Thursday, May 21, 2015

Thu May 21st 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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Dear Members (YOU MUST READ THIS THREAD)
As of today, the rules of this forum are going to be enforced more rigorously. This includes the instant removal of members who personally abuse other members of this forum.
Whilst the use of bad language is often invoked as colourful descriptors of politicians, we ask that people refrain from the C word as there are many people on this forum who do not want to see that as part of every day language here.
Blatant racism, homophobia and religious slurs will be removed from the forum, along with the person who posted them.
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Generally we will give people a 24 hour time out to cool off after they have been removed and those people will be welcome back to the forum once they have applied via an admin..... we will however, permanently remove repeat offenders with a rule of "3 strikes and you're out".
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The standard of this forum needs to be better and people are responsible for their own behaviour.... bullying of others or bullying of admins will also result in that person being removed.
Legitimate criticism is appreciated, along with logical and rational commentary.
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Regards
Admins
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Todays report stands on its own because this time in 2014, the Conservative Voice was looking for rental accommodation after being forced to sell their unit/home.
Peter Walsh was not competent. He was a finance minister for the Hawke Government and had views commensurate with a responsible minister who dealt with money. He was not an AGW hysteric, did not approve of the NBN and espoused fiscal responsibility for which he was lauded by Mathias Cormann as a "real pillar of the Hawke Government." However, Peter himself admitted he failed to reign in spending across the ministry. Peter was not competent, but he was good as far as the ALP goes, no one else before or since in the ALP have shown his talent. The conservative parties have had better finance ministers. Many of them who were competent. Like Cormann. Cormann has twice found more money than projected. Whereas Penny Wong had lost over $130 billion. 

 Islamic Council asks government to tighten immigration rules. Thing is there is nothing wrong with the rules. The problem of jihadists being raised in Australia has nothing to do with migration and everything to do with the community, including left wing media and impotent Islamic leaders and Impotent Christian Leaders who support jihadist victimology. A survey of birthplace of migrants shows Australia has diverse cultures. The laws are sufficient. The victim ideology is awful. 

 Millerism relates to today, the anniversary of Seventh Day Adventism coming into being. The ridiculous failure of Millerism, where the advent of the end of days is predicted again and again and hasn't arrived. It discredits the faith. But the faith is sound in trying to base itself on the Word. More care needs to be taken, and sense from the leadership needs to be given. In the US the President is assaulting the faithful, denying soldiers prayer. But while the President may never turn to God for important things, he must realise that his culturally diverse nation includes faithful people who do. 

Anti-Bogan leftwing group admin is being investigated for pedophilia. He is also an Assistant Principal.  

On this day in history, In 293, Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appointed Galerius as Caesar to Diocletian, beginning the period of four rulers known as the Tetrarchy. 878, Syracuse, Sicily, was captured by the Muslim sultan of Sicily. 879, Pope John VIII gave blessings to Branimir of Croatia and to the Croatian people, considered to be international recognition of the Croatian state. 996, Sixteen-year-old Otto III was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. He died less than six years later within empire in rebellion, he got fever. 1085, the Swedish town of Helsingborg was founded.

In 1349, Dušan's Code, the constitution of the Serbian Empire, was enacted by Dušan the Mighty. 1403, Henry III of Castile sent Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo as ambassador to Timur to discuss the possibility of an alliance between Timur and Castile against the Ottoman Empire. It was a long and arduous journey, but Ruy made it to speak with Timur. Timur did not give him a return letter, but conquered a lot of territory which took pressure of Castile. It was not a Muslim thing, both Timur and the Ottomans were Islamic. Henry III did not live long enough to get the message, he had been too sickly. 1502, the island of Saint Helena was discovered by the Portuguese explorer João da Nova. 1554, Queen Mary I granted a royal charter to Derby School, as a grammar school for boys in Derby, England. 1674, the nobility elect John Sobieski King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. 1725, the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky was instituted in Russia by Empress Catherine I. It would later be discontinued and then reinstated by the Soviet government in 1942 as the Order of Alexander Nevsky. 1758, ten-year-old Mary Campbell was abducted in Pennsylvania by Lenape during the French and Indian War. She was returned six and a half years later. She had been well treated by her abductors and went on to live a full life without a high school education, dying aged about 50. 

In 1809, the first day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling between the Austrian army led by Archduke Charles and the French army led by Napoleon I of France saw the French attack across the Danube held. 1851, Slavery was abolished in Colombia, South America. 1856, Lawrence, Kansas was captured and burned by pro-slavery bigots. The force had semi legitimacy with a grand jury declaring a hotel was actually a fort, so 800 bigots rode out and destroyed the printing presses and blew up the hotel. But one bigot died in the siege from falling masonry. 1863, American Civil War: The Union Army succeeded in closing off the last escape route from Port Hudson, Louisiana, in preparation for the coming siege. Also 1863, Organisation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. They had had over twenty years of disappointment as Millerites. 1864, Russia declared an end to the Russian–Circassian War and many Circassians were forced into exile. The day was designated the Circassian Day of Mourning. Also 1864, American Civil War: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House ended. Also 1864, the Ionian Islands reunited with Greece. 1871, French troops invaded the Paris Commune and engaged its residents in street fighting. By the close of "Bloody Week", some 20,000 communards had been killed and 38,000 arrested. Also 1871, Opening of the first rack railway in Europe, the Rigi-Bahnen on Mount Rigi. 1879, War of the Pacific: Two Chilean ships blocking the harbor of Iquique (then belonging to Peru) battle two Peruvian vessels in the Battle of Iquique. 1881, the American Red Cross was established by Clara Barton in Washington, D.C. 1894, the Manchester Ship Canal in the United Kingdom was officially opened by Queen Victoria, who later knighted its designer Sir Edward Leader Williams.

In 1904, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in Paris. In 1911, President of Mexico Porfirio Díaz and the revolutionary Francisco Madero signed the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez to put an end to the fighting between the forces of both men, concluding the initial phase of the Mexican Revolution. 1917, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was established through royal charter to mark, record and maintain the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations military forces. Also 1917, the Great Atlanta fire of 1917 caused $5.5 million in damages, destroying some 300 acres including 2,000 homes, businesses and churches, displacing about 10,000 people but leading to only one fatality (due to heart attack). 1924, University of Chicago students Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a "thrill killing" The killing was infinitely worse than can be quickly written. The boy was a second cousin of Loeb and a near neighbour. The killers were geniuses who studied Nietzsche and thought the perfect crime of killing would show they were supermen. They planned the murder for months, including covering it up with a fake note suggesting a ransom. They weren't executed for their crime. Leopold was released eventually and gave back to the community. They had given gays a bad rap. 1927, Charles Lindbergh touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1932, Bad weather forced Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and she thereby became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. 1934, Oskaloosa, Iowa, became the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens. 1936, Sada Abe was arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her handbag. Her story soon becomes one of Japan's most notorious scandals. It was a case of a sex game gone wrong. She served six years. He was shamed by it, being a politician consorting with a lower cast girl. But he died so his shame was minimal. 1937, a Soviet station, North Pole-1, became the first scientific research settlement to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean. 1939, the Canadian National War Memorial was unveiled by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Ottawa. 1946, physicist Louis Slotin was fatally irradiated in a critical incident during an experiment with the demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He had failed to follow protocol, but had worked quickly to prevent others from dying from it. It took him nine days to die. 1951, the opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition: A gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively known as the New York School.

In 1961, American civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson declared martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots broke out. 1966, the Ulster Volunteer Force declared war on the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. 1969, civil unrest in Rosario, Argentina, known as Rosariazo, following the death of a 15-year-old student. 1972, Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was damaged by a vandal, the mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist Laszlo Toth. 1976, the Yuba City bus disaster occurred in Martinez, California. Twenty-nine were killed making it the deadliest road accident in U.S. history. 1979, White Night riots in San Francisco followed the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. 1981, Irish Republican hunger strikers Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara died on hunger strike in Maze prison. Also 1981, the Italian government released the membership list of Propaganda Due, an illegal pseudo-Masonic lodge that was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries. 1982, Falklands War: A British amphibious assault during Operation Sutton led to the Battle of San Carlos.

In 1991, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber near Madras. She had been armed by the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers who had no business with Indian politics. Also 1991, Mengistu Haile Mariam, president of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, fled Ethiopia, effectively bringing the Ethiopian Civil War to an end. 1992, After 30 seasons Johnny Carson hosted his penultimate episode and last featuring guests (Robin Williams and Bette Midler) of The Tonight Show. David Letterman finished his show in 2015. 1994, the Democratic Republic of Yemen unsuccessfully attempted to secede from the Republic of Yemen; a war broke out. 1996, the ferry MV Bukoba sank in Tanzanian waters on Lake Victoria, killing nearly 1,000. Also 1996, the Trappist Martyrs of Atlas, kidnapped during the Algerian Civil War and held for two months, were found dead. 1998, in Miami, five abortion clinics were hit by a butyric acid attacker. Also 1998, president Suharto of Indonesia resigned following the killing of students from Trisakti University earlier that week by security forces and growing mass protests in Jakarta against his ongoing corrupt rule.

In 2001, French Taubira law was enacted, officially recognising the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity. 2003, an earthquake hit northern Algeria, killing more than 2,000 people. 2005, the tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka opened at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey. 2006, the Republic of Montenegro held a referendum proposing independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro; 55% of Montenegrins voted for independence. 2010, JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launched the solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket. The vessel would make a Venus flyby later in the year. 2011, Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on this date. 2012, a bus accident near Himara, Albania killed 13 people and injured 21 others. Also 2012, a suicide bombing killed more than 120 people in Sana'a, Yemen. 2014, a knife attack on a Taipei Metro train left four people dead and almost two dozen others injured. Also 2014, the National September 11 Museum opened to the public.
2014
None in 2014 because of Government and public service corruption related to the petitions
Historical perspectives on this day
In 293, Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian appointed Galerius as Caesar to Diocletian, beginning the period of four rulers known as the Tetrarchy. 878, Syracuse, Sicily, was captured by the Muslim sultan of Sicily. 879, Pope John VIII gave blessings to Branimir of Croatia and to the Croatian people, considered to be international recognition of the Croatian state. 996, Sixteen-year-old Otto III was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. 1085, the Swedish town of Helsingborg was founded.

 In 1349, Dušan's Code, the constitution of the Serbian Empire, was enacted by Dušan the Mighty. 1403, Henry III of Castile sent Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo as ambassador to Timur to discuss the possibility of an alliance between Timur and Castile against the Ottoman Empire. 1502, the island of Saint Helena was discovered by the Portuguese explorer João da Nova. 1554, Queen Mary I granted a royal charter to Derby School, as a grammar school for boys in Derby, England. 1674, the nobility elect John Sobieski King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. 1725, the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky was instituted in Russia by Empress Catherine I. It would later be discontinued and then reinstated by the Soviet government in 1942 as the Order of Alexander Nevsky. 1758, ten-year-old Mary Campbell was abducted in Pennsylvania by Lenape during the French and Indian War. She was returned six and a half years later.

 In 1809, the first day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling between the Austrian army led by Archduke Charles and the French army led by Napoleon I of France saw the French attack across the Danube held. 1851, Slavery was abolished in Colombia, South America. 1856, Lawrence, Kansas was captured and burned by pro-slavery forces. 1863, American Civil War: The Union Army succeeded in closing off the last escape route from Port Hudson, Louisiana, in preparation for the coming siege. Also 1863, Organisation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. 1864, Russia declared an end to the Russian–Circassian War and many Circassians were forced into exile. The day was designated the Circassian Day of Mourning. Also 1864, American Civil War: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House ended. Also 1864, the Ionian Islands reunited with Greece. 1871, French troops invaded the Paris Commune and engaged its residents in street fighting. By the close of "Bloody Week", some 20,000 communards had been killed and 38,000 arrested. Also 1871, Opening of the first rack railway in Europe, the Rigi-Bahnen on Mount Rigi. 1879, War of the Pacific: Two Chilean ships blocking the harbor of Iquique (then belonging to Peru) battle two Peruvian vessels in the Battle of Iquique. 1881, the American Red Cross was established by Clara Barton in Washington, D.C. 1894, the Manchester Ship Canal in the United Kingdom was officially opened by Queen Victoria, who later knighted its designer Sir Edward Leader Williams.

 In 1904, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in Paris. In 1911, President of Mexico Porfirio Díaz and the revolutionary Francisco Madero signed the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez to put an end to the fighting between the forces of both men, concluding the initial phase of the Mexican Revolution. 1917, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was established through royal charter to mark, record and maintain the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations military forces. Also 1917, the Great Atlanta fire of 1917 caused $5.5 million in damages, destroying some 300 acres including 2,000 homes, businesses and churches, displacing about 10,000 people but leading to only one fatality (due to heart attack). 1924, University of Chicago students Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a "thrill killing". 1927, Charles Lindbergh touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

 In 1932, Bad weather forced Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and she thereby became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. 1934, Oskaloosa, Iowa, became the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens. 1936, Sada Abe was arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her handbag. Her story soon becomes one of Japan's most notorious scandals. 1937, a Soviet station, North Pole-1, became the first scientific research settlement to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean. 1939, the Canadian National War Memorial was unveiled by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Ottawa. 1946, physicist Louis Slotin was fatally irradiated in a critical incident during an experiment with the demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 1951, the opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition: A gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively known as the New York School.

 In 1961, American civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson declared martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots broke out. 1966, the Ulster Volunteer Force declared war on the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. 1969, civil unrest in Rosario, Argentina, known as Rosariazo, following the death of a 15-year-old student. 1972, Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was damaged by a vandal, the mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist Laszlo Toth. 1976, the Yuba City bus disaster occurred in Martinez, California. Twenty-nine were killed making it the deadliest road accident in U.S. history. 1979, White Night riots in San Francisco followed the manslaughter conviction of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. 1981, Irish Republican hunger strikers Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara died on hunger strike in Maze prison. Also 1981, the Italian government released the membership list of Propaganda Due, an illegal pseudo-Masonic lodge that was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries. 1982, Falklands War: A British amphibious assault during Operation Sutton led to the Battle of San Carlos.

 In 1991, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber near Madras. Also 1991, Mengistu Haile Mariam, president of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, fled Ethiopia, effectively bringing the Ethiopian Civil War to an end. 1992, After 30 seasons Johnny Carson hosted his penultimate episode and last featuring guests (Robin Williams and Bette Midler) of The Tonight Show. 1994, the Democratic Republic of Yemen unsuccessfully attempted to secede from the Republic of Yemen; a war broke out. 1996, the ferry MV Bukoba sank in Tanzanian waters on Lake Victoria, killing nearly 1,000. Also 1996, the Trappist Martyrs of Atlas, kidnapped during the Algerian Civil War and held for two months, were found dead. 1998, in Miami, five abortion clinics were hit by a butyric acid attacker. Also 1998, president Suharto of Indonesia resigned following the killing of students from Trisakti University earlier that week by security forces and growing mass protests in Jakarta against his ongoing corrupt rule.

 In 2001, French Taubira law was enacted, officially recognising the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity. 2003, an earthquake hit northern Algeria, killing more than 2,000 people. 2005, the tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka opened at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey. 2006, the Republic of Montenegro held a referendum proposing independence from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro; 55% of Montenegrins voted for independence. 2010, JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launched the solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket. The vessel would make a Venus flyby later in the year. 2011, Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on this date. 2012, a bus accident near Himara, Albania killed 13 people and injured 21 others. Also 2012, a suicide bombing killed more than 120 people in Sana'a, Yemen. 2014, a knife attack on a Taipei Metro train left four people dead and almost two dozen others injured. Also 2014, the National September 11 Museum opened to the public.
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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 Nicholas Comanos, Rob Dipper and Toni Patsias. Born on the same day, across the years. The same day in 1863 in which Seventh Day Adventism began and humour became a part of theology in a way never seen before. It is ok to give blood, if you are sincere .. it is your birthday and that makes all the difference.

Albrecht Dürer
Deaths
May 21: Navy Day in Chile
Charles Lindbergh and The Spirit of St. Louis
We have seen it and recognise it. It was a draw. FIFA lives! Charles has flown the coop. Italy is run by Italians. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches

Albrecht Dürer

Alexander Pope
Despatches
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2015
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SHEAR MADNESS

Tim Blair – Thursday, May 21, 2015 (3:10pm)

Be polite to sheep – or face investigation: 
A case of alleged animal abuse in the far west of New South Wales has led to debate about whether sheep can comprehend human speech …
It was alleged sheep were abused verbally during shearing. 
Brilliant response from the farmer whose station was accused of the sheep rudeness: 
For Ken Turner, who operates Boorungie Station, the obvious answer to the quandary was to ask the sheep themselves to corroborate the evidence. 
UPDATE. A barnyard bar barney in the UK: 
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a letter to the oldest bar in Britain on Monday demanding that it change its historic name because “Ye Olde Fighting Cocks” is offensive to chickens. 
(Via Mark Perry)
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CONTAGION SPREADS

Tim Blair – Thursday, May 21, 2015 (1:21pm)

Gosford’s Father Tilty McJesus warns nearby residents:

image
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HE CONTINUES TO BELIEVE

Tim Blair – Thursday, May 21, 2015 (5:13am)

Evidently enjoying his time in opposition and wishing to extend it, Labor’s Chris Bowen revives the carbon tax: 
We continue to believe firstly that climate change is real.
Secondly, that it’s caused by humankind and thirdly, the best way of dealing with it is a price on carbon.
We continue to believe that, and that will be reflected in our detailed policy that we announce and seek a mandate to implement. 
Really, Chris? A mandate for the carbon tax? That’ll be a first. Of course, this is less about saving the planet than it is about saving inner-city Labor seats from metastasising Greens. Look for Labor in coming elections to form an alliance with the Arts Party. Whatever; here’s some timely news for Bowen on the sainted occasion of his carbon quest renewal: 
Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at allsince the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede. 
(Via Bing Bing)
UPDATE. Bowen is a proud graduate of Julia Gillard’s Mispronunciation College. (Via Stu)
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THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL THREE

Tim Blair – Thursday, May 21, 2015 (4:29am)

It has now been three days since Ben Eltham vowed to expose all of the factual inaccuracies in this week’s column. While we’re waiting, here are Twitter profile shots of three creative types who share Ben’s view:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL THREE'
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BIN LADEN’S BOOK CLUB

Tim Blair – Thursday, May 21, 2015 (3:51am)

Among documents discovered at Osama bin Laden’s compound following his career-ending skull ventilation:
• A letter from bin Laden on the implications of climate change.
• Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky.
• Khalifah Publications, A Warm Call from Hizb ut-Tahrir to the Muslims.
• Profiles of bishops in the Church of England.
• Adobe Photoshop Manual.
Conspicuously absent from bin Laden’s collection: any useful guidance on how to avoid things aimed at his head.
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MOOOVING ON

Tim Blair – Thursday, May 21, 2015 (3:43am)

Post-election UK reviewed by the Spectator‘s Rod Liddle: 
And so now we have to suffer the epic delusions, temper tantrums and hissy fits of the metro-left …
My favourite little temper strop, though, came from a woman called Rebecca Roache, who is a lecturer at Royal Holloway. Tory voters are akin to racists, sexists and homophobes, she asserted on her blog, before adding that she had ‘defriended’ people on Facebook who had posted links to pro-Tory pages. ‘I’m tired of reasoned debate,’ she added.
In what subject does Becca bestow upon her students the fruits of her incalculable wisdom? Remember, she’s tired of reasoned debate. Yep, of course – philosophy. Better give up your job then, you fatuous cow. 
Labour’s next leader, by the way, won’t be decided until September.
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SORRY CLOWN

Tim Blair – Thursday, May 21, 2015 (3:26am)

A scary Melbourne clown has silently apologised for his clownish ways:

image

On this topic, does anybody else feel that a clown of doom might soon loom over Bill Shorten’s shoulder? I know that Kevin Rudd’s leadership rule changes make a demotion difficult, but doom clowns have special powers.
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CONSERVATIVES ATTACK

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (5:26pm)

The BBC reports an attempted murder in Turkey: 
A Turkish woman who has been taking part in a talent show on national TV has been shot in the head while rehearsing at home, Turkish media say.

image

Mutlu Kaya, 19, was in a critical condition after being shot in Diyarbakir province early on Monday. 
What monsters are responsible for this? The BBC has an interesting theory: 
Diyarbakir is a conservative region in south-east Turkey and Ms Kaya had reportedly received death threats for singing on the show …
The attack on Mutlu Kaya took place in Diyarbakir, a city where the Kurdish women’s movement is very strong … But, despite playing a prominent role in society and politics, women are still under pressure from the traditional structures of conservative society.
That is why news stories about prominent female fighters in the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Syria go hand in hand with news stories of “honour killings” …
For a poor girl living with her family in a run-down one bedroom flat, attracting national media attention could have triggered a fatal conservative social backlash. 
(Via David T., who emails: “Obviously this has nothing to do with Islam.")
UPDATE. Italian police have arrested a man suspected of involvement in the March 18 attack on Tunisia’s Bardo museum that left 22 people dead – and it turns out he’s a boatie: 
Police say the Moroccan man arrested in connection with the Tunisian museum attack had arrived in Italy aboard a migrant boat a month before the attack and was ordered expelled. 
Italian politicians, some of whom who are not inclined towards political correctness, demand action: 
The news that the suspect had allegedly sneaked into Italy by boat sparked an immediate outcry among rightwing politicians, with the head of the anti-immigration Northern League party, Matteo Salvini, calling for the Schengen agreement allowing free movement between most continental European states to be suspended.
“Libyan intelligence says boats are arriving with Islamic State terrorists. Today in my Milan, a north African was arrested for involvement in the Tunisian massacre. Close the borders before it’s too late,” Salvini told Italian media.
Hard-right politician Daniela Santanchè from Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party also criticised the government.
It is “unbelievable that this government, instead of defending us from cut-throats, has transformed Italy into a useful platform for terrorists,” Santanchè said. 
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Tunisian museum attack, in which four Italians were murdered.
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Greenpeace cons you about the Reef. How can you trust a word it says

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (7:41pm)


The Greenpeace ad, claiming our Great Barrier Reef is being destroyed:
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But wait. That picture of dead coral is actually of coral in the Philippines, and was lifted from another Greenpeace publication:
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Even more amazing, Greenpeace had actually used that picture to demonstrate how coral killed by a cyclone could actually grow back. Don’t panic!
Apo Island’s community-managed marine sanctuary is considered one of the best of its kind in the world. Established in the mid1980s, the sanctuary became a beacon of hope that damaged reefs can, with proper protection, management, and community buy-in, be restored back to health. ..
Strong storm surges decimated the corals and washed them ashore. The sanctuary, once known to be teeming with marine life was left devastated and now resembles a coral graveyard. Fortunately the reefs on the other sides of the island were spared. But while the damage to the sanctuary was significant not all was lost because marine life around the island was already healthy…
Apo Island’s success story has always been a model of hope for the Philippine seas. 
What a con. Here’s Greenpeace using a dodgy picture to push a dodgy scare about a dodgy warming theory - with the result that it’s likely to drive away tourists.
It’s also pretending nothing is being doing to “save” the Reef, when in fact more than $2 billion of taxpayers’ money is being spent over the next decade to protect it.
Has Greenpeace no shame? 
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Walls breached!  ABC presenter smuggles in a sceptic. Gives him a sympathetic hearing

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (6:21pm)


New ABC presenter Tom Switzer gives a good hearing to climate sceptic Nigel Lawson, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer and chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Listen here.
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How the ABC pumped up a protest

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (6:06pm)


How the ABC sold a strike today by public service workers in Canberra angry with the Abbott Government:

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Another view of the protesters, giving a truer picture:

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Muslim leaders want crackdown on Muslim immigration

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (4:36pm)


Now that Muslim leaders and academics are saying it, too, - and on the ABC - may conservatives finally be allowed to say the same without being smeared as “racists” and threatened with prosecution?


As authorities grapple with the threat posed by Islamic State, there are calls from within the Muslim community to tighten Australia’s immigration policies.
The founding president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), Haset Sali, who also served as both a president and legal adviser to the organisation, said moderate Muslims had been sidelined by an Islamic leadership promoting more fundamentalist views…
“Sometimes the truth has to be faced and if the truth is awkward, then it has to be faced anyway, and I really do believe we have to be more careful about who we let into this country and who we grant refugee status to, because I think it’s just getting beyond a joke quite frankly,” he said…

He said a classic example was Sydney siege shooter Man Haron Monis, the self-styled radical cleric with a violent past who he said Australian authorities “tolerated to the nth degree”.
Associate Professor Halim Rane, from Griffith University’s Islamic Research Unit, said the gulf was even broader.
“Interestingly enough Muslims used to be better integrated into Australian society a number of generations ago than they tend to be today - that’s a consequence I think of migration policy,” he said.
“In attempting to have a non-discriminatory migration policy we’ve allowed into the country many people whose values and norms are simply inconsistent with Australian values and norms, so they would obviously find it difficult to integrate into Australian society…
“Maybe we need to look more carefully at the individual who’s coming,” he said...
Why has it taken so long for this conversation to be possible on the ABC? What damage has been done in the meantime?
UPDATE
Bring in poorly educated, poorly skilled people from a third-world Muslim area? How has that worked the last few times we tried it?
And so I’d suggest only one politician of the three represents the public will:
PRIME Minister Tony Abbott has ruled out resettling any of the thousands of refugees stranded at sea amid the Southeast Asia asylum seeker crisis.
“NOPE, nope, nope,” Mr Abbott told reporters on Thursday, saying the prospect of resettlement in Western countries would encourage more people to risk their lives on leaky boats.
“If you want to start a new life, you come through the front door, not through the back door,” he said…
Mr Abbott’s refusal has attracted scorn from Labor.
“Tony Abbott’s not-my-problem approach is disappointing,” Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said.
The Greens say Australia should be accepting thousands of Rohingya refugees.
I prefer to help these people to make their lives in their own country, not ours:

Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia estimated 7,000 people were stranded at today’s meeting but the UN refugee agency believes there are 4,000 at sea and activists had initially put the number at 6,000.
Food shortages has driven migrants to fighting over aid supplies, survivors have said, and around 100 people are reported to have died on one boat after being stabbed, hanged and thrown overboard during a scramble for the final scraps of food.
(Thanks to reader aussieute.)
UPDATE

I have no idea why news.com.au has lurched so far to the Left this year. It’s bizarre, the ranting on global warming, the Abbott-bashing and the rest of the agenda. Today’s example:
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The story itself notes that before “callous” Abbott got elected, hundreds of boat people died at sea trying to get to Australia.
So define “callous”. Explain why that editorialising is in a news headline. 
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Budget already blows out by $1 billion

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (4:32pm)


Wow. That didn’t last long:


Little more than a week after its second budget, the Abbott government has made its first strategic retreat by abandoning a plan to increase charges for subsidised medicines.
The backdown will blow a $1 billion hole in the budget.
Speaking to reporters in Melbourne on Thursday, Health Minister Sussan Ley acknowledged the proposal to increase the amount patients must spend on drugs before qualifying for relief under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme safety net would not pass the Senate.
The proposal is part of a bill that would also increase the patient contribution for PBS drugs by $5 a script for general patients, and by 80¢ a script for concessional patients.
“That measure is not going to pass the Parliament,” Ms Ley said.
“I have had conversations with the crossbench and they have indicated they are not going to support it.”
So why did Ley, presumably, back it in the Budget in the first place? 
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Is Labor representing voters or unions?

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (8:29am)


How did Labor let itself become a union franchise in the 21st century? Patrick Hannaford:

The national platform contains a staggering 169 references to unions.
These references range from mere statements of support to measures granting the unions constitutional power — such as the requirement that 50 per cent of all delegates to state conferences have to come from affiliated unions.
This level of influence is replicated throughout the party structure.
In the national executive — the party’s chief administrative organisation — 73 per cent of the 26 members are current or former trade union officials.
At a parliamentary level, this influence can be seen in the fact 42 per cent of lower house MPs and a staggering 71 per cent of ALP senators previously have held a paid position in a trade union.
This means that, despite the fact only 12 per cent of Australia’s voting-age population consists of trade union members, 51 per cent of federal ALP parliamentarians are former union officials. 
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Even a French Socialist does an Abbott on boat people. UPDATE: No wonder. Alleged terrorist nabbed

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (8:04am)


Socialists in France are different to the ones here:


After about 750 migrants perished at sea last month as they tried to reach Italy from Libya, European leaders pledged to help to rescue efforts in the Mediterranean, while the EU drew up quotas to resettle 20,000 asylum seekers around the continent. Nearly 40,000 have landed in Italy this year…
First Britain used its EU opt-out clause to duck out of the quotas… In Berlin yesterday, President Francois Hollande reinforced French opposition to the EU scheme…
“People who come because they think that Europe is a prosperous continent ... must be escorted back, that’s the rule,” Mr Hollande said…
UPDATE
Who else is hiding among the boat people flooding into Italy?

Italian police say they have arrested a Moroccan suspected of taking part in the March ­attack on the Bardo National ­Museum in Tunis in which 21 tourists, including an Australian, were killed.
Abdel Majid Touil, 22, was ­arrested on an international ­warrant by Italy’s anti-terrorism DIGOS police in the northern town of Gaggiano… He was living with his mother, a carer, and two older brothers in the town near Milan…
Police said last night that Touil had been in Italy before the attack. They said he entered illegally in February with a boatload of 90 migrants, before being issued with an order to leave. The officers did not specify whether he had been expelled or, if he had, where he had gone to.
(Thanks to reader Correllio.) 
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Turnbull a sexist? Some women should toughen up

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (8:00am)


SORRY, ladies, but let’s call it Gillard’s law: the first person to shout “sexist” now loses the argument.
No more hiding behind a skirt when a professional woman is criticised for poor performance.
No more doing a Julia Gillard, attacking serious critics as “misogynists”.
So after this week’s whingeing, bzzz, you lose, Emma Alberici. You, too, Mia Freedman.
And, you, Annabel Crabb. And ... my God! They’re everywhere, now pack-attacking Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
No wonder he’s startled. Turnbull, a sexist?
Until this week he was the Liberal the Left loved, but on Sunday’s Bolt Report Turnbull sinned.
(Read full article here.) 
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Muslims killing Christians. Why won’t churches speak out?

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (7:55am)


IT is religious persecution on a horrific scale, involving massacres, bombings, slavery, beheadings and mass rape. 

So why don’t our churches protest against this slaughter of their own?
Yes, Christians are now the prime target of unbelievably barbaric attacks in the Middle East and Africa, yet Australia’s bishops, ministers, priests, church “social justice” units and Christian aid groups — usually so vocal — are now near mute.
Nothing better demonstrates the fear our political and media class has of offending Islam than this failure of churches to speak out to save fellow Christians.
(Read the full article here.)
UPDATE
Reader the Rev David Palmer, Past Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, suggests a reason for the relative silence:
Andrew’s assertions are not quite right. Churches with a few notable exceptions have spent considerable time approaching politicians, including Australia’s current and previous Foreign minister seeking allocation under the humanitarian programme for allocation of places to persecuted Christians both inside and outside country of origin plus aid specifically targeted to Christians. In Muslim majority countries getting aid to Christians is particularly difficult. These approaches have yielded meagre results.
Christians do support Christian specific aid agencies which unfortunately it is imprudent for me to name. The Christians I know are extremely concerned about the plight of Middle East Christians and not a Sunday goes by without prayer being offered on their behalf.
With the exception of the Coptic Bishop, Bishop Suriel, the other Orthodox leaders tend to say very little because of their people in the Middle East and not wishing to cause them further difficulty.
But if the Pope can protest, why can’t Melbourne’s Anglicans squeeze in one press release on the topic this year? 
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University reform: no to segregating women

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (7:54am)


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Small mercies. Barry Glover, vice chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, will no longer allow the segregation of women at functions at his university:
THE students were wrong. Without a doubt, the representatives of the Muslim Students’ ­Association (MSA) at UWS’s Parramatta campus made a mistake in requesting the segregation of men and women at a recent event.
A recent article in The Daily Telegraph implied the university tolerates a form of subtle sexism by virtue of what occurred. The university rejects this assertion.

UWS has never condoned gender segregation, and all of our students are well aware of this.
It will not recur at any future event held on our campuses by any student or community group.
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Be very careful that justice is done, and both sides are heard

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (7:49am)


George Pell responds. I am concerned that he is being subjected to trial by media. 
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Define “reformed”

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (12:31am)


We are told they are reformed and could be used to deradicalise young Muslims here:

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: The Abbott Government is taking a hard-line approach on the fate of Australians who fought with militant groups like Islamic State but now want to come home… Others argue reformed jihadists could provide useful intelligence and help de-radicalise young Muslims…
ROB STARY, LAWYER: They can personally engage in de-radicalisation programs so they don’t pose as a perspective risk on their return.
PETER JENNINGS, AUST. STRATEGIC POLICY INSTITUTE: I think it’s worth testing to see if we can use them for de-radicalisation.
Use them for de-radicalisation? Seriously?
Are these people listening to what these “repentant” Islamic State members are actually saying? Do we seriously want Adam Brookman, now calling himself “Abu Ibrahim”, to be passing on his opinions to vulnerable young Australians?
TOM IGGULDEN, REPORTER: [Brookman] left for Syria as a medic and spent six months at an IS military camp. He gave a recent interview to American television, describing his disillusionment with the movement after witnessing a couple stoned to death for adultery....
ABU IBRAHIM, FMR IS MEDIC (CBS News, Feb. 9): Seeing someone die is not something anyone, probably, would want to see. But having the actual Sharia established is what many Muslims look forward to.
CLARISSA WARD, REPORTER (CBS News, Feb. 9): Doesn’t it strike you as medieval? Brutal?
ABU IBRAHIM (CBS News, Feb. 9): It’s harsh, it’s real. But it’s Sharia.
Worse:



He claims to have witnessed the aftermath of the crucifixion of an alleged Assad regime spy and the stoning of a couple accused of adultery. He said these punishments were in keeping with sharia law, “which is something all Muslims want to have, but done correctly, not gangster-style”.
Keep this man miles away from any classroom. A jail cell would be good. 
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Chris Bowen announces: don’t vote for Labor

Andrew Bolt May 21 2015 (12:18am)


Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen demonstrates with his global warming catechism at the National Press Club why Labor is not fit to govern and won’t. It’s parked its brains:
We continue to believe firstly that climate change is real.
Meaningless. Who doesn’t believe the climate changes?
Secondly, that it’s caused by humankind...
False. No serious scientist, even die-hard warmists, would agree that all climate change is caused by humans.
...and thirdly, the best way of dealing with it is a price on carbon.
Useless. What not one Labor MP will tell you is what difference their carbon tax would make to any warming. The reason: the answer, embarrassingly, is effectively zero.

We continue to believe that, and that will be reflected in our detailed policy that we announce and seek a mandate to implement.
Suicidal. Labor promising to bring back a tax on electricity will just remind voters why they loathed the Gillard Government.
Mad.
UPDATE
Labor’s panic over global warming suggests it has not consulted a single chart on climate and its effects. All attitude, no research.
Atmospheric temperature - no warming for 18 years:
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Extent of sea ice - recovered, above average:
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Cyclones - fewer, not stronger:

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Crops - world harvests of major cereal crops increasing:
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Climate models are wrong - the models used by climate scientists to forecast warming have been contradicted by the temperatures so far, even when plotted against the hottest measure of global warming:
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Faith is the currency of the kingdom of heaven!
Posted by Marilyn Hickey on Tuesday, 19 May 2015

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Love unlovable people, because we have all been unlovable at times.
Posted by Dave Willis on Sunday, 15 March 2015

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Peter Dutton
We’ve cancelled 450 visas since July of last year. That’s a 450% increase in cancellations from the previous year, and we’ve also refused about 100 since the first of January. It means that nine people convicted of sexually based offences involving children have been removed from Australia, six people have been removed who had been convicted of rape, three convicted of armed robbery, two convicted of kidnapping and one of murder; and so it sends a very clear message to people that if you’re going to come here it’s a great privilege, and most people do the right thing, but if you do the wrong thing expect to have your visa cancelled and to be on your way out the door.
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Fair enough!
Posted by Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics on Wednesday, 19 February 2014

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Australian universities have odd hiring standards these days.
Posted by Institute of Public Affairs on Tuesday, 19 May 2015

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Your book's title can make or break its success. Here's how to choose the perfect one: http://bit.ly/1ScGZ8L
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Wednesday, 20 May 2015

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VIDEO: Muslim student behaves disgustingly and ATTACKS HIS TEACHER!(Third party video)
Posted by Crusade Against Islamisation of The World on Sunday, 17 May 2015

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Posted by Purple Clover on Sunday, 17 May 2015

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Need help finding a good editor? Use this guide to hone in on the right one: http://bit.ly/1ScIX8R
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Wednesday, 20 May 2015

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This is the problem with double negatives in English! (via offthemark.com)
Posted by Grammarly on Sunday, 17 May 2015

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Andrew Laming MP
Party's over in Syria. Local ISIS combatants want to return to start collecting their disability payments again. Do we let them? SHARE
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=== Posts from last year ===

MIKE NO LIKE

Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 21, 2013 (5:11pm)

It’s been a tough 24 hours for our mate Mike Carlton, who failed to impress on Q & A last night and is now at war with the ABC: 
Mike Carlton has launched a stinging attack on the ABC’s Australian Story, claiming his comments were “selectively edited” by the show’s producers to give a glowing account of his former radio nemesis Ray Hadley.
Carlton launched his tirade via his Twitter account, describing the program, which aired on Monday night, as a “travesty”, “disgrace” and “garbage” …
Carlton said: “They absolutely have editorial control over the program but they also have a responsibility to present what I said in its entirety and not distort and misrepresent my comments to present a false impression of my views.” 
You want your interview presented in its entirety, Mike? The show was about Hadley, not you. Anyway, Carlton is now putting on his top hat and monocle for a formal complaint. In other lefty fury news, Labor speechwriter Bob Ellis is alternately threatening to sue or kill Fairfax columnist (and former dining companion) John Birmingham. No response yet from Birmingham, who is usually extremely sensitive to any perceived dangers.

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TWISTED

Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 21, 2013 (1:22pm)

How long does it take for idiots to use the Oklahoma tornado deaths – we’re still some days away from a final body count – as global warming propaganda? Try instantly. (Very persuasive piece there, Rebecca. Nuanced. Sensitive.)
Here’s a less-obscene version of the same thing.
UPDATE. Democrat senator Sheldon Whitehouse uses the disaster to attack “polluters and deniers”.
UPDATE II. The warmy swarm is on.

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SUBURBS ERASED

Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 21, 2013 (12:09pm)

Horror in Oklahoma: 
A monstrous tornado at least a half-mile wide roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds up to 200 mph. 
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At least 51 people were killed, and officials said the death toll was expected to rise, according to CBS News. 
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The storm laid waste to scores of buildings in Moore, a community of 41,000 people south of the city. Block after block lay in ruins. 
Click for further images and updates.
UPDATE. Before and after.
UPDATE II. Video:



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GIMME A T FOR TICKETS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 21, 2013 (4:23am)

Tim “Don’t you know who I am?” Mathieson, Australia’s leading ticket mooch, tours Texas: 
Julia Gillard said her partner Tim Mathieson travelled to the US in an unofficial capacity despite being spotted at a Texan car race wearing accreditation tagged “Office of the Prime Minister”. 
image
Gridwalker: Texas Tim steps out at the Circuit of the Americas
The First Bloke was spotted enjoying VIP treatment at the V8 Supercar races held in Austin over the weekend, looking relaxed in an open checked shirt and belting out the Australian national anthem. 
According to the Prime Minister, no public money was spent on Mathieson’s brief time away from his Canberra couch.

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OUR MAN INSIDE THE BBC

Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 21, 2013 (1:15am)

Guido Fawkes looks at the BBC’s latest star hire: 
Fair, balanced and impartial Ian Katz will have no trouble fitting in at his new role as Newsnight editor … Katz certainly has top drawer left-wing credentials. Back in 2004, he was editor of the Guardian’s G2 magazine during their infamous ‘Operation Clark County’ plot to swing the state of Ohio in favour of John Kerry and against George W. Bush. Katz organised thousands of letters written by lefty Britons to be sent to individual voters in Ohio, imploring them to cast their ballot for Kerry. The result was uproar, a near diplomatic incident, and victory for Bush. 
Operation Clark County, for those unaware, was one of the more spectacular leftoid fails of the past 20 years. The whole debacle began when I mockingly suggested that Guardian types contact Americans during the 2004 US election campaign, to turn them away from Bush.
Unbelievably, the Guardian took the idea seriously and set about putting readers in touch with voters in Clark County, Ohio – an area that had narrowly voted Democrat in 2000. Katz seemedunprepared for hostile online reaction, which led to global media interest: 
I realised just how much momentum our project to match concerned non-Americans with voters in a marginal US county had acquired when I arrived in Shanghai on Sunday to be handed a message from a local reporter … “Is it possible to make interview about Operation Clark County?” …
When I rang a colleague in London the next morning to tell him about the strangely surreal encounter, he reported that he had just said goodbye to a crew from Japanese TV. CNN were on their way.
It’s been like that for the best part of a week: Canadian newspapers, Irish radio, US TV networks. Fox has been frothing. Rush Limbaugh has been raving. A quick Google search as I write this produces the Washington Post wondering, “Can the Brits swing Ohio?”, and the New York Times reporting, in unusually demotic voice, “British Two Cents Draws, in Sum, a Two-Word Reply: Butt Out”. Elsewhere, detailing the robust response to our campaign, the Arab News in Saudi Arabia asks gravely: “Can the ‘special’ US-UK relationship survive?”. 
An unnamed ringleader found himself blamed for coordinating an “eye-wateringly unpleasant”counter-campaign against the Guardian, which quickly abandoned its anti-Bush quest. Final outcome: Democrat candidate John Kerry lost Clark County by more than 1500 votes, Ohio voted Republican, and Bush was returned to the Presidency. The BBC wondered: “Could the Guardianand its Operation Clark County be responsible for a second Bush term?” Katz wasn’t keen to acceptfault: 
Mr Katz denies the experiment backfired.
“The only thing that’s completely clear is that we didn’t get Kerry elected and nobody’s going to be hiring me as a political strategist,” he said. 
In a way, we did hire Katz as a strategist – for no pay, and for the other side. He performed brilliantly. Slate‘s Andy Bowers summarised: 
Kerry won every Gore county in Ohio except Clark. He even increased Gore’s winning margin in 12 of the 16. Nowhere among the Gore counties did more votes move from the blue to the red column than in Clark. The Guardian’s Katz was quoted as saying it would be “self-aggrandizing” to claim Operation Clark County affected the election. Don’t be so modest, Ian. 
And now strategic mastermind Katz is in charge of one of the BBC’s most influential programs. Fun times ahead.

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MO SAYS NO

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (1:29pm)

Alleged Islamic rioter Mohammed Issai Issaka takes a stand – or, more accurately, doesn’t: 
A man accused of rioting during last year’s violent Muslim protests has been berated for his “disrespect” after refusing to stand before a magistrate at his court hearing.
Mohammed Issai Issaka, who was charged with riot, assaulting police and resisting arrest over the September incident, this morning said his religious beliefs stopped him from rising for the court ...

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Mohammed can’t stand it

Magistrate Jacqueline Milledge repeatedly demanded Issaka stand for her, telling the accused man she didn’t accept his refusal.
“You can tell me where it is in his religion that it says he cannot stand,” she said to Issaka’s lawyer.
“I was a magistrate at Bankstown Court for four years and I have never had to deal with such disrespect.” 
The hearing eventually continued with Issaka allowed to wait outside the courtroom while everyone else stood.

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OVER TO YOU, POLITIFACT

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (1:21pm)

Labor Senator Helen Polley: 
Several months ago I spoke in this chamber about the opposition’s slide towards Tea Party style tactics… In America, this sort of shrill, fear-driven campaigning led to the tragic shooting of United States congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. How much further will the Opposition Leader go until his tactics lead to a similar disaster occurring in Australia? 

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JOURNALISM vs AUSTRALIA

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (1:05pm)

Intriguing, but not entirely surprising, research from the University of the Sunshine Coast: 
[The university’s] survey of 605 journalists around Australia found that more than half (51.0%) describe themselves as holding left-of-centre political views, compared with only 12.9% who consider themselves right-of-centre …
When asked about their voting intentions, less than two-thirds of the journalists we surveyed revealed their voting intention. Of those 372 people, 43.0% said they would give their first preference vote to Labor; 30.2% would vote for the Coalition; and 19.4% said they would choose the Greens – about twice the Australian average. 
Senior media folk seem close to current polling: 
Among the 83 senior editors who took part in the survey, the Coalition was the party of choice on 43.2%, followed by Labor (34.1%) and the Greens (11.4%).
This suggests that Australia’s media bosses are more in line with the broader electorate, at least according to recent Newspoll results. 
And then there’s the ABC: 
41.2% of the 34 ABC journalists who declared a voting intention said they would vote for the Greens, followed by 32.4% for Labor and 14.7% for the Coalition.
In contrast, 46.5% of 86 News Limited journalists who answered this question said they would vote for Labor, 26.7% for the Coalition, and only 19.8% for the Greens. 
The Greens enjoy similar support at Fairfax: 
Among the 86 Fairfax Media journalists who responded, Labor was by far the most popular party at 54.7% support, followed by the Coalition and the Greens, both on 19.8%. 
(Via James J.)

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UNDERCARD OVERACHIEVERS

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (5:08am)

If you’ve ever been to an Anthony Mundine fight, you’ll know that the best entertainment comes from unknowns in the support bouts. Those scrappy combatants always put on a far better show than Anthony and whatever handpicked homeless pensioner cripple he’s usually slapping around.
The same is true in federal politics, where this September’s heavyweight title bout currently looks like a complete mismatch. One fighter is unmarked while the other somehow keeps wearing hits even when resting between rounds. She’s cut to the bone, you might say.
Check out the minor players, however. They’re brawling amongst themselves like absolute champions. It’s fantastic. Let’s run through the card:

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THANKS FOR NOTHING, BIG OIL

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (4:41am)

Maybe if they’d given some of it to our government, we might not be $20 billion in deficit: 
Major international oil companies are buying off governments, according to the world’s most prominent climate scientist, Prof James Hansen …
“The thing we are facing overall is that the fossil fuel industry has so much money that they are buying off governments,” Hansen said. “Our democracies are seriously handicapped by the money that is driving decisions in Washington and other capitals.” 
Whatever, warmy. As Iowahawk says: “If you want to get money out of politics, get politics out of money.”

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FROM TAMPA BAY TO NESCAFE

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (4:35am)

Six years ago, Florida’s Tampa Bay Times began an experiment in political coverage. The paper established a website called Politifact to examine the accuracy of claims made by politicians and those involved in politics.
Results to this point are mixed, but apparently successful enough to justify the launch of a local sister site. Australia’s Politifact is headed by ex-SMH editor Peter Fray, whose crack fact-checking team last week probed a statement from Liberal Jamie Briggs: “Labor can’t claim to be reining in government spending when they are buying gold-plated coffee machines for their growing public service workforce.”

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ALSO, THEY DON’T DRESS LIKE PIRATES

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (4:08am)

A moment of clarity for bandana-wearing SMH pulp producer Peter FitzSimons: 
Since Fairfax has encouraged readers to submit comments at the end of columns, I notice many of you express things better than I can. 
Readers might have put it more concisely.

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JUST ADD MORE RED

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (3:48am)

“Funnily enough,” writes doom clown artist and cover satirist Brett, “it didn’t take much work at all to make her look like Ronald McDonald ...”

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HOUSEHOLD HOLDUP HELPLINE

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (3:44am)

When robbing a man’s home, it isn’t a good idea to shut him inside the closet where he keeps his guns.

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HOCKEY ONE

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (2:36am)

Latest Newspoll, same as the old poll. Well, except for one small change: 
Following the budget, voters were asked who would make the better treasurer. The coalition’s Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey trumped Wayne Swan for the first time by 39 per cent to 35 per cent. 
Ouch. Cut to the bone, Wayne. Another poll finds: 
Australians have declared Wayne Swan a dud treasurer with almost twice as many people trusting his Coalition counterpart Joe Hockey to deliver a budget surplus.
Even Labor voters appear to have lost confidence in Mr Swan – almost half believed Mr Hockey was more likely to get the budget back into the black than the Treasurer. 
The other half need hooking up to a polygraph.

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WAYNE’S REIGN

Tim Blair – Monday, May 20, 2013 (12:13am)

Last year I mentioned a remarkable meeting with former world motorcycle champion Wayne Gardner. Here’s an excellent documentary featuring Gardner and his fellow riders from the ferocious two-stroke era of the late 80s and early 90s.

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Oklahoma tornado strikes, climate vultures gather

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (2:29pm)

 Rescuers are still digging children out of a collapsed school, but warmists are already trying to turn the Oklohama disaster into a poster for the cause, with all the usual compassion:
Oh, sorry, are we “politicizing” the report that up to 75 kids are trapped under debris in their Moore, Oklahoma, elementary school right now? Eat us. Oh, is the science not totally sure yet about tornadoes and climate change? Well we will just wait until 97 percent of scientists agree, then surely the GOP will get reasonable and stop blaming hurricanes on gay marriage, and we can all save the planet! Also, go f*** yourself. 
Tim Blair tracks down more examples of the warmist vultures, come to feed on the dead.
If there was really someone to blame for this hideous tragedy, the anger would be justified. But what we are seeing is the deliberate exploitation of grief and fear to perpetrate a lie:
image
And despite the increasing population density of the US:
image
The warmists exploiting this tragedy are utterly disgusting.
UPDATE
Further verification from the Storm Prediction Centre, from last month::
With a preliminary count of 87 EF1 and stronger U.S. tornadoes through April 2013, the year is off to a slow start with about half the average number of tornadoes for this period of the year (153 JFMA tornadoes over the past 60 years). If the preliminary count stands, 2013 will rank 49 out of 60 in tornado activity level (through April) since 1954..
(Graphic via Watts Up With That, which flays a shameless US Senator. Thanks to reader Mark.)  

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Abbott rises, publishers weep

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (2:21pm)

Tony Abbott has remade himself and rebuilt his shattered party, taking it to the brink of victory in September.
But the publishing class, as always, would rather read about its own party - and will receive plenty of insights into how Labor would have done better had it only listened more to Rudd/voters/Bowen/the Left/polls/Ferguson:
TWO books penned by Kevin Rudd backers are set for release or re-release around the election as the legacy battle over Labor’s leadership wars ramp up in print. 
Former Labor MP Maxine McKew is writing a new chapter about the final year of the parliamentary term for her controversial book from last year - including “frank” interviews with key Labor figures about the recent aborted leadership spill.
And Labor figure Bruce Hawker, who helped plot Mr Rudd’s 2012 leadership challenge, is writing a book about campaigns and elections - though publishers won’t comment on whether it will canvas the recent ALP turmoil…
Two former Labor ministers and Rudd backers, Chris Bowen and Kim Carr, have announced pre-election books while Treasurer Wayne Swan’s former chief-of-staff, Jim Chalmers, will also release a book on the handling of the GFC. Former Rudd speech writer James Button is updating his “Speechless” book which criticised Mr Rudd last year while former Fairfax journalist Kerry-Anne Walsh will release “Stalking Julia” on Mr Rudd and the media’s alleged role in trying to bring down Ms Gillard. 

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Mamamia, what a failure to disclose

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (12:44pm)

How to disclose when you’re not disclosing:
Jamila Rizvi @JamilaRizvi
Editor at @Mamamia, columnist at @CosmopolitanAU, optimistic realist, feminist + former political staffer. Opinions expressed are mine + I’m not sharing. Hmph.
“Editor at @mamamia” should already be enough to tell you her political leanings, giventhose of her boss.
This should clear it up:
image
So, back to the non-disclosure disclosure. Whose political staffer was Rizvi?
Need you ask? The Rudd and Gillard governments’, of course. 

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Labor stays, business goes

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (12:28pm)

New Bureau of Statistics figures show only half the businesses which started in the first full financial year of the Rudd Government are still going today:
- Of the 299,123 new business entries during 2008–09, 75.8% were still operating in June 2010, 60.5% were still operating in June 2011 and 51.0% were still operating in June 2012. 
UPDATE
Reader K, a chartered accountant, warns:
Traditionally these stats have a major flaw being Bill Bloggs starts up a little business as a sole trader and gets an ABN. The business starts to go well so he shuts down the sole trader ABN and starts a partnership with his wife running the same business. So the business in fact continues, indeed it is doing well but the ABS count the shutting down of his old ABN as a business exit.
(Thanks to reader Trevor.) 

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BBC admits: a “standstill” in global warming. Bad luck for fish

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (12:02pm)

The BBC concedes what The Age still can’t:
Since 1998, there has been an unexplained “standstill” in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere. 
UPDATE
More unexpected news. Global warming could actually mean fish breed better, says a new paper in Global Change Biology:
Increased CO2 stimulates reproduction in a coral reef fish 
Gabrielle M. Miller et al Abstract: Ocean acidification is predicted to negatively impact the reproduction of many marine species, either by reducing fertilization success or diverting energy from reproductive effort… We investigated the effects of near-future levels of pCO2 on the reproductive performance of the cinnamon anemonefish, Amphiprion melanopus, from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Breeding pairs were held under three CO2 treatments (Current-day Control (430?atm), Moderate (584?atm) and High (1032?atm)) for a 9-month period that included the summer breeding season. Unexpectedly, increased CO2 dramatically stimulated breeding activity in this species of fish. Over twice as many pairs bred in the Moderate (67% of pairs) and High (55%) compared to the Control (27%) CO2 treatment. Pairs in the High CO2 group produced double the number of clutches per pair and 67% more eggs per clutch compared to the Moderate and Control groups. As a result, reproductive output in the High group was 82% higher than the Control group and 50% higher than the Moderate group… This study provides the first evidence of the potential effects of ocean acidification on key reproductive attributes of marine fishes and, contrary to expectations, demonstrates an initially stimulatory (hormetic) effect in response to increased pCO2. However, any long-term consequences of increased reproductive effort on individuals or populations remains to be determined.
UPDATE

image
A competition in which sceptics profit from warmists:
A husband and wife from Kenai were the sole winners of the $318,500 Nenana Ice Classic jackpot on Monday… It was the latest breakup in the 97-year history of the Ice Classic, a contest in which thousands of Alaskans pay $2.50 a chance to guess the exact time and date the Tanana River ice goes out at Nenana. The previous late breakup record was 11:41 a.m. AST on May 20, 1964… 
The wooden tripod was sitting on an ice sheet at the edge of an open channel when the ice broke off and floated down the river, triggering a siren in town to notify residents the tripod was moving.
UPDATE
The facts may change, but the panic MUST remain. Observe:

The BBC’s Roger Harrabin reports: 
So it is possible that the climate would warm less than predicted, but the effects of the warming at a low level might be greater than predicted.
The clip begins at about 1:39:40 into the program.
(Thanks to readers Peter, Steve, watty, Jaki and Gavin Atkins.) 

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Why won’t the ABC admit its staff lean Left?

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (10:21am)

Culture wars, Media
image
Why is the ABC so determined to deny that truth - that the vast majority of its journalists lean to the Left? Is it embarrassed that they do? Ashamed of the tag?
Point out that every host of Media Watch in its 24 years has been of the Left, and you get - well, not an outright denial, exactly - a claim that one of the seven actually believes in free speech and free markets, so might not be of the Left, after all.
Point out that every host of every one of the ABC’s main current affairs shows is hosted by someone of the Left, and you get managing director Mark Scott spluttering that this is a “simplistic” view and he does not know his staff’s personal views or how they vote.
Point out the clear cultural bias of so many ABC presenters, and you get ABC presenters past and present insist that only conservatives would call them biased, and, besides, conservatives are too biased to be good. (That’s also the view of the presenter who celebrated the fall of John Howard with a party at which guests could whack a Howard pinata.)
And now more denials:
MORE than 40 per cent of ABC journalists who answered a survey question about their political attitudes are Greens supporters, four times the support the minor party enjoys in the wider population. ... 
An ABC spokeswoman said the number of the broadcaster’s journalists who responded to the survey was too small to draw any firm conclusions.
ABC radio presenter Mark Colvin described the result as “absolutely meaningless”. “Only a tiny proportion of ABC journalists were prepared to reveal their voting intentions,” he said. “You don’t know anything about the much larger percentage of ABC journalists who weren’t prepared to reveal their voting intentions . . . it’s absolutely ridiculous to draw conclusions from this survey on that subject.”
Does Colvin seriously argue that the ABC journalists who didn’t disclose their voting intentions were all the ABC’s secret Liberal voters?
Why this absurd pretence? I say openly I’m a conservative humanist, agnostic and rationalist. What’s the big secret about the Leftism of ABC staff?
Is it that the ABC, if it were honest, would be forced to open what’s actually a closed shop? It is trying to hide and protect what is an ideological monoculture?
UPDATE
Nick Cater says the need to make a dollar connects a journalist more firmly to their audience and keeps bias in check:
There are no surprises there, nor in the fact 41 per cent of ABC journalists who declared their intention said they would be voting Greens. 
It is easy, but unfair, to single out the ABC for special mention. The cohort employed in commercial media is hardly representative of the general population either. At News Limited, the publisher of this newspaper, 46.5 per cent of journalists who responded to the researchers’ question said they would vote for Labor, 26.7 per cent for the Coalition, and 19.8 per cent for the Greens. The main difference between journalists at the ABC and in the commercial media is that the latter are mindful of the imperative to make a dollar. Far from corrupting journalism as some have suggested, market forces keep journalists on the straight and narrow and less dismissive of the national mood.
Given what Fairfax journalists produce, however. I’d say a greater corrective is firm management by owners with skin in the game - and strong editors.
Cater will discuss his new book, The Lucky Culture, on Thursday and Saturday at the Sydney Writers Festival. Book here.
(Thanks to reader Bill for the graphic.) 

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From the streets of Muslim Sweden

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (9:25am)

 Muslim immigration isn’t quite working out in Sweden. The latest example:

Gangs of youth angered by the police shooting death of an elderly man in a mainly immigrant neighborhood hurled rocks at police and set cars and buildings on fire in a Stockholm suburb early Monday, forcing the evacuation of an apartment block. 
Around 50 youths were involved in the riots in the suburb of Husby, police spokesman Lars Bystrom said.
The youths set light to a parking garage, compelling police to evacuate residents from an adjacent apartment block, Bystrom said…

Around 80 percent of the roughly 11,000 people living in Husby – a drab, low-income neighborhood of apartment blocks west of Stockholm – are first or second generation immigrants…
One policeman was attacked by youths kicking him and two others were injured by rocks, local police officer Jorgen Karlsson said. He added around 10 cars were set ablaze, and windows were smashed at two schools and several local businesses… Karlsson said the dead man was “European,” but couldn’t specify his nationality.
Note the refusal to describe the “immigrants”.
The real racists are the abusive police, claims a youth “leader”, and riots will continue:

Rami al-Khamisi, law student and founder of youth organization Megafonen, ... a community-based organization in the area that aims to organize residents of Stockholm’s northern suburbs to fight for social justice. Al-Khamisi, the founder of the organization, said the riots were a “reaction to police brutality against citizens, our neighbours”....

Al-Khamisi said that the crowd was reacting to a “growing marginalization and segregation in Sweden over the past ten, 20 years” from both a class and a race perspective.
“Out in the suburbs the majority of people aren’t white, and from a political perspective we’re seen as a problem that politicians want to solve by sending more police. This is not a solution we agree with,” he said…
“This kind of thing isn’t only happening in Husby, it’s happening all over Sweden. People are tired of politics not working in our favour, they’re tired of the current situation,” he told The Local.
Were Swedes told this was the deal with Third World immigration?  That they would have to agree not to send in more police when the newcomers got “tired” and torched buildings and cars?
UPDATE
From 2010:
Rioters in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, have burned down a school building and thrown stones at police in a second night of disturbances. 
The trouble began on Monday after a group of youths in a suburb with a mainly immigrant population were refused entry to a school dance. Police said the rioters threw stones at the fire engines, preventing them from reaching the school building before it burned to the ground. The youths also attacked a police station. Rinkeby is home to a large number of first- and second-generation immigrants. Many of them are from Somalia, so the area is sometimes nicknamed Little Mogadishu.

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Aren’t they, though?

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (9:21am)

Don’t defend. Attack:

The Conservative Party board has rejected a call for an investigation into whether Tory co-chairman Lord Feldman described grassroots activists as “swivel-eyed loons”… 
The Conservative leadership has rallied around Lord Feldman in the row over reports in The Daily Telegraph and The Times that an ally of the Prime Minister described local party associations as “mad, swivel-eyed loons” who forced MPs to adopt hardline stances.
Challenge the activists made to sound many by their media megaphones.
(Thanks to reader John.) 

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Bias checking

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (8:14am)

Politifact, allegedly a neutral fact-checking outfit started by a former Sydney Morning Herald editor, forgives a verbal slip of Labor’s flailing Treasurer (millions instead of a billions) but not a metaphor of the Liberals’ Jamie Briggs ("gold-plated").  Ludicrous. 

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Who was that leadfoot in the car we bought the PM?

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (7:44am)

Reader Gavin is curious:
Press focused on Tony Abbot’s Chief of staff [allegedly] drink driving. 
Press quiet on why the Department of Finance refuses to name driver who broke the law 8 times in 12 weeks while driving the PM’s car.
The letter from the Finance Department suggests there was more than one driver. 

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Tim enjoys the perks while they last

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (7:30am)

image
Tim Mathieson sure knows how to make his surprising new status work for him. There’s all the freebies here, and now this: 

JULIA Gillard said her partner Tim Mathieson travelled to the US in an unofficial capacity despite being spotted at a Texan car race wearing accreditation tagged “Office of the Prime Minister”.
The First Bloke was spotted enjoying VIP treatment at the V8 Supercar races held in Austin over the weekend…
But the Prime Minister yesterday insisted there was “no public spending being spent there” as she fielded questions in Canberra…
The former hairdresser was filmed by the Seven Network in the VIP enclosure during the V8 race in Texas, wearing an official tag: “Tim Mathieson - Office of the Prime Minister”. But the PM’s office said the pass was issued by the organisers of the event and was “not an official Government pass”.
When was the last time Mathieson was by Gillard’s side, helping her at this most difficult time in her political career? Not sure funning it up is a great look, when your partner is left to walk the dog alone.  

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Rudd backs gay marriage, saying it’s not about Gillard

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (7:10am)

It is a sad measure of the bastardry we’ve seen in Labor - and the cynicism it’s inevitably produced - that first reaction to this announcement is to ask: what’s Rudd’s real game here? And that Rudd, knowing this, declares even before the question is asked that he won’t take a “leadership” role on it. And that still we wonder…
KEVIN Rudd has thrown his support behind same-sex marriage placing him at odds with Prime Minister Julia Gillard… 
“I have come to the conclusion that church and state can have different positions and practices on the question of same sex marriage,’’ he wrote…
Rudd said his decision was based on a conversation with a former political staffer, who he did not name, on Saturday morning recently in Canberra…
“My opponents both within and beyond the Labor Party, will read all sorts of political significance into this. That’s a matter for them. There is no such thing as perfect timing to go public on issues such as this… “I will not be taking any leadership role on this issue nationally...”

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Government with black hole invents one for the Opposition

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (7:04am)

Surely this government wouldn’t tell lies to run a scare campaign, would it?
THE Education Department has been accused of providing misleading budget estimates designed to serve the Gillard government’s “political agenda”, amid a furore over Labor’s central claim that schools will lose $16.2 billion if the Coalition wins the election... 
As the Prime Minister wrote to the premiers yesterday to urge them to accept her funding plan by June 30, she warned that government and independent schools would lose $16.2bn funding over the next six years if the states did not sign up…
“You will have seen that on 19 May I announced that if the current funding model is maintained, school funding nationally will go backwards by $16.2bn over the next six years,” she wrote.
The letters base their forecasts on a scenario included in last week’s federal budget, under which the rate of growth in school funding - the Average Government School Recurrent Costs index - was 3 per cent.
Both last year’s budget and October’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook used a school spending growth forecast of about 6 per cent…
Last week’s budget said the recurrent funding levels “could have fallen below” the guaranteed growth rate of 4.7 per cent. It added that, had they fallen to 3 per cent a year, the extra investment under Gonski would amount to about $16.2bn over six years. The budget document did not say why it assumed an alternative scenario of 3 per cent growth. 

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We must stand up for our rule of law

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (6:46am)

The rule of law - and respect for it - is what makes ours the kind of society which attracts refugees and offers safety: 

A MUSLIM man standing trial over his role in last year’s violent protests in central Sydney has been scolded for his “disrespect” after refusing to stand before a magistrate. 
Mohammed Issai Issaka, 44, has pleaded not guilty to rioting, resisting arrest and assaulting police during the protests last September, organised in response to an internet video defaming the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
As the hearing commenced in Sydney’s Downing Centre yesterday, Mr Issaka refused to rise from his chair as a show of respect to magistrate Jacqueline Milledge as she entered the room.
Ms Milledge then repeatedly demanded the defendant stand, refusing to accept his excuse.
“You can tell me where it is in his religion that it says he cannot stand,” Ms Milledge told Mr Issaka’s lawyer. “I was a magistrate at Bankstown court (in southwest Sydney) for four years and I have never had to deal with such disrespect.” After a delay of almost half an hour, the case resumed with Mr Issaka waiting outside the courtroom until the magistrate was seated.
(No comments.) 

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The beautiful suffer, too

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (6:08am)


Scientist Dr Laura Fernee says she had to quit her job two years ago because she was too beautiful, and hasn’t worked since:

They assumed because I was pretty, I was stupid, so didn’t take me seriously at first and, because of their own insecurities, were jealous of my looks…
Then when they realised I was very good at my job, possibly better than them, they hated me even more… I was rarely invited to lunch with them or for after-work drinks. Once when I was, they told me to sit facing a different direction because men were staring at me, not them. 
Really?
We’re all victims. now. Even the fortunate. 

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Gary Johns: end the New Racism

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (5:55am)

I’ve written how the “stolen generations” myth - a product of the New Racism - is killing Aboriginal children.
Former Labor Minister Gary Johns has more:
THREE cheers for Adam Giles, the Northern Territory Chief Minister, who last week vowed that, if necessary, he would remove neglected Aboriginal children from their parents and place them in adoptive homes.

Of course there will be a chorus keen to do the Whiteman in the eye over the so-called Stolen Generations. But they can’t do Giles in the eye. He is Aboriginal…

But there are serious consequences if he wants to keep to the path of saving children from their own. An entire industry built on collective identity and collective solutions will feel as if their time is up. And so it is.

When Labor is flung from office, the Liberals will have to step in. Not with a polite marketing difference but with a bold statement of what is right and what is wrong.

The first place they need to look is racist legislation. The Northern Territory Adoption of Children Act, section 11, states: “Where an order for the adoption of an Aboriginal child is to be made, the court shall satisfy itself that every effort has been made to arrange appropriate custody within the child’s extended family, or with Aboriginal people who have the correct relationship with the child in accordance with Aboriginal customary law.”

Where it is not possible the court “shall give preference to the adoption of the child by applicants one or both of whom are Aboriginal persons” or “facilitate the maintenance of contact between the child and its own kin and with its own culture.”

This act, and a whole load of attitude behind it, is racist. It is the reason only one child has been adopted. There should be one single measure of good: “the best interests of the child"…

Australia is dealing with a failed experiment where people have been excluded from the healthy part of society, initially through prejudice and then through ideology. The result is entire regions and families are destroying each other. 
(Thanks to reader Peter.) 

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Kiwis save like Swan can’t

Andrew Bolt May 21 2013 (5:10am)

Luke Malpass of the New Zealand Initiative compares New Zealand’s Budget last week with Wayne Swan’s:
In 2008, Australia had a mining boom, rising wages and no debt. Its government had delivered consistent surpluses, tax cuts and targeted cash payments to targeted voter groups. Growth was assumed and household wealth doubled during the Howard years. It even avoided recession. 
In contrast, New Zealand was lurching into debt, had a collapsed non- bank finance sector, a tradeables sector that had been squeezed for several years, a real recession in advance of the global recession, and a structural deficit.
So when Finance Minister Bill English announced last Thursday that New Zealand is on track to record a budget surplus (albeit tiny) in 2014-15, it stood in stark contrast to Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan announcing his sixth budget deficit… Since Mr Swan has taken over as treasurer, tax revenue has increased by roughly the equivalent of New Zealand’s entire budget. Unfortunately, he and prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard spent all of the increase plus some, and are miffed because revenue did not increase at an even higher rate...
(Thanks to reader Bryce.) 

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Nielsen says Labor boosted by Budget, Newspoll no. UPDATE: Essential no.

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (3:32pm)

I am surprised. A Budget like that gives Julia Gillard a boost - or was it her tears?


The latest Age/Nielsen poll, taken after Treasurer Wayne Swan’s unorthodox no-handouts pre-election budget, has found voters drifting back to Labor, with two-thirds approving of what was supposed to be the most politically risky aspect of the budget, the decision to scrap the generous Howard government baby bonus… On a two-party-preferred basis, the Coalition has a strong lead with 54 per cent of the total vote (down 3 points) compared with the government on 46 per cent (up 3 points).
On the other hand, Newspoll notes no real change:

While voters were evenly split overall on whether the Treasurer’s sixth budget was good or bad for the economy, or would make individuals financially better or worse off, it was high-income earners who gave it the tick and low-income earners who were turned off… 
There was also the strongest indication yet of a growing belief in the Coalition’s economic management, with the highest support in 20 years for the suggestion that the alternative government would have brought down a better budget…

Based on preference flows at the last election, the Coalition continues to hold an easy election-winning lead of 56 to 44 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis.
Both polls show Gillard closing the preferred PM gap.
UPDATE
Essential Media records no change: Labor 45 per cent to the Coalition 55. So on one poll of three, a narrative is built of a Labor comeback. Yet again.
UPDATE
Roy Morgan poll shows slight closing - but to Labor 45, Coalition 55. 

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Anything But Conservative: survey confirms all you suspected about the ABC

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (10:03am)

Folker Hanusch, senior lecturer in journalism at University of the Sunshine Coast, on new polling confirming the Leftist bias of the overwhelming majority of journalists:
Our survey was conducted by telephone with carefully selected journalists from newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, online news sites and news agency AAP, as a sample of the 8000 to 10,000 journalists in Australia today. 
When asked about their voting intentions, less than two-thirds of the journalists we surveyed revealed their voting intention. Of those 372 people, 43.0% said they would give their first preference vote to Labor; 30.2% would vote for the Coalition; and 19.4% said they would choose the Greens – about twice the Australian average.
No bunch of journalists skews more violently left than the ABC:
However, 41.2% of the 34 ABC journalists who declared a voting intention said they would vote for the Greens, followed by 32.4% for Labor and 14.7% for the Coalition.
Newspoll today shows the voters - the journalists’ audience and the funders of the ABC - have a very different political leaning:
image
The survey is the third in Australia to confirm the Leftist bias of Australian journalism. But none makes clearer the self-deception (to put it mildly) of ABC managing director Mark Scott, who this month claimed to detect no political skew to his journalists.
As for those who teach them…
(Thanks to reader Steve and many completely unsurprised others. )
UPDATE
I am suspicious that three figures in the story are exactly the same, down to the same decimal. The fact that so many journalists refused nominate their voting preference doesn’t, I believe, alter the overall finding. It demonstrates how secretive journalists are about their own leanings, but I suspect the ABC journalists would have been more reluctant to admit they conformed to the ABC stereotype. The overall findings are also in conformity with the survey done by Professor John Henningham and also one by the RMIT school of journalism. 

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They were wrong, Age admits. But keep believing those warmists

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (9:37am)

Global warming - dud predictions
Sure, warmists exaggerated the temperature rise so far, The Age finally admits. But we still have to believe they’ll be right about the apocalypse to come:

The rate of global warming caused by rising greenhouse gas levels could be slower than previously thought, but will still result in the same eventual higher temperatures as earlier forecast, new research has found.

Note also the story suggests there has been a “rate of global warming” over the past decade, without actually telling you what it is. If the reporter did, he’d have to admit there’s been no warming at all:
image

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The very model of a modern climatologist

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (8:55am)

Via Digging in the Clay, Gilbert and Sullivan brilliantly updated:

I am the very model of a modern climatologist,
I’m smart and brash and canny, and not a whit apologist.
I know my greenhouse science from Keeling and Arrhenius,
My hero is Pachauri, a prognosticating genius.
My arguments are fashioned from proxies picked and polished,
So hockey-sticks of various hues see history demolished.
Concerning greenhouse warming, I’m up there with the best,
My graphical analysis survives the chi-square test.
Radiation science is meat and drink to me -
The facts are at my fingertips, it’s plain for all to see… 
I’m smart and brash and canny, and not a whit apologist,
I am the very model of a modern climatologist.
I’m very good at bluster, hype, and statements categorical,
Don’t fence with me, for as you’ll see, my logic is canonical.
Obfuscation is my stock-in-trade, and devious my tactics,
Debating not, I write a lot, so routing all the sceptics.
Full lyrics at the link.  The original version:

(Thanks to reader Another Ian.) 

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Another AWU slush fund Gillard helped

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (8:34am)

What is it with Julia Gillard and AWU slush funds? 
Now the focus is on a slush fund in the name of Cesar Melham, another former AWU official who is now in the Victorian parliament. It has raised $500,000, some with Gillard’s active help:
As workplace relations minister in August 2008, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was a guest speaker at the inaugural fund-raising lunch for the Industry 2020 fund at Flemington racecourse, which generated about $250,000 with nearly half that profit.

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Black conservatives against the New Racism

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (8:31am)

Culture wars, Free speech, The politics of race
image
SIGNING up former Labor president Warren Mundine helps Tony Abbott show he’s ending the Gillard Government’s politics of division.
But it does not yet show that Abbott - if elected prime minister in September - would end the politics of race.
For that, he needs not the support of Mundine, the Aboriginal who this year left Labor and now says he would “seriously consider” and “possibly take” a job from the Opposition Leader to help fight Aboriginal disadvantage.
Abbott needs, instead, to listen to bold new politicians and writers from his own side - conservatives of Aboriginal descent.
These are black conservatives whom we all badly need to hear - Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles, politician Bess Price, writer and artist Dallas Scott and academic Anthony Dillon.
I know, winning Mundine’s support on the weekend is gold for Abbott.
Abbott knows voters are desperate to end Labor’s tactic of pitting rich against poor, women against men, everybody against miners.
How better to show he’ll end this than by getting a former Labor president to say he’ll work with the Liberal leader?
But don’t be misled by Mundine’s Aboriginality. Mundine’s support does not show Abbott is ending the New Racism that most threatens to turn us into a nation of tribes.
In fact, Abbott has given into it by promising a referendum to change the Constitution to include “acknowledgment of Aboriginal people as the first Australians”.
Dividing Australians by law on the basis of the “race” of some of their ancestors is not our future.
But for me, a white man, to say this won’t change many minds. In fact, it’s the kind of thing that got me sued and censored.
So, hear it instead from, say, Bess Price, a Country Liberal Party politician from the NT, who, in a blazing speech to the Legislative Assembly last week pleaded for an end to the New Racism killing her relatives.

(Read full article here.) 

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The vicious ignorance of Helen Polley

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (8:13am)

Labor Senator Helen Polley is as hysterical and vicious as she is ignorant:
Several months ago I spoke in this chamber about the opposition’s slide towards Tea Party style tactics… In America, this sort of shrill, fear-driven campaigning led to the tragic shooting of United States congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. How much further will the Opposition Leader go until his tactics lead to a similar disaster occurring in Australia? 
Yes, hate-mongers of the Left - like Polley herself - did pretend Jared Loughner, the man who shot Giffords, was a Right-winger driven to violence by the political rhetoric of the Right, especially Sarah Palin. The truth is he was a nutter of the Left, if anything, who hated Giffords long before Palin made news:

ON his MySpace and YouTube pages [Loughner] never mentions Palin or health care, the issue on which she attacked Giffords.
Both sites suggest he’s simply deranged, raving about bad grammar, thought control, “conscience dreaming” and a “third currency”.
A typical post on MySpace - on December 30 - gives the temperature of his mind: “With every day on torture, the hours are my painful isolation; these dreams, which are realistic, vehemence feelings of greatness—finally!"…
Still, if you think it worth trying to detect a political orientation in Loughner’s shattered thoughts, you’d have to conclude it’s sure not Palin’s.
He was not a Christian, and his favourite film clip is of an American flag being burned. He denounced the US Constitution as full of “treasonous laws”.
Simon Mann, of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, led his report yesterday by implying Loughner was a neo-Nazi, noting his victim was Jewish and he’d listed Mein Kampf on his YouTube page as one of his “favourite books”.
What Mann failed to add is that Loughner also loved A Communist Manifesto.
Another problem for the blame-Palin brigade is that Loughner’s hatred of Giffords seems to pre-date Palin’s rise to fame.
Caitie Parker went to school with Loughner, and played in the same band with this “loner” she describes as “Left-wing, quite liberal”.
She claims: “He was a political radical and met Giffords once before in ‘07, asked her a question and he told me she was ‘stupid and unintelligent’.” 

Senator Polley is also a hypocrite. Having denounced the rhetoric of hate and division she claims to detected in Abbott, she then gives a great gob-full of her own:

Already the political narrative, relentlessly pursued by the Opposition Leader and shadow treasurer, has unleashed responses in some sections of the public that are honestly quite frightening . . . This is, of course, part of a wider trend . . . as senior Coalition leaders try to sound like everyday people. If I hear Tony Abbott say the words “fair dinkum”. . .
The President: Order! You need to refer to someone in the other place by their correct title. Senator Polley: If I hear Mr Abbott say the words “fair dinkum” one more time, I will vomit.
Ignorant, vicious, hypocritical, snobbish. Can Labor really do no better?
Oh, and does this surprise you?

Helen is a passionate member of the Australian Workers Union.
What’s her opinion of AWU officials who rip off their members, using, say, a slush fund set up by their lover?  

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Labor now swears it will cut spending like it never has before

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (7:53am)

Henry Ergas says Labor’s promise to return the Budget to surplus is three years is based on unbelievable claims it will restrain its spending like it’s never done before:
For example, comparing Labor’s record with the budget’s estimates for the period ahead, the average annual growth rate of real health spending is projected to collapse from 6.3 per cent to 2.4 per cent; that of education plummets from 9.5 per cent to barely 2 per cent; while the growth rate of welfare spending halves.
Since the 1980s, there is no five-year period in which growth rates of those outlays have been so low…
As for the revenue side, it too makes Walter Mitty seem positively unimaginative. Take the carbon price. Only days ago, Greg Combet ... was forced to concede that with European permits trading for about $5, Australian prices would not reach the $29 level he had stubbornly clung to.
Apparently, in Combet’s world, what goes down, must come up, so the budget predicts a 2015-16 price of $12.10 - which on current European futures prices, is more than 50 per cent too high. That initial canter in carbon prices then becomes a gallop, with the budget projecting a 50 per cent increase in 2015-16 and a sustained rise thereafter.
Ergas says it takes more brains than Swan has to be a swindler. 

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Swan never was going to give us a surplus

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (7:37am)


From my interview yesterday with Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese, the only Labor minister with the courage to ever come on my show:
ANDREW BOLT:  The Budget - just one month ago, the Prime Minister said the Government’s revenue was down $12 billion, right? On what you would expect when she lasted promised a surplus six months ago. But then she gave us a deficit of not $12 billion but $19 billion. So in just one month, some $7 billion went walkies. What happened? 
ANTHONY ALBANESE: No. It’s a difference between the time frames. So it’s the difference between from MYEFO, and the difference from the last Budget.
ANDREW BOLT: No, that’s - MYEFO. After MYEFO she said she was going to deliver a surplus. So it’s from that time. Six months ago. Where did the $7 billion go?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: But it’s a time frame of where she’s picking. There’s a reduction in the anticipated revenue from MYEFO to the Budget, but obviously there was a greater reduction in revenue from last year’s Budget to this year’s Budget. I think that’s the difference between the things.
ANDREW BOLT: I’m just saying, $12 billion gone in a month. She said - she’s $12 billion down a month ago. But you have delivered a sur- a deficit of $19 billion. That’s $7 billion more. You were going to always deliver a deficit, regardless of the reduction in revenue, on what you expected. That’s true, isn’t it?
ANTHONY ALBANESE: No. That’s not right, Andrew. We were determined to deliver a surplus. What occurred was that there was an impact on Government revenue. A massive write-down, as a result of - as a result of essentially the high Australian dollar…
ANDREW BOLT: Your revenue actually went up. Now, you say, “Oh, well look, the dollar was - was too high.” But this is a point - when Julia Gillard delivered her promise six months ago of a surplus, she already had the MYEFO figures. Now, Goldman Sachs said the excuse you have just offered that the dollar was a problem, the terms of trade went bad. That isn’t reasonable. You knew all this back in October and you still promised a surplus, and you still now have delivered a deficit.
ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well, that’s not right, Andrew. And common sense tells you - common sense tells you…
ANDREW BOLT: It is! The predictions are there. ANTHONY ALBANESE: Common sense tells you, Andrew, that as soon as we knew that we weren’t going to be able to hit a surplus we would make that public. There is no rational reason why you would hold on to that commitment once it became untenable. 
I believe Albanese has been spun by Wayne Swan. Samuel J of Catallaxy explains:

On the Bolt Report today, in responding to questions about the budget deficit, Anthony Albanese (who at least should receive credit for turning up) said at least two things that are false.
First, that the difference in the write down of $12 billion claimed by the Prime Minister before the budget and the close to $20 billion at budget is due to timing differences (ie: the former is from MYEFO and the latter from budget).
Second, that the revenue writedown (misforecasting) was due to the ‘high Australian dollar’.
Let’s examine these claims. The reconciliation table for last week’s budget shows a parameter variation of negative $19.936 billion. This comprises $13.7 billion in overestimated revenue and $5.6 billion in underestimated expenditure. Importantly this is the variation since last year’s MYEFO, not last year’s budget…
On the second issue, the writedown due to the ‘high Australian dollar’ we only need to look at the exchange rate assumption used at last year’s budget, MYEFO and this year’s budget. In last year’s budget, the assumption used was for a USD exchange rate of 103 cents. For MYEFO it was 102 cents. For this year’s budget it is 103 cents. Therefore it cannot be the ‘high Australian dollar’ causing the revenue writedown – the same exchange rate assumption was used in last budget as this budget. 

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Er, no, Tim. We do really believe in more than ourselves

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (7:04am)

I am astonished - well, not really - that a “political philosopher at the University of Sydney” could seriously hold such a crudely Manichean view of conservatives such as Tony Abbott:

In the face of a radical, mutated conservatism, social democracy may ironically be the most traditionally conservative force left. Who, after all, will stand to preserve the political culture of the common good, and defend it against the all-conquering market?
Does Tim Soutphommasane, who also doubles as an Age columnist and has been a Labor speechwriter, really think Abbott - or conservatives generally - have no sense of the common good and no desire to protect it?
A mere second of reflection exposes this as nonsense. Abbott has for many years been a community volunteer. He recently held his annual bike ride for charity. He has pledged a Coalition Government to a great effort to raise the living standards of Aborigines. He spoke on the common good in his speech last month at the IPA anniversary dinner, which surely cannot have escaped Soutphommasane’s attention:
In celebrating the IPA, we celebrate its calling which is to support and sustain the public culture which has shaped our country and influenced so well the wider world.

In the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve could do almost as they pleased but freedom turned out to have its limits and its abuses, as this foundational story makes only too clear. Yet without freedom we can hardly be human; hardly be worthy of creation in the image of God. From the Garden of Eden, to the Exodus, Athenian democracy, the Roman Senate, Magna Carta, the glorious revolution and American independence, the story of our civilisation has been the story of freedom and our struggles to achieve it.

Freedom, ladies and gentlemen, is what we yearn for but it can only exist within a framework of law so that every person’s freedom is consistent with the same freedom for everyone else. This is what the poet Tennyson meant when he described England as “a land of just and old renown, a land of settled government where freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent”. At least in the English speaking tradition, liberalism and conservatism, love of freedom and respect for due process, have been easy allies.

The IPA, I want to say, has been freedom’s discerning friend. It has supported capitalism, but capitalism with a conscience. Not for the IPA, a single-minded dogmatism or opposition to all restraint; rather a sophisticated appreciation that freedom requires a social context and that much is expected from those to whom so much has been given. You’ve understood that freedom is both an end and a means; a good in itself, as well as necessary for full human flourishing… 
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is the foundation of our justice. “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” is the foundation of our mercy. 
Great conservative writers have not championed liberty in opposition to the common good - as Soutphommasane seems to believe. Rather, they have defended liberty from autocracy, insisting the common good is the responsibility of all and not merely the licence of the closet totalitarian. Few expressed this better than did Edmund Burke when warning the French Revolution, far from promoting the common good, would usher in tyranny: 

Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition, is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.
What on earth could make Soutphommasane believe conservatives are just greedy individualists who, unlike those on the Left like himself, have no concern for the common good?
I blame vanity. And the Left’s tell-tale preference for the seeming over the achieving.

UPDATE
More of that pantomime moral world of hiss-boo conservative villains and clap-and-cheer Leftist heroes. Troy Bramston describes the new Gough Whitlam documentary to be screened - where else - on the ABC:

Whitlam is labelled “an Orpheus in a bogan underworld”. The 60s are described as “an era so oppressive, it made your eyes water”. In these times, “Whitlam rode the wave of anger”. When Labor won, “the hippies were suddenly the government”. This hyperbole detracts from the documentary.

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He claimed he was busy, but he just lacked numeracy skills

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (6:51am)

Is “numeracy skills” a euphemism? As in: “The used car salesman said the car had been driven only by a widow in slippers on Sundays, but I reckon he lacks numeracy skills.”

FEARS are running high in the nation’s capital over the numeracy skills of ACT Greens Senate candidate Simon Sheikh. Sheikh, the former madam of left-wing cause bordello GetUp!, has already been befuddled by questions on how many years he spent as a Labor Party member, insisting it was first only one, then two, when the records say four.
Another euphemism: 
WE dips our lid to Anthony Albanese, who boldly ventured on to The Bolt Report for the third time yesterday. “Why don’t more Labor ministers do what you do and reach out to people who might not be natural Labor voters?” Andrew Bolt wanted to know. “That’s a decision for them,” Albo replied. “I take a view that even though you and I would disagree pretty fundamentally on a range of issues, you’re someone who puts your name to things, you argue your case. And I am prepared to argue the case with you.” That wasn’t good enough for the Bolta, but Albo manfully pressed on. “I think it’s probably just a matter of there’s a range of demands on people’s time.” The Spectator coined the term “tired and emotional” after being successfully sued in the 1960s by a bibulous minister it accused of being drunk. ”Demands on people’s time” could become a euphemism for political cowardice.

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Pants on fire alert

Andrew Bolt May 20 2013 (6:47am)

A lack of irony, humor and a sense of proportion is a dangerous thing. Also, boring:

Australia’s Politifact is headed by ex-SMH editor Peter Fray, whose crack fact-checking team last week probed a statement from Liberal Jamie Briggs: “Labor can’t claim to be reining in government spending when they are buying gold-plated coffee machines for their growing public service workforce.” 
Most people would have instantly recognised the phrase “gold-plated” as a way of illustrating Labor excess in purchasing several $15,000 coffee machines for two government departments.
Politifact, however, took the phrase literally. The site “checked a tender for this essential equipment. No mention of gold-plating. We telephoned Cosmorex, the supplier to the Department of Industry. They’ve never heard of ‘gold plated coffee machines’.”
Forensic investigation over, Politifact concluded: “We think there should be some form of modifier, a marker, when referring to gold-plating to ensure everyone knows it is not real gold.” Everybody besides Politfact already knew that, but this didn’t stop the site awarding Briggs a “pants on fire” dishonesty rating. Wait a minute … “pants on fire”? Should there not be some form of modifier, a marker if you will, when referring to blazing trousers to ensure everyone knows they aren’t really on fire? 

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Hi everyone! Here's the MichelleMalkin.com newsletter for May 20th. Enjoy!

From the Blog

Audit THIS! Tea Party groups to protest at IRS offices nationwide on Tuesday

Don’t stand down...

The Obama Way: DOJ dumpster divers spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen

Chilling...

IRS gave Obama foundation fast, retroactive non-profit approval while stalling conservative applications

Conservative groups have reported waiting for the IRS to review or approve their non-profit status applications for many months and even years (as well as receiving ridiculous demands from the IRS)...

More From the Right Side of the Web

National Review: True scandal

Michelle's Top Tweets

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And ... Our Hate Tweet of the Day

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Feel the love, y'all.

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“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.” -James 3:17-18
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth."
Ecclesiastes 10:7
Upstarts frequently usurp the highest places, while the truly great pine in obscurity. This is a riddle in providence whose solution will one day gladden the hearts of the upright; but it is so common a fact, that none of us should murmur if it should fall to our own lot. When our Lord was upon earth, although he is the Prince of the kings of the earth, yet he walked the footpath of weariness and service as the Servant of servants: what wonder is it if his followers, who are princes of the blood, should also be looked down upon as inferior and contemptible persons? The world is upside down, and therefore, the first are last and the last first. See how the servile sons of Satan lord it in the earth! What a high horse they ride! How they lift up their horn on high! Haman is in the court, while Mordecai sits in the gate; David wanders on the mountains, while Saul reigns in state; Elijah is complaining in the cave while Jezebel is boasting in the palace; yet who would wish to take the places of the proud rebels? and who, on the other hand, might not envy the despised saints? When the wheel turns, those who are lowest rise, and the highest sink. Patience, then, believer, eternity will right the wrongs of time.
Let us not fall into the error of letting our passions and carnal appetites ride in triumph, while our nobler powers walk in the dust. Grace must reign as a prince, and make the members of the body instruments of righteousness. The Holy Spirit loves order, and he therefore sets our powers and faculties in due rank and place, giving the highest room to those spiritual faculties which link us with the great King; let us not disturb the divine arrangement, but ask for grace that we may keep under our body and bring it into subjection. We were not new created to allow our passions to rule over us, but that we, as kings, may reign in Christ Jesus over the triple kingdom of spirit, soul, and body, to the glory of God the Father.

Evening

"And he requested for himself that he might die."
1 Kings 19:4
It was a remarkable thing that the man who was never to die, for whom God had ordained an infinitely better lot, the man who should be carried to heaven in a chariot of fire, and be translated, that he should not see death--should thus pray, "Let me die, I am no better than my fathers." We have here a memorable proof that God does not always answer prayer in kind, though he always does in effect. He gave Elias something better than that which he asked for, and thus really heard and answered him. Strange was it that the lion-hearted Elijah should be so depressed by Jezebel's threat as to ask to die, and blessedly kind was it on the part of our heavenly Father that he did not take his desponding servant at his word. There is a limit to the doctrine of the prayer of faith. We are not to expect that God will give us everything we choose to ask for. We know that we sometimes ask, and do not receive, because we ask amiss. If we ask for that which is not promised--if we run counter to the spirit which the Lord would have us cultivate--if we ask contrary to his will, or to the decrees of his providence--if we ask merely for the gratification of our own ease, and without an eye to his glory, we must not expect that we shall receive. Yet, when we ask in faith, nothing doubting, if we receive not the precise thing asked for, we shall receive an equivalent, and more than an equivalent, for it. As one remarks, "If the Lord does not pay in silver, he will in gold; and if he does not pay in gold, he will in diamonds." If he does not give you precisely what you ask for, he will give you that which is tantamount to it, and that which you will greatly rejoice to receive in lieu thereof. Be then, dear reader, much in prayer, and make this evening a season of earnest intercession, but take heed what you ask.
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Onesiphorus

[ÅŽne sĭph'o rŭs] - bringing advantage. A believer in Ephesuswho befriended Paul (2 Tim. 1:16; 4:19).

The Man Who Was Kind to His Friend

From the description Paul gives us of Onesiphorus, he must have been a lovely character. In his revealing essay of this rare character, Alexander Whyte speaks of him as "an elder in the Church of Ephesus, and a better elder there never was."
Much controversy has raged around Paul's cameo of Onesiphorus. Was he adorning the brow of a living man with a garland? Or was he placing a wreath upon the tomb of a saint? Some see in Paul's reference to "the house of Onesiphorus" a proof for the lawfulness of prayers for the dead. But Paul's language does not constitute a prayer, but only a wish or exclamation. The dead are beyond the influence of our intercessions.
There are several traits of the admirable life of Onesiphorus we can profitably meditate upon:
I. He was repeatedly kind. "He oft refreshed me." In the overwhelming heat of his trials, Paul found himself revived when this dear saint came his way. What a blessed ministry it is to refresh the needy children of God!
II. He associated himself with Paul's suffering. "He was not ashamed of my chain." Some of the apostle's friends did not like to own any connection with a chained man. But not so Onesiphorus. He had a big soul and brought consolation to the manacled prisoner. Many of God's best servants are harassed with chains of sorrow and of affliction. Let us not shrink from helping them.
III. He made it his business to find Paul. "He sought me out." Matthew Henry says, "A good man will seek opportunities of doing good, and will not shun that offer." Is there someone you should hunt up and cheer?
IV. He and his house were blessed for kindness shown. "The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus." Paul was not able to reward his friend for all his gracious solicitation, but the Lord could, and would. In ministering to Paul, Onesiphorous had ministered to the Lord, and of the Lord would be blessed.
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Today's reading: 1 Chronicles 7-9, John 6:22-44 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 1 Chronicles 7-9

Issachar
1 The sons of Issachar:
Tola, Puah, Jashub and Shimron--four in all.
2 The sons of Tola:
Uzzi, Rephaiah, Jeriel, Jahmai, Ibsam and Samuel--heads of their families. During the reign of David, the descendants of Tola listed as fighting men in their genealogy numbered 22,600.
3 The son of Uzzi:
Izrahiah.
The sons of Izrahiah:
Michael, Obadiah, Joel and Ishiah. All five of them were chiefs. 4 According to their family genealogy, they had 36,000 men ready for battle, for they had many wives and children.
5 The relatives who were fighting men belonging to all the clans of Issachar, as listed in their genealogy, were 87,000 in all....

Today's New Testament reading: John 6:22-44

22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the opposite shore of the lake realized that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. 23 Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus....
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