Saturday, May 02, 2015

Sat May 2nd 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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A badly led, badly divided ALP is bleeding in public. They have not yet reached peak stupid. Foreign investment is really important for Australia, just to maintain her economic profile. To reject foreign investment is stupid, but ALP identities suggest it. The Abbott government is not promising that, but promising to crack down on foreign investors who break the rules set out by the government on what foreign investment is mutually beneficial. But international criminal networks seek to circumvent the rules. They might like to use Australia to launder money, which is not beneficial to anyone. The ALP get confused by the prudent action, dangerously claiming the government is opposing foreign investment instead. The problem for the ALP is there is no leadership. There is no policy beyond the reflexive one of protecting unions from investigation. And in the vacuum that is the ALP leadership there is fighting. Shorten is the inept leader, Plibersek is his inept deputy. Neither are willing to have a policy that benefits Australia, but they strongly demarcate under irrelevant issues. They can promise $1.8 billion in cuts when $40 billion is needed for parity. They are part of the committees that oversaw the spending problem and debt issues. They claimed there are no fixes for the spending problem as they oppose solutions. Wh will lead the ALP? Not Shorten. Not Plibersek. Not the fawning, partisan media. They are the furniture Rudd saved. But not the furniture Australia needs.

 Reconciliation is not racism, but there are many claiming it is exactly the case. Rewriting elements of the Australian Constitution to recognise a race, any race, is racist. Some may label it as benign racism. It isn't benign. Racism does not address any issues Australia needs addressed. If anyone supports it and tells you it is needed ask them how it is that racism will improve things? Australia can address poverty without calling the poor racist names. 

 Ben E King died. His hit Stand By Me, recorded in 1960, released the next year, was inspired by the hymn "Lord Stand by Me" and Psalms 46:2-3
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam    and the mountains quake with their surging
He also did Save the Last Dance for Me. Thank you sir, may you rest in peace. 

Baby Cambridge avoided Labour day, attempts Mother's day.
 In 1194, King Richard I gave Portsmouth a royal charter. Royal charters don't end. Richard had given Portsmouth royal assent to be what it was, a city. In 1230, William de Braose was hanged by Prince Llywelyn The Great of Wales. William's family was despised by the Welsh. He was caught by the Prince and ransomed. William sought to marry his son to the Prince's daughter. He was caught sleeping with the Prince's wife. The rest is history for a bad dog. Anne Boleyn was an admirable woman with many great qualities, which is sometimes lost for those who see only the intense hatred with which Henry VIII persecuted her. She had encouraged Henry to make what he later saw as an over reach. With Anne, Henry became too close to early protestantism. He had to distance himself from that so as to not antagonise his Catholic friends. Politics is a lousy mistress. While Anne's end was bloody, her life was brilliant. She had brought into being the Anglican Church and lived an exemplary life she insisted her maids follow. She had intimidated the royal court with a quick and clever tongue. At one stage, her haters had rumoured she was a witch who had cursed the previous queen. And After Queen Mary had died, it was found her heart was black at autopsy. No one then knew why, but Anne's supposed curse was blamed. We now know it was cancer that had been untreated.

 On this day in 1559, John Knox, who had been exiled to England from Scotland after he had been captured by French forces, returned to Scotland after Bloody Mary ascended the English throne. He founded the Presbyterian Church. In 1670, King Charles II of England granted a royal charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to trade in fur from North America. It is difficult to find qualities to admire in pro slavery bigots. General Lee and General Jackson were both highly admired by all they fought for and with. In 1863, the highly admired General Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own men while reconnoitring Union positions at the Battle of Chancellorsville. He had an arm amputated and died of pneumonia eight days later. In 1885, the magazine Good Housekeeping went on sale for the first time. In 1920, the first game of the Negro National League Baseball league was played in Indianapolis. In 1932, Jack Benny's radio show aired for the first time. In 1945, as Soviets erect a flag in Berlin and German's surrender in Italy, the US 82nd Airborne Division liberated Wöbbelin concentration camp finding 1000 dead prisoners, most of whom starved to death. In 1952, the world's first passenger jet, De Havilland Comet I made its first flight from London to Johannesburg. In 1955, Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1982, the submarine HMS Conqueror sank the cruiser ARA General Belgrano. In 1986, Soviets decided to evacuate Chernobyl six days after hey irradiated her. In 1995, Serb forces fired cluster bombs into Zagreb. In 2011, at the same time as President Obama announced it the day before, because of time difference, Osama Bin Ladin was killed.
2014
The ICAC are looking increasingly desperate to be closed down before they fully investigate ALP activity. The recent allegation against former NSW Police Minister Mike Gallacher, of which he has not yet been given a right of reply, is perfectly explicable if he were competently going about his business. The problem is the ALP fostered corruption throughout the NSW public service over 16 years it was in government and so it is going to be a tough road to rooting it out. It is the job of a politician to network with people of substance. It is painful for LNP supporters right now, but it will mean the accused may be exonerated well before the election, and the ALP will have to address their corruption issues .. and they have not begun, with Obeid appointee Robertson still being opposition leader. 

On this day, 1536, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, was arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft. There is no evidence of her prowess as a witch, but I believe she was innocent of that charge and I would employ a champion, Stephen Fry, in a fight to the death using wits any who claim they can prove she was a witch. A nemesis of Anne's daughter, Mary Queen of Scots escaped from Elizabeth 1st's detention on this day in 1568. Mary's son had his bible printed on this day in 1611. Just when you think you know how God works .. remember, Fry is my champion. 
Historical perspectives on this day 
In 1194, King Richard I of England gave Portsmouth its first Royal Charter. 1230, William de Braose was hanged by Prince Llywelyn the Great. 1335, Otto the Merry, Duke of Austria, became Duke of Carinthia. 1536, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, was arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft. 1559, John Knox returned from exile to Scotland to become the leader of the nascent Scottish Reformation. 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots, escaped from Loch Leven Castle. 1611, the King James Bible was published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker. 1670, King Charles II of England granted a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America. 1672, John Maitland became Duke of Lauderdale and Earl of March.

In 1808, outbreak of the Peninsular War: The people of Madrid rose up in rebellion against French occupation. Francisco de Goya later memorialized this event in his painting The Second of May 1808. 1812, the Siege of Cuautla during the Mexican War of Independence ended with both sides claiming victory after Mexican rebels under José María Morelos y Pavón abandoned the city after 72 days under siege by royalist Spanish troops under Félix María Calleja. 1816, marriage of Léopold of Saxe-Coburg and Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales. 1829, after anchoring nearby, Captain Charles Fremantle of HMS Challenger, declared the Swan River Colony in Australia. 1863, American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson was wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering during the Battle of Chancellorsville. He succumbed to pneumonia eight days later. 1866, Peruvian defenders fought off the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Callao. 1876, the April Uprising broke out in Bulgaria. 1879, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party was founded in Casa Labra Pub (city of Madrid) by the historical Spanish workers' leader Pablo Iglesias. 1885, Good Housekeeping magazine went on sale for the first time. Also 1885, Cree and Assiniboine warriors won the Battle of Cut Knife, their largest victory over Canadian forces during the North-West Rebellion. Also 1885, the Congo Free State was established by King Léopold II of Belgium. 1889, Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, signed a treaty of amity with Italy, giving Italy control over Eritrea.

In 1906, closing ceremony of the Intercalated Games in Athens, Greece. 1918, General Motors acquired the Chevrolet Motor Company of Delaware. 1920, the first game of the Negro National League baseball was played in Indianapolis. 1932, comedian Jack Benny's radio show aired for the first time. 1933, Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler banned trade unions. 1941, following the coup d'état against Iraq Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah earlier that year, the United Kingdom launched the Anglo-Iraqi War to restore him to power. 1945, World War II: Fall of Berlin: The Soviet Union announced the capture of Berlin and Soviet soldiers hoisted their red flag over the Reichstag building. Also 1945, World War II: Italian Campaign: General Heinrich von Vietinghoff signed the official instrument of surrender of all Wehrmacht forces in Italy. Also 1945, World War II: The US 82nd Airborne Division liberated Wöbbelin concentration camp finding 1000 dead prisoners, most of whom starved to death. 1946, the "Battle of Alcatraz" took place; two guards and three inmates were killed.

In 1952, the world's first ever jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1 made its maiden flight, from London to Johannesburg. 1955, Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 1963, Berthold Seliger launched a rocket with three stages and a maximum flight altitude of more than 100 kilometres near Cuxhaven. It was the only sounding rocket developed in Germany. 1964, Vietnam War: An explosion sank the USS Card while it was docked at Saigon. Viet Cong forces were suspected of placing a bomb on the ship. She was raised and returned to service less than seven months later. Also 1964, First ascent of Shishapangma the fourteenth highest mountain in the world and the lowest of the Eight-thousanders. 1969, the British ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 departed on her maiden voyage to New York City.

In 1972, in the early morning hours a fire broke out at the Sunshine Mine located between Kellogg and Wallace, ID, killing 91 workers. 1980, Referendum on system of government held in Nepal. 1982, Falklands War: The British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano. 1986, the Chernobyl Disaster: The City of Chernobyl was evacuated six days after the disaster 1989, Hungary began dismantling its border fence with Austria, which allowed a number of East Germans to defect. 1994, a bus crashed in Gdańsk, Poland killing 32 people. 1995, during the Croatian War of Independence, Serb forces fired cluster bombs at Zagreb, killing seven and wounding over 175 civilians. 1998, the European Central Bank was founded in Brussels in order to define and execute the European Union's monetary policy. 1999, Panamanian election, 1999: Mireya Moscoso became the first woman to be elected President of Panama.
In 2000, president Bill Clinton announced that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military. 2004, Yelwa massacre ended. It began on 4 February 2004 when armed Muslims attacked the Christians of Yelwa killing more than 78 Christians including at least 48 who were worshipping inside a church compound. More than 630 nomad Muslims were killed by Christians in Nigeria. 2008, Cyclone Nargis made landfall in Burma killing over 138,000 people and leaving millions of people homeless. Also 2008, Chaitén Volcano began erupting in Chile, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,500 people. 2011, Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man was killed by the United States special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. 2011, an E. coli outbreak struck Europe, mostly in Germany, leaving more than 30 people dead and many others sick from the bacteria outbreak. 2012, a pastel version of The Scream, by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, sold for $120 million in a New York City auction, setting a new world record for a work of art at auction. 2014, Two mudslides in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, left up to 2,500 people missing.
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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 Sokleang Taing and Lucy La. Born when it was Teacher's day in Iran and Flag day in Poland .. and when Robert Barker printed in 1611 the first authorized King James version of the Bible. Your day is inspirational.
Deaths
May 2: Flag Day in Poland
ARA General Belgrano
The exile is over. We got him. The battle is over. We sank it. Terrorists were fired. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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2015
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IN CASE ANYBODY FORGOT

Tim Blair – Saturday, May 02, 2015 (4:14pm)

An important reminder from Labor’s Jenny Macklin:



(Via Stu) 
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JU JITSU MARKETING

Tim Blair – Saturday, May 02, 2015 (2:33pm)

Making money from stupid: the art and science of converting leftist rage into tons of cash.
(Via AC.) 
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GAMBLE RESPONSIBLY

Tim Blair – Saturday, May 02, 2015 (2:27pm)

Those inclined to bet on election results are invited to consider recent predictions from noted Australian psychic Bob Ellis: 
It is fairly certain Ed Miliband will head the next government in the UK. He will win about 283 seats, and the Scottish Nationals about 49, Plaid Cymru 1 and the Greens 2. This will give him 332 or 336 votes, more than the 325 he needs …
It is likely too that after this the Tories will not hold power again …
David Cameron cannot form a government, and Ed Miliband can and will. 
Please gamble responsibly. This means, in Ellis’s case, always gambling reversibly.
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HIGH ACHIEVER

Tim Blair – Saturday, May 02, 2015 (2:11pm)

A doper’s to-do list, located during a police search in Western Australia.
UPDATE. Meanwhile, in Nimbin: 
An Australian town was cut off by floodwaters Saturday, trapping hundreds of people attending the town’s annual cannabis festival.
The town hall was being used as emergency accommodation as camping grounds were swamped by record heavy rains that hit the eastern coast Friday and Saturday. 
That rain will be useful when one of them nods out and sets the place on fire.
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Plibersek turns up pressure on Shorten

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (12:09pm)

Politics - federal

As I noted on 2GB on Thursday, Tanya Plibersek has started her campaign to replace the unimpressive Bill Shorten, who has let timidity paralyse his promise.
Troy Bramston:

Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek ... has started to strongly assert herself on policy and internal reform, opening further divisions with Bill Shorten…
Despite facing criticism from her party colleagues this week, Ms Plibersek stood by her position [rejected by Shorten] that all Labor MPs should be ­compelled to vote for same-sex marriage and said she would fight for this to be enshrined in the party’s platform at the national conference in July…
She also disagreed with Mr Shorten on rewriting the party’s 1921 socialist objective, saying it should not be changed. Although Ms Plibersek supports the party’s union link, she added that it was time members had a bigger say. “Genuine involvement of union rank-and-file members is important, making sure that it is not just leaders of unions deciding en bloc about issues,” she said.
As Labor activists push for a more “pro-Palestinian” policy and criticism of Israel percolates through local branches, Ms Plibersek said she would steer a middle course on Middle East policy. “I support a secure Israel with internationally recognised borders and a secure state of Palestine that has economic viability and ­security as well,” she said. “How we achieve that is the thing that is being debated in the Labor Party right now, not whether we support a two-state solution.”
Shorten, a former union leader, is not popular with Labor members, as his leadership ballot with Anthony Albanese revealed. Plibersek, of the Left, wants an anti-Shorten constituency to have more power.
Plibersek is also accused of helping to draft an anti-Israel resolution which Shorten opposes.
UPDATE
Peter van Onselen warns Plibersek could split Labor:
If Labor listens to its deputy and the national conference votes in favour of a binding vote on gay marriage, the major party of the Left in this country could split. Certainly the conservative elements of the party will cross the floor and risk expulsion. If they are kicked out, then a split will soon follow…
The Left faction, of which [Plibersek] is the most senior member, is growing in strength internally. It dominates the ranks of the lay membership, which now has an equal say with the parliamentary party when electing federal leaders. Plibersek is playing to her natural constituency… Many within the Left wouldn’t mind a party split that saw the Right weakened with departures....
Shorten has had to use his authority to try to quash the Plibersek push ahead of national conference. Not that Shorten has as much political capital internally right now as he would like, a point I suspect isn’t lost on Plibersek, whose supporters behind the scenes continue to push her case as a future leader.
Shorten indeed lacks authority:
Bill Shorten has an invisibility problem.... “He still almost never gets mentioned,” says JWS Research’s John Scales, whose regular True Issues surveys monitor what is on the minds of ordinary voters… The problem for him is what he says barely registers…
....the problem for Shorten is that the empty space which his lack of voter recognition leaves becomes a political risk the closer the next election comes… When you leave an empty space, you make the task easier for your opponents.
In recent weeks, the risks to Shorten have become apparent. Abbott’s dumping of unpopular policies, the back-peddling on the debt and deficit issues and the Prime Minister’s use of defence and security issues (and the Anzac commemorations) to appear more prime ministerial have helped narrow Labor’s lead in the polls. Coalition supporters are less pessimistic than they were about the government’s chances of survival.
At the same time, Shorten’s poll ratings have slipped… Scales ... “Our research indicates that the Labor brand, at the federal level, has not recovered since the election.”
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Reconciliation becomes intimidation: Paul Kelly’s shameful suggestion

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (10:32am)

Advocates of the “reconciliation” movement are becoming desperate. The Australian’s Paul Kelly today makes an unforgivable suggestion on overcoming the opposition to what I insist is a fundamentally racist and divisive campaign to change our constitution to recognise people with Aboriginal ancestry as the “first Australians”, and confer on them special rights.
Writes Kelly:
If our polity denies recognition of this truth in our Constitution then Australia probably faces a bleak future. This raises another question: as the referendum advances, how much liberty will be extended to Bolt by his editors to continue his campaign in their newspapers?
It is not clear whether Kelly, himself a former editor and influential in News Corp, is recommending I be muzzled or expecting some News Corp editors to muzzle me. Is this a threat?  And what happened to Kelly, warrior for free speech?
Kelly should explain himself, and apologise either to me or to my editors. He might also consider reassuring readers of News Corp newspapers that they can expect a genuine debate on this critical issue.
I certainly give readers my own guarantee in the light of Kelly’s article: if I am muzzled I will say so. But be assured: the News Corp I know will let both sides speak.
The rest of Kelly’s article is, I’m afraid, very far from his usual standard. The personal abuse - calling my argument “poison”, “mean-spirited” and an appeal to xenophobes - and Kelly’s failure to properly address my genuine moral and pragmatic concerns with this race-based initiative say plenty about the poverty of his argument.
Does Kelly think he can likewise abuse millions of Australians out of sharing similar concerns about what he proposes?
This piece suggests to me that Kelly has again lost his head to a grand “moral” cause, just as he did with the 1999 republican referendum and then with Kevin Rudd’s global warming policies, which he warned the Liberals to back if they didn’t want to be ”signing their own political death warrant” in what was a “mortal political threat to the [Liberals]”.
Kelly’s article actually tails off into a mushy no-but-yes confirmation of much that I actually warned about:
Yet this creates an immediate problem. It is making laws defined solely by race. Indeed, it goes to the point raised by Bolt. Is the referendum designed to eliminate the notion of race in the Constitution or to entrench the idea of race, even with a provision saying the power cannot be used “adversely” against the indigenous peoples?
Indigenous leaders might insist on such a proposal. But the dangers are too obvious. Why should the Constitution offer the indigenous peoples such protections that are not extended to other Australians? This opens the door to a destructive no campaign.
The test is whether the referendum changes will authorise laws on a racial basis, thereby giving credibility to the campaign waged by Bolt. Everybody is being put on notice....
One possible way around this dilemma, as suggested by Twomey, is to authorise laws in relation to native title, indigenous culture, and heritage — issues part of the legal system now — thereby avoiding laws on a racial basis.
Er, Paul, passing laws to advance or protect “indigenous culture” - and not the culture of anyone else - is already passing laws on a racial basis. It sets up a clash between competing claims of advocates of indigenous culture, however defined, and the rest, with the law already privileging one side, on the basis that they are people who have some ancestors of a particular “race”.
As I said, this is a no, but yes argument that goes to the irreducible core of my objection: however the laws will be drafted, anything that starts with the assumption that we must be defined and dealt with differently on the basis of the “race” of some of our ancestors is racist, divisive and immoral.
Paul, whatever form of words you come up with, however much you plead the goodness of your intentions, I am against. I can never agree.
What is “poison” is not my opposition but your proposal to divide us by “race”.
Read an extended explanation of my position here. It addresses, among other things, Kelly’s complete misunderstanding of my objection to calling people with Aboriginal ancestry today our “first Australians”, and why it is indeed racist to confer a special legal distinction on Australians today and in the distant future on the grounds of the “race” of some of their ancestors. 
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The children these bullying protesters betray

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (9:47am)

This is not persuasion but aggression, not reconciliation but aggravation, not compassion but contempt:
PROTESTERS who shut down the central city for three hours vow it won’t be the last time they cause peak-hour commuter chaos.
For the second time in three weeks, hundreds of thousands of people trying to get home on Friday were severely inconvenienced as an angry throng of more than 12,000 people jammed the streets.
Demonstrators voiced their concerns in what they called a “proud expression of Aboriginal sovereignty’’ and a signal to governments not to scale back support services in remote ­Aboriginal communities.
The ostensible issue for these protesters, many from socialist groups, is the proposal to end the excessive funding of Aboriginal micro-settlements in remote regions where there are no schools or jobs.
This kind of dysfunction these authoritarian protesters are in fact defending:

If you are an Aboriginal child in a remote part of the Northern Territory, chances are you’re struggling with your education and behind on at least one early development indicator before you start school.
By Year 3, you will be behind not just most other children, but a full two years behind most other Aboriginal children living in similarly remote places elsewhere in the country. By Year 9, the gap will be five years.
If you’re lucky, you’ll manage to join the 10 per cent of kids living outside Alice Springs, Katherine and Darwin who achieve minimal standards for NAPLAN literacy. At least half of your friends will have stopped going to school by aged 14, if they ever enrolled.
You will be one of about 800 remote kids annually who could complete Year 12, but unless you have access to a larger town, you’ll have to overcome enormous obstacles to become one of the roughly 24 who actually do.
These are some of the devastating findings of a review indigenous education that the Northern Territory government is trying to address with a new 10-year strategy for indigenous education entitled Share in the Future…
Local member for the seat of Arafura, Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu, whose electorate covers parts of Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands, blamed “community issues.”
“I think the kids are not getting the support from parents at the moment. I’m sad to hear and see what’s happening in the community,” he said.
Note, by the way, what our “reconciliation” movement has encouraged - an inflamed sense of grievance and “racial” entitlement. Politicians have been playing with fire.
(Thanks to reader WaG311.) 
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Guardian reporter demands Julie Bishop save headhacking jihadists

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (9:38am)

Gerard Henderson in Media Watch Dog not some extraordinary attempts to attack the Abbott Government for not doing more to help ... whatever:
[On] last Sunday’s Insiders ... The Guardian’s Katharine Murphy exhibited a bleeding heart which she developed obviously from her years at The Age. The topic turned on Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s recent visit to Iran and the possibility that Australia and Iran might exchange security information concerning Daesh or the so-called Islamic State…

Katharine Murphy: I think it should be noted – and it wasn’t really in much of the reporting this week – that the Foreign Minister certainly has not, seems to have sought no special protection for any Australian citizens who are in the field fighting for ISIS. Maybe we shouldn’t care about these people – Mark Kenny: No, we shouldn’t.
Katharine Murphy: But they are still Australian citizens.
Mark Kenny: Well if they’re fighting for ISIS they’ve rescinded their Australian citizenship.
Katharine Murphy: Well sure, but I’m just saying that the Iranian ambassador couldn’t have been clearer on Fran Kelly’s program this week. He basically said that if these people are in harm’s way and they have to happen to encounter Shi’ite militia then you know, Bob’s your uncle. [Here Ms Murphy went through a throat-slitting action]…
So there you go. Right now Sunni Muslims are leaving Australia to head off to Syria or Iraq with the intention of killing Shi’ite Muslims. By beheadings, burnings and the like. And Katharine Murphy not only reckons that the Australian government should “care” about our home-grown beheaders like Khaled Sharrouf but also believes that Julie Bishop should seek their “special protection” while they are busy murdering Shi’ite Muslims in Syria and Iraq. Can you bear it?
Hendo is on fire, and turns to a second example: Waleed Aly.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Who let it get to this?

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (9:11am)

No Western country with a substantial Muslim minority is now safe.
Germany this week:
Police have been forced to cancel a major cycle race after thwarting an alleged Islamist terror attack by a married couple.
German officers found weapons and explosives at their home, including a pipe bomb and an assault rifle… The husband, who has been named locally only as Halil, raised suspicions after buying large amounts of chemicals under a fake identity.
He was also spotted along the route of Frankfurt’s annual May Day cycle race, which is usually attended by thousands of people. The race has been cancelled as a precaution.
The pair, who are suspected to have links to jihadist militant groups, were arrested in Oberursel, near Frankfurt…
Some 450 people have travelled from Germany to join jihadist forces in Syria and Iraq.
Bosnia this week:
One policeman was killed and two others wounded Monday in the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik when a man opened fire on a police station shouting “Allahu Akbar”, officials said…

“Everything indicates that he belonged to (ultra-conservative Islamist) Wahhabi movement. We have yet to verify whether this is an isolated act or if other people are involved,” [Interior Minister Dragan] Lukac said…
More recently, some 150 Bosnians are believed to have joined jihadists groups in Iraq and Syria, while some 50 others have returned to Bosnia, according to the intelligence services.
France last week:
France is to deploy soldiers and paramilitary police to defend Catholic churches following reports of a terrorist cell preparing an ISIS-style attack on congregations.
Although already thinly spread and struggling with fatigue, the French deployment of 10,000 soldiers and many thousands more police officers will now be expanded to Christian sites…
The impetus for the change of policy has come just days after French police arrested would-be Jihadist murderer Sid Ahmed Ghlam. Ghlam, a 24-year-old Moroccan student studying in Paris, murdered a fitness instructor in a botched attempt to hijack her car for a terror attack, and then accidentally shot himself in the leg… Searching his student flat, [police] discovered plans for a gang of Islamists to open fire on Church services in Paris. 
(Thanks to reader Albert.) 
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The Bolt Report tomorrow, May 3

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (8:13am)

On the The Bolt Report on Channel 10 tomorrow at 10am and 3pm.
Editorial: The haters who will hurt us if we heed them on Indonesia.
Guest:  Social Services Minister Scott Morrison on dealing with Indonesia, and breeding the underclass that smuggles drugs.
The panel - and more balance than you’ll see on the ABC:  former Gillard advisor Nicholas Reece and former Labor president Warren Mundine. What is Tanya Plibersek up to, and did Labor reach peak stupid this week? And is the anti-Indonesia/anti-capital punishment frenzy actually a turn-off to most Australians?
NewsWatch: Daily Telegraph columnist and 2GB presenter Miranda Devine on blaming Abbott for the Indonesian executions and other examples of media derangement.
And much more, including the truth about capital punishment that most reports won’t admit.
The videos of the shows appear here.
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Тот самый случай, когда размер не имеет значения :D
Posted by Rus.Tvnet on Wednesday, 25 February 2015

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Why is SBS’s Lee Lin Chin a speaker?  And John Hewson reveals himself

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (8:07am)

Progress15 has collected busloads of Leftist speakers for a conference in Melbourne of “changemakers” to fight for “progress” on global warming, boat people and the usual roll-call of Leftist causes.
Speakers include traitor Edward Snowden, Greens leader Christine Milne, anti-nuclear hysteric Helen Caldicott, warming alarmist Will Steffen, Greenpeace exec David Ritter, GetUp head Sam McLean, Greens slimer Scott Ludlam, ACTU president Ged Kearney, Friends of the Earth veteran Cam Walker, celebrity Muslims Susan Carland and Yassmin Abdel-Magied, “stolen generations” propagandist Robert Manne, Earth Hour manager Anna Rose, writer Naomi Klein, celebrity “human rights"extremist Julian Burnside, domestic violence campaigner and Greens supporter Rosie Battie, euthanasia for “defective infants” advocate Peter Singer, and dozens more representatives from global warming industries, Aboriginal bureaucracies, “awareness” campaigns, academia, Islam, Labor, the Greens and the media.
The roll call of speakers is vast, and raises some questions:
Why does it include SBS newsreader and current affairs presenter Lee Lin Chin? Shouldn’t SBS at least pretend it isn’t yet another taxpayer-funded soap box hijacked by the far Left?

Why Is John Hewson, also one of the speakers, still presented by media organisations such as Sky News as a representative of the conservative side of debates? Why does Hewson almost never declare when commenting on global warming what he declares here - that he is in fact chairman of the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, a green financial advisory group advising on global warming that earns money from the scare.
Who is actually paying for this vast network of green and Left groups? How much taxpayers’ money is involved in keeping so many activists in work?
How many of these people are paid more than Catholic priests to preach on being nice to people and the planet? Is being a Leftist activist a good earn?
How on earth do we still get conservative governments elected when there is this immensity of Leftist lobbyists, activists, journalists, unionists and mobilisers, unmatched by anything on the conservative side, where individualism is prized above collectivism?
How many Australians do this army of Leftist representatives truly represent?
Don’t these people get bored with endlessly agreeing with each other at conferences designed not to promote debate but avoid it?
And note how strongly global warming features, confirming it is just the latest vehicle for the Left’s authoritarians and salvation seekers.
(Thanks to reader Don.) 
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Andrews Government tunnelling deeper into financial pain

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (7:50am)

First Victoria’s Andrews Government throws away at least $640 million by scrapping a much-needed East West road link.
Now, short of cash and desperate to at least build something else, it considers a new scheme - without a cost-benefit analysis - that could eventually cost us much, much more.
Terry McCrann explains Transurban’s kind offer to build a road-tunnel link closely related to the very thing Labor scrapped:
The $5 billion-plus deal proposed by Transurban ...  cleverly constructed its proposal to “work” with either the previous Napthine Liberal government’s first stage of the “public” East-West link; or to “substitute” for the incoming Andrews Labor government’s abandonment of that project…
Transurban proposes that the new road would be funded by a combination of direct tolls and an “extension of its CityLink Concession Deed”....
No one else can bid as they would have to recoup all their expenditure from tolls. Only Transurban can spread the funding across its much wider existing toll base; and indeed impose most of it beyond 2035. It is seeking to have its tolling concession extended from 2035 to 2050.
So the state gets much needed infrastructure at no immediate or direct cost. Motorists get a vastly improved road system at minimal immediate direct cost, with most of the cost postponed for 20 years.
Except that cost, properly discounted to today, will be huge and much higher than the alternative cost of public sector borrowing.
Transurban gets to be the sole bidder in a $5bn tender. In ‘winning’ it will get to retrospectively increase the returns on its existing infrastructure, as more traffic is channelled into the existing network — returns, to be noted, that are already high.
How a Socialist Left Government end up both costing taxpayers more while enriching capitalists.
UPDATE
Alan Moran:
Now that he has abandoned the previously approved East West road link through Melbourne, the Daniel Andrews ALP Government is promoting a different road link across to the East and widening of existing links....
Important advantages of the new proposals are that, unlike the East West link, they would not be covered by the Construction Code that overrode the CMFEU featherbedding and excess wage payments that characterise all major Victorian projects. The Premier can therefore continue to receive the support of that important rogue union funder and supplier of other electoral assistance. Clearly, the undermining of the CFMEU privileged closed shop working arrangements was the critical reason for abandoning the East West link.
Ken Phillips:
What needs to be understood is that there is no separation now between the Victorian construction union, the CFMEU and the new Labor Government. They are one and the same…

The cancellation [of the East West link] happened because the CFMEU did not have contractual control of the job. The job had to be stopped at any cost to the taxpayer, seemingly to ensure the CFMEU controlled all current and future major construction in Victoria.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Global warming academics want laws to fine and ban sceptics

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (7:40am)

Tony Thomas on the authoritarian soul of the global warming faith, now embedded in Melbourne University:

The Australian-German College of Climate and Energy Transitions, twinned with the Melbourne University Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI), is a hotbed of climate activism....
[A] doom-monger at the MSSI is executive committee member ... Peter Christoff, who teaches climate change politics. The professor is former vice-president and current board member of the Australian Conservation Foundation lobby group…
I have just part-transcribed a Melbourne University seminar where Peter Christoff [from 20 mins in video above] calls for legal bans and punitive fines on broadcasters and individuals for ‘climate denial’. This would be “based on the fact that unchecked climate denialism over time would cause loss of freedom and rights, the death of thousands of humans, the loss of entire cultures, effectively genocide , extinctions…
“The legislation to be contemplated might be roughly framed around things like Holocaust Denial legislation which already exists in 17 countries, focused on the criminalisation of those who public condone, deny or trivialise crimes of genocide or crimes against humanity… If it is selective and well focused, with substantial fines and perhaps bans on certain broadcasters and individuals whom I will not name, who stray from the dominant science without any defensible cause, it would have a disciplinary effect on public debate."…

His proposal was heard with equanimity by the panel comprising Professor Helen Sullivan, Director of the University’s Centre for Public Policy (introducer); Professor Eckersley; activist Dave Kerin and Professor of Rhetoric Marianne Constable (University California, Berkeley). The young audience showed no negative reaction.
Such is Melbourne University.
Since that video, shot in 2012, there have been three more years of no warming. That’s now 18 years of no warming so far, a fact for which I presume I’d face jail for pointing out.
Note that Christoff is followed as speaker by a long-time communist union official. It says so much.
UPDATE
At the risk of being fined, dare I point out that the Australian Academy of Science seems to be stretching with its alarmist report into the danger of global warming?
Australia could become more susceptible to vector-borne diseases, such as dengue, as well as respiratory diseases as people spend more time indoors avoiding extreme heat.
It’s more dangerous to be inside our homes, rather than outside? Give me a break.
(Thanks to reader Richard.)  
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UK Greens confirm: same sex marriage first, polygamy considered next

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (7:18am)

I have long warned of the “slippery slope” - that once we permit two men to marry we cannot logically deny the right of three or more people to marry, too, as already occurs in many Muslim countries and traditional Aboriginal society.
In 2013 I wrote that the High Court in fact endorsed the slippery-slope argument already, albeit in reverse:
The High Court this week endorsed the “slippery slope” argument used by opponents of same-sex marriage - and unwisely sneered at by the likes of Malcolm Turnbull…
It turns out ... the High Court says we already legally endorse polygamy for many purposes, so we cannot logically oppose same sex marriage. This is indeed the “slippery slope” argument - backed by our Highest Court, albeit with a different agenda in mind.

The High Court, in over-ruling the ACT’s same sex marriage laws, noted ..."Once it is accepted that “marriage” can include polygamous marriages, it becomes evident that the juristic concept of “marriage” cannot be confined to a union having the [traditional between-a-man-and-a-woman] characteristics described in Hyde v Hyde and other nineteenth century cases. Rather, “marriage” is to be understood in s 51(xxi) of the Constitution as referring to a consensual union formed between natural persons in accordance with legally prescribed requirements… It is not now possible (if it ever was) to confine attention to jurisdictions whose law of marriage provides only for unions between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. Marriage law is and must be recognised now to be more complex.
Some in the Australian Greens have already accepted the slippery slope argument - and are using it to argue for marriage rights for polygamists:
A SPLIT within the Greens over gay marriage has widened, with a prominent party official claiming senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s insistence that marriage is between two consenting adults discriminates against others in the gay community, including polyamorists.
Greens ACT convenor Simon Copland, who is political editor of the gay magazine FUSE, ... said: “I am now seeing major queer organisations and queer activists develop exclusive habits, excluding those who they think don’t fit the mainstream gay and lesbian model. For example, after some publicity around the issue, marriage advocates from Australian Marriage Equality and the Greens recently (came) out strongly against the idea of polyamorous marriage.
“The institutional queer movement has become dominated by upper- to middle-class wealthy queer activists . . . ensuring a select few get equal access to heteropatriarchal systems.”
Now the UK Greens demonstrate my point:
Green party leader Natalie Bennett has revealed she is open to the idea of legalising three-way marriages…
She replied: ‘At present, we do not have a policy on civil partnerships involving more than two people… We have led the way on many issues related to the liberalisation of legal status in adult consenting relationships, and we are open to further conversation and consultation on this issue.’
(Thanks to reader Albert.) 
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Why is Labor protecting this disgraceful union?

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (7:05am)

The Herald Sun:

THE criminal activities of the state’s most militant union, the CFMEU, are a disaster in the making for Premier Daniel Andrews.
Protected by its membership of the premier’s own Socialist Left faction, the union is costing Victoria hundreds of millions of dollars in cost blowouts on major projects…
Mr Andrews failed to discipline the rogue union...[although] the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption ...  in its interim report has already made known its intention to refer criminal charges against some of these officials.
Union secretary John Setka is a veteran of violent clashes with police and is the union’s chief intimidator in its bid to control the state’s construction sites.
The Herald Sun continues to document the activities of Mr Setka and his underlings, three of whom are members of Premier Andrews’ parliamentary faction with an influence on the policymaking decisions of the Labor Party’s state conferences.
An example of the thuggery Labor is protecting:
‘NO one would have to know.”
That was the offer from CFMEU secretary John Setka.
It seemed a simple bargain — stop supplying a customer for two weeks to buy peace.
But Boral chief executive Mike Kane thought this could turn out to be what’s known as a deal with the devil…
So Mr Kane refused the bargain.. But the decision to stand up to the Victorian branch of the CFMEU has cost Boral up to $28 million so far…
Mr Kane is leading the fight against the CFMEU, which is being flanked on three fronts.
The union is under the flame of a royal commission into union corruption, battling against the Abbott Government’s plans to revive the tough building industry watchdog, the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and multimillion-dollar lawsuits brought by Boral and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
But Boral did not seek the battle. It has become collateral damage in a war between the firebrand CFMEU and Daniel Grollo, the only major builder in Australia that has refused to bend to the union’s demands…
Boral was warned in February 2013 that it was heading for trouble if it continued to supply Grocon with concrete. Trucks were stopped at the gates of jobs and customers started calling Boral to cancel orders. 
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Worry more about the children

Andrew Bolt May 02 2015 (5:23am)

Ted Lapkin, writing in the Spectator, is angry:
When future chroniclers of our particular moral decline designate milestones on our long slide into nihilism, efforts to mitigate the evil of sexual abuse against children must surely rate a dishonourable mention. A particularly disgraceful example of this genre appeared in the Advertiser from the pen of its political editor Tory Shepherd. In a meandering piece whose speciousness only surpassed its noxiousness, Shepherd argues that paedophiles are blameless because their brains are (un)naturally hardwired to lust after children. It’s ‘not their fault’ she declares, citing a University of Toronto study that found child molesters on average have lower than average IQs. She argues that if paedophiles were only given ‘sympathy’ and ‘respect’ the end result would be ‘fewer children raped.’ In essence, Shepherd wants to wager the lives of our sons and daughters on the hypothetical proposition that a ‘softly softly’ approach to paedophilia will reduce child sexual abuse.
Read on.
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=== Posts from last year ===

An 86-step strategy for fiscal rescue

Piers Akerman – Thursday, May 01, 2014 (7:59pm)

TONY Shepherd and his Commission of Audit report stand in stark contrast to Tony Abbott’s blizzard in their view of what the coming Budget must deliver.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'An 86-step strategy for fiscal rescue'
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NO HALF MEASURES

Tim Blair – Friday, May 02, 2014 (12:14pm)

Luvvie rage: 
The Australian film industry has reacted with fury to the suggestion that Screen Australia, the organisation responsible for a significant number of Australian films and television dramas, should lose half its funding. 
I share their fury. Screen Australia should lose all its funding. 
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Hockey’s next target:  expensive and ugly wind turbines

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (10:17am)

One more sign of a change in the climate:
TREASURER Joe Hockey has flagged a crackdown on corporate welfare, including for renewable energy projects, describing wind turbines as “a blight on the landscape"…

Asked specifically about grants to renewable energy ventures, the North Sydney MP said: “If I can be a little indulgent, I drive to Canberra to go to parliament and I must say I find those wind turbines around Lake George to be utterly offensive. I think they’re a blight on the landscape.”
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Lawson: global warming is no longer about the science

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (9:41am)

Global warming - general

Nigel Lawson, the former British Chancellor, says the warmists may try to scream him down but the facts speak even louder:
I must admit I am strongly tempted to agree that, since I am not a climate scientist, I should from now on remain silent on the subject — on the clear understanding, of course, that everyone else plays by the same rules. No more statements by Ed Davey, or indeed any other politician, including Ed Milliband, Lord Deben and Al Gore. Nothing more from the Prince of Wales, or from Lord Stern. What bliss! 
But of course this is not going to happen. Nor should it; for at bottom this is not a scientific issue. That is to say, the issue is not climate change but climate change alarmism, and the hugely damaging policies that are advocated, and in some cases put in place, in its name…
According to the temperature records kept by the UK Met Office (and other series are much the same), over the past 150 years (that is, from the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution), mean global temperature has increased by a little under a degree centigrade — according to the Met Office, 0.8ºC. This has happened in fits and starts, which are not fully understood. To begin with, to the extent that anyone noticed it, it was seen as a welcome and natural recovery from the rigours of the Little Ice Age. But the great bulk of it — 0.5ºC out of the 0.8ºC — occurred during the last quarter of the 20th century. It was then that global warming alarmism was born.
But since then, and wholly contrary to the expectations of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, who confidently predicted that global warming would not merely continue but would accelerate, given the unprecedented growth of global carbon emissions, as China’s coal-based economy has grown by leaps and bounds, there has been no further warming at all. To be precise, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a deeply flawed body whose non-scientist chairman is a committed climate alarmist, reckons that global warming has latterly been occurring at the rate of — wait for it — 0.05ºC per decade, plus or minus 0.1ºC. Their figures, not mine. In other words, the observed rate of warming is less than the margin of error....
The lessons of the unpredicted 15-year global temperature standstill (or hiatus as the IPCC calls it) are clear. In the first place, the so-called Integrated Assessment Models which the climate science community uses to predict the global temperature increase which is likely to occur over the next 100 years are almost certainly mistaken, in that climate sensitivity is almost certainly significantly less than they once thought, and thus the models exaggerate the likely temperature rise over the next hundred years.....
The fact remains that the most careful empirical studies show that, so far at least, there has been no perceptible increase, globally, in either the number or the severity of extreme weather events....
So how is it that much of the Western world, and this country in particular, has succumbed to the self-harming collective madness that is climate change orthodoxy? It is difficult to escape the conclusion that climate change orthodoxy has in effect become a substitute religion, attended by all the intolerant zealotry that has so often marred religion in the past, and in some places still does so today.
Throughout the Western world, the two creeds that used to vie for popular support, Christianity and the atheistic belief system of Communism, are each clearly in decline. Yet people still feel the need both for the comfort and for the transcendent values that religion can provide. It is the quasi-religion of green alarmism and global salvationism, of which the climate change dogma is the prime example, which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as little short of sacrilege....
But, despite their success, there are still hundreds of millions of people ... in dire poverty, suffering all the ills that this brings, in terms of malnutrition, preventable disease, and premature death. Asking these countries to abandon the cheapest available sources of energy is, at the very least, asking them to delay the conquest of malnutrition, to perpetuate the incidence of preventable disease, and to increase the numbers of premature deaths.... Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked.
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It is Labor’s back-of-the-coaster management which created the disaster Abbott must fix

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (9:03am)

Technology Spectator on how Kevin Rudd decided on the National Broadband Network - a $44 billion (plus) disaster:
...ultimately the blame for the NBN’s poor execution has to lie at the feet of the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Communications Minister Steven Conroy. 
Urban legend has it the idea for the project was sketched out on a napkin – this writer has been told it was written on a drinks coaster in the Canberra Qantas Chairman’s Lounge – but whatever the truth is, the NBN suffered from being poorly thought out at the beginning. 
Bit of a bad habit:


 
KEVIN Rudd’s botched batts scheme was hurriedly costed on the “back of a napkin” by the ­former prime minister, or one of his inner-circle, and an industry ­figure, the Royal Commission into the Home Insulation ­Program has heard.
Troy Delbridge says he was bullied and then sacked by the government as a technical adviser to the $2.8 billion program in July 2009 for repeatedly warning the rushed rollout put installers in danger.
The scheme, announced by Mr Rudd as an economic stimulus measure, was cut short in February 2010 after more than 100 house fires and four worker deaths.
Hired on a one-year contract in March 2009, environmental scientist Dr Delbridge said ... “(I was told) the costings were drawn up on the back of a napkin by some senior Labor Party politician ... and the head of the bulk (insulation) industry association,” said Dr Delbridge, who was hired to advise the government on technical, performance and safety aspects of the scheme. “It was one of the prime minister’s inner-circle, whether it was him himself, I’m not sure.”
. For all the criticisms of Tony Abbott’s attempts to now balance the books, remember the grotesque Labor incompetence and recklessness that created the yawning deficits he must now fix. 
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What sinking ship, gurgles Bill Shorten

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (8:43am)

Labor pretends there isn’t a problem. Every lobby group is in the queue to be interviewed attacking the Abbott Government’s planned cuts.
We’re in trouble, and Chris Richardson of Access Economics is in despair:
(T)he next 72 hours will be a test of the maturity of the Australian electorate – and I have to say that history doesn’t fill me with confidence. 
A bunch of the commission’s recommendations will be easy to demonise. Talkback and tabloid alike can and probably will have a rich feast on the political pain involved in good policy… There will be free kicks galore available to the opposition and the populists (the Greens and Palmer United)… Australia’s social compact – our federal budget – is broken and in need of repair. As a nation, we will either have a good debate or a bad one about the way we do that repair. We are about to find out which it will be.
UPDATE
What crisis, asks shadow treasurer Chris Bowen, surveying the wreckage left by Labor. Why cut anything? Why raise any taxes?:
We’ll be putting a case that we shouldn’t be charging people to go to the doctor ... [Abbott] should immediately say he will not slow down the roll-out of the NDIS… Well again, there are a whole range of recommendations here, some of which would cause us concern in relation to carers, for example, others of which are complex and detailed… We maintain the position that increasing the GST or broadening the base is not good policy...
And:
“Let’s be very, very clear. There is no budget crisis, there is no budget emergency,” Mr Bowen told ABC Radio.
UPDATE
Adam Creighton on the timidity of the political class:
The Commission of Audit’s proposals will be greeted with hysteria from the usual rent-seekers and partisans of a larger state but they are in many ways quite modest and reasonable.
Even if the Coalition adopted all the recommendations in the upcoming budget, government spending per capita would still grow in real terms for each of the next 10 years.
By comparison, the Cameron government in Britain has had to cut real spending by about 1 per cent every year since 2010. If growth turns out to be weaker than projected, as it has continually in recent years, the centrepiece of the Coalition’s fiscal vision, a 1 per cent surplus by 2023, will vanish. 
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Taxes hurt, tax cuts help

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (8:03am)

Senator-elect Bob Day of Family First says no to a deficit tax and yes to lower taxes instead:
The first thing to say about taxation is that we need less of it, not more of it. As has been widely acknowledged – most recently by the Treasurer Joe Hockey, governments in Australia do not a revenue problem, they have a spending problem. So if I were Joe Hockey, I would ... announce ... the Government is declaring a moratorium on any new tax increases…  
When the Australian company tax rate was cut from 39 to 30 percent, revenues went up not down. The famous Reagan tax cuts from 70% to 30% in the 1980s produced a $9 billion increase in revenue when a $1 billion shortfall had been forecast. Russia is another example, where the move to a 13 percent flat rate tax in 2001 increased revenues from 9 to 16 percent of GDP. When Sweden halved its company tax rate from 60 per cent to 30 per cent company tax revenue tripled. Resistance to paying tax declines as people view the tax system as fair and reasonable.
And, of course, business tend to improve.
Day also warns against increasing the GST:
… a lift in the GST rate, or a base-broadening change, would simply give State governments more of our money. Why on earth should any sensible person want that? 
These Treasury officials, economists and business people will of course say that they’re not looking to raise more revenue, they just want to raise more from the GST and then offset that by reducing other taxes. [But] by the time you have “compensated” everybody who says they will be worse off as a result of the rise or broadening of the GST, you are left with only a portion of what the GST increase will raise. The result, as it was in 2001, would be a higher level of expenditure, a higher level of taxation and no reduction in other taxes. 
Oh, and don’t like this message from one of the cross-benchers who now share the balance of power in the Senate? Well, the big parties had better not think of reforms to stop them getting elected again:
The Abbott Government ... will need six votes to get its legislative agenda through the Senate. In the Senate there are six new crossbenchers. I am one of them. Now we’ve been variously described by the media as “a mishmash, grab bag, barnyard, liquorice allsorts, flotsam and jetsam, motley crew of Star Wars aliens!” with calls for the Electoral Act to be changed immediately to make sure this sort of thing never happens again…  
Bear in mind 25% of the electorate did not vote for a major party ... but the non-major party senators took only 18% of the seats… Yes, people like Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party got a tiny number of primary votes but people weren’t specifically voting for him - it isn’t personal, any more than it is with the major parties, people do not vote for individual Senators, they vote for the party and Ricky Muir represented all those who voted for someone other than the major parties… If the government is half smart it will not team up with Labor and the Greens to change the Electoral Act to prevent minor parties getting elected. That would certainly get us off on the wrong foot.
Bob Day’s speech here:


Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Taxes hurt, tax cuts help'
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The memo which shows the White House lying about Benghazi

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (7:31am)


image
An email from Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, shows him coaching then-ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice on what to say on the Sunday TV shows following the co-ordinated terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, in which four Americans were killed.
Blame an anti-Muslim video, the email suggested - not the weak president or the terrorists:
Documents obtained by Judicial Watch show deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes providing Rice, as well as others on the e-mail, with a list of “goals” for handling the attacks. Two of them: 
“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” “To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”
The White House preposterously claims the email wasn’t coaching Rice what to say about that week’s murder of four Americans in Benghazi but about the wider protests in the region.
Really? What else would the talk shows want to discuss but that week’s Benghazi attack? What else in the White House talking points covered that burning topic?
It is a cover-up and a deliberate campaign to lie to the American people:

State Department, CIA officials and reporters have explained that within 24 hours, certainly 48 hours (Sept. 13) the State Department and CIA knew this was a planned terrorist attack. The FBI was already dispatched. A background briefing by the State Department on Sept. 12 reiterated that this was a coordinated attack.
Yet the White House ordered Rice to pretend this was just a protest against an anti-Islamic video that got out of control. 
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Kathy Jackson: I told Shorten of my slush fund

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (7:12am)

The royal commission into union corruption is looking at union slush funds, and has been asked to look into this one:
HEALTH Services Union ­national secretary Kathy Jackson has tried to justify using union members’ money for a slush fund to support election campaigns of factional allies, and claimed she discussed one such campaign with Bill Shorten.
She claims the Labor leader, when he was a boss of the Australian Workers Union, and Labor frontbencher Stephen Conroy, had talked about the matter at a dinner party at Mr Shorten’s house about nine years ago.
Ms Jackson ... was the secretary of the HSU’s Victoria No 3 branch [when] she ran a slush fund into which the union transferred nearly $300,000 over several years.
Ms Jackson last night said the transfers of union money to the fund, called the National Health Development Account, had been approved by the union’s committee of management, which knew it would be allocated for political purposes.
“There is no allegation that I benefited personally from the money in that bank account. None of those funds were used for my benefit or the private benefit of others,” Ms Jackson said.
“Money that came from that bank account was used to ­finance various union and Labor Party related causes. I discussed some payments from the account with Bill Shorten and Stephen Conroy,” Ms Jackson said.
“On one occasion at Mr Shorten’s home, we discussed a payment of $6000 from the HSU fund to finance a Labor Party member’s campaign.”
A spokesman for the Labor leader said: “Mr Shorten has ­absolutely no recollection of the ‘National Health Development Account’ being referred to.” A spokesman for Senator Conroy said he “has no recollection of a dinner or a discussion"… [The] union’s acting national secretary, Chris Brown, has referred the allegations to the Fair Work Commission and the royal commission into union corruption.
I make no allegation at all of corruption in this matter. None. Besides, these are untested claims. But it’s not hard to see how the royal commission could drag Shorten into the witness box and that alone would cause political damage. 
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Why would Tony Abbott put a tax on his good word?

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (6:53am)

Professor Sinclair Davidson has tough words for Treasurer Joe Hockey about his planned new deficit tax:
In full knowledge of the budget situation you promised to repair the damage while not increasing taxes. To renege on that promise is simply to have told a lie. You will have lied when you promised to not increase taxes, and you will have lied about why you lied in the first place. 
The IPA’s Simon Breheny just shows a Liberal poster:

UPDATE
Piers Akerman:
From the constant repetition of the “spreading the pain” mantra, it is clear that Abbott thinks (erroneously) that hitting up those Australians who already pay the overwhelming bulk of income tax will in some way make those who pay little or no income tax feel more kindly toward his government. 
That is the sort of soak-the-rich attitude that unthinking generations of Labor trade unionists and politicians used to kill industry and stifle growth.
The Labor and Green voters, for whom this sort of pandering rhetoric is ambrosial, are never going to change their votes…
In raising a sum which would do little to meet even the interest bill on Labor’s $123 million deficit, Abbott would destroy the single greatest point of difference between himself and the last two Labor prime ministers. He would have broken faith with the public who believed he was not lying when he promised no new taxes.
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Audit commission’s plan could save us but would kill the Government

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (6:42am)

The audit commission explained the trouble we’re in but its rescue plan would kill the Government, says Terry McCrann:
RELAX. Most - almost all - of the Commission of Audit’s recommendations won’t be implemented… 
Take the most “courageous” recommendation: to effectively abolish Medicare.
Ask yourself - as Prime Minister Tony Abbott most certainly already has - if the Coalition promised to do that, would it even be able to put together a parliamentary cricket team on the Opposition benches after 2016’s election?…
Much the same applies to most of the commission’s other big recommendations.
Bluntly - brutally - this is less a road map to a sustainable fiscal future and more a road map to political oblivion....
There are a few, essentially minor [proposals], that have been picked up. The standout is the $6 - not $15, as recommended - Medicare co-payment.
The other is the pension age going to 70 after 2050.
Add the coming deficit levy, and that’s more than enough to make it difficult for the Government to win again in 2016. 
UPDATE
But as the audit commission says, something must be done - and it’s its not these changes, then what?
Under the “business as usual” scenario the commonwealth’s budget remains in deficit out to 2023-24 and beyond.
If this occurred, Australia would record an unprecedented run of 16 consecutive years of deficits (and more in prospect), with net debt rising to around 17 per cent of GDP, or some $440bn. Under the “reform” scenario the budget returns to surplus in 2019-20, with the surplus growing to 1 per cent of GDP by 2023-24.
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The Bolt Report on Sunday

Andrew Bolt May 02 2014 (12:51am)

On Channel 10 at 10am and 4pm.
Abbott breaks a promise. Should he be forgiven?
My guest: Amanda Vanstone, former Howard Government minister and member of the Commission of Audit.
The panel: Michael Kroger and Cassandra Wilkinson.
NewsWatch: Rowan Dean.
So much to discuss: destroying the handout mentality, budget cuts and the deficit tax. Plus:  the menace of Clive Palmer’s money and the arrest of a man who quoted Churchill in public.
Your Say and more.
The videos appear here.
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The Holocaust during WWII was one of the very low points in human history. Millions of Jews were systematically exterminated in concentration camps. These are the fats, and yet some still try to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Whatever their reasoning, they maintain the stories are Nazi propaganda.
Showing great foresight, Dwight Eisenhower made an effort to stop any such attempts. In 1945, he visited one of the concentration camps near Gotha, and was shocked and horrified at what he saw. Though some of the sights made him physically ill, he inspected every part of the camps. He felt that it was his duty to see it all and be able to testify to the truth of the Nazi brutality.

Read more at http://www.omg-facts.com/History/President-Eisenhower-Predicted-Holocaust/56972#ZK2ZvScgpuzrBDBT.99 
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May 2: Flag Day in Poland
Aerial view of Old Portsmouth
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“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” - Hebrews 11:6
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers."
Song of Solomon 5:13
Lo, the flowery month is come! March winds and April showers have done their work, and the earth is all bedecked with beauty. Come my soul, put on thine holiday attire and go forth to gather garlands of heavenly thoughts. Thou knowest whither to betake thyself, for to thee "the beds of spices" are well known, and thou hast so often smelt the perfume of "the sweet flowers," that thou wilt go at once to thy well-beloved and find all loveliness, all joy in him. That cheek once so rudely smitten with a rod, oft bedewed with tears of sympathy and then defiled with spittle--that cheek as it smiles with mercy is as fragrant aromatic to my heart. Thou didst not hide thy face from shame and spitting, O Lord Jesus, and therefore I will find my dearest delight in praising thee. Those cheeks were furrowed by the plough of grief, and crimsoned with red lines of blood from thy thorn-crowned temples; such marks of love unbounded cannot but charm my soul far more than "pillars of perfume." If I may not see the whole of his face I would behold his cheeks, for the least glimpse of him is exceedingly refreshing to my spiritual sense and yields a variety of delights. In Jesus I find not only fragrance, but a bed of spices; not one flower, but all manner of sweet flowers. He is to me my rose and my lily, my heartsease and my cluster of camphire. When he is with me it is May all the year round, and my soul goes forth to wash her happy face in the morning-dew of his grace, and to solace herself with the singing of the birds of his promises. Precious Lord Jesus, let me in very deed know the blessedness which dwells in abiding, unbroken fellowship with thee. I am a poor worthless one, whose cheek thou hast deigned to kiss! O let me kiss thee in return with the kisses of my lips.

Evening

"I am the rose of Sharon."
Song of Solomon 2:1
Whatever there may be of beauty in the material world, Jesus Christ possesses all that in the spiritual world in a tenfold degree. Amongst flowers the rose is deemed the sweetest, but Jesus is infinitely more beautiful in the garden of the soul than the rose can be in the gardens of earth. He takes the first place as the fairest among ten thousand. He is the sun, and all others are the stars; the heavens and the day are dark in comparison with him, for the King in his beauty transcends all. "I am the rose of Sharon." This was the best and rarest of roses. Jesus is not "the rose" alone, he is "the rose of Sharon," just as he calls his righteousness "gold," and then adds, "the gold of Ophir"--the best of the best. He is positively lovely, and superlatively the loveliest. There is variety in his charms. The rose is delightful to the eye, and its scent is pleasant and refreshing; so each of the senses of the soul, whether it be the taste or feeling, the hearing, the sight, or the spiritual smell, finds appropriate gratification in Jesus. Even the recollection of his love is sweet. Take the rose of Sharon, and pull it leaf from leaf, and lay by the leaves in the jar of memory, and you shall find each leaf fragrant long afterwards, filling the house with perfume. Christ satisfies the highest taste of the most educated spirit to the very full. The greatest amateur in perfumes is quite satisfied with the rose: and when the soul has arrived at her highest pitch of true taste, she shall still be content with Christ, nay, she shall be the better able to appreciate him. Heaven itself possesses nothing which excels the rose of Sharon. What emblem can fully set forth his beauty? Human speech and earth-born things fail to tell of him. Earth's choicest charms commingled, feebly picture his abounding preciousness. Blessed rose, bloom in my heart forever!
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Today's reading: 1 Kings 10-11, Luke 21:20-38 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 1 Kings 10-11

When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to the LORD, she came to test Solomon with hard questions. 2 Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan--with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones--she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that she had on her mind. 3 Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her. 4When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, 5 the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the LORD, she was overwhelmed....

Today's New Testament reading: Luke 21:20-38

21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. 22 For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. 23 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. 24 They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled....

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