arrested by the Prussian Secret Police, Alsatian police inspector Guillaume Schnaebelé was released on order of German Emperor William I, defusing a possible war.

 In 1910, frenchman Louis Paulhan won the 1910 London to Manchester air race, the first long-distance aeroplane race in England. 1920, Azerbaijan was added to the Soviet Union. 1930, the first night game in organised baseball history took place in Independence, Kansas. 1932, a vaccine for yellow fever was announced for use on humans. 1944, World War II: Nine German E-boats attacked US and UK units during Exercise Tiger, the rehearsal for the Normandy landings, killing 946. 1945, Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the Italian resistance movement. 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. 1948, Igor Stravinsky conducted the premier of his American ballet, Orpheus, in New York City at New York City Centre. 1949, former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon, 61, was assassinated while en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and ten others were also killed.

 In 1950, Bhumibol Adulyadej married Queen Sirikit after their quiet engagement in Lausanne, Switzerland on July 19, 1949. 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Also 1952, Occupied Japan: The United States occupation of Japan ended as the Treaty of San Francisco, ratified September 8, 1951, came into force. Also 1952, the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (Treaty of Taipei) was signed in Taipei, Taiwan between Japan and the Republic of China to officially end the Second Sino-Japanese War. 1965, United States occupation of the Dominican Republic: American troops landed in the Dominican Republic to "forestall establishment of a Communist dictatorship" and to evacuate U.S. Army troops. 1969, Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of France. 1970, Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon formally authorised American combat troops to fight communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. 1975, General Cao Văn Viên, chief of the South Vietnamese military, departed for the US as the North Vietnamese Army closed in on victory. 1977, the Red Army Faction trial ended, with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe found guilty of four counts of murder and more than 30 counts of attempted murder. Also 1977, the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure was signed. 1978, President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, was overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.

 In 1986, the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise became the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea. Also 1986, High levels of radiation resulting from the Chernobyl disaster were detected at a nuclear power plant in Sweden, leading Soviet authorities to publicly announce the accident. 1987, American engineer Ben Linder was killed in an ambush by U.S.-funded Contras in northern Nicaragua. In 1988, near Maui, Hawaii, flight attendant Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing was blown out of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a Boeing 737, and fell to her death when part of the plane's fuselage ripped open in mid-flight. 1994, former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst Aldrich Ames pled guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia. 1996, Whitewater controversy: President Bill Clinton gave a 4½ hour videotaped testimony for the defence. Also 1996, Port Arthur Massacre (Australia): Gunman Martin Bryant opened fire at the Broad Arrow Cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, Killing 35 people and wounding 23 others. 2001, Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist.
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This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
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Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August https://www.createspace.com/4124406, September https://www.createspace.com/5106914, October https://www.createspace.com/5106951, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4  The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows the purchase of a kindle version for just $3.99 more. 
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For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

Or the US President at
https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-change-this-injustice#
or
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/change-injustice-faced-david-daniel-ball-after-he-reported-bungled-pedophile-investigation-and/b8mxPWtJ or http://wh.gov/ilXYR
Douglas Sutherland-Bruce via David Daniel Ball
Mr Ball, I will not sign your petition as it will do no good, but I will share your message and ask as many of friends who read it, to share it also. Let us see if we cannot use the power of the internet to spread the word of these infamous killings. As a father and a former soldier, I cannot, could not, justify ignoring this appalling action by the perpetrators, whoever they may; I thank you Douglas. You are wrong about the petition. Signing it is as worthless and meaningless an act as voting. A stand up guy would know that. - ed

Lorraine Allen Hider I signed the petition ages ago David, with pleasure, nobody knows what it's like until they've been there. Keep heart David take care.

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.
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Happy birthday and many happy returns to all those born on this day, across the years, including 
Deaths
Nichiren Daishonin Hakii Portrait.jpg
You make the ineffable simple. You led the mutiny. You won the air race. You signed the treaty. You fled wisely. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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2015
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Floods bring heroes, not whingers

Miranda Devine – Sunday, April 26, 2015 (9:18am)

WHERE are all the whingers? How can there be a natural disaster and not a foot-stamping, entitled bludger in sight? No one holding out their hand for government compo, looking for someone to blame for their predicament, demanding that “they” fix things. Immediately!
Instead, after the floods that hit NSW last week, people have been helping themselves and taking care of their neighbours. 
Tales of good old Aussie stoicism, solidarity and rugged self reliance abound in the coal mining towns of the Hunter Valley. 
Typical was the woman in Maitland, standing with a broom in her wrecked house after the floodwaters had subsided, with her kitchen missing and furniture washed away: “It could have been worse”.
In Dungog, Tim Irwin, owner of the Reliance Motor Company, was cleaning up the wreckage at the tractor business his grandfather founded in 1947.
“All our tools are gone, all our manuals, “ he told the ABC. “It’s devastating.”
But as he walked around his workshop, Irwin’s voice grew stronger: “The town will rally. We’re pretty tough here. It’s just a matter of getting everything sorted… Everything’s wet, we’ve got no phone coverage and we’ve got no water. But three people lost their lives. We’re lucky we’re still alive and have got a business.”
Nearby, on Cessnock Road, the spirit of Anzac ruled, when four people dived into raging waters to save a stranger whose car had just been washed off a causeway.
A poignant photograph shows three men and a woman running full pelt towards the raging torrent where the silver hatchback was sinking.
Sadly, the driver, 86-year-old great-grandmother Anne Jarmain, drowned before she could be rescued. But it was a testament to the pluck of the people of the Hunter Valley that so many were ready to risk their lives to save hers.
Then there’s the unnamed hero in East Maitland who rescued flooded residents with his front-end loader. He drove his rig right through Maureen Darcy’s front fence and up to her veranda, where the old lady was frantically waving.
“He come and got me and carried me out and put me in the backhoe,” she said.
In the nearby township of Greta, floodwaters carried away Henry Krajewski’s home of 60 years and left him clinging to a tree until his neighbour Bob McPherson came to the rescue.
McPherson spotted Henry as he was bringing his boat around to save another neighbour, Kate Hart, and sons, Mathew, 9, and John, 8, who were stuck in their flooded house.
By that stage the water was up to Henry’s chest, McPherson told the ABC. “My neighbour said he’s got a big long rope and he’ll grab a couple of lifejackets”. With the help of local firefighters, Henry and the Harts were saved.
“We’re very lucky we had some great neighbours who had a boat,” said Hart. “They were amazing.”
That’s to be expected in Greta, a working class mining town, which is a model of community solidarity.
The average weekly household income is $1330, but Greta is the most generous town in NSW, listed by the Australian Taxation Office as having the highest proportion of residents donating to charity. 
It also regularly wins the tidy town award.
In Greta, looking after your mates is engraved in people’s DNA, so it is no surprise that they pulled together when disaster struck last week.
Compare their can-do attitude to the whingeing dependency we have come to expect in other natural disasters.
Around the country, in bushfire or flood, all we hear is angry abuse against the government for not fixing the damage in five minutes. 
Queensland’s Cyclone Larry a decade ago was the start of the rot. Innisfail residents even complained when overstretched State Emergency Service volunteers only handed out tarpaulins, instead of staying to spread them out.
“Effing do something now. That is my message for them. Get off their fat arses and do something,” was a typical complaint about government from Innisfail local Shiralee Hazel.
Sure enough, politicians hopped to it, with then-Prime Minister John Howard and Premier Peter Beattie competing to see how much taxpayer dosh they could lavish on the victims.
Howard delivered a $100 million “Cyclone Larry relief package” with $1000 cash to pay off every whinger.
That set the tone for disasters to come. The non-means tested Disaster Relief Payment was like winning the jackpot.
Yet when the Abbott government tried gingerly to rein in the ballooning costs and give $1000 only to people “severely affected” by a natural disaster, they were slammed as heartless.
This is the problem with a welfare state. When government always picks up the tab, there’s no incentive for communities to help themselves. Volunteer and mutual aid organisations are marginalised as people become used to government solving their problems, rather than working together to help their neighbours.
Somehow the Hunter Valley is admirably immune to this disease. Whatever makes its people so self reliant, we should bottle it. 
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BENJI THE CODEBREAKER

Tim Blair – Tuesday, April 28, 2015 (2:56pm)

Ben Hillier, editor of Socialist Alternative’s Redflag, takes issue with recent commentary: 
Amid the reporting of another alleged terrorist plot in Melbourne last week, the political right launched several volleys of innuendo, abuse, and slur …
The “respectable” and educated columnists are leading the way in this vile campaigning. Tim Blair’s piece … published in the Daily Telegraph on 20 April (fittingly: it’s Hitler’s birthday), can only be described as proto-fascist.
It is an allegory that embeds racist tropes in almost every sentence: allusion to Muslim or immigrant hordes, their stupidity and repulsiveness, their sponging off the rest of us, their gang violence and calculated aggression against an otherwise harmonious indigenous (if not pure) society etc. 
I couldn’t remember actually writing that column, but it turns out I did – in a code so secret and impenetrable that even I was unaware of it. Please read on to discover the column to which Ben refers. You won’t believe it.
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WHO IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT

Tim Blair – Tuesday, April 28, 2015 (2:02pm)

Woolworths made two grave errors with its recent Anzac-themed promotion. The first was using “Anzac” in a commercial capacity without permission. The second was using the word “fresh” in those promotions, which crassly tied the Anzac theme to Woolworths’ advertising slogan. Liberal senator Simon Birmingham’s criticism hit the right notes: 
“They are otherwise a good and generous company in many ways but they made a bad mistake yesterday,” he told Sky News on Wednesday. “The real reminder and message to all companies and anybody who seeks to profit out there is that ... when it comes to honouring the Anzacs they should be as selfless in their honour as those servicemen and women were.” 
Online response was less measured. Twitter leftists slammed the supermarket chain and called for those responsible to be sacked: 
Treating as a consumable product those who sacrificed life, limb, and mental health to protect Aus is just vile. 
Curiously, Fairfax’s tasteless Anzac trinket sales attracted no Twitter outrage. Mike Carlton, whose main value these days is as a windsock guide to leftoid online opinion, described the Woolworths promotion as “disgusting" and “rubbish” and gleefully anticipated further trouble: 
Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the Woolworths top management meeting as the blame flies this morning. 
There we have it; leftists boldly protecting the honour of Anzac Day. Good for them. But some may suspect that this had more to do with opportunistic corporate bashing than any latent Anzac loyalty. And some would be right. Just days after Woolworths’ was condemned over the word “fresh”, SBS reporter Scott McIntyre used far more vicious terms to  denounce Anzac Day and  smear Australian soldiers (and Australians in general). This time, online leftists lined up to defend him. Here’s Mike Carlton on last night’s 7.30: 
He’s entitled to those opinions and he should be free to express them whether his employers like them or not … Scott McIntyre is entitled to whatever beliefs he likes and he’s entitled to tweet those beliefs. The fact that he works for SBS doesn’t matter a damn. 
In summary: when a supermarket uses the line “fresh in our memory” in connection with Anzacs, that’s the worst thing ever and people should be fired. But when an SBS reporter describes Anzacs as rapists and thieves, that’s just free speech and everybody should be cool about it. If this seems at all inconsistent, please consult your leftist grievance poker rulebook for a full explanation.
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PERFECT FITZ

Tim Blair – Tuesday, April 28, 2015 (12:21pm)

Bandana nervosa. 
Mr Deal is entitled to a victory gift of either a FitzSimons book or a housebrick – whichever is lighter (and more readable).
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YOU’RE NEVER DISEMPOWERED WITH AN AK-47

Tim Blair – Tuesday, April 28, 2015 (11:23am)

That whole “Je suis Charlie” thing sure didn’t last long: 
Six prominent novelists have withdrawn from a New York literary gala to protest against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo being honoured with a freedom of expression award.
The New York Times named the writers pulling out of the May 5 annual PEN American Center gala as Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi.
Carey, a two-times Booker Prize winner, said the award stepped beyond the group’s traditional role of protecting freedom of expression against government oppression, the Times reported.
“A hideous crime was committed, but was it a freedom of speech issue for PEN America to be self-righteous about?” the newspaper quoted the Australian as saying in an email interview.
“All this is complicated by PEN’s seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation, which does not recognise its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.” 
I wonder what that “moral obligation” might be. Interesting, too, that Carey directly connects France’s general Islamic population with the Charlie Hebdo murderers.
UPDATE. In other luvvie news, a bunch of Australian actors, musicians and writers have called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to visit Indonesia in a bid to stop the executions of heroin smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. None of the actors, musicians and writers have gone there themselves, of course.
UPDATE II. Andrew Bolt: 
This is a video made by people who are largely ignorant of what has been done and can be, and who seem to think the best way to advertising their superior virtue is to vilify someone else.
And if they really wanted to do something for Chan and Sukumaran, filming a selfie really doesn’t cut it. 
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LATTE SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED

Tim Blair – Tuesday, April 28, 2015 (2:39am)

The best Sydney Morning Herald intro since last June’s frightbat response from Elizabeth Farrelly is provided by Angela Macdonald-Smith in earthquake-smashed Nepal: 
Relaxing over my late morning latte in Kathmandu after our strenuous trek around Mount Manaslu, it felt at first like vibrations from an extra heavy truck passing strangely close by. 
Perfect.
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JUST ROLLING WITH THE THEME

Tim Blair – Tuesday, April 28, 2015 (2:07am)

Shocked silence following my Belle Gibson confession on last Friday’s Viewpoint:

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AVIAN ASBESTOS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, April 28, 2015 (12:09am)

The latest and most advanced bird ever: 
A Cooper’s hawk discovered near a waste transfer station in greater Vancouver, Canada, is believed to be the most polluted wild bird ever discovered. In fact, it was so contaminated with flame retardant chemicals that it was “flameproof” ... 
This is a stunning evolutionary response to recent North American environmental challenges. While lesser species are turned to ash by massive solar plants, the flameproof hawk will fly serenely on. Soon it will be joined by the Kevlar eagle and the armour-bellied warbler, whose protective coatings make them immune to wind turbines.
At the other end of both evolutionary and temperature spectra, the UK Greens have now promised to “keep global temperatures below 2°”, thereby killing everybody on earth.
(Via A.R.M. Jones) 
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Costello: too few rich for Labor’s envy politics to work

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (4:06pm)

Peter Costello, Australia’s longest-serving Treasurer and arguably the best, says Labor’s tax-the-rich promises are a con. We actually have a spending problem and too few rich people to make up the difference:

THERE are a lot of people in Australia who don’t pay tax. Does that shock you? Well it shouldn’t because that’s the way our tax system is designed.
The 20 per cent of Australians on the lowest incomes pay no net income tax… The next 25 per cent of Australians pay hardly any income tax, on average, about $1500 a year or $30 a week. These two groups, representing 45 per cent of the population who file tax returns, pay under 4 per cent of the income tax in this country.
So who pays income tax? Middle and higher income earners carry the income tax system. Those earning above $80,000 pay two-thirds of the income tax collected in this country. The 2 per cent of Australians on incomes above $180,000 really make up the revenue by paying 26 per cent of the country’s income tax....
High income earners are not the problem…
Last week Labor announced proposals for a new tax on superannuation.,, The plan is to tax funds in the pension phase that earn more than $75,000… This time, ...  it says it can raise $9.2 billion … over 10 years…
Let us suppose it is possible to enact this proposal and that it raised that kind of money… It would boost annual tax revenue by a fraction of 1 per cent… The idea a tax like this could solve our budget problems is fanciful. It would not even amount to a rounding error in the budget…
The government is right. The Budget problem is a spending problem. Just as you raise money by taking small amounts from lots of people you save it by cutting back on small amounts for lots of people — a policy the government is trying to pursue by altering indexation and income thresholds that apply to the payment of benefits.
Budgeting is a numbers business. Unless you touch the bulk of the population, then it doesn’t touch the sides. 
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Miliband is mad, promising laws that could make a crime of even his own comments on Islam

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (4:02pm)

This is insane. Dangerous. A grave threat to the freedom to debate and critique Islam and immigration:
A future Labour Government is committed to outlaw the scourge of Islamophobia by changing the law and making it an aggravated crime, according to the Party’s Leader Ed Miliband.
“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,” Miliband told the Editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J Versi in a wide ranging exclusive interview.
Basic problem: how do you define “Islamophobia”? And in this very same report of this very same interview, The Muslim News exposes just how Miliband himself could be muzzled by his own crazy laws:
Throughout his interview, Miliband insisted that he took “extreme care” in what he said but it still did not stop him in using the generic term of “Islamist terrorism” and inferring the cause was religious rather than political when suggesting more than once it was based on “perverted ideology.”

And that very argument - so critical - would then become even too dangerous for a Miliband.
The man is mad.
UPDATE
Douglas Murray, author of Islamophilia, in the Spectator:
If Ed Miliband does become Prime Minister and chooses to make ‘Islamophobia’ illegal would he mind letting us know what he thinks ‘Islamophobia’ is? After all a ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear. The Charlie Hebdo staff were often called ‘Islamophobes’ before (and after) two Islamists went into their magazine’s office and shot most of them in the head. If there is such a thing as ‘Islamophobia’ and it is indeed an ‘irrational’ fear, would Ed mind telling us whether it was ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’ of the Charlie Hebdo staff to be fearful of elements of Islam? An answer before 7 May would be helpful.
Leo McKinstry denounces the hypocrite in the Express:


In January Miliband echoed the global outrage at the Charlie Hebdo massacre by Muslim terrorists in Paris, even joining other political leaders in the French capital’s official protest march. But his call for a British law against Islamophobia exposes the hollowness of his indignation.
Under his proposal, most of the Charlie Hebdo staff would have been in prison over their satirical cartoons.
Indeed Winston Churchill, Britain’s greatest statesman, would have ended up behind bars if Miliband’s law had been enacted during his life. In his 1899 book The River War, Churchill wrote that “no stronger retrograde force exists in the world” than the “militant and proselytising faith” of Islam…
So-called Islamophobia is not an irrational fear or prejudice but an understandable response to the horrors we see all around us perpetrated in the name of Allah, from the savage persecution of Christians in the Middle East to the beheading of Drummer Lee Rigby and the London bombings at home.
UPDATE
The great Rowan Dean on the “Islamophobia” con.
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Artists show hatred of Abbott, not care for Chan and Sukumaran. UPDATE: Cowell car-crash interview

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (11:26am)

Abbott haters in the entertainment business use the pending execution of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan to vilifiy the Prime Minister as lacking “balls” and being weak in fighting for the lives of the two drug smugglers.
If you want to see the face of a vicious sanctimony - of artists who feel that filming a little clip on their iPhone outweighs all the furious efforts Abbott has in fact made - then watch this. CAUTION: not recommended for those with weak stomachs:
The roll call, and note well their names:
Those who appear in the film include actors Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce, Bryan Brown, Deborah Mailman, Joel Edgerton and Brendan Cowell.
{Note: some of those artists - Rush, for instance - do not mention Abbott and cannot be criticising for politicising the issue.)
Others are people I’ve never seen before, but maybe this video will boost their profile.
Probably the most offensive contribution:
“Actor Brendan Cowell raised eyebrows in the video after urging Mr Abbott to show “some balls”.
“Tony, if you have any courage and compassion get over to Indonesia and bring these two boys home. Show some balls,” he demanded.
It’s a common and contemptible theme from participants who seem only too glad to make Abbott the scapegoat for executions neither he nor any other leader can stop:
Another participant says Mr Abbott should show some “ticker” and another asks: “Where are you Mr Abbott?”
Probably the most idiotic suggestion is this, from some woman I can’t recognise:
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Tony Abbott you need to give diplomatic immunity and protection to Andrew and Myuran before it’s too late.
All image, no substance. Let’s leave aside the humiliation and dangerous precedent of Abbott appointing two convicted heroin smugglers as Australian diplomats simply to confer on them diplomatic immunity from Indonesian justice.
Concentrate instead on the simple fact that Indonesia has the power under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to refuse to recognise Chan and Sukumaran and would without question turn down any such an idiotic request from Australia with deserved contempt:
The receiving State may at any time and without having to explain its decision, notify the sending State that the head of the mission or any member of the diplomatic staff of the mission is persona non grata or that any other member of the staff of the mission is not acceptable. In any such case, the sending State shall, as appropriate, either recall the person concerned or terminate his functions with the mission. A person may be declared non grata or not acceptable before arriving in the territory of the receiving State.
This is a video made by people who are largely ignorant of what has been done and what can be, and who seem to think the best way to advertising their superior virtue is to vilify someone else while puffing themselves..
And if they really wanted to do something for Chan and Sukumaran, filming a selfie really doesn’t cut it.
UPDATE
It really is all about seeming, not doing. Confronted by a journalist, Cowell reveals he doesn’t actually have a clue what Abbott could actually do:
But Cowell did not offer any ideas for what Mr Abbott could do to prevent the execution.
“I’m not a politician, I don’t know exactly what happens, I don’t pretend to, I didn’t study it, but all I’m saying is just get in there, just do as much as you can,” he said.

He has no clue, he admits, yet still feels qualified to denigrate Abbott for not doing what Cowell knows not what.
UPDATE
MUST LISTEN: Hear how inarticulate Cowell is - despite being a professional words man - when asked to justify his attack. Really, when you are that absolutely clueless what on earth makes you think you should go on radio to pontificate?
Car crash radio.
UPDATE
Reader Dougal:

So if this compassionista class of actors and other multi-millionaires are so concerned why haven’t they clubbed together and offered Indonesia a sum of money to stop the executions (discussed on ‘Paul Murray Live’ last night)?
Why is multi-millionaire Geoffrey Rush not offering a million to save their lives? Why Geoffrey? It’s only a million.
How about you Guy Pearce? How much are you paid to stand infront of a camera and read lines? You can’t spare any of your money? Why Guy, why?
Bryan Brown, you must have a nice tidy sum stashed away? Probably have a few properties too. How about you sell one for them, Bryan?
Joel Edgerton, you must be richer than the character you played in ‘The Great Gatsby’. Have you offered any money to stop their deaths? Why Joel, why?
(UPDATE: the original post was what follows below.)
Indonesia’s president is too weak to grant clemency to Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran even if he wanted to:
Joko Widodo, who took power just six months ago with stratospheric approval ratings, should have been feted when he appeared before his party’s national congress earlier this month.
Instead, he was humiliated. As he sat in the front row, his party’s chairperson, Megawati Soekarnoputri, harangued him from the lectern....
“It goes without saying that the president and vice president must toe the party line,” said Megawati, herself a former president and the daughter of Indonesia’s late founder, Soekarno.

“As the ‘extended hands’ of the party, you are its functionaries. If you do not want to be called party functionaries, just get out!”
Megawati’s speech won applause described by the Indonesian media as thunderous. And the president’s speech, which he had with him, ready to be delivered?
It was not heard. Jokowi, the nickname by which he’s universally known, was denied the opportunity to speak to his party congress. It was, in all, a brutal and calculated putdown…
Jokowi campaigned on ... the restoration of the death penalty, suspended by his predecessor. And Megawati is now pressing him hard on the issue. As part of his ritual humiliation at the party conference, she goaded him publicly on the issue:
“Megawati said to him at the party congress, ‘Why haven’t the executions been carried out already – you aren’t buckling to foreign pressure, are you?’” says Greg Fealy, a leading ANU scholar of Indonesia.
This is beyond terrible for Chan and Sukumaran. It is also a deep concern for Australia. How can the Abbott Government confide in and negotiate with a President so weak?
(Thanks to readers Peter, Tony and many others.) 
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Bishop: Islamism worse threat than communism

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (10:29am)

The Government still doesn’t dare to discuss the links between Islam and terrorism, but does acknowledge the danger to the multicultural state:

The Islamic State terror group and similar violent jihadist movements are an even greater threat to world order than communism was during the Cold War, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said…
Ms Bishop suggested the ideology of the Islamic State – also known as ISIL and Da’esh – was the worst the world had seen since the Nazis…
This borderless group was building “increasingly sophisticated transnational networks that would rival a multinational corporation” and used the most modern technology and weapons while also using social media and the internet with “all the dexterity and understanding of an enterprising entrepreneur”.
As such, it was a threat to the Westphalian system of nation-states, which was created nearly 400 years ago in Europe at the end of the Thirty Years’ War and established the principle that each country had sovereignty over its territory and affairs.
UPDATE
And, as with Communism, many artists are on the wrong side.
Peter Carey, like so many on the Left, seems incapable of seeing people as individuals rather than representatives of some tribe or ‘race”. So when men carrying AK-47s confront men and women carrying only pencils, he judges that the men with the guns are actually the “disempowered” on the grounds that they are Muslim. The people with the pencils might dispute that judgement, but, alas, they are dead. Empowered no longer.
Sir Salman Rushdie calls out the fool:
Sir Salman Rushdie has labelled a pair of novelist friends as cowards after they boycotted a freedom of speech award for the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The Booker Prize-winning author described Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje as “pussies” for pulling out of a gala event in the US.
The pair were among a group of six writers who questioned whether a publication that brazenly offended Muslims should be awarded the annual Freedom of Expression Courage award by PEN, an association that promotes free speech, on May 5 in New York.
Charlie Hebdo lost eight journalists in an attack by Islamic extremist gunmen on January 7. Rushdie, who went into hiding for more than a decade after being sentenced to death by Ayatollah Khomeini for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, said that writers should support free speech even if they disagreed with Charlie Hebdo’s content.
Writing on Twitter, he made a reference to Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author. “The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.”
Carey acknowledged that the murders were a “hideous crime” but queried PEN’s wish to champion Charlie Hebdo.
“Was it a freedom-of-speech issue for PEN America to be self-righteous about?” he asked when approached by The New York Times.
“All this is complicated by PEN’s seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation, which does not recognise its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.”

(Thanks to reader WaG311.) 
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Bjorn Lomborg vs the enemies of reason

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (9:32am)

Brendan O’Neill on the totalitarian side of the green movement, now trying to ban Bjorn Lomborg:

The massive stink over Bjorn Lomborg being given Australian government funding to set up a climate-change centre at the University of Western Australia (UWA) shows that the spirit of McCarthyism lives on. Only now, its targets aren’t Reds, but anti-greens: anyone who dares to criticise either the science — sorry, The Science — or the politics of climate change.
Lomborg is the Danish-born author of the bestselling book The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001). He’s the rattler of greens across the globe with his claims that climate change is not the biggest problem facing humanity, and to the extent that it is a problem we should develop our way out of it rather than cutting back on fossil-fuel use and forcing everyone to live ‘sustainable lives’, which is only fancy code for eco-friendly poverty… But even by the standards of denier-denouncing environmentalists, the fury over Lomborg heading Down Under has been intense — and revealing…
The Australia Guardian questions the fitness of Lomborg for university life. Green-leaning writers demand the Oz government ‘pull the plug’ on the Lomborg centre, outraged that it might argue that climate change should be ‘placed well down [the] list of global priorities’. At the UWA itself, academics and students held a meeting ... at which there was ‘riotous applause’ when staff called for UWA to ‘end [its] deal with the climate-change contrarian’.... The UWA Student Guild joined with their professors to demand that UWA refuse to ‘engage controversial climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg’, on the basis that having him on campus would ‘harm UWA’s world-class reputation’....
There’s also a palpable religious feel to the denunciations. That student-started petition calling for Lomborg to be kept off campus demands that this be done ‘In the name of science’. Once we had ‘In the name of the Lord’, now we have ‘In the name of science’. The terminology used to denounce those who question climate change, particularly ‘DENIER’, brings to mind dark, intolerant episodes from history when anyone who called into question the truth of the Bible or the authority of the Church was likewise hounded out of universities (think John Wycliffe, expelled from Oxford in 1382 for riling church elders)…
As the UWA Student Guild said, ‘While Dr Lomborg doesn’t refute climate change itself’, he does have a ‘controversial track record [as a] climate contrarian’. And we can’t have controversy on a campus, can we?
This scandal exposes the true intolerance of the eco-lobby, their real censorious urge — which is not merely to ringfence science from ridicule, which is bad enough, but to prevent the expression of contrarian ideas.
I’d add that these totalitarians are not in fact attacking Lomborg for criticising the science. They are criticising him for actually citing the science. Lomborg notes that the science tells us there has been a pause in the warming. Lomborg notes the science that reveals the warming pause isn’t what was predicted by warmists. Lomborg notes the science that shows many disasters once predicted - more cyclones, for instance - have not eventuated. Lomborg notes the science that shows the schemes to cut our emissions involve spending trillions of dollars to make virtually no noticable or meaningful difference to the temperature.
Lomborg respects the science. His critics do not. The anti-Lomborg lobby hates the science and hates those who question not the science but the warming faith. They are enemies of reason and of freedom. 
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The police may have been violent, but see what they confront

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (9:06am)

It may well be that police have behaved brutally in the case of Freddie Gray, arrested on weapons charges, or other African Americans. But of far greater moment - but deliberately camoflagued by the protessional outrage merchants - is the serious and widespread dysfunction and criminality of an African American underclass which police must deal with.
In Balitmore now these terrible scenes of protests ostensibily against police brutality, but in fact orgies of violence and looting.
We have already seen two police murdered in Brooklyn.  Now this, another sign of a growing race war:
Baltimore Police say they have received a “credible threat” that rival gangs have teamed up to “take out” law enforcement officers.
Police said in a statement that they have received information that members of “various gangs” — including the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips — have “entered into a partnership” to harm police…
In December, the Baltimore FBI office issued a memo that the Black Guerrilla Family gang was targeting “white cops” in Maryland, an agency spokeswoman confirmed.
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Slush fund scandal returns: Blewitt to be charged. Claims will subpoena Gillard

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (7:38am)

Hedley Thomas says the AWU slush fund story is not over, and not for Julia Gillard, either:
Former prime minister Julia Gillard is facing further scrutiny of her role in helping to set up a fraudulent union slush fund as Victorian police prepare to charge a key player in the saga.
A senior Victoria Police detective has told self-confessed AWU bagman and fraudster Ralph ­Blewitt that he will very soon be criminally charged over his role in the union slush fund set up with Ms Gillard’s legal advice.
Mr Blewitt said yesterday he intended to plead not guilty and would instruct his lawyers to subpoena witnesses, including Ms Gillard, to give evidence under oath.
Detective Sergeant Ross Mitchell of the Fraud Squad, who has been leading the two-year investigation, which provided key evidence to the ongoing royal commission into union graft, has told Mr Blewitt that at least two charges will be levelled in Victoria.
Mr Blewitt, who has admitted his involvement in fraud with his friend and former union boss Bruce Wilson, and their slush fund, the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Ass­ociation, yesterday said he understood others would be charged…
The royal commission’s head, former High Court judge Dyson Heydon ... recommended that Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt face prosecution for multiple fraud-related offences [and] criticised Ms Gillard’s determination to deny under oath that thousands of dollars — “wads of notes” — were handed to her by Mr Wilson during the renovation of her Melbourne home, as witnessed by a builder, Athol James. Another witness, Wayne Hem, was also found to be truthful about $5000 being deposited in her bank account.
Gillard denies any suggestion of wrongdoing.
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill, Jeff of FNQ, and others.) 
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Plibersek’s next step?

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (7:02am)

Acting Labor leader Tanya Plibersek:

Marriage ... for some people it is a religious sacrament but for many, many people it is as well as that, or indeed instead of that, it is a legal agreement ... When you’re talking about an issue like this ... it is important for the Labor Party to say we don’t agree with legal discrimination.
How about discrimination against polygamists wanting to get married?
UPDATE
Bill Shorten goes overseas, and no sooner does Tanya Plibersek take over as leader than the party is divided and distracted:

Acting Labor leader Tanya Plibersek’s push to make Labor MPs vote for same-sex marriage has sent shockwaves through the party, with at least one MP promising to cross the floor if they had to support the reform and others pledging to fight the binding vote proposal.
Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon, who voted against same-sex marriage when it came before Parliament in 2012, declared...: “I will stand and fight for the right of every member of the caucus to vote in the manner they see fit, whatever their position on the substantive issue.”

One MP, frustrated by what they saw as a distraction from issues like cost of living, said they would have to cross the floor if they were forced to support same-sex marriage. Fairfax Media was also told that Ms Plibersek’s announcement had created a “a lot of unhappy” MPs, with some having to face electorates that wanted to keep the traditional definition of marriage…
Labor leader Bill Shorten is travelling overseas for Anzac Day, but has previously said he supports same-sex marriage but not a binding vote.
Interesting timing from Plibersek. Abusing the power she’s just borrowed. 
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McIntyre sacking is just as the Twitterati would demand had he vilified anyone else but Anzacs

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (6:55am)

Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson nails the hypocrites of the Left who attack SBS for sacking a presenter who vilified Anzacs as rapists, war criminals, thieves and the worst terrorists:
Decrying McIntyre’s dismissal as a free speech violation and censorship is absurd. McIntyre was free to tweet his bile before he worked for SBS, while he worked for SBS and now that he no longer works for SBS.
His tweets did not break any law. He has not been censored. SBS simply decided it didn’t want to be associated with him. No one is guaranteed a job. Employers are not compelled to put up with behaviour that harms their public reputation…
The broader issue is not free speech but how an increasingly hysterical culture led by social media is resulting in people losing their jobs. McIntyre is not alone. Had he tweeted content interpreted as homophobic, racist or sexist, some would be calling on SBS to sack him, not tweeting “free speech”.
Perhaps McIntyre’s sacking will be a lesson that always calling for retribution against opinions you disagree with is a double-edged sword that can slay your enemies as well as your friends.
Credit to Media Watch host Paul Barry:
(T)here has been a huge debate about whether [McIntyre’s] sacking is an attack on free speech. Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think it is.
Free speech allows you to say what you like and not be jailed. It does not give you protection from trashing your own career. 

Note how ABC AM labels one side of the debate but not the Leftist other:
MICHAEL EDWARDS [Reporter]: ... On one side of [the] debate conservative commentators such as Chris Kenny from News Limited say Scott McIntyre only has himself to blame.
Some prominent journalists such as Hugh Riminton from Channel Ten found the tweets offensive but disagreed with SBS’s decision to sack him.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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When will Dan Andrews bring over The Book of Islam?

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (12:03am)

The Age editorialises in 2004 on the conviction of two Christian pastors for criticising Islam:
Judge Michael Higgins in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found that members of the Catch the Fire Ministries had broken the law by making fun of Muslim beliefs and customs in a way that was “hostile, demeaning and derogatory of all Muslim people, their god, Allah, the prophet Muhammad and in general Muslim religious beliefs and practices”. Judge Higgins was satisfied that in the course of a Catch the Fire Ministries seminar and in publications distributed by it, statements were made suggesting that the Koran promotes violence, killing and looting, that Muslims are liars, misogynists, and plan to overrun Western democracy by the use of violence and terror… This is a good decision, a signal to extremist religious and race hate groups that preying upon the fears and prejudices of a misguided minority will not be tolerated by the broader Australian community.
The Age editorialises in 2006 on cartoons of Muhammad:

The sacrilegious images were calculated to offend Muslims… The Age has not published these cartoons as a matter of editorial judgement, a position supported by this newspaper’s cartoonists. The Danish cartoons were neither insightful nor effective, just stereotypical smears. At the level of content, there was little justification to run them. Even given their curiosity value, such material carries a responsibility to consider whether the point of publication outweighs any likely offence.
Now The Age celebrates the calculated offence of another faith:
Like South Park, which began in 1997 and has screened on Australia’s SBS since, The Book of Mormon is calculated to offend… Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced the news via social media…
“I’m thrilled we’re bringing the most successful piece of theatre in the world today to Victoria,” he said via his Facebook page. 
Would the Andrews Government also try to get The Book of Islam performed here? Would The Age support such a show that was “calculated to offend”?

(Thanks to reader Lloyd.) 
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Labor sure owes the unions

Andrew Bolt April 28 2015 (12:00am)

Labor sure is in hock to the union movement:
The NSW Electrical Trades Union made an unconventional $500,000 loan to the NSW ALP two days before Christmas 2010 because the party was unable to pay staff holiday entitlements, an inquiry has heard.
In the first hearings of the year of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, the commission also heard NSW ETU assistant secretary Paul Sinclair had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in allegedly improper director’s fees.
Mr Sinclair, who is responsible for taking minutes at NSW ETU meetings, told the commission that at the time the NSW ETU lent the NSW ALP the $500,000 he had no idea the loan had been made.
The commission heard an allegation that all 11 of the other ETU members present at a December 20 2013 meeting remembered - or did not deny knowledge of the loan being discussed at that meeting.
Mr Sinclair said he had recorded the minutes of the meeting and the minutes did not record any discussion of the loan....
Mr Sinclair said the loan had been made in “haste” because the NSW ALP was facing financial problems. “(I was told) the reason that the ALP loan was made in such haste was because the NSW ALP did not have enough money to pay their staff wages and holiday pay over the Christmas and New Year period,” he said.
(Thanks to reader WaG311.) 
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How to break an egg... Lol
Posted by Willy Foo - Photographer, Marketer, Technopreneur on Sunday, 31 August 2014

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Posted by Word Porn on Monday, 27 April 2015

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Important lessons from today:1) Sheep are impossible to reason with.2) Sheep are rude.
Posted by Taylor Swift on Monday, 27 April 2015

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Pretty sure this was one of the original vehicles used from the show, Just west of Glen Rose
Posted by David Dedwylder on Monday, 27 April 2015

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=== Posts from last year ===

WORLD THREATENED, AGAIN

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (6:23am)

According to America’s Global Post, Tony Abbott is ruining Australia and threatening the whole world: 
From his rolling back of green initiatives and his disregard for climate change to his hardline stance against asylum-seekers and promotion of social conservatism, it sometimes feels like Abbott is taking Australia back into the dark ages … 
The Boston-based author is perhaps unaware of Australian history. It’s rather difficult to take Australia back into the dark ages considering we were never there in the first place.
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DONKEY DOLLARS

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (6:11am)

One of Julia Gillard’s final acts as Prime Minister was to give an extra $10 million to the ABC, a local community-based broadcasting outfit struggling to get by on a mere $1.2 billion every year.
That additional cash helped the ABC to fund an elite fact-checking unit ahead of last year’s election. Sadly, the ABC’s fact-checkers have since made little public impact. Their biggest success may have been crowding another truth-seeking bunch, the privately-funded PolitiFact Australia, out of the market.
But over the Anzac Day weekend the ABC’s fact-checkers finally hit their stride.

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Simpson, now with bonus donkeys. (Note: image is digitally altered)

Armed with reams of detailed research, several interviews with historians and ninja verification skills, the checkers revealed the shocking truth about celebrated Gallipoli stretcher-bearer John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey, which he used to rescue fallen Australian soldiers from the battlefield.
It’s probable, the ABC reported, that there was more than one donkey. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'DONKEY DOLLARS'
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BASHCAR

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (5:39am)

Post-race NASCAR conflicts generally feature lots of yelling and shoving, plus the occasional flung helmet. Actual punches are rare. Australian Marcos Ambrose ramped things up on Sunday in Virginia after being pushed around by Casey Mears:



Take a closer look here. Mears started it. Ambrose ended it. Impressively, NASCAR Vice President of CompetitionRobin Pemberton is taking things easy: 
It doesn’t seem to be much, but we’ll take our time Monday and Tuesday and look at it some more. 
At the same event, Nelson Piquet Jr. kicked rival Brian Scott, recalling a clash involving his father 32 years earlier:

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BIAS IS UNPROFESSIONAL

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (5:31am)

The SMH’s Julia Baird pines for a long-lost era of political impartiality: 
It’s time to recall the forgotten figure of the mugwump. The non-partisan observer of politics. Most journalists are mugwumps, though you might not know it from the way we are often described as ideological warriors salivating over opportunities to pursue foes. (A prospect as exhausting as it is fictional).
This does not mean they do not have private views – journalists do vote – but that journalism is a profession and bias is unprofessional. As ABC journalist Jonathan Green put it: “Journalism tainted by conviction just isn’t. That’s the simple truth of it.” 
Baird might have chosen a better mugwump example than Green, who only qualifies as one syllable of that noun. Green is, you’ll recall, Alene Composta’s mug, and he’s featured in several other taint-by-conviction incidentsbesides. Late last year this beacon of journalistic non-tainterhood described death-dealing asylum seeker smugglers as merely “small business people”. Good call, Julia.
(Via James In Footscray)
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HARRY FIRTH

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (4:43am)

Australian motorsport legend Harry Firth has died at 96. I remember reading – in the mid-1970s, long after Firth had quit racing to become a team manager – a magazine article mentioning that he still did some track testing. No helmet, from memory. And he ran close to lap records.

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HISTORY REPEATS

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (3:46am)

Bill Shorten recently met the Duke of Cambridge. It wasn’t the first time royalty had encountered a member of Shorten’s family, as the Labor leader revealed to a reception audience.
“A couple of years ago, some relatives of mine who run a small hotel on the Isle of Mull on the west coast of Scotland, sent me an old photograph of Prince William’s great-grandfather George VI, at the launch of a ship at Newcastle upon Tyne, circa 1931,” Shorten said.
“Just two guests, perhaps three guests to the right of the then Duke of York, stands a bowler-hatted gentleman, proudly watching on, my great-grandfather, a Tyneside dockside worker. It has only taken us 83 years for our families to catch up again, but it is a distinct pleasure.”
There is another historic echo here. The then-Duke of York later became King George VI, whose debilitating st-st-stammer was successfully treated by Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'HISTORY REPEATS'
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TWELVE YEARS WORK, NO PAY

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (3:30am)

Papua New Guinea’s National reports a slight teacher payment problem:

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That’s bad enough, but some teachers are doing even worse:

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Via Dave in PNG, who writes: “Don’t know if I would keep working without being paid for 12 years. Eleven, okay, everyone makes a mistake, but I doubt 12.” Still, those long-working but never-paid teachers give Dave encouragement: “This is one of the reasons I hold out hope PNG will eventually make it. People like this.”
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WAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (3:23am)

A “good-natured open leftist” seeks a shared apartment in Berlin: 
I’m searching for an apartment that is 100% shared by women who are active against terror, war, racial madness, fascism, chauvinism and US cultural imperialism. I am myself a vegan and think that long-term living together makes sense when absolutely no animal-based products find a place in my apartment …
In return for a room (20-30 sqm) I offer work in the household, repairs and discussions (also therapeutic). Money is the lever of the powerful with which I cannot identify with …
Moreover it would be super if there was already a washing machine. 
In the end, it’s always about the washing machine.
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FAST AND SLOW

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 27, 2014 (10:41pm)

Just look at all the planet-smashing, Gaia-crushing, CO2-making metal magic at the 2014 Iowahawk Earth Week Cruise-In. This year’s event features four-year-old hydrocarbon princess Ava:

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The earth doesn’t stand a chance. In other automotive news, friend Kae sends a note: 
Mum – 79 in July – has bought a Prius.
12 months old. Just 4k on the clock. Only $21k.
A. Prius.
Gah!
She reckons it will see her out. 
Kae’s mum has made a fine choice. A used Prius is the perfect vehicle for the not-so-young. For a start, they won’t be startled by anything unexpected, like acceleration. And all of the Prius’s controls are edgeless and mild; it’s the automotive equivalent of mashed vegetables.
Plus, check out that retiree-friendly depreciation! A new Prius runs to around $40,000. These things drop faster than soccer players.
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  • Palmer becomes even more of a menace

    Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (2:35pm)

    Clive Palmer’s wealth has already given him a huge advantage in building power. For him to also use it to sue critics into silence makes his brand of money politics even more sinister:
    FEDERAL MP Clive Palmer says… he will sue Campbell Newman after the premier alleged the mining magnate turned MP had tried to “buy” Queensland’s Liberal National Party government… 
    Mr Newman yesterday attacked Mr Palmer following his announcement that indigenous former Country Liberal members Alison Anderson, Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu and Larisa Lee would join the ranks of his Palmer United Party.
    “This is a guy who tried to buy a government, my government, and we said ‘go away, we’re not for sale’,” Mr Newman said.
    “As a result, he’s gone on a rampage around Australia, trying to buy other people and buy people’s votes. We’re seeing that in the NT today. I ask: what inducements were offered to these three MPs, what promises, what inducements were offered for them to jump ship?”
    Mr Palmer ... warned the claim of vote-buying was “highly defamatory” and “attacking my integrity"…
    “He will get his day in court,” Mr Palmer told AAP.
    There’ll be no settlement, no negotiations, the matter will go to trial,” Mr Palmer told ABC Radio.     “To make it clear we offered (the indigenous MPs) nothing … There’s been no inducements been offered to them at all....”
    No inducements offered, yet Anderson sounds strangely seduced: 

    Ms Anderson, a former minister in successive Labor and Country Liberal governments, said there was no written agreement with Palmer United and issued a statement last night strongly rejecting Mr Newman’s claims.
    “We were not offered any inducements to join...”     She said the trio had decided in the past week that it was “impractical” to set up their own party and that they had joined the PUP for “financial support,” security and a party platform.
    Is “financial support” not an inducement, then? 
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Now it’s the NSW Liberals’ turn to disgust us

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (2:10pm)

Sounds like it’s not just a Labor disease but a NSW one:
MORE than $400,000 in hidden donations was funnelled through a Liberal party slush fund run by former minister Chris Hartcher — including from a developer who hosted Mr Hartcher and now energy minister Anthony Roberts on a luxury yacht in Hamilton Island, the ICAC heard today… 
The first day of the Operation Spicer inquiry at the Independent Commission Against Corruption has begun with sensational allegations levelled against Mr Hartcher and fellow right wing central coast MPs Darren Webber and Chris Spence, that they have been involved in “the systematic subversion of the electoral funding laws of NSW” through sham company Eight by Five…
The slush fund had three principal donors — Australian Water Holdings, ... major Newcastle developer Buildev, and Gazcorp — which was the subject of a previous ICAC inquiry about its shopping centre at Orange Grove…
The inquiry has heard Mr Hartcher and Energy minister Anthony Roberts, the current leader of the hard right faction, were guests on a luxury yacht called “Octavia” in Hamilton Island in 2007, which was owned by the Gazal family, the owners of Gazcorp when the pair were in opposition.
[Counsel Assisting the inquiry Geoffrey Watson SC] said the “proper inference” drawn from the payments from Gazcorp to slush fund Eight by Five is that Mr Hartcher agreed “to assist the Gazal family and assist Gazcorp in relation to Orange Grove”. “Gazcorp got its desired outcome,” he said.
I’ll say:

Gazcorp, the proponent of the controversial Orange Grove shopping centre development in Liverpool, paid $137,000 to the fund, while the Obeid-linked infrastructure company Australian Water Holdings paid $183,000. 
Orange Grove was given the green light after the Liberal Party won the state election.
Even more important in this fetid climate that Tony Abbott - himself a cleanskin - keep his promises. There is right now a huge integrity deficit in politics that needs repairing.
UPDATE
First casualty:
NSW Premier Mike Baird has asked Liberal MP Marie Ficarra to step aside as parliamentary secretary… 
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Geoffrey Watson, SC, said ... Ms Ficarra, the former parliamentary secretary to then premier Barry O’Farrell, was part of the [slush fund] scheme and had solicited a $5000 donation from property developer Tony Merhi just days before the March 2011 state election. The inquiry heard her explanations about the donation were not credible. 
Shameless:
And billionaire Harry Triguboff, who as a property developer was prohibited from making donations, used a Liberal party foundation to make donations to the NSW Liberals… The Free Enterprise Foundation had been used as a way of laundering a substantial part of $700,000 of donations from developers to the Liberal Party. 
Liberal fundraiser Paul Nicolaou admitted that he solicited and washed donations from developers through the foundation.
Mr Watson said that a company called Eightbyfive, operated by former Hartcher staffer Tim Koelma was used a vehicle to launder donations from property developers in contravention of electoral funding laws.
Nathan Tinkler’s Buildev group made $66,000 worth of payments to Eightbyfive when it wanted to develop a coal loader in Newcastle. It received some favours from Mr Hartcher, but did not get its coal loader approved, ICAC heard.
The Gazals’ company Gazcorp paid $137,00 for fake services from Eightbyfive.
The money was used to fund Tim Koelma as an additional staff member of Mr Hartcher’s staff, as well as pay Chris Spence and Darren Webber so they could give up their jobs and work full time on their election campaigns.
Mr Koelma was paid $265,000, Chris Spence $105,000 and Darren Webber $50,000.
And Mr Koelma used his brother to make a maliciously false allegation against the head of Sydney Water, Dr Kerry Schott, in an attempt to ruin her career and further the interests of Australian Water Holdings, which wanted a deal with the NSW government. Mr Nicolaou also tried to get Sydney radio personality Alan Jones to make allegations against Sydney Water.
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Some racists are too mighty to defy. UPDATE: Wrong

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (8:46am)

This is the LA Clippers NBA team:
image
This is the owner of the LA Clippers, Donald Sterling, telling girlfriend V. Stiviano, who is part black and part Mexican, to stop bringing African-American friends to Clippers games and posting Instagram pictures of them:
 
- “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?” (3:30) 
-- “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want.  The little I ask you is not to promote it on that ... and not to bring them to my games.” (5:15)
-- “I’m just saying, in your lousy f******* Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with, walking with black people.” (7:45) -- “...Don’t put him [Magic] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me.  And don’t bring him to my games.” (9:13)
Astonishing. Why is this girlfriend even with him?
Oops. Silly question.
UPDATE
Too powerful to punish?
The ...  Los Angeles Clippers ...  are in the midst of a competitive first-round playoff series against the Golden State Warriors. Despite some calls to boycott the playoffs, coach Doc River said he is against it and called the Sterling audio recording a ‘distraction.’… 
Reports also have it that everyone on the Clippers roster were pissed with the comments of their owner, even the team’s lone white guy JJ Reddick.

Center DeAndre Jordan, who has stepped up his game in the playoffs, posted a square black image on his Instagram account with no comments whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Clippers superstar Chris Paul declined to comment about Sterling’s words. But he issued a statement on behalf of the National Basketball Players Association, where he serves as president. Per LA Times:
“On behalf of the National Players Association, this is a very serious issue which we will address aggressively. We have asked [Sacramento] Mayor Kevin Johnson to extend his responsibilities with the NBPA to determine our response and our next steps.” He added: “As players, we owe it to our teams and our fans to keep our focus on our game, the playoffs and the drive to the Finals.”
UPDATE
But this should help Sterling survive, because, as you know, only conservatives can officially be racist:
According to records obtained by the independent data research tool Littlesis.org – maintained by the Public Accountability Initiative – the owner of the LA Clippers embroiled in controversy has only donated to Democratic candidates. 
Between 1990 and 1992 Donald Sterling made a $2,000 donations to the former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, a $1000 donation to current Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, as well as a $1000 donation to the recalled former governor of California Gray Davis. Despite having a 100% track record of donating to Democrats, Littlesis.org has no records of him donating to either of President Barack Obama’s election campaigns.
UPDATE
Much better news:
Los Angeles Clippers players have staged a silent protest and worn black apparel during an NBA playoff game in the wake of racist remarks attributed to team owner Donald Sterling… 
Players gathered at centre court in Oakland before a pre-game warm-up, removed their team warm-up shirts and left them on the floor, working out wearing shirts that were inside out and did not display the Clippers name or logo. In what was the fourth game in their best-of-seven series with Golden State, the Clippers wore black socks, shirts, wristbands or armbands. 
UPDATE
President Barack Obama says Donald Sterling has a right to make bigoted statements, even though Obama rightly denounces them as “incredibly offensive”
When people — when ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk. And that’s what happened here.
The issue will be far better resolved through discussion than legal action - and would probably happen here are under offensive Racial Discrimination Act. It is healthier to see Sterling being condemned by his community than silenced by a judge.
(Thanks to reader Alan R.M. Jones.) 
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ABC’s shock finding:  Simpson switched donkeys

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (8:12am)

Tim Blair on the ABC’s fact-checking unit, created with some of a special $10 million handout from the dying Gillard Government:
Their biggest success may have been crowding another truth-seeking bunch, the privately-funded PolitiFact Australia, out of the market. 
But over the Anzac Day weekend the ABC’s fact-checkers finally hit their stride.
Armed with reams of detailed research, several interviews with historians and ninja verification skills, the checkers revealed the shocking truth about celebrated Gallipoli stretcher-bearer John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey, which he used to rescue fallen Australian soldiers from the battlefield. It’s probable, the ABC reported, that there was more than one donkey. 
Gosh. Who knew?:
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Palmer United: Not a party but a feeding trough

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (7:24am)

This is not a political party but a lender of last resort, charging only a loyalty fee: 
RENEGADE indigenous politician Alison Anderson joined Clive Palmer’s party after one meeting and a brief look at his policies, in the hope of using a share of his millions of dollars to win the balance of power in the Northern Territory parliament. 
Ms Anderson is now expected to become leader of a new PUP parliamentary wing in the Territory, encompassing herself and her two indigenous backbench colleagues, Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu and Larisa Lee… She said the trio had decided in the past week that it was “impractical” to set up their own party and that they had joined the PUP for “financial support,” security and a party platform… She acknowledged that they had flirted with joining the Katter Party first, but later settled on the “more powerful” PUP.
And in return Clive Palmer will suddenly discover the Aboriginal cause, as defined by Anderson, just as he suddenly discovered the orphan cause, as defined by Jacqui Lambie.
UPDATE
Palmer’s very late and opportunistic conversion to Aboriginal issues have left him no time for study:
Palmer wades into Northern Territory politics and displays his local knowledge on ABC TV’s Insiders yesterday: 
ALISON Anderson will be the first parliamentary leader of the — of any parliamentary party as an indigenous person ...
Host Fran Kelly interrupts: 
EXCEPT for Adam Giles, who is the Chief Minister there in the Northern Territory.
Palmer has something to say about Giles: 
ADAM Giles is just a liar.
Palmer represents something dangerous in politics. Voters might see this better if Labor hadn’t already trashed the brand so completely.
UPDATE
Exactly what does Anderson stand for other than herself?
...she contested the central desert seat of MacDonnell for the Labor Party in the 2005 Northern Territory election, and won it with a strong majority. She was appointed a Minister in the Labor government… 
In the wake of the ensuing political crisis she sat as an independent for two years before joining the opposition Country Liberal Party.
And now she’s a Palmer United Party leader in her fourth political incarnation.
UPDATE
I thought it a mistake at the time, but the Liberals at least dodged a bullet in 2012:
TONY Abbott has failed in a radical bid to get high-profile Aboriginal politician Alison Anderson into federal parliament. 
An excess of enthusiasm from Abbott back then:

There is the marvellous and charismatic and inspirational Alison Anderson who is quite simply one of the most striking human beings it has ever been my pleasure and privilege to meet. 
===

The Prince’s tour of conquest

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (7:17am)

Culture wars, Political things

 
PRINCE William smashed it out of the park. Or maybe it was his ever-smiling wife or their baby, George, the republic-slayer. Not since William’s grandmother first came here 60 years ago has a royal tour been such a success.
Sure, Charles and Diana scored big headlines in 1983, but their crowds seemed more dazzled than charmed.
This tour was warmer — and more politically decisive, which has prominent republicans weeping.
“A triumph,” admitted novelist Thomas Keneally.
“I have thrown in the towel,” sighed former Labor minister Graham Richardson.
But some republicans are crying foul. “It is a classic case of emotion defeating logic,” complained academic Nicholas Reece, former senior adviser to prime minister Julia Gillard.
“Forget the compelling rationale for change, a new generation of voters love the glamour and image of the young royals and could not give a hoot about the republic.”
But what did logic ever have to do with royalty?
(Read full story here.) 
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Anzacs shouldn’t be so insulted at a Dawn Service

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (7:12am)

Culture wars

 MANY insults are flung at Anzac Day but none was so savagely timed as Peter Underwood’s last Friday.
And none has been such a betrayal. Underwood should resign as Governor of Tasmania for his Dawn Service speech.
First, some background.
This Anzac Day was of the kind that most seems to appal the likes of Underwood.
It was one of those Anzac Days that millions of Australians rescued from the contempt of the elites with their reverence, grief and gratitude.
There were record crowds again this year. Melbourne had four times more people at its Dawn Service than 16 years ago.
These are crowds the alienated Left cannot stand.
ABC presenter Jonathan Green, for instance, marked Anzac Day by protesting it showed “our collective quest for a military history that we can drape around us”.
Such sneering is not new. How can second-rate intellectuals feel superior unless they hate what the “mob” loves?
How can the cheaply refined men of letters show their class than by despising the soldier?
But different now is that such sneerers have wormed into positions of authority over a tradition we expected them to guard.
Academic Peter Stanley was a senior historian at the Australian War Memorial yet mocks our “Anzackery” and claims that to commemorate the Anzacs is “peculiar at best and grotesque at worst” given more people have died in car accidents or suicides.
Dr Lindy Edwards, another academic teaching our soldiers, even claims they are part of “a long tradition of firing up fighting men by invoking their shared ability to sexually degrade women”.
These critics of Anzac Day, at least, don’t have the authority to deliver their attacks from a Cenotaph during the very celebration they seek to undermine.
But Underwood did.
(Read full story here.) 
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Weak growth tipped. So which idiots blew the surplus?

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (6:56am)

Proof of the utter stupidity of Labor blowing the budget during a mining boom:
TREASURY is expecting the most sustained period of weak growth in Australia for at least 50 years, with the economy forecast still to be feeling the pain of falling commodity prices and weak income growth in 2020. 
Treasury’s outlook is considerably more pessimistic than those of private forecasters, who suggest the economy could be $70 billion bigger than Treasury expects within three years.
I worry about a deficit levy - actually a tax increase. Is this just politics? Surely the best way to cut the deficit is to cut spending, not raise taxes - which have already gone up effectively through several years of bracket creep. Is a deficit levy just a quick “hit the rich” exercise, easier to sell than a hundred cuts to programs - starting with, say, the Human Rights Commission?
The government is considering imposing a “deficit levy” similar to the Gillard government’s flood levy, according to a report in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday… 
Deloitte Access Economics partner Chris Richardson said yesterday that a levy of 0.5 percentage points on the top three tax brackets would raise about $2bn a year… Mr Richardson said that $2bn raised by the levy could add to $6bn in spending cuts, improving the budget position by $8bn in the coming year. This would still leave a large deficit for 2014-15 in excess of $20bn.
UPDATE
My suspicion grows:
Chris Richardson… [said:] “The smoke signals coming out of Canberra’s Expenditure Review Committee are indicating that the government is finding it hard to achieve the sorts of cuts that budget repair requires… [And] that means that a feared negative to the economic outlook – savage cuts from Canberra – is unlikely to occur.”
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and whatthe.) 
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The real disability was in Labor’s management skills

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (6:52am)

Typical Labor bungling and waste: 

A SECRET report handed to the former Labor government before the National Disability Insurance Scheme was launched in 2013 warned the sector was drastically underprepared for the massive rollout task.
The report, written for the Gillard government in 2012 by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers, and obtained by News Corp, sounded the alarm, warning organisations were “not currently prepared for the significant changes that will be required in transitioning to an NDIS"… (T)he PwC report reveals the former government was cautioned as early as November 2012 that the sector faced serious challenges and was not yet equipped to adjust to an NDIS model.
The NDIS looks like the NBN of the welfare sector.
UPDATE
Yet another: 
THE federal bureaucracy is ­incapable of managing complex programs such as the National Rental Affordability Scheme, ­according to Labor senator Mark Bishop, who has criticised the Rudd government’s implement­ation of the scheme… 
Responding to revelations in The Australian that the rental scheme rollout had been a fiasco in his home state of Western Australia, Senator Bishop said the necessary leg work had not been done when Kevin Rudd took the scheme to cabinet in 2008.
The Australian revealed last week that two firms in Western Australia that received more than half of that state’s subsidies — Questus and Yaran — had built a fraction of the 3000 homes promised.
The West Australian fiasco comes after revelations that the scheme had been exploited by developers and universities to build student accommodation…
The $4.5bn NRAS scheme was introduced in 2008, but its viability was damaged from the start because the Australian Taxation Office took more than two years to rule on the tax status of investments discouraging large-scale private-sector investment, Senator Bishop said.
“When Rudd took it to cabinet a lot of the work hadn’t been done,’’ he said… The problems in Western Australia centre on Yaran Property Group, which secured more than 1100 incentives in the third round of the program but has built just 82 houses with them, according to the latest federal figures.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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We must reform the Senate, but will the Senate allow it?

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (6:28am)

The trouble is that the micro-parties now have crucial votes in the Senate and could cripple a government which tried to reform the electoral laws:
THE major political parties are poised to engineer the biggest electoral reforms since the 1980s, including moves to limit preference distribution from micro-­parties… 
Upper house elections in NSW, Tasmania and in the ­Senate have been the target of ­orchestrated gaming of preferences among tiny parties formed for the sole intention of harvesting preferences from each other and sneaking into parliament.
The Liberal and Labor parties are putting formal submissions to the joint standing committee on electoral matters today, in which they are expected to argue for a percentage of a minimum quota for a Senate seat to be set that parties must reach before preferences are distributed to other parties.
In NSW Legislative Council and Senate elections minor parties and so-called micro-parties have gamed the system by ­creating dozens of parties and then swapping preferences to be elected with a tiny first-preference vote. The major parties have been considering seeking a minimum percentage of 1.4 per cent in first-preference votes before any preferences could be distributed. They have also been seeking limits on how tiny parties are formed, with the view that any person can only be the registered officer of one party at a time to prevent a proliferation of small parties using the same personnel.
These changes are critical. Voters now have little control in choosing who ends up winning the critical last seats in the Senate and have accidentally elected a couple of Senators at the last election who are clearly not up to the job.
(Thanks to reader whatthe?) 
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Two IPCC insiders tell: key document corrupted by politics

Andrew Bolt April 28 2014 (6:24am)

Two insiders last week confirmed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been corrupted. “Consensus” was never how science was done, and now know it’s just politics.

Dr. Robert Stavins, an IPCC Co-Coordinating Lead Author: 
Over the past 5 years, I have dedicated an immense amount of time and effort to serving as the Co-Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) of Chapter 13, “International Cooperation:  Agreements and Instruments,” ..... of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)… It has been an intense and exceptionally time-consuming process, which recently culminated in a grueling week spent in Berlin, Germany, April 5-13, 2014, at the government approval sessions, in which some 195 country delegations discussed, revised, and ultimately approved (line-by-line) the “Summary for Policymakers” (SPM), which condenses more than 2,000 pages of text from 15 chapters into an SPM document of 33 pages.  Several of the CLAs present with me in Berlin commented that given the nature and outcome of the week, the resulting document should probably be called the Summary by Policymakers, rather than the Summary for Policymakers… 
Over the course of the two hours of the contact group deliberations, it became clear that the only way the assembled government representatives would approve text for SPM.5.2 was essentially to remove all “controversial” text (that is, text that was uncomfortable for any one individual government), which meant deleting almost 75% of the text, including nearly all explications and examples under the bolded headings. In more than one instance, specific examples or sentences were removed at the will of only one or two countries, because under IPCC rules, the dissent of one country is sufficient to grind the entire approval process to a halt unless and until that country can be appeased.
Professor Richard Tol, a convening lead author of the IPCC for which he’s worked for 20 years:
In the earlier drafts of the SPM, there was a key message that was new, snappy and relevant: Many of the more worrying impacts of climate change really are symptoms of mismanagement and underdevelopment. 
This message does not support the political agenda for greenhouse gas emission reduction. Later drafts put more and more emphasis on the reasons for concern about climate change…
I reckoned that putting my name on such a document would not be credible – my opinions are well-known – and I withdrew.
The SPM, drafted by the scholars of the IPCC, is rewritten by delegates of the governments of the world, in this case in a week-long session in Yokohama. Some of these delegates are scholars, others are not. The Irish delegate, for instance, thinks that unmitigated climate change would put us on a highway to hell, referring, I believe, to an AC/DC song rather than a learned paper.
Other delegations have a political agenda too. The international climate negotiations of 2013 in Warsaw concluded that poor countries might be entitled to compensation for the impacts of climate change… This led to an undignified bidding war among delegations – my country is more vulnerable than yours – that descended into farce when landlocked countries vigorously protested that they too would suffer from sea level rise.
Many countries send a single person delegation. Some countries can afford to send many delegates. They work in shifts, exhausting the other delegations with endless discussions about trivia, so that all important decisions are made in the final night with only a few delegations left standing. The IPCC authors, who technically have the right to veto text that contradicts their chapter, suffer from tiredness too.
This shows. The SPM omits that better cultivars and improved irrigation increase crop yields. It shows the impact of sea level rise on the most vulnerable country, but does not mention the average. It emphasize the impacts of increased heat stress but downplays reduced cold stress. It warns about poverty traps, violent conflict and mass migration without much support in the literature. The media, of course, exaggerated further… The IPCC does not guard itself against selection bias and group think. Academics who worry about climate change are more likely to publish about it, and more likely to get into the IPCC. Groups of like-minded people reinforce their beliefs. The environment agencies that comment on the draft IPCC report will not argue that their department is obsolete. The IPCC should therefore be taken out of the hands of the climate bureaucracy and transferred to the academic authorities.
(Via Watts Up With That, which has more. Thanks to reader fulchrum.) 
===

INFORMED AND CIVIL

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (3:02pm)

So this is how Q & A works. If you call Prime Minister Julia Gillard a “witch”, you’ll be the subject of anguished discussion: 
Bill Shorten: I saw those signs of “Ditch the witch”. You just have to go to some of the disgusting far right, blogosphere websites to see the sort of crazy, rancid attacks ... 
But if you call Prime Minister Tony Abbott a “lying, sexist c-nt” whose “hatred of women is palpable”, Q & A will book you for the show, fly you to Sydney and put you up in a hotel – all at taxpayers’ expense.

image

It’s a funny old world. Seeking some clarification on Q & A‘s booking procedures, last week I sent a few questions to Peter McEvoy, the show’s executive producer. His unedited reply: 
Q & A aims to provide a platform for as wide a variety of views as possible. The point of the program is to generate an informed and civil discussion where ideas can be examined, weighed and debated. By necessity this means some guests will have views others might object to.
Other discussion based programs take a similar approach, including on Sky where Van Badham has been a guest previously just as you have been a guest on Q & A.
Next Monday’s panel includes a diverse range of viewpoints including Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Shadow Human Services Minister Doug Cameron, conservative British editor and broadcaster Andrew Neil and The Daily Telegraph’s opinion editor Sarrah Le Marquand, alongside Van Badham who describes herself as an anarchist.
As executive producer I would expect Van Badham will be challenged and tested on her views by other panellists and by our audience members as well as being scrutinised by host Tony Jones.
And as Q & A requires all panellists to be in one location, we will fly Van Badham to Sydney and accommodate her in an inexpensive hotel. 
I’ll take that as a comment. In the great tradition of ABC PR stuff-ups, however, McEvoy’s reply also featured an attached note from Q & A host Tony Jones, obviously intended for eyes other than mine: 
Why do we have to say “inexpensive” hotel. It sounds a bit like we have designated cheap accommodation for her. What about “the same nearby hotel that all our panelists stay in” or some such.
You don’t want to upset the talent. Who knows what dear little Van might say.
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PROPERTY ISN’T THEFT AFTER ALL

Tim Blair – Monday, April 28, 2014 (2:54pm)

A commie copyright battle in the UK: Marxist publisher sues over property rights.
(Via Jeb)
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38th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FALL OF SAIGON

Great honour to be given the privilege to give an address at the Vietnam War Memorial in Canberra today to mark the 38th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon with my good friend Liberal Senator for the ACT Gary Humphries.

Following is a transcript of my speech. 

• Today we gather on the 38th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, to honour the more than 500 Australians and 250,000 South Vietnamese servicemen and women that sacrificed their lives for the principles of freedom and democracy in the Vietnam War.

• We also honour the many thousands more that were wounded or were victims of illness.

• And we further honor the families and the relatives of the many South Vietnamese, that following the fall of Saigon were deprived of access to the basic necessities of food, clothing, & shelter, and who found communist persecution so unbearable, that they took to the high seas in anything that floated.

• Now like all wars, the Vietnam War, was a war in which tragic mistakes were made – but we were fighting for a just and honourable cause.

• Therefore, it is to our nation's eternal shame, that confused by ‘protest rhetoric’, that we failed to give those who fought and served in Vietnam the due and proper recognition that they rightfully deserved when they returned home.

• And it is now with the hindsight of time, that it is now evident that those who served in Vietnam did in fact achieve the long-term strategic objectives that our nation set out to accomplish – to halt the spread of communism.

• And that success demonstrates that those Australians and Vietnamese did not fight or die in vain, and that our veterans of Vietnam War are deserving of honor and gratitude, and that the ideals of freedom and democracy were, and are, worth fighting for.

A battle within the Cold War

• For although Vietnam was a war with it all its horror, its bloodshed and its death - it was a battle in within the broader Cold War.

• A war that was fought to ultimately determine the question of; whether humanity’s best hope for peace and prosperity, lies with the authoritarian rule of a centrally planned communist state – or - ……… whether humanity’s best hopes lie with a free market democracy, with freedom on the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of movement.

A dangerous time

• So, it must never be forgotten, that when Australia first became involved in Vietnam, the world was in the midst of the Cold War, when the ideological confrontation with communism was at its height.

• It was a time when Eastern Europe was one great concentration camp - its people captives behind a concrete wall, topped with barbed wire and guards armed with machine guns.

• It was a time when the communists had taken control of the world's most populous nation—China.

• It was a time when Soviet Union imperialism was on the march, with the intent of dominating the world by using subversion or military power to convert countries to communism …….when Khrushchev had warmed the west; “We will bury you" The domino theory was real.

• These were dark days, days when the very future of; freedom, liberty and democracy were under the gravest of threats.

Strategy of Containment

• So Australia’s support for South Vietnam and our American allies was part of a grand strategy of containment - the goal of which was to hault or slow the spread of communism.

• And let us never forget, and we must be forever grateful - that this grand strategy was ultimately successful.

• And let us never forget that the success of containing the spread of communism, and winning the Cold War was not achieved through policies of appeasement.

• It was achieved by what became known as the ‘Kennedy Doctrine’: a promise to pay any price, to bear any burden, to support any friend, to oppose any foe - to assure the survival and success of liberty.

A holding action for democracy

• So the 10 years of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, when we fought alongside our American and South Vietnamese allies, was a ‘holding action’ fought for the survival of freedom and democracy in the war against the spread of communism.

• And during these 10 years, we played an important role in halting the communist advance, a time which allowed the Western democracies and other ASEAN nations to grow strong enough to outlast the enemy.

• For it was also during this 10-year period that the growing contrast in the standard of living between West German & East Germany - and North & South Korea became undeniable.

• The policy of containment gave Communism time to fail, fail because countries which followed an ideology of a centrally controlled economy, with inefficient planned manufacturing and collectivized agriculture, run by party bureaucrats concerned with protecting their own power and privileges - saw their economies stagnate.

• And Communism failed - because the individual freedom in Western democracies encouraged entrepreneurial activity – the driver of; innovation, experimentation, and fresh innovation - a system which produced the new medicines, the modern cars, the personal computers and new business models that created a growing prosperity – simply did not occur in centrally planned economies.

• It was that 10 years of containment of communist expansion during the Vietnam war that allowed time for the west to ultimately triumph in the global battle of ideas – the idea that mankind’s best chance for peace and prosperity lie in a free market democracy, with freedom on the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of movement is today globally accepted.

• So there was a 'domino effect' following the Vietnam war, but not the one that we rightly worried about in the early 1960s. The domino effect that occurred after the Vietnam War was when countries saw how their neighbors that had rejected communist ideologies and instead followed the principles of free and open markets prospered and grew strong — and those countries followed.

Today’s Vietnam

• So today we can celebrated that communist economic ideology has been rejected throughout South-East Asia and also the majority of the world. And we see the Vietnamese economy, having significantly departed from the old Stalinist-Maoist model, now prospering from free-market incentives through the encouragement of private businesses and foreign investment, which has lifted millions of Vietnamese out of poverty.

• For that we have our troops' service in Vietnam to thank for being a crucial part of an honorable and ultimately successful struggle for freedom and prosperity.

Jobs not yet finished

• However ‘free markets’ are only one half of the ideals of a true democratic society; ……. a free peoples, with free political expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press -are the other half – and over time, you can’t have one without the other.

• And although the Vietnamese leadership, out of necessity, has abandoned its Marxist-Leninist ideal of command and control economic collectivism. It still today continues to cling to political control - restricting freedom and democracy.

• And there can be no doubt that the principles of freedom have been grossly violated by the current Vietnamese communist regime.

• So the same vigilance & pressure that dragged Vietnam onto the path toward a market economy, now needs to be applied to weaken its grip on totalitarian authority.

• And I have no doubt, that one day soon, freedom and liberty will finally win, and the people of Vietnam will finally enjoy full freedom and democracy, peace and prosperity – and when that day does come, we will eternally gratefully to those that made countless sacrifices during the Vietnam War.

• Lest we forget.
===
Selecta DNA Pistol System Product Launch 

A new tool that would allow law enforcement to prevent criminals from running away or disappearing into a crowd before arrest was highlighted last week at The SHOT Show in Las Vegas. 

The High Velocity DNA Tagging system by the U.K.-based security company Selectamark was introduced with police officers in a riot situation in mind. Coming in both pistol and rifle form, the tool would allow police to remain 30 to 40 meters from the target and tag them with a SelectaDNA High Velocity pellet that contains a unique DNA code to ensure the correct person is apprehended later.

DNA pellets used by law enforcement officers will tag individuals with a unique SelectaDNA code from a distance. “On contact with the target the uniquely-coded SelectaDNA solution leaves a synthetic DNA trace mark that will enable the relevant authorities to confirm or eliminate that person from their involvement in a particular situation and could ultimately lead to arrest and prosecution,”
Selectamark Managing Director Andrew Knights said in a statement.

Watch the product launchhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roon2DwZGfQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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sharing this ~FurretTails:
I went to the mall, and a little girl called me a terrorist. 

My name is Ela. I am seventeen years old. I am not Muslim, but my friend told me about her friend being discriminated against for wearing a hijab. So I decided to see the discrimination firsthand to get a better understanding of what Muslim women go through. 

My friend and I pinned scarves around our heads, and then we went to the mall. Normally, vendors try to get us to buy things and ask us to sample a snack. Clerks usually ask us if we need help, tell us about sales, and smile at us. Not today. People, including vendors, clerks, and other shoppers, wouldn’t look at us. They didn’t talk to us. They acted like we didn’t exist. They didn’t want to be caught staring at us, so they didn’t look at all.

And then, in one store, a girl (who looked about four years old) asked her mom if my friend and I were terrorists. She wasn’t trying to be mean or anything. I don’t even think she could have grasped the idea of prejudice. However, her mother’s response is one I can never forgive or forget. The mother hushed her child, glared at me, and then took her daughter by the hand and led her out of the store.

All that because I put a scarf on my head. Just like that, a mother taught her little girl that being Muslim was evil. It didn’t matter that I was a nice person. All that mattered was that I looked different. That little girl may grow up and teach her children the same thing.

This experiment gave me a huge wakeup call. It lasted for only a few hours, so I can’t even begin to imagine how much prejudice Muslim girls go through every day. It reminded me of something that many people know but rarely remember: the women in hijabs are people, just like all those women out there who aren’t Muslim.

People of Tumblr, please help me spread this message. Treat Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, Taoists, etc., exactly the way you want to be treated, regardless of what they’re wearing or not wearing, no exceptions. Reblog this. Tell your friends. I don’t know that the world will ever totally wipe out prejudice, but we can try, one blog at a time.
Also, fat people are 2nd class citizens - ed
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These Sugar Cookie Tacos with fresh fruit and whipped cream look so yummy

Sugar Cookie Tacos
Ingredients:
1 Package 18oz refrigerated sugar cookie dough
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup sugar

2 cups of your favorite fruit cut-up



1. Preheat oven to 350. grease 2 baking sheets. Cover rounded forms such as rolling pins or cardboard tubes from paper towel roll with aluminum foil.

2. cut cookie dough into 16 half inch thick slices. Press each slice on a slightly floured surface into a 3 inch round sprinkle with cinnamon.

3. Bake cookies until lightly golden, but still soft, 7-9 min. Gently remove cookies from baking sheet and IMMEDIATELY drape over rounded forms (I found it easier to invert the forms, instead of laying it on top of the rounded form I put 2 rolls next to each other and draped the tinfoil over them pushing down in the middle, then I place the cookie in the middle, they did not break that way.... Clear as mud???? sorry)

4. Cool cookies until firm about 2 min. gently remove.

5. Beat whipping cream and sugar in large bowl with mixer on high until stiff. Fill each cookie with about 2 tablespoons and your favorite fruit
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DARK TIMES

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 28, 2013 (2:19pm)

Phillip Adams considers the Boston bombings: 
This must be a very, very dark time for American Muslims. 
Just a theory, but it may be a slightly darker time for American non-Muslims currently mourning their dead, having shrapnel picked out of the faces and bodies, or being fitted with prosthetic limbs. Further on these dark times from Mark Steyn: 
The Tsarnaevs’ mom, now relocated from Cambridge to Makhachkala in delightful Dagestan, told a press conference the other day that she regrets ever having gotten mixed up with those crazy Yanks: “I would prefer not to have lived in America,” she said.
Not, I’m sure, as much as the Richard family would have preferred it. Eight-year-old Martin was killed; his sister lost a leg; and his mother suffered serious brain injuries. What did the Richards and some 200 other families do to deserve having a great big hole blown in their lives? Well, according to the New York Times, they and you bear collective responsibility. Writing on the op-ed page, Marcello Suarez-Orozco, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and Carola Suarez-Orozco, a professor at the same institution, began their ruminations thus:
“The alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers.” 
Quite so. Americans should have given these kids educations and jobs and places to worship and … oh, wait.
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NOTHING TO SEE HERE

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 28, 2013 (2:28pm)

Damian Thompson on the media circus that is not surrounding a certain trial: 
One of the most disgusting serial killers in American history is standing trial in Philadelphia at the moment – and, since it’s happening in the US, where reporting restrictions are light, the media are free to discuss his case.
Only they haven’t – at least, not until recently, and even when the crimes are reported, they haven’t merited many headlines. Which is horrifying, when you consider what the killer is accused of. I’m going to leave out the nastiest details – but, seriously, if you don’t want to feel sick to your stomach, look away now. 
Sadly, much of the media is following that exact instruction.
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Nichiren Daishonin Hakii Portrait.jpg
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“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”” - Luke 19:10
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"God, even our own God."
Psalm 67:6
It is strange how little use we make of the spiritual blessings which God gives us, but it is stranger still how little use we make of God himself. Though he is "our own God," we apply ourselves but little to him, and ask but little of him. How seldom do we ask counsel at the hands of the Lord! How often do we go about our business, without seeking his guidance! In our troubles how constantly do we strive to bear our burdens ourselves, instead of casting them upon the Lord, that he may sustain us! This is not because we may not, for the Lord seems to say, "I am thine, soul, come and make use of me as thou wilt; thou mayst freely come to my store, and the oftener the more welcome." It is our own fault if we make not free with the riches of our God. Then, since thou hast such a friend, and he invites thee, draw from him daily. Never want whilst thou hast a God to go to; never fear or faint whilst thou hast God to help thee; go to thy treasure and take whatever thou needest--there is all that thou canst want. Learn the divine skill of making God all things to thee. He can supply thee with all, or, better still, he can be to thee instead of all. Let me urge thee, then, to make use of thy God. Make use of him in prayer. Go to him often, because he is thy God. O, wilt thou fail to use so great a privilege? Fly to him, tell him all thy wants. Use him constantly by faith at all times. If some dark providence has beclouded thee, use thy God as a "sun;" if some strong enemy has beset thee, find in Jehovah a "shield," for he is a sun and shield to his people. If thou hast lost thy way in the mazes of life, use him as a "guide," for he will direct thee. Whatever thou art, and wherever thou art, remember God is just what thou wantest, and just where thou wantest, and that he can do all thou wantest.

Evening

"The Lord is King forever and ever."
Psalm 10:16
Jesus Christ is no despotic claimant of divine right, but he is really and truly the Lord's anointed! "It hath pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell." God hath given to him all power and all authority. As the Son of man, he is now head over all things to his church, and he reigns over heaven, and earth, and hell, with the keys of life and death at his girdle. Certain princes have delighted to call themselves kings by the popular will, and certainly our Lord Jesus Christ is such in his church. If it could be put to the vote whether he should be King in the church, every believing heart would crown him. O that we could crown him more gloriously than we do! We would count no expense to be wasted that could glorify Christ. Suffering would be pleasure, and loss would be gain, if thereby we could surround his brow with brighter crowns, and make him more glorious in the eyes of men and angels. Yes, he shall reign. Long live the King! All hail to thee, King Jesus! Go forth, ye virgin souls who love your Lord, bow at his feet, strew his way with the lilies of your love, and the roses of your gratitude: "Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown him Lord of all." Moreover, our Lord Jesus is King in Zion by right of conquest: he has taken and carried by storm the hearts of his people, and has slain their enemies who held them in cruel bondage. In the Red Sea of his own blood, our Redeemer has drowned the Pharaoh of our sins: shall he not be King in Jeshurun? He has delivered us from the iron yoke and heavy curse of the law: shall not the Liberator be crowned? We are his portion, whom he has taken out of the hand of the Amorite with his sword and with his bow: who shall snatch his conquest from his hand? All hail, King Jesus! we gladly own thy gentle sway! Rule in our hearts forever, thou lovely Prince of Peace.
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Today's reading: 1 Kings 1-2, Luke 19:28-48 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 1 Kings 1-2

Adonijah Sets Himself Up as King
1 When King David was very old, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. 2 So his attendants said to him, "Let us look for a young virgin to serve the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm."
3 Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4 The woman was very beautiful; she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no sexual relations with her.
5 Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, put himself forward and said, "I will be king." So he got chariots and horses ready, with fifty men to run ahead of him. 6 (His father had never rebuked him by asking, "Why do you behave as you do?" He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom.)

Today's New Testament reading: Luke 19:28-48

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King
28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 "Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' say, 'The Lord needs it.'"
32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"
34 They replied, "The Lord needs it...."
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Bildad

[Bĭl'dăd] - son of contention, lord adad or old friendship. One of Job's three friends, a Shuhite, descended from Shuah, Abraham's son by Keturah (Job 2:11; 8:1; 18:1; 25:1; 42:9).

The Man Who Made a Speech

Bildad's name is an interesting study. One meaning of it is "Lord of Hadad" and "Hadad" means to shout. Studying the speeches of this second speaker who came to comfort Job, one can see how apt the name is, for Bildad was inclined to be loud, insistent and boisterous in his declarations.
This Shuhite, in a vehement fashion, implied as he continued the discussion opened by Eliphaz, that all the extraordinary misfortune overtaking Job were the certain proof of hidden and exceptional crimes of which Job must have been guilty. Doubtless Bildad thought his speech was rich in ideas. But he is before us as the religious dogmatist whose dogmatism vested upon human tradition. With proverbial wisdom and pious phrases, abounding throughout his discourses, Bildad sought to illustrate the principle that Job suffered because of his sin.
With philosophy, wisdom and tradition gathered from the fathers (Job 8:8), Bildad sought to convince Job of his wrongs. But the mystery of Job's sufferings was not to be unraveled in that way. The wisdom of man and tradition has its limits. What has been handed down and accepted by each succeeding generation as truth, is not necessarily so. Every man must be fully persuaded in his own mind. The mysterious dealings of God can only be revealed by God Himself. He is His own Interpreter.



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