Saturday, December 05, 2015

Sat Dec 5th Todays News

Australia has significant debt which has to be paid. It should not be left to our children to pay for it. If we do, our children, or their children, may have to go entirely without something we take for granted. We have a spending problem. We could cut some spending on Education to improve the spending we already have. A second English teacher in front of the top English class in year 10 is probably a waste of resources. It would be of more immediate benefit to Math students in the lower middle to work on basics. That does not cost much. But failure to do so ay mean we have no money for remedial work at all, going forward. And it is similar with bloated services in Health and public administration. At the moment, we have bureaucrats without jobs. Get rid of Climate Change department before we have to ditch meteorology. 

 For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2014 ===
ALP opposition
Shorten still fails and so promotes independent parties. The ALP has said 'no' to almost all government legislation, including legislation the ALP put in place or backed while in office. The result is that minority parties have extraordinary power, but the results are a dysfunctional parliament which upsets the voting public. The government has been relentless, and so a desperate Palmer has pushed his party to fracture when it had every single advantage. PUP could have become a deal breaker, and been credited with bringing in needed reform in Health, Education and Welfare. Instead it has a voting record which closely matches the ALP and a history of being unable to keep its own promises. Even if Palmer himself survives his court cases politically, he has junked his reputation. Lambie, a former PUP, has opposed legislation allowing children that ALP failed to drown out of detention. PUP Lazarus has not opposed that legislation, but has said he found it very confronting. He really wanted those children detained, presumably. Sarah Hanson Young (Green) was appalled that the government would free those children. The media is desperately pointing at polls and hysterically claiming that the government is doomed come the next election. They point to alleged division within government ranks and claim Mr Hockey is to blame for the ALP failing to assert itself. It may well be true that Joe has destroyed the ALP with his budget, but that is not yet widely recognised. Even if an election were called tomorrow, all that would happen would be the public recognition that the ALP have no policy. 

ABC struggling to come to terms with children they couldn't drown being freed from detention. When the ALP were in government, it was easy for the ABC, as all they needed to do was ignore the issue, or claim there was no solution. Now they report on the problem and blame the government when it was the fault of the previous government. Meanwhile, 7:30 report finished by highlighting thirty years of partisan politics resulting in systemic failure. Quentin Dempster mentioned he had campaigned against Joh Bjelke-Petersen in Queensland before coming to NSW to campaign against the Liberals. He gloated at how he shielded successive ALP governments from criticism. 

Quantising ALP debt isn't hard. It is that big. Bolt posts Hekler's suggestions.
Example 1. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we took half of everything earned by every Australian for two years the debt would return to zero.
Example 2. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we stopped every Social Security payment for three years the debt would return to zero.
Example 3. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on health for seven years the debt would return to zero. 
Example 4. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on education for 14 years the debt would return to zero
Example 5. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on defence for 19 years the debt would return to zero
Chris Bowen admits the ALP has no policy. In an interview with Tony Jones Bowen claims he would reinstate cancelled spending by the Libs, but had no way of paying for that promise, beyond extending debt. 

Left wing fantasy land is built where according to Bolt "Passion trumps truth. Hatred substitutes for an understanding of the other." Bolt lists examples, but that list is not exhaustive. 
Other issues

Clive Palmer is failing to stay afloat. He is losing court cases and pursued by journalists and China. Instead of making fiends, he has tried to control people, and so his power is failing. Soon he will be as pathetic as a teary Joh Bjelke-Petersen locked in Queensland's parliament having lost election after following Palmer's advice. 

Cuneen vs ICAC. ICAC are desperate to be torn apart before they have to finish investigations into the ALP. To that end they have had an investigation into the conservative NSW government that has not shown any corruption, but has claimed scalps. But the disciplined LNP in NSW has weathered the storm. So the ICAC are upping the ante. Prosecutor Cuneen has been maliciously accused of advising her son's girlfriend to avoid breath testing when she had had no alcohol in her system. There is nothing to investigate. But if the ICAC do investigate, they can fish for things that are irrelevant. Few individuals, no matter how virtuous would stand up to such probing. But the ICAC have been denied their attempt at corrupt investigation. But they are appealing the decision based on principle. They really want to be wound up for corruption before they have to investigate the ALP. 

The issue of blacks dying resisting arrest. The US does not have a problem with racist policeman. Two recent celebrated cases show conclusively that the real issue is the pop culture mentality of those resisting arrest. If a policeman detains you, you go do as you are told and let the courts and lawyers settle it. It isn't the job of the police to play with idiots resisting arrest. But then, tragically, the miscarriage of justice with the arrest of Rodney King has it that any idiot can get rich resisting arrest. And they can. But they can also die. 

Frightbat's tragic tale of an untouched hand as Blair reports on Clementine Ford's boarding of a train and not having her hand touched. Apparently men are awful. 
From 2013
Much needs to be done, it is hard to know where to start. One important agenda item is to do with the ABC. It won't be fixed at once, as there is a culture of corruption pervading it from the lowest levels to the top. It is important to have a national broadcaster. It isn't desirable to have a bad one. I believe the news and current affair element needs to be separated. The infotainment that has resulted from the abysmal journalism service has obfuscated all of the most important events of the last forty years. While people would be aware of the role of the ABC in bringing about a diplomatic incident with Indonesia, they would not be aware of how the ABC has protected ALP from corruption investigation. Consider the following Media Watch questions to Tim Blair following the story of a constituent of Nathan Reese having an affair with him. Reese had confessed to parliament his misjudgement and stood aside from his portfolio. 
Media Watch asked:1. Were you aware at the time of publication that this story had been rejected by two other media outlets?2. Did that give you any concerns?3. Why did you decide it was in the public interest to reveal what several commentators have described as a private matter?4. Why did you not reveal the name of the woman involved, given that the credibility and completeness of her account may be at issue?5. Were you concerned about this woman’s reported connection to people in the NSW ALP? 
The serious issue involved a shadow police minister and a former Premier. The possibility of corruption and blackmail is strong. It is hard to know under what circumstances it would not be in the public interest to run the story. Now consider my issue in finding a reporter for the issue of dead schoolboy Hamidur Rahman and a bungled pedophile investigation at Campbelltown PAHS. I have, through no fault of my own, been unemployed since July 2007. My life savings is gone. I have been illegally blacklisted. My citizenship evidence was destroyed by Bob Carr. I have been denied legal aid because of my race. I have been harassed for being fat and US born by my equal opportunity employer. I have been paid less than award wage by the government under Gillard's Fair Work legislation. My life has been threatened by a known hit man. I have privately engaged with the ALP on many occasions to get the issue sorted without public fuss. Keep in mind, I have never been allowed to put my position before any court. I gave some information to the NSW coroner, but they ignored it after the police incompetently, or corruptly, failed to examine it. 

I know journalists of all ages and descriptions. A former student of mine who was a cadet journalist said they couldn't help because it was 'above their pay grade.' A senior journalist has told me they have been instructed by editors they cannot report on my issue. These questions from Media Watch illustrate why it is so hard for me to get my story told, despite extreme privation and substantial evidence. 

The ABC can no longer merely balance their abysmal service. We don't need them to lie about conservatives. We need them to report impartially. They have failed by any measure.
Historical perspective on this day
In 65 BC, Cicero gave the fourth and final of the Catiline Orations. In 633 Fourth Council of Toledo took place. In 1082, Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona was assassinated. In 1408, Emir Edigu of Golden Horde reached Moscow. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes affectibus, a papal bull that deputised Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany. In 1492, Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (now Haitiand the Dominican Republic). In 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal issued a decree of expulsion of "heretics" from the country. In 1757, Seven Years' War: Battle of Leuthen – Frederick II of Prussia led Prussian forces to a decisive victory over Austrian forces under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine. In 1766, in London, James Christie held his first sale. In 1775, at Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox began his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1815, foundation of Maceió, Brazil. In 1831, former U.S. President John Quincy Adamstook his seat in the House of Representatives. In 1847, Jefferson Davis was elected to the U.S. senate, his first political post. In 1848,  California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirmed that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California. In 1865, Chincha Islands War: Peru allied with Chile against Spain. In 1876, the Brooklyn Theater Fire killed at least 278 people in Brooklyn, New York. In 1916, British premier H. H. Asquith resigned from his post. In 1920, Dimitrios Rallis formed a government in Greece. In 1932, German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein was granted an American visa. In 1933, Prohibition in the United States ended: Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment. (This overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol illegal in the United States.) In 1934, Abyssinia Crisis: Italian troops attacked Wal Wal in Abyssinia, taking four days to capture the city. In 1936, the Soviet Union adopted a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.

In 1941, World War II: In the Battle of Moscow, Georgy Zhukov launched a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre. Also, World War II: Great Britain declared war on Finland, Hungary and Romania. In 1943, World War II: U.S. Army Air Force began attacking Germany's secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow. In 1945, Flight 19 was lost in the Bermuda Triangle. In 1952, Great Smog: A cold fog descended upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow. In 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged and formed the AFL–CIO. Also, E. D. Nixon and Rosa Parks led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957,  Sukarnoexpelled all Dutch people from Indonesia. In 1958, Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) was inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she spoke to the Lord Provostin a call from Bristol to Edinburgh. Also, the Preston By-pass, the UK's first stretch of motorway, opened to traffic for the first time. (It is now part of the M6 and M55 motorways.)

In 1964, Vietnam War: For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon was awarded the first Medal of Honor of the war. In 1969, the four node ARPANET network was established. In 1977,  Egypt broke diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen. The move was in retaliation for the Declaration of Tripoli against Egypt. In 1978, the Soviet Union signed a "friendship treaty" with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In 1983, dissolution of the Military Junta in Argentina. In 1993, the mayor of Vienna, Helmut Zilk, was injured by a letter bomb. In 1995, Sri Lankan Civil War: The Sri Lankan government announced the conquest of the Tamil stronghold of Jaffna. In 2004, the Civil Partnership Act came into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership was registered there. In 2005, the Lake Tanganyika earthquake caused significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2006, Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrew the government in Fiji. In 2007, Westroads Mall shooting: A gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha, Nebraska, mall, killing eight people before taking his own life. In 2012, at least 8 people were killed and 12 others injured after a 5.6 earthquake strikes Iran's South Khorasan Province.
=== Publishing News ===
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.
===
Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August, September, October, 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. 

List of available items at Create Space
===
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.

Happy birthday and many happy returns Alan J Tran, Ilsa Mirza and Pradeep Garg. Born on the same day, across the years, along with
December 5: St Nicholas's Eve in various European countries; The King's birthday, National Day and Father's Day in Thailand (1927)
Damage from the Brooklyn Theater Fire
You are innocent. You are on fire. You have vigour. When others fail, you remain. You have the world. Let's party. 
Deaths
===

HORN HONKED

Tim Blair – Saturday, December 05, 2015 (2:26am)

Please take a few minutes to read about the victims of San Bernardino’s Islamist atrocity. And then, if you can tolerate it, read a Washington Post piece about the real victims: 
American Muslims say they are living through an intensely painful moment and feel growing anti-Muslim sentiment after the recent Islamic State attacks in Paris and this week’s San Bernardino shootings, carried out by a Muslim husband and wife.
Anti-Muslim violence in the United States has jumped since the Paris attacks, including gunfire and vandalism targeting mosques and assaults against individual Muslims …
One recent evening, Haneen Jasim, 22, a University of Cincinnati pre-med student who wears the hijab, said she had just left a Starbucks where she was studying for an exam when a man approaching in a car began honking his horn. 
Jasim claims the honker then yelled insults and swerved his car in her direction. How absolutely dreadful. On a positive note, however, this week’s murders apparently provide a “wonderful opportunity and a wonderful moment to really make significant change.”
(Via Iowahawk.)
UPDATE: 
David Bowditch, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said the mass shooting that killed 14 people at a work party was now being investigated as “an act of terrorism”.

image

The announcement came shortly after it was revealed that Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter, pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook during the massacre. 
And in other developments:

image
===

On The Bolt Report tomorrow, December 6

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (4:08pm)

On Sunday at 10am and 3pm.
Editorial: Is the party crumbling under Malcolm Turnbull.
My guest: Attorney General George Brandis: on the terrorism fight after the San Bernardino massacre. And the Macfarlane desertion and the North Sydney by-election result..
The panel: former Treasurer Peter Costello and former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa. On the Liberals’ in-fighting, ian Macfarlane’s defection, the Greens’ silence over atrocities against gays, and more.  Can Turnbull keep it together?
NewsWatch: Rowan Dean, columnist with The Courier Mail and Financial Review, and editor of Spectator Australia.  The media love for Turnbull and contempt for soldiers. The Left tightens its grip on the ABC.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

“Weak” and “contained” Islamic State advances

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (3:57pm)

Barack Obama last month, on the morning of the Paris attacks by the Islamic State:
I don’t think they’re gaining strength… What is true, from the start our goal has been first to contain [the Islamic State] and we have contained them.
Malcolm Turnbull on the Islamic State two weeks ago:
By most measures, however, ISIL is in a fundamentally weak position.
We must not be fooled by its hype. Its ideology is archaic, but its use of the Internet is very modern. ISIL has many more smartphones than guns, more twitter accounts than fighters. It does not command broad-based legitimacy even in those areas under its direct control.
Today:

Islamic State fighters have captured swathes of eastern Afghanistan in a drive to establish a new province of the group’s self-styled caliphate on territory straddling the border with Pakistan.
Up to 1600 fighters pledging allegiance to Isis are ruling much of four districts south of Jalalabad with the same ruthlessness that characterises the group’s regime in Syria and Iraq: public beheadings, strict adherence to Koranic teachings foreign to Afghanistan, and extortion. Some of the worst atrocities have been filmed and posted online.
===

If this is how Turnbull treats his friends… UPDATE: Now even criticising Frydenberg?

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (10:36am)

Malcolm Turnbull’s infamously poor people skills are in part to blame for his latest strife. Laurie Oakes:
Turnbull was totally blindsided by Ian Macfarlane’s defection, but the crisis was largely of his own making. The spark was his cavalier treatment of a friend…
Macfarlane, industry minister in the Abbott Cabinet, was left out when Turnbull reshuffled the front bench…
One of Macfarlane’s mates asked him a couple of days before the reshuffle if he was sure his position was safe. “Absolutely,” he replied. “One hundred per cent.”
He had not only voted for Turnbull in the ballot but had helped him get the numbers. His place in Cabinet, he asserted confidently, was “safe as houses”.
When the same mate ran into Macfarlane a few weeks later, the ousted minister — now cast in the role of has-been, even though he is six months younger than the new PM — was bitter. He felt he was owed an explanation. Turnbull, he said, had never bothered to tell him why he had to go… Macfarlane’s anger over the reshuffle would have been exacerbated by the fact that he was dumped to make room for someone like Brough…
Attention now turns to Scott Buchholz, dropped as Liberal Whip by Turnbull, who has also been flirting with the idea of joining the Nationals.
Turnbull has also made a phone call to one prominent critic he should have placated and not called a liar after losing his temper.
UPDATE
More strife:
Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has crossed the floor for a second time in a fortnight and fired a warning shot to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to better consult the party room, after a midnight deal was struck with the Greens to overturn Liberal policy on private companies disclosing their tax affairs…
The Coalition repealed the measure when it won office in 2013. But on Wednesday night, Treasurer Scott Morrison agreed with the Greens to reintroduce the policy with a higher threshold…
The legislation was passed on Thursday after Senator Bernardi crossed the floor, complaining that the major U-turn in government policy had not been put to cabinet or the party room....
[Bernardi said:] “To have sprung this on us at the last minute, I think is not in the best interest of my party and the procedures and policies we work with.”
...This complaint was echoed by Nationals senator Matt Canavan, who told Fairfax Media he too was concerned about the lack of consultation… Other Liberals, who did not want to be identified, also said they were concerned by a lack of proper process.
Turnbull, 14 September:
The culture of our leadership is going to be one that’s thoroughly consultative. A traditional, thoroughly traditional cabinet government that ensures that we make decisions in a collaborative manner.
UPDATE
Former Treasury secretary John Stone, a friend of the highest integrity, writing in the Spectator Australia:
Those who, like myself, remain appalled by that have since been enjoined – including by commentators formerly seen as Abbott supporters – to ‘get over it’ and ‘accept the pollsters’ verdicts’. Well, I’m sorry, but as Margaret Thatcher famously told her Conservative Party colleagues: ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning’. Nor am I.
Why not? Because if treachery and betrayal on this scale are not punished, they will beget more such treachery and betrayal, as Labor Party experience amply demonstrates.
UPDATE
Another potential problem:
The Liberal Party is bracing for a swing against it in today’s North Sydney by-election of 5-7 per cent — a bigger swing than in the Canning by-election in September when Malcolm Turnbull removed Tony Abbott as prime minister.
The by-election on Sydney’s north shore was forced by the resig­nation of former treasurer Joe Hockey...
UPDATE
Turnbull seems to have learned nothing. First mistake: repudiating Frydenberg. Second: briefing journalists about it:
Malcolm Turnbull was ending a day of friendly talks in Malta last weekend when Josh Frydenberg started a dispute the Prime Minister could have done without.
Turnbull had spent the day meeting fellow leaders from across the Commonwealth and negotiating a new plan to counter extremism and radicalisation. As on other stops of his recent travels, his message was about working with the Muslim community.
On Sunday morning in Sydney, however, Frydenberg had a warning for that same community. His remarks, including a rebuke to the nation’s peak Islamic leader, did not fit easily with Turnbull’s more inclusive tone.
Turnbull phoned from Malta to talk to Frydenberg as soon as he could. Some characterise the call as an expression of concern at the way the Resources Minister had raised the issue. The phone call would not have been made if there were no issue with the remarks or no anxiety about the potential fallout.
Frydenberg had in fact spoken frankly, and with the support of dozens of Liberal MPs:
Josh Frydenberg [said] that “a problem within Islam” is to blame for recent terrorist attacks and extremist activity....
Mr Frydenberg warned the country was “not winning the battle of hearts and minds” of the Muslim community and launched a stinging rebuke of the Grand Mufti of Australia, declaring the nation’s most senior Islamic cleric had made a “graphic” leadership failure after the violence in Paris…
The Grand Mufti, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, drew criticism from government MPs when he and the Australian National Imams Council argued the violence in France was provoked by “causative factors” such as­ racism, Islamophobia, security laws and foreign policy decisions.
And now I hear that Macfarlane approached Turnbull for a ministry as a price for not defecting to the Nationals. Turnbull refused, but he now faces having to give the Nationals one extra Cabinet position in line with their extra numbers. Macfarlane, a good friend of Treasurer Scott Morrison, wants Frydenberg’s job. If Frydenberg is demoted in any way - from his job or from Cabinet - I suspect the Liberals will be torn apart. This will be seen as a hostile act to someone more conservative than the Turnbull camp.
Stand by.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Scientists wouldn’t fall for the climate hype last time. So why this change?

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (9:59am)

Tony Thomas tracks down a letter from a politician at the height of the last climate change scare, 40 years ago:
A great embarrassment to the warming-catastrophic community is that 40 years ago the climatology scare was about cooling and onset of an ice age. Warmists today go, “Pooh! That cooling stuff then was just a few hyped-up articles in magazines. Cooling never got any traction in the real science community!”
Really? Then explain this away…
Letter from the Australian Federal Minister for Science, W.L. (Bill) Morrison, to the President of the Academy of Science, Professor Badger, January 9, 1975: 
Dear Professor Badger,
I am writing on this occasion to enquire if the Academy could assist the Government by examining, and reporting on, claims recently made in the media, and apparently also by competent scientists that the earth’s climate is changing and that a new ice-age could be on the way.
The Prime Minister [Gough Whitlam] is very interested in this subject and is anxious to obtain the best possible advice about it. As an interim measure towards that end, I sought, and obtained, a short report from Dr Gibbs, Director of Meteorology, and Dr Priestley, Chairman of the CSIRO Environmental Physics Research Laboratories…I am now anxious to have the subject examined in more detail and at greater length…Since the enquiry stems primarily from concern about man and the possible effects of climatic changes on him [I think Bill means ‘him or her’] , it seems to me that it should reflect not only the input of those expert in the physical sciences but also that of those expert in the biological sciences…I would be most grateful to have your views at your earliest convenience.
... The Academy swung into action, mustering eleven of its finest minds and a three-man secretariat for the job. The eventual report, delivered a year later, ran to 80 pages...: 
In the 1960s some scientists extrapolated from the warming trend evident between 1895 and 1940 and predicted the melting of the ice caps and the consequent flooding of the world’s seaports. There was then thought to be some rational justification for their warnings, namely the warming effect associated with the global increase of CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels (Matthews et al, 1971). However, since 1940 the temperature curve has reversed its direction [despite significant increase in CO2 emissions – TT]. It is just as precipitate now for scientists to postulate that the present downturn presages an imminent glaciation as it was for their collegues (sic) to forecast the melting of the ice caps 20 years ago [1955]…Nevertheless the historical record…does not preclude a change lasting for some decades or even centuries to a regime colder than what is called by some northern hemisphere climatologists the ‘climatic optimum’ of the 1940s-50s. (page 14)
...The Academy report began,
During the past few years, there have been reports of a persistent cooling trend in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere, crop failures in the USSR, severe droughts in the Sahel region of Africa, and failures in the Indian monsoon rains. Some scientists have interpreted these events as showing that the global climate is changing [i.e. cooling, TT] in such a way as to make conditions of man more difficult and these views have received widespread publicity through the mass media.
Following the concern expressed at the World Food Conference in November 1974 about the possible effects of this predicted climatic change on agricultural production and the world’s food supply, the Australian Government requested the Academy to report to it on these assertions. The Government was especially interested in their possible significance for Australia…
The report comes to a ringing conclusion:
We conclude that there is no evidence that the world is now on the brink of a major climatic change. There is ample evidence that the world’s climate has changed widely during the geological past, and while there is every expectation that it will continue to change in the future, the time scale of these changes is in the range of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years rather than decades or centuries.
It cannot be too strongly emphasised that year-to-year variability is an inherent feature of global and regional climates and that…large fluctuations leading to severe droughts and floods are bound to occur from time to time.
Sigh. Remember the days when scientists prided themselves on keeping perspective and sticking to the evidence?
Thomas goes on to offer a telling contrast with alarmist scientists today. Read on. 
===

Claim: San Bernardino killer ‘pledged allegiance’ to Islamic State

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (8:18am)

Barack Obama said the Islamic State was “contained”. Malcolm Turnbull claimed it was “fundamentally weak”.
But, three weeks after the Islamic State’s Paris massacre:
A woman who joined her husband in killing 14 people in California apparently pledged allegiance to a leader of the militant group Islamic State, two US government sources said…
Tashfeen Malik, 27, and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, were killed in a shootout with police hours after the Wednesday massacre during a holiday party at the Inland Regional Centre social services agency in San Bernardino…
US investigators are evaluating evidence that Malik, a Pakistani native who had been living in Saudi Arabia when she married Farook, had pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, two US officials told Reuters. They said the finding, if confirmed, could be a “game changer” in the investigation.
===

Advice to Turnbull, now in danger

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (7:35am)

Dennis Shanahan on the Liberals crumbling in the hands of Malcolm Turnbull:

Turnbull [on Thursday was] shutting down question time, ... having gagged Labor for trying to censure him over the behaviour of his handpicked Special Minister of State, Mal Brough, who is under investigation by the federal police.
Against a backdrop of a continuing vendetta of counter-leaking among his colleagues designed to damage or defend Tony Abbott, the failure of key legislation in the Senate, a growing backlash from conservative Coalition MPs and the Liberal Party membership, a spectacular defection to the Nationals that is expected to force a ministerial shuffle and a mounting pile of work because of overseas travel, Turnbull was fortunate the parliament was rising for the long summer break…
Whether it is accepting he has made a mistake himself, imposing his authority on senior colleagues, trying to allay conservative concerns and better managing the Coalition relationship, the time has come for Turnbull to address the daily challenges of being Prime Minister…

While Abbott hasn’t conducted a campaign of damaging leaks such as that which hurt Julia Gillard, he and his fellow thwarted conservatives are publicly pitching policy positions on terrorism and security that challenge the rhetoric of Turnbull, Julie Bishop and new Defence Minister Marise Payne.
On the other side, the continued leaking of confidential meetings and transactions over the leadership plotting, designed to destroy or tarnish Abbott’s legacy and exclude Peter Dutton, an Abbott supporter and hardline conservative, from the national security committee, continues to anger conservatives, even beyond those who voted for Abbott.
Turnbull’s response to these bitter recriminations on his return from Paris was to urge all his colleagues to “stop speaking about ourselves” — Abbott’s own forlorn appeal as his leadership was undermined.
Turnbull does not wish to continue these old fights but can’t seem to stop his senior colleagues bent on the destruction of Abbott…
Ian Macfarlane’s surprise move to defect to the Nationals as a way of getting back on to the frontbench is largely driven by personal ambition to become a minister again but is representative of the feeling of conservative exclusion and the belief that Turnbull is not being “truly consultative with colleagues” — the complaint maverick conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi made as he crossed the Senate floor late Thursday.
The defection also has shown the depth of suspicion among Nationals MPs about Turnbull’s longer-term plans and reinforces the Nationals’ conviction on the need for a concrete, written and enforceable Coalition agreement with Turnbull.
A few tips for Turnbull for his Christmas break:
- have Brough resign.
- ideally, replace him with a conservative (although Macfarlane’s defection to the Nationals suggests they are now owed the next vacant position.)
- put Dutton back on the National Security Committee.
- reach out to conservatives. Placate the Nationals.
- shut down Julie Bishop, demanding assurances from her that the leaking and anti-Abbott backbiting stop.
- recalibrate on Islam, ISIS and national security. Claiming the Islamic State is “fundamentally weak”, defending the Mufti and mocking calls for special forces in Syria and Iraq were all mistakes, and a more realistic, frank and credible approach is needed, free of paranoia over Tony Abbott.
- avoid any temptation to turn the submarine project into a job creation plan for South Australia.
- scrap plans to increase the GST. After the Premiers get their share and the poor are compensated, there’s only limited money left for tax cuts - meaning the total tax take will rise, infuriating conservatives. The GST rise will galvanise the Greens and Labor, and be blocked in the Senate, anyway. So forget it.
- Get cracking on savings. The Budget deficit is blowing, which will damage your image of a financially-savvy manager.
- Get Abbott on board. Woo him.
- Intervene, gently, in the culture wars on an issue important to the conservative base - whether the ABC, the excesses of the global warming alarmists, immigration, free speech, the new tribalising of Australia. Whatever you are personally comfortable in arguing. Energise Liberal supporters.
- Cut down on the overseas travel.
- Hire an office sceptic - a trusted conservative who will at least warn you how some lines and policies will play.
- Get cracking with talking about jobs and cost of living, and policies to fix them. No more global warming conferences.
- What happened to that successful campaign - pre the coup - to portray Shorten as a union hack, and to push for reform of the unions and our workplaces?
- Tighten up the talk. The waffle must go in what will be an election here. For a start: do not qualify every sentence, mid sentence. Short and declarative, fit for insertion in the news bulletins.
- “Agile” is a word that needs to be retired. Apart from being overdone now, I suspect many Australians are looking now for steadiness rather than exercise.
- Fix some stuff. Look like you’re making a difference.
- Hammer the old sureties - you will stop the boats and fight Labor’s carbon tax.
- Add a bit of patriotism to the pitch. Menzies and Howard weren’t shy of flying the flag, and there’s a risk in seeming too much the rootless cosmopolitan.
- for God’s sake give me something to applaud. I’ve boring even myself in criticising this lurch to the Left, and the pleasure of saying “I told you so” isn’t compensation enough. And if you don’t have the support of conservative commentators, who will defend you when the media Left falls out of love?
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The persecution of George Pell

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (7:26am)

Gerard Henderson on the witchhunt against Cardinal George Pell:

Frank Brennan, the Jesuit priest and author, has been a considered critic of [Pell]… However, in an article published in the online Eureka Street magazine on November 23, Brennan essentially called for Pell to receive a fair go at the royal commission and in the media.
Brennan made the point that the [Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse] “has spared no effort in scrutinising” Pell’s “past actions”. He added that “no one else has been called three times before the commission”.
Justice Peter McClellan and his fellow commissioners have decided to highlight Pell’s forthcoming appearance in Melbourne…
Pell’s many media critics essentially have run the case for the prosecution with alternative views effectively censored. This “case for the prosecution” mentality even finds expression at the royal commission…
This despite the fact Pell was one of the first figures in church or state who acknowledged and addressed the crime of child sexual abuse. In 1996, just three months after succeeding Frank Little as Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, Pell set up what was called the Melbourne Response. The following year, the other Catholic archdioceses and dioceses created Towards Healing.
===

What the ABC wouldn’t tell you last night about Clementine Ford

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (6:55am)

The ABC’s 7.30 last night omitted critical information - information if was fully aware of - to present an abusive troll as actually the victim of abusive trolls:
SABRA LANE, PRESENTER: Social media has opened up whole new frontiers of communication, but it has a dark side. A world of haters and abusers often targeting women with threats and insults. Writer and commentator Clementine Ford has been bombarded with abuse online after she called out one of the haters. His company subsequently sacked him. Today a Twitter campaign was launched to support all women exposed to attacks on social media and it went off....
TRACY BOWDEN, REPORTER: Clementine Ford speaks her mind and she is often provocative
YOUTUBER: What we are looking at right now is essentially the face of modern evil. You are looking at the face of a totalitarian psychopath. This right here is a beast of a creature.
TRACY BOWDEN: The writer and commentator’s views have made her the subject of constant online abuse.
CLEMINTINE FORD: The first time someone calls you a fat ugly (bleep) it really does hurt, it stings and you think, “What have I done to deserve this?”
TRACEY SPICER, JOURNALIST: She has had death threats, she’s had threats of rape, the things that have been said to that woman, she has almost become a lightning rod for men’s anger against the rising tide of feminism.
That kind of abuse is awful, even if it’s probably still well short of what I’ve had to deal with this year. But 7.30 gives only this hint that Ford may actually be a hypocrite:
TRACY BOWDEN: Last week after being called a slut yet again, Clementine Ford called one of her attackers to account.
TRACEY SPICER: She ... simply tagged his company, Meriton and said, “Are you aware of what your employee is writing?” And they took very responsible action which was to terminate this man’s employment.
TRACY BOWDEN: It was a controversial outcome.
JUDITH SLOAN, ECONOMIST: She said some extraordinarily hateful things herself. So it seems to me it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black here. I mean, I think to call for someone’s sacking is just extraordinary, you know, just toughen up, princess.
But 7.30 never explained just what Ford had herself said, and never asked her to explain the contradiction in complaining of abuse of women while dishing it out herself.
I know that 7.30 knows exactly Ford has been in the past, because it asked to interview the two journalists who have pointed it out - me and Tim Blair. (I was too busy cooking for my Bolt Report Christmas party.)
But let me here repeat what the ABC refused to report last night:

Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford has printed and sold “F… Abbott” T-shirts.
Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford has jeered that a female journalist of Iranian background [Rita Panahi] “will never be a white man”.
Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford has called former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman a “c..t”.
Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford has called conservative columnist Miranda Devine a “f...ing c..t”.
Why did the ABC not report any of that? Why didn’t it interview Miranda Devine and Rita Panahi about being trolled?
Come to think of it, why wasn’t Tracey Spicer’s own abuse mentioned?
Answer: because it didn’t fit the ABC’s preferred narrative. And the collective always looks after its ideological own. 
===

Don’t believe what Mark Scott says about the ABC’s “plurality”, just look at who he hires

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (5:51am)

ABC boss Mark Scott told a Senate committee this week the ABC was pluralist - and not just on gay marriage:
We appreciate that on this matter, as with other matters, we need to bring a plurality of views and perspectives.
Scott is joking.  The ABC is openly breaking the law that says the ABC must be impartial and balanced, with not a single conservative presenter of any mainstream current affairs show.
And then, fresh from having tried to fool the Senators about the ANC’s “plurality of views” , Scott announced this:
image
Author and comedian Wendy Harmer has been unveiled as the new host of ABC Sydney’s 702 Mornings program.
The Left’s grip on the “pluralist” ABC is tightened.
Harmer campaigns for same sex marriage:
There’s hardly anyone I know who hasn’t done their bit for the cause of marriage equality in Australia. Friends have marched, written, campaigned and spoken out on the topic of same sex marriage for years … and now it’s my turn to lend my voice and to encourage you to make yourself heard.
Harmer campaigns for the global warming faith:
More than 60,000 people are estimated to have rallied or marched for climate action across Australia… The rallies were organised by GetUp, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and the Australian Conservation Foundation.... In Sydney 10,000 people turned out to rally in the rain producing a sea of umbrellas. Wendy Harmer as the MC of the Sydney rally encouraged the crowd to do the umbrella ballet...
More Harmer views, from the Left pantry:

Australian’s [sic] are rejecting the neo-conservative policies of austerity – cutting jobs and public services. And they do not like the privatisation of state assets – they never have. Voters are rejecting attacks on unions while big business avoids paying tax. They do not like the prospect of paying more for university fees and visits to the doctor. And they are increasingly worried about climate change.
Nor was that Scott’s only joke this week about the ABC’s “plurality”. The day before Harmer’s appointment, the ABC announced this:
image
...musician Clare Bowditch was announced as the new presenter of ABC Melbourne’s afternoon program
And, again, Bowditch is also a global warming campaigner:
Claire Bowditch and Jess McAvoy set to take to the iconic Zoo bandstand for Earth Hour.... Earth Hour Unplugged… aims to bring attention to climate change and sustainable living while encouraging people to make a difference for not just Earth Hour, but the whole year.
Bowditch’s view on mining is Green Left:

I see the mining sector in this way: we have a situation where there are a minority of people in Australia who are gaining a whole lot of wealth out of resources that we all own… I mean, mining is finite by its very nature, so I think we need to start making the transition to a new way of thinking about energy full stop.
Bowditch’s view on wearing the burqa in Australia is the predictably Conflicted Multicultural Feminist one:
I think I’d like to see a hashtag of “I wear the burqa”. I’d like to hear what those women think. I don’t think we can dictate or impose our feelings and thoughts and fears, actually, upon another minority group. I think it’s important that we leave the discussion open and that we do not dictate to women what they should or shouldn’t wear, because I think that sets a dangerous precedent. But I also think we’re confused about it. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we’re confused about it for this reason: because we see seemingly liberal countries or countries that we’ve previously thought of as Liberal and forward thinking, such as France, currently in the process of burning - banning the burqa. Thank God they’re not burning it. That would be a different issue. And I think that throws - you know, it does need to be brought to debate. It is an important question. It’s obviously, you know, of great concern to you, Corey, but I think that we just need to tread carefully when we’re talking about imposing our cultures on other people’s (indistinct).
Bowditch’s views on the Liberals are not sympathetic:
I think we need to uphold the principle of Freedom of Speech, Cory [Bernardi], and I think that all views should be welcome, but I also think we need to - I think political parties are wise to actually use their inner ear to listen to what it is that’s being said by the people who have represented them and the people who have been part of their party and I think if you annex whole sections of your party with hardcore policies such as these and you leave - you know, democracy - who said it, Winston Churchill - democracy is, to paraphrase, a fairly crap system until you examine the alternatives, and I guess there are alternatives, and that’s what this kind of discussion is making people turn towards. So if you want that to happen, yeah, keep on going.
It continues to astonish me that so many Liberals tacitly accept what the Left under Scott have done to the ABC, allowing this vast taxpayer-funded media empire to not just suffocate private media outlets but to be hijacked so comprehensively by the Left.
UPDATE
Gerard Henderson demonstrates how the ABC, our biggest media organisation, uses its massive state power to distort debate and smother conservative views:

Here are ABC Media Watch’s figures up to 17 August 2015.

- The ABC interviewed same-sex marriage advocates Rodney Croome and Christine Forster on 16 occasions. - The ABC did not interview Marriage Alliances’ Sophie York, who is opposed to same sex marriage, on any occasion.
This is how The Australian reported Mark Scott’s response to the evidence at the Senate Estimates:

Mr Scott said that the ABC was not obliged under its charter to provide equal time to both sides of a “contentious” debate, only to present divergent views.
“There is nothing in the editorial policies that say a stopwatch needs to be out on this matter, or climate change, or a range of contentious issues in the community,” he said, adding that the ABC had “robust” processes to ensure its editorial coverage was balanced.
This response demonstrates the extent of denial that Mark Scott is prepared to exhibit — rather than concede that, on the same sex marriage debate at least, the ABC has not presented a diversity of views.
Mark Scott reckons that it’s quite okay for the ABC to interview Mr Croome and Ms Forster a total of 16 occasions while totally ignoring the views of Ms York and David van Gend. And Mark Scott claims that such evident imbalance is really balance. 
===

The great carbon trading ripoff

Andrew Bolt December 05 2015 (5:48am)

Big surprise. Trading in promises to cut invisible gasses is ripe for rorting:
Attempts to stamp out endemic fraud in the EU’s flagship Emissions Trading Scheme are “not adequate”, say auditors. At least £14 billion has been lost to fraud since the scheme’s launch in 2005, according to one analyst, Marius-Cristian Frunza, author of the book Fraud and Carbon Markets…
EU’s main scheme for reducing CO2 emissions is almost never enforced, according to an official report by Brussels’ own spending watchdog.
Only one EU country inspected – Britain – makes on-the-spot visits to factories to check whether they are staying within their carbon limits under the scheme, the EU Court of Auditors found. Even the UK only checks 1 per cent of sites, down from 5 per cent before.
In some EU countries, anyone could open a carbon trading account with as little as a name and an email address. In Denmark, 1,300 people opened accounts, as many as four-fifths of them fraudulently. When background checks were begun in 2011, the number of registered carbon traders dropped to just 30…
British and German traders from the giant Deutsche Bank are currently facing trial in Germany for their part in a massive alleged carbon credit fraud.
An Interpol spokesman said: “Unlike traditional commodities, which at some time during the course of their market exchange must be physically delivered to someone, carbon credits do not represent a physical commodity but instead have been described as a legal fiction that is poorly understood by many sellers, buyers and traders. This lack of understanding makes carbon trading particularly vulnerable to fraud and other illegal activity.”
(Thanks to reader TerryG of PK.) 
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Report: Islamic State is in Thailand

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (9:58pm)

A warning:
AUTHORITIES believe at least ten Islamic State militants have slipped into Thailand with the intention of attacking western targets, a leaked police memo has revealed.
The “urgent” and “secret” memo cited information about ten Syrian members of ISIS that was provided to Thailand authorities by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), according to Bangkok-based news service Khaosod.
It said four suspects had travelled to Pattaya, two Bangkok and two to Phuket, with the remaining two heading to unknown locations.
Thailand also has a Muslim insurgency in its south. But which part of the world is now safe, anyway? Apart from Japan and New Zealand, that is. 
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Shorten still throwing our future away

Piers Akerman – Friday, December 05, 2014 (11:32am)

Whatever Opposition Leader Bill Shorten may say about Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Labor policies were responsible for the nation’s perilous finances, and he has no solutions.
He leads a party which could meaningfully negotiate with the government and negate the debilitating effect on public confidence of the truly stupid minority party senators, but he prefers to put at risk the nation’s reputation for good governance for petty political gain.
The disorderly former PUP senator Jacqui Lambie and her cross-bench colleagues owe their disruptive balance of power to Labor’s determination to be wreckers, not builders.
Without Labor, they would be toast.
Australians have been twice warned in the space of a fortnight that they face a deteriorating standard of living.
Outgoing Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson warned last week that unless tough decisions were taken over the next few years, the future is bleak.
‘It’s not feasible to materially reduce spending growth without looking at the largest spending categories … this is health, welfare and higher education,” he said.
They are the three policy areas where the senate has refused to embrace change, areas which Labor has in the past sought to reform but is now rejecting necessary reorganisation.
Parkinson warned: ‘We know what failure looks like. Declining growth in living standards, perhaps even falling living standards, lower wages, few opportunities for our young and, in all likelihood, declining public services and rising personal tax burdens.
‘The implications for fiscal sustainability of failing to take action seem to have been lost in the public debate, as if this does not matter to Australia’s future prosperity,” he said.
Shorten and his team are just sitting on their hands. Yet he was a minister in the successive Labor governments, which constantly failed to produce promised surpluses and presented nothing but deficits, culminating in the $48.5 billion deficit for 2013-14 - $30 billion larger than Labor forecast last year.
Parkinson’s analysis made three specific points.
In addition to emphasising the need to examine the three big-spending policy areas, he said it was better to cut spending than increase taxation, and he stressed the need to act now or face another ten years of budget deficits.
‘This should be understood for what it is,” Parkinson said. ‘A serious warning to us as a nation that unless we tackle structural reform, including fixing our fundamental budget problem, we will not be able to guarantee rising income and living standards for Australians.” In the next fortnight, Treasurer Joe Hockey will deliver the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), setting the direction until next May’s federal Budget.
This opportunity to regain control of the debate must not be squandered. With the ABC and Fairfax promoting the minority parties and generally supporting Labor’s negative approach to any of the Coalition’s budgetary measures, about 90 per cent of the media are working with the opposition to consign Australians to reduced standards of living in the next decade.
Labor has a role to play in opposition but under Shorten it has vacated its authoritative position and preferred to let the nation think crazy cross-benchers are running the country.
It is actively promoting the chaos.
With grotesque hypocrisy, it is actually blocking $5.7 billion of cuts it advocated when it was in office, including research and development tax changes and tax cuts linked to the now extinct job-destroying carbon tax.
Labor has a record of cutting university research funds and promoted an overall reduction in spending on the tertiary sector.
Now it is looking the other way, or actively promoting demented radicals from the noisy but essentially irrelevant Social Alliance organisation and other disruptive fanatics.
The GP co-payment should not be a conversation killer.
The Hawke Labor government backed the initiative more than 20 years ago, New Zealanders have lived with a co-payment without any fuss, and such a market mechanism is universally regarded as a common sense solution to reducing unnecessary demands on an already overstretched public health system.
But Labor, under Shorten, has sacrificed rational and coherent long-term policy objectives that would benefit the nation for short-term, headline-catching negativity.
In his end-of-year remarks to parliament yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott remarked that the fundamental tasks were?national security and economic security.
He said that at least on one of those tasks the government received a great deal of co-operation from the opposition.
With his usual charitableness he omitted the fact that Labor had slashed defence spending when in office and run down our national security capability. Now that parliament has risen for the year, Labor must ask itself if it wants to continue building the reputations of minority party non-entities and cement itself as the party of negativity and destruction, or to take part in our democracy constructively.As long as he stays wedded to adolescent rabble-rousing rather than making contributions to constructive and productive policy, he will cement his identity as a roadblock on the path to a positive, prosperous future.
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THE HAND THAT ROCKED A FRIGHTBAT

Tim Blair – Friday, December 05, 2014 (5:26am)

Even the most ferocious Fairfax frightbat is vulnerable to one particularly insidious masculine tactic of oppression. Read on if you dare, as Age columnist Clementine Ford reveals the terrifying power of the untouched hand: 
I just boarded a train to regional Victoria. As I was walking down the aisle … 
There’s a line she won’t be using again in a hurry. 
… I saw a large group of obnoxiously boisterous blokes. One of them held his hand out as I walked past, as if for me to shake it. I ignored it and kept walking, as his friends ribbed him for it.
Such a simple interaction and so meaningless. But from the moment I spied them to the point of walking past and then for a few minutes in my seat, I was shaking. 
Maybe it’s unfair to give the untouched hand all the credit here. It seems, by her own account, that Clementine’s hypersensitive fembat sonar was all a-jangle from the instant she spotted these “obnoxiously boisterous blokes”. It sent the timid Fairfax writer into a paranoid fear spiral: 
Not really from fear for my physical safety, but from realising once again that there is a certain type of man who thinks that the world and everything in it – particularly women – belongs to him. 
Clementine took mere seconds to establish this complete understanding of her fellow rail commuters. 
I hate that I can be made to feel this way … 
She wasn’t made to feel that way at all. 
… from annoyance at being wrenched out of my thoughts and into alert mode, to feeling sick at the thought of what minor punishments I might receive if I don’t comply – the possible taunts, the insults and even the potentiality of a 1.5 hour train ride being peppered with harassment. 
And? 
These guys didn’t follow through on any of that … 
Oh. So nothing happened. Nothing. Yet this innocuous encounter was still enough to provoke a full-blown Clementine panic attack: 
By engaging in the way they did they caused me to feel vulnerable and unsafe – because so many other men do respond violently when you deny them the attention they feel entitled to, which ultimately means they get away with it because women feel too afraid to fight back. Contributing to culture of male entitlement – even if you think it’s harmless – contributes to the spectrum of gendered violence that targets women in particular.
You are not entitled to women’s time or attention. You are not entitled to use us as ego boosts or as props to score man points with your mates. Just don’t do it! Leave women alone! 
Er, Clementine? They did.
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O CHILLI TREE

Tim Blair – Friday, December 05, 2014 (2:58am)

This year’s Blair Christmas tree is small and edible:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'O CHILLI TREE'
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THUNDER AND WEIGHT LOSS

Tim Blair – Friday, December 05, 2014 (2:50am)

Attention, Twitter users: Sydney enjoyed an entertaining lightning storm last night, not a lightening storm. Spelling issues aside, it was a thriller. One thunderclap was so concussive that it set off car alarms.
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On The Bolt Report on Sunday, December 7

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (11:38am)

image

On the year’s final The Bolt Report on Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 4pm.
Editorial: Call out the wreckers
My guest:  Christopher Pyne, Education Minister and Leader of the House
The panel: former Labor campaign guru Bruce Hawker and Janet Albrechtsen of The Australian
NewsWatch:  Sharri Markson, media editor of  The Australian.
The real battle and who’s ahead. The Palmer United Senator who could surprise. Is the Senate a time bomb? Who flopped and must go? Joe Hockey in strife.

The videos of the shows appear here.
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Hockey undermined

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (11:08am)

I thought Joe Hockey statement to parliament on our finances yesterday lacked heft, although the line of argument was good.
More is needed to shut up the destabilisers:
SENIOR Coalition MPs, including several cabinet ministers, claim to be losing faith in Joe Hockey’s ability to deliver the government’s message on the economy, as the Treasurer yesterday sought to prove he is still in command… 
While Tony Abbott is said to be wedded to Mr Hockey as Treasurer, and would be extremely reluctant to move him, there is a growing disquiet within the Liberal party room for a New Year reshuffle.
There is growing support for Malcolm Turnbull within senior ranks to take over if the government begins next year the same way it ended this one. “Everyone wants Joe to ­succeed,” one of his colleagues said. “But to say there is not a problem is barking mad. The backbench wants Malcolm.”
The Liberals are doing a brilliant job in undermining each other.
UPDATE
David Crowe on Hockey’s big moment:
The budget update the week after next will be the government’s opportunity to face up to its maladies. The $48.5 billion deficit last financial year — that is the final outcome, not a tricky forecast — will be followed by a deficit of about $40bn this year. 
The nation is in denial about the scale of this challenge. Labor pretends the problem is exaggerated; the Coalition struggles to put its rhetoric into action…
It must not miss the opportunity of this month’s budget update to awaken voters to the need for change.
Public complaints about Hockey keep growing but talk of replacing him is misguided. Abbott and his Treasurer stand or fall together. “If you change your Treasurer you’re admitting you’ve buggered everything up from the beginning,” says one MP.
And why is the blame Hockey’s alone?
The largest budget saving blocked in the Senate is $9.6bn in welfare reforms. Whose job is it to advocate these? Kevin Andrews.
The expenditure review committee had to ask him to nominate bigger budget savings than he initially proposed… Andrews ... rarely says a word to advocate the Prime Minister’s paid parental leave scheme that falls within his portfolio....
The biggest dead weight on the government, the unpopular $7 co-payment, remains policy… Peter Dutton has argued for it in the language of a health policy wonk. At no point have voters been confronted with the pressure on health spending.
UPDATE
Turns out some Liberals are sabotaging colleagues by peddling untruths. The expenditure review committee actually turned down $10 billion of savings nominated by Andrews, who doesn’t strike me as a Minister who’d flinch from a challenge.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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How much longer can the ABC operate as the propaganda arm of the Left?

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (10:38am)

The Australian on the ABC’s indefensible bias:
THE ABC’s shamelessly partisan performance on the asylum-seeker issue bells the cat for how our cultural institutions and most of the Canberra press gallery are captured by the green-Left of politics. Earlier this week the ABC’s 7.30 program aired a harrowing report about the horrors of the perilous and exploitative people-smuggling trade…
Casual viewers might not have realised the story was about incidents that occurred under the Rudd-Gillard governments. Host Leigh Sales did say the “surge” of asylum-seekers “reached its peak” under Labor. Reached its peak? No. It started after Labor relaxed the laws and grew until the Abbott government’s policy halted the flow of boats. Reporter Dan Oakes did not name or interview any of Labor’s four immigration ministers but relayed that they “categorically denied” any interference.

The ABC did not run stories like this during the years Labor was in power and boats were arriving, and more than 1200 people drowned. Often its various news arms failed even to report the arrival of boatloads of asylum-seekers. A web page to record all boat arrivals was established only after the change of government — it has been updated with just one vessel arriving this year.
The same program this week covered the Abbott government’s higher education reforms, choosing to interview the only university vice-chancellor (of 39) who opposed the changes. When sister program Lateline spoke to one of the other 38 vice-chancellors, much of the interview was taken up by host Tony Jones running the arguments of the lone dissenter. This looks more like activism than objective journalism, especially from an organisation that justifies its jaundice on global warming by saying its role is to reflect the consensus. 
ABC host Jon Faine has perfected a brilliant tactic for marginalising and abusing conservatives. He has for some time made it a practice to end interviews with politicians by reading out texts for listeners. Texting, like tweets, is a medium which notoriously skews Left. Add that to the ABC’s carefully cultivated Leftist audience and the result is that conservative politicians interviewed by Faine almost invariably departs the studio with Faine reading out a volley of abuse and scorn.
UPDATE
The ABC is now so huge and so biased that a conservative party finds its future threatened by a massive state monolith that stifles a reasoned debate. Appeals to simply be less biased are doomed to fail. It is in the nature of state-funded media to be of the Left. Ask Britain’s Conservatives:
The Conservatives have accused the BBC of “bias” and “systematic exaggeration” after David Cameron and George Osborne launched an unprecedented attack on the corporation’s coverage of the Autumn Statement. ... 
One senior Tory MP suggested there was a risk that unless the BBC was scrupulously fair in its reporting it could drive voters “into the arms of Labour"…
Mr Cameron, Mr Osborne and other senior Conservative figures criticised two separate television and radio reports broadcast by the BBC within hours of the Autumn Statement on Wednesday.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme compared forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility to “a book of doom” and said that Britain was heading back to the time of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier.
That came hours after BBC Two’s Newsnight broadcast black and white footage of rioting workers over a commentary by its presenter, Evan Davis, comparing the UK’s prospects to the depression of the 1930s. Mr Davis told viewers: “You have to go back to the depression of the 1930s to find a crisis comparable to the one we are in — it is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor both said that the coverage on the Today programme was “hyperbolic” because it exaggerated the economic threat to the UK.
Mr Osborne said the comparison with Orwell’s Britain was “nonsense”, adding: “I would have thought the BBC would have learnt from the last four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what has actually happened.” ...
Conor Burns, a Tory member of the culture, media and sport committee which scrutinises the BBC’s work, said it was “patently absurd” for Newsnight to suggest “either political party will be intent on taking Britain back to a pre-welfare state, pre-health service Britain”.  
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Morrison gives government a final win for the year

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (9:35am)

Another win to Scott Morrison, first stopping the boats and now getting the votes:
The Senate has passed sweeping changes to asylum seeker laws, including the reintroduction of temporary protection visas...< 
The bill was passed 34 votes to 32 in a late sitting of Parliament on Thursday night ... (T)he decision came down to one vote - that of the Motoring Enthusiast Party's Ricky Muir.
The Government secured the deal after agreeing to several requests from the Palmer United Party, including that children be released from detention on Christmas Island.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison will also now increase the annual refugee intake by 7,500 places and give asylum seekers on bridging visas work rights.
The new TPVs grant refugees protection in Australia for three years but could see them sent back to their home countries after that if the Government deems conditions there have improved… Senator Jacqui Lambie and her fellow independent John Madigan joined Labor and the Greens in voting against the bill.
What an unholy alliance in opposition.
How many ministers can boast Morrison’s record of success, including in negotiating?  So why the lobbying against giving him a bigger job?
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

A policeman can choke a man to death without punishment? UPDATE: I’m wrong

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (9:34am)


I cannot believe a policeman can choke a man to death without any legal sanction:
A Staten Island grand jury on Wednesday ended the criminal case against a white New York police officer whose chokehold on an unarmed black man led to the man’s death, a decision that drew condemnation from elected officials and touched off a wave of protests… 
During the proceedings, jurors were shown three videos of the encounter, and in his testimony Officer Pantaleo sought to characterize his actions as a maneuver taught at the Police Academy. He said that while holding onto Mr. Garner, he felt fear that they would crash through a plate glass storefront as they tumbled to the ground, said Stuart London, his lawyer. One of the officer’s arms went around Mr. Garner’s throat, as Mr. Garner repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

The fury over the Ferguson shooting was unjustified. But not this.
I accept that Garner was of intimidating size and was resisting arrest. But several officers were around him and he’s dead.
UPDATE
I am not convinced this is the racial issue the usual race-baiters will claim:
Pantaleo who applied the lethal chokehold on Eric Garner was supervised by an African-American female NYPD sergeant.  Having that black sergeant in charge of that crime scene takes race out of the equation. As awful as Pantaleo’s actions appear on that video, at no time does that black sergeant order Pantaleo to stop choking Garner.
UPDATE
Several readers say I have fallen for the spin, and I’m afraid they are right.  Garner was not “choked to death”. Jack Lacton mounts the most persuasive case:
1. The choke hold did not asphyxiate him. He was telling the officers that he could not breathe. You can’t do that if you’re being fatally choked. 
2. The autopsy showed that he had an underlying heart condition and asthma. According to the autopsy report the compression applied to his chest is likely what caused his death. 3. Garner had been arrested some 30 times and knew what to do. For some reason on this occasion he chose to resist arrest. He was aware of his own health condition and should have submitted immediately when asked to do so, repeatedly and calmly, by the officers.
Reader Craig:
What a sensationalist opening line! Blood chokes (where you briefly compress the carotid arteries so as to effect unconsciousness), as opposed to air chokes (where you compress the windpipe itself, damaging it quite severely while preventing inhalation of 02) is a safe procedure, performed countless times over, not just in law enforcement, but also sport (MMA).The man in question was not choked to death. Had his wind pipe been crushed as your ridiculous opening line suggests, then he would not have been able to speak! Period!  
UPDATE
The sanest and most inspiring words about this and Ferguson come from former NBA star Charles Barkley:
UPDATE
Theodore Dalrymple:
More than a quarter of blacks killed by police — about 1300 of 4500 — were killed by black officers; and as black officers represent only a sixth of the force, a black man should therefore be warier of a black policeman than a white. 
(This might not be quite fair, for there would be more black officers in a black area than in the country as a whole.)
(Thanks to reader Richard.) 
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How to understand the size of Labor’s debt

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (9:01am)

Reader Hekler devises a terrific metric for communicating the budget wreckage Labor caused and refuses to fix:
Hi everyone. It’s been a whole year since I stopped editing krudd.com.... During that year I have sat back and watched and listened.... The government must stop talking about billions of $$$$. Means nothing to the average person. Put it another way. In a way that they understand like…
Example 1. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we took half of everything earned by every Australian for two years the debt would return to zero. Example 2. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we stopped every Social Security payment for three years the debt would return to zero. 
Example 3. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on health for seven years the debt would return to zero. 
Example 4. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on education for 14 years the debt would return to zero 
Example 5. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on defence for 19 years the debt would return to zero
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Chris Bowen admits Labor opposes cuts he probably can’t afford to restore

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (8:54am)

Hmm. The ABC has twice this week held the Opposition accountable for sabotaging the rescue of the country’s finances. Last night is was shadow treasurer Chris Bowen’s turn to blather:
TONY JONES:  You’ve accused the Government of cutting $80 billion from Health and Education, presumably ... Presumably you’d reinstate that $80 billion immediately on returning to government. Is that correct? 
CHRIS BOWEN: Well, Tony, let’s cut to the chase of - let’s pre-empt a number of questions that I suspect you might be about to ask me on a whole range of policies. What we will do is we will fight for what we believe in with the proposals before the Parliament as we speak. And then as we develop our policies and announce our policies, we’ll assess the state of the books, we will assess the damage done by Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey to the budget and to the state budgets and the family budgets and the budgets of the health and education system.
TONY JONES: Well hang on - I’m going to stop you there. You can’t really have it both ways. You can accuse them of chopping all this money out of the budget for health and education, but if you don’t say yourself that you’re going to reinstate that spending, there must be some point to them cutting it out.
CHRIS BOWEN: Well, Tony, let me make it very clear: both the Health and Education sectors of the Government will be better off under a Shorten Labor government than they are under an Abbott Liberal government…
TONY JONES: But the point is, if you can’t say you’re going to put that money back in, you can hardly blame the Government for taking it out when they think they can’t afford it. And bear in mind, the head of Treasury, Martin Parkinson, has belled the cat here. He’s very simply saying that governments, including yours, presumably, have been writing cheques they can’t cash. Is that right?
CHRIS BOWEN: Well, I don’t think that’s an accurate characterisation of the ...
TONY JONES: Well he said the current levels of spending are just not sustainable. Do you agree with that or not?
CHRIS BOWEN: Oh, that’s - with respect, that’s not exactly what you said to start with.
Labor is blocking cuts it admits it might not restore, presumably on the grounds that the spending is unaffordable.
Hypocrites. Wreckers.
UPDATE
Bowen at least admits corporate tax rates must come down:
TONY JONES: ... Australia’s corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world. Would you lower it or attempt to lower it to create more money for investment, innovation and job creation? 
CHRIS BOWEN: I’d like to see it lower over time. I think we’ve had 14 years of having the corporate tax rate stable. That’s too long. Over time, I’d like to see it lowered. It is an expensive thing to do and I’m not committing of course tonight to a timetable to that.
TONY JONES: But do you consider it a priority?
CHRIS BOWEN: As the alternative Treasurer, I’m telling you that I think it would be a better thing if Australia’s corporate tax rate was more competitive, yes.
But if taxes are too high, then there is only one way to cut the deficit and debt: to slash spending. But that’s precisely what Labor pretends isn’t needed.
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill, John and Jeff of FNQ.) 
===

The lurid dreams of the Left: describing the world as it isn’t

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (6:42am)

Many writers on the Left now feel free to simply imagine the facts. There seems not the slightest moral imperative to truly understand the arguments of their adversaries or even to consider them fully human
Passion trumps truth. Hatred substitutes for an understanding of the other.
Four examples from just the past two days.

Example 1 - Steve Dow in The Age on the authors of a review into our school curriculum:
Jesus “was a carpenter and he worked with a saw and hammer”, the late country music singer Johnny Cash once wrote, “and his hands could join a table true enough to stand forever.” Coalition education cronies lamenting the lack of “Judeo-Christian” deference in state primary and secondary curriculums, who are now seeking to curb individual creativity by killing the ambitious arts component of Labor’s proposed national curriculum, would love such lyrics of sustained and unquestioned faith. But they’d probably plump for the chart-busters of the large conservative voting bloc Hillsong over cool Cash.
I know Kevin Donnelly, one of the two men Dow mocks. I know what Dow says is complete crap. I know what Donnelly and his colleague argue is that it is as important for Australians to understand the Judeo-Christian traditions and teachings that shaped their society as it would be for Turkish students to understand Islam. I know they wish to open minds and not to close them, and that singing Cash or going happy-clappy is anathema to them. They wish schools not to preach faith but teach culture.

Example 2 - Ruby Hamad in The Age on the multi-ethnic Rise Up Australia:
It’s a clever trick, getting non-white people to spout racist rhetoric… Whiteness is essentially those cultural beliefs, practices, norms and values that are sanctioned by white, western society.  Rise Up Australia is an example of how you can share in the bounty of white privilege even if you are not white, as long as you are willing to play by the rules. And one of these rules is to talk about race in a way that legitimises the dominance of white culture.  
How bizarre to attack a party formed by a Sri Lankan and embracing Pacific Islands, Indians and many others as too racist, too white and the tool of whites. Yes, the party is Christian, and a gratingly vehement expression of it. But Christianity, created by Middle Eastern Jews and followed most fervently in South America and Africa, is not “white culture” but a faith which transcends “race”. Rise Up Australia, as the varied “racial” makeup of its representatives shows, is opposed not to other “races” but other creeds.

Example 3 - Jonathan Green of the ABC on the media’s treatment of Tony Abbott:
That the Abbott Government enjoys a significantly more supportive relationship with the mainstream political commentariat, a commentariat that, faced with that collapse in Kevin Rudd’s popularity, threw the rhetorical switch to “chaos” and “dysfunction"… That sense of destructive certainty, of simple crisis is lacking for the moment in the reporting of the Abbott Government… A more hostile media mainstream, one without the ideological empathy much of the popular and politically influential media has for conservative politics, might invest more in creating a sense of unstable vulnerability; political instability and crisis being good box office, after all. 
Abbott has a more supportive media than did Rudd and Gillard? That is laughable. The country’s biggest media organisation, the ABC, is more supportive of Abbott than of Gillard?  The Age is more supportive of Abbott? The Sydney Morning Herald? The Guardian Australia, Saturday Paper, The Conversation, the press gallery correspondents of the TV channels,  The Project, New Daily, The Monthly? Laurie Oakes, Paul Bongiorno, Waleed Aly, Laura Tingle, Phillip Adams, Fran Kelly, Barrie Cassidy, Jon Faine, Mark Kenny and on and on and on?
News flash: the journalists’ union last night awarded its Walkley Scoop of the Year to the ABC for embarrassing the Abbott Government over the actual sins of the Rudd Government. The ABC reported last night: “A joint ABC News and Guardian investigation which angered Prime Minister Tony Abbott and upset relations with Indonesia was named the Scoop of the Year. Reporters Michael Brissenden, Ewan MacAskill and Lenore Taylor were presented the award for their story revealing that Australia’s spy networks were targeting the Indonesian president’s personal mobile phone.” Er, our spy networks under a Labor Government, actually. But the media turned this into a story of how Abbott, who cleaned up the mess, was stuffing up.

Example 4 - Helen Elliott in The Age on Jacqui Lambie, victim of gender and class snobs:
Why is it that Clive Palmer, who revels in gross behaviour, seems beyond serious reprimand? We indulge Palmer: he’s silly, naughty, rude, whacky, one of the boys.  But doesn’t he say things just as uninformed, confused, conflicted and dangerous as Lambie? Why is Palmer funny but Lambie coarse? With Palmer there isn’t the class sneer, that curl of the lip that is always present when Lambie does something awkward. Does the noise of a man with money make us all deaf?  
Clive Palmer is forgiven by the media, and Lambie not? Palmer, who was monstered at the Press Club this week, while Lambie feted as a class hero on The Project? Seriously? Palmer has been the focus of a long investigation by The Australian into his business dealings and has been denounced as a clown and a menace from the very start by me and others. Only the ABC feted him as a critic of Tony Abbott. No, it’s Lambie who is protected. Her irrationality, rages and vindictive abuse would almost certainly be denounced if it came from a man or a Liberal.    
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The new tribal Sydney

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (1:57am)

 Another multicultural festival in Sydney.
We have so many manners police hyper-sensitive to any sign of racial intolerance. So why are they silent about this kind of stuff?
(Thanks to reader Nick.) 
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I suspect they will stick it - to Clive

Andrew Bolt December 05 2014 (1:32am)

Clive Palmer is unravelling fast:
THE Palmer United Party leader cut short a press conference in Canberra on Thursday when asked about his dispute with the state-owned Chinese company CITIC Pacific.
CITIC is suing the federal MP over claims more than $12 million was misappropriated by his company Mineralogy… Asked why he was avoiding scrutiny, the billionaire businessman said he couldn’t comment because the matter was before the courts. When told it was a civil case and he was allowed to comment, Mr Palmer told reporters: “Stick it,” before storming away.
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You’re not a real woman to Fairfax if you vote Liberal

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (6:59pm)

How far to the Left is Fairfax? How absurdly cartoonish is its bias?
It’s women’s pages nominates 36 women for its ”Women of the Year” awards, five of them politicians past and present.
Missing is Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, as star of the Abbott Government and our first female foreign minister.
Missing is Peta Credlin, the first second female chief of staff of an Australian Prime Minister.
Instead, its nominees in politics comprise two Greens, two Labor and one Australian Democrat. Not a single Liberal anywhere.
Other nominees tell us exactly what’s going on. Tim Blair explains:
Look who turns up in Fairfax’s list of candidates for woman of the year: 
Freya Newman was the brave young whistleblower who leaked information about a fashion school scholarship controversially awarded to the Prime Minister’s daughter.
Newman invaded Frances Abbott’s privacy and then sent confidential details of the young student’s financial circumstances to a male-run publication. Following subsequent legal action, she might not even be a willing recipient of Fairfax’s award: “Ms Newman had expressed contrition and remorse for her actions, and had refused to take part in any of the protests that followed the laying of charges against her.” 
UPDATE
More from Fairfax.
The headline:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott loses first round in John Setka defamation case
The copy: 
Mr Abbott’s lawyers had applied to the Victorian Court of Appeal to order Mr Setka to immediately pay legal costs incurred over the union official’s failed bid to have part of the Prime Minister’s defence against the defamation action struck out.
===

===

Biased ABC leads a howling media mob

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, December 04, 2013 (6:44am)

THE government has been in office 77 days but the Canberra press gallery has already written it off. Where fault can be found it will be furiously exaggerated. Where success occurs it will be ignored.
It began with the so-called expenses “scandal”, when Tony Abbott’s electioneering at sports events was recast as some sinister attempt to rort the public purse.
Then he was blamed for the Indonesia spying scandal which occurred under Rudd.
On border protection, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has been hammered for not divulging operational detail about exactly how asylum boats are being stopped. He revealed this week that November had seen the lowest boat arrivals in five years, but all anyone wants to talk about is his “hostile” attitude to the media. Well, hello. He’s only human.
Education Minister Christopher Pyne is the latest punching bag for refusing to implement the Gonski education funding model, as prescribed by Julia Gillard. Why was that a surprise to anyone, least of all Barry O’Farrell?
Treasurer Joe Hockey is being lambasted over the non-sale of GrainCorp, over which, hilariously, lefties are siding with the free market - anything to beat up on Abbott.
The contrast to the honeymoon period of the Rudd government is staggering. Kevin Rudd was feted as a messiah for more than a year.
At the end of his first three months, he was preferred prime minister over Brendan Nelson by 68 per cent to 10 per cent, according to ABC-TV’s Insiders’ “poll of polls”, which relishes Abbott’s less impressive lead of 44-29 over Bill Shorten.
Rudd’s popularity soared to record highs thanks in large part to all the positive coverage lavished on him and his lame-brained ideas, like the 2020 summit, FuelWatch, GroceryWatch, an ETS, green loans, free pink batts, the end of homelessness, and dismantling border protection.
The media was dazzled, especially the ABC-Fairfax Media axis of love. But even conservatives gave Rudd the benefit of the doubt for too long.
To its eternal shame, The Australian newspaper even named him Australian of the year in 2010. Uh oh.
Rudd’s media honeymoon was so prolonged that it seemed few people were more surprised when his party ditched him for non-performance later that same year than the press gallery.
More than any other news organisation, the ABC gave Labor a free pass over the past six years of calamitous government.
Remarkably, it has run dead on serious crime allegations against senior Labor figures which are currently being investigated by police, while
ferociously hunting down every verbal misstep or stumble by the new government.
Labor bodies are piling up and stinking behind the doors the ABC refuses to open.
Instead it fires all its barrels at the poor saps who barely have their feet under their desks.
So when Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi launched a scathing attack on the ABC in the Coalition party room yesterday, he was reflecting the opinion not only of his party’s conservative base but of the bulk of his parliamentary colleagues.
The applause he received was a pointed rebuke to his old foe, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who continues to defend the national broadcaster.
“I’m concerned because it’s not our ABC, it’s not my ABC, it’s ‘their’ ABC,” Bernardi said.
“It’s a taxpayer-funded behemoth that is cannibalising commercial media while spreading a message that ignores the majority views of Australians.”
Bernardi told colleagues he does not advocate privatising the ABC since it has a role to play in regional communities.
But the national broadcaster “no longer complies with its charter of fairness and balance.
“It is politically biased, regularly unfair and has priorities completely at odds with its raison d’être,’’ he said.
“Gone are the days when it simply operated TV and radio services. It has a massive online presence providing at taxpayers expense what commercial media operations need to charge for, four television channels and who knows how many radio licences.
“It is out of control and needs to be reined in. It needs to be broken up and returned to its primary purpose rather than the engorged propaganda unit it has become.”
Bernardi is on the backbench because he was marginalised by many in his own party before the election for refusing to maintain a safe, politically correct line. Turnbull particularly targeted him because Bernardi led the revolt against the ETS which ended his leadership and launched Abbott.
Now Bernardi is leading the conservative revolt against the ABC, and again he is on the right side of history.
The ABC’s plan to get tentacles into kids
THE ABC is an enormous beast, with tentacles stretching across the internet and digital TV at a time when other media organisations are struggling to survive.
Its success at enforcing the narrow groupthink of the Left cannot be over-estimated, and not just on obvious flagship programs such as Q&A.
Take its controversial education show Behind The News, watched by more than one million unsuspecting children each week.
With a cheery youth-friendly style, it promotes the soft-left line on everything from asylum seekers to gender equality to big government spending.
Yesterday’s episode of BTN began with a story about Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s “broken promise” on Gonski funding.
Next was “Why sorry seems to be the hardest word over the Indonesian spy scandal”, complete with footage of Kevin Rudd making his Stolen Generations apology. Praise for Rudd was cleverly delivered using Tony Abbott’s words.
“So it seems Tony is a fan of people who say sorry too. Well, he was.”
That is, until the Indonesia spying scandal erupted. No mention that the spying occurred during Rudd’s sainted reign.
At the end of the package the young BTN host, sitting in a school he identifies as Norwood Primary, asks the children around him if they think “Tony” should have said sorry.
It’s no surprise that the majority, about 30 children, put up their hands to say yes the Prime Minister should have apologised.
A scan of other BTN stories this year finds similar examples of loaded commentary: “The new PM Tony Abbott hasn’t repaid some money that he claimed for going to a few running and cycling events. The fitness freak says they were genuine community events, so it’s OK for the taxpayer to help foot the bill.”
Subtle propaganda to children is all part of the ABC’s long march. 
===

MOSQUE ATTACK

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (2:42pm)

Multicultural mayhem in Melbourne: 
Worshippers ran for their lives during a stabbing attack during morning prayers that has left one man dead and two seriously hurt at a mosque in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
Horrified witnesses said the attacker went beserk in the Broadmeadows Mosque.
“It was crazy. A rampage,” one man said. “Six people locked themselves in the billiard room when they saw the knife and the president was locked in his office.”
Several men claimed the attacker was at the mosque with his sister when he went berserk.
“He was asking if people if they were Yahudi (Jewish),” a man said. “He then became agitated and not long after he pulled a knife.” 
The billiard room?
===

FOUR MONTIES

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (2:25pm)

A certain level of racial hypersensitivity is evident.
===

SERVANT INSTRUCTED

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (1:00pm)

A outstanding Adelaide incident, featuring an impressive Adelaide name: 
A child pornographer who claimed he was merely “praying” over downloaded images has been dragged kicking and screaming from court and into custody.
Andrew Liddington Shore lost all composure this afternoon when District Court Judge Gordon Barrett revoked his bail because he had repeatedly ignored an order to obtain a lawyer.
“Unhand me, servant,” he yelled as two courts sheriff’s officers tried to escort him into the cells. 
Shore also offered an extremely Adelaide defence: 
Shore then said he did not recognise the authority of the court, claiming the charges against him violated several United Nations and international treaties. 
Appropriately, the piece is written by City of Evil author Sean Fewster.
===

SCHOOL OF CROCK

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (5:49am)

Aspiring reporter Aicha Marhfour reviews her experience as a journalism student, when she was educated by a former Fairfax staffer: 
I don’t remember very much of the class I took with Rachel Buchanan in 2010.
I do remember that she put her own work on our reading list and (this I will never forget) in our last tutorial read out her honours thesis, a long piece about which I recall precisely nothing – and cried as she did it. 
Wow. But there was also a focus on basic journalistic practice: 
In Rachel’s class, it took us all semester to write a single feature. 
===

FROM THE CITY THAT INVENTED OBAMACARE

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 05, 2013 (12:12am)

The last time I saw my friend Jim Treacher in DC he was still limping following a years-earlier assault by car. Now he’s been attacked by an enraged DC driver.
And then things only got worse. That city doesn’t deserve Jim.
===

A promise on free speech we must demand be kept

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (10:52am)

Free speech

Professor James Allan: 
THIS government’s commitment to repeal at least parts of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the so-called anti-hate speech laws that were used against Andrew Bolt, raises at least four crucial issues.
First, any commitment to free speech is a commitment to allowing people to say and write things you may not like, that you may detest, that you may disagree with and find offensive. If the words spoken are words we all agree with and find congenial, then there is no need for any commitment to free speech…
The next point about the repeal of these existing hate speech provisions is that they were grossly misused in the Bolt case…
The whole Bolt saga was an embarrassment to Australia’s liberal credentials…
Next, there is the democratic issue. Tony Abbott and the Coalition went to the September election with a major pledge to repeal all or most of section 18 of the act. So it is right that, having won a big majority, they do what they promised…
The fourth issue relates to the prudential aspects of running a newly elected government. George Brandis, our new Attorney-General, made plain his commitment to free-speech principles before the election. And he is clear that he will proceed with some sort of repeal… This repeal needs to go ahead. All four aspects of this provision, the ones aimed at offending, insulting, humiliating and intimidating, they need to go. A half-hearted repeal would hardly make Brandis or the Coalition defenders of free speech and liberty. Honour your campaign pledge, Senator Brandis.
I have been particularly disappointed to be treated as collateral damage by Jewish community leaders and political players who have been demanding these illiberal laws be kept. Several have privately assured me they found the case against me a misapplication of the law or even an injustice. But not one publicly said so. Every one of them knows what a supporter I have been of the Jewish community, not just in print, yet not one publicly protested when a Jewish QC told a Jewish judge in my case something far more foul than anything I had written - that my thinking resembled that of the Nazis who drew up the Nuremberg race laws.  That obscene slur struck me as a legally sanctioned defamation.
I do, however, single out Danny Lamm for offering to speak on my behalf. I am grateful to him.
But I believe the Jewish community - or those members involved in public advocacy - should reflect on whether principle here has been trashed for advantage by representatives who should know better.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
UPDATE
Thanks to this oppressive law, my lawyers advise me not to be extremely cautions in commenting further on one particular issue - the rise of a divisive new racism. It is no longer safe for me, I’m told, to say what it is that I’d object to in stories this this one today:
image
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Neil Mitchell could be right to say he taught me eveything I know

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (10:42am)

Reader Adiboy:
You will be sad to hear that you have become boring according to Neil Mitchell on 3AW at about 11-45 am yesterday. Oh, and by the way, he pompously announced that he taught you everything you know.

If I’m boring, he did. 
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Strange noises from Clive Palmer’s party of bogans

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (10:25am)

Palmer United Party Senator-elect Jacqui Lambie has sent people I know surprisingly aggressive messages that suggest a woman rather too full of herself and not one on whom I’d ever like to rely. They may come back to haunt her - as have these strange late-night messages left on the answering machine of former PUP candidate Marti Zucco:

More problems with PUP politicians, who seem not to realise they really are the bogan party:
Clive Palmer has dismissed the leaking of an internal email from one of his MPs, which described voters as “bogans”... 
The email, allegedly sent by a Queensland MP in Mr Palmer’s party, Alex Douglas, reportedly describes voters as “bogans” living “empty lives” fueled by a “diet of grease”.
The email was allegedly leaked to the Courier Mail newspaper by former Tasmanian PUP candidate Marti Zucco, who quit the party this week…
Dr Douglas’ email also reportedly says that the world of “bogans” was a “world we see daily and quietly hope will disappear”.
‘’The interesting observation about Boganland is not just how common it is now but how the sufferers just copy one another so quickly with each trend ... It is no longer satisfactory that they will just buy [and wear] ugg boots, watch Big Brother, choke on a diet of grease, dye their bright purple (sic), tatoo (sic) and rejoice in their ignorance,’’ Dr Douglas allegedly said in an email…
Mr Palmer said there was nothing wrong with bogans and people should know that Dr Douglas was himself a bogan… Dr Douglas defected from the Queensland Premier’s Liberal National Party to Mr Palmer’s party late last year and is now Queensland leader of the party.
(Thanks to reader David.) 
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Former ABC chairman calls for review on its size and possible bias

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (10:14am)

The ABC has grown too big, as well as too biased. 
FORMER ABC chairman Donald McDonald has called for the board to launch a full-scale review of the broadcaster’s operations and priorities to ensure its coverage is distinctive, high quality and represents a broad range of views…
“The ABC has to make the case for public broadcasting by making sure what it puts to air is distinctive, is of high quality and - very importantly - is thoroughly representative of a broad range of views,” Mr McDonald said… “The ABC is dangerously down the path of the BBC of wanting to be big for the sake of being big,” he said.
The suffocating size of the ABC and its push into markets served by private media businesses are serious issues - not least for those who believe it healthy to have state media dominate journalism and debate:
QUESTIONS about the ABC’s activity on digital media platforms are warranted, given the broadcaster is using taxpayer-provided funds to compete with commercial media outlets, News Corp chief executive Julian Clarke says… 
“...The first question I would ask is why is a business like the ABC, which is a government-owned and run business, why is it operating in a commercial space?”
He agreed with Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull that a lack of advertising revenue was not the ABC’s fault… “But nevertheless the audiences are absolutely fragmented and who knows what is around the corner? ... At some time someone has to say . . . there is a whole industry out here doing it on its own, paying all its own bills with no government subsidy whatsoever and it should be allowed to do that.”
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Richard Lindzen: Cool it on the climate

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (9:59am)

Global warming - general

Professor Richard S. Lindzen, arguably the world’s most prominent climate scientist, testifies to the US House Committee on Science and Technology:
I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. 
The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such....
Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating. In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age.
But this is about faith, not reason.
UPDATE
Still waiting for more warming. The UAH temperatures, updated now for November:
image
(Thanks to reader fulchrum.)  
===

More Iranian and Sri Lankan boat people sent back than arrive

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (9:36am)

Why couldn’t Labor achieve this?
THE flow of boatpeople from Sri Lanka and Iran has reversed for the first time in three years, with more being sent back than arrive. 
The net decline in asylum-seekers from two of the biggest source countries in the past three years coincides with the lowest November total for asylum-seeker arrivals since Kevin Rudd repealed the Howard government border-protection laws.
Last month, there were 207 arrivals and 66 people were sent back, including more than 40 Iranians. All Sri Lankans who arrived illegally since mid-September have been sent back or volunteered to return to Sri Lanka.
This month is expected to see more people who have arrived illegally from the two countries sent back than those still arriving on boats…
Tony Abbott and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison have both this week cited a reduction in the number of boat arrivals under the Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders since September 18 of between 80 and 90 per cent, compared with the last months of the Labor government. The 86 per cent reduction is based on the 5463 illegal arrivals in the last 72 days of the Labor government and the 751 illegal arrivals in the first 72 days of the Abbott government. The decline in illegal arrivals from a peak under Labor began after July when the Rudd government reopened the Howard government’s arrangement with PNG on Manus Island for offshore processing and regional resettlement.
One boatload of young men seems to have arrived so far this week. 
UPDATE
From the Immigration Minister’s interview on 7.30 last night:
LEIGH SALES:...Why, when we do have significant numbers coming by plane, are they treated differently to people who come via boat? 
SCOTT MORRISON: Well several reasons, Leigh. The first thing is people aren’t dying on planes coming to Australia.
Very good performance from Morrison yesterday. Equally good one from Christopher Pyne on 7.30the night before. Tony Abbott is sounding far more the fighter and is being seen more. And Joe Hockey makes a deal on the debt limit with the Greens that costs the Government nothing but cuts out Labor. All in all, an incomparably better week from the government, which I hope has learned some lessons about past communications failures.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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You didn’t write that

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (9:24am)

If you have his books you can keep them:
“I’ve written two books,” Senator Barack Obama told a crowd of teachers in Virginia on the campaign trial in July of 2008. The teachers applauded. “I actually wrote them myself,” he added with a wink and a nod, and now the teachers exploded in laughter. They got the joke: Republicans were too stupid to write their books.
Actually, talking about a politician too stupid to write his own book - a politician now known to be a liar - read on. You see:
The only problem, of course, is that Obama did not write either of those books “by myself.” He was as incapable of writing those books as he was of guaranteeing that his eponymous health care system would allow millions of individual policyholders to keep the health care plans that they liked. Still, he had no obvious qualms about deceiving the public in either case.
The deception:
As Andersen told it, Obama found himself deeply in debt and “hopelessly blocked” even after accepting a second contract [to write the same book]. At “Michelle’s urging,” Obama “sought advice from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.” 
What attracted the Obamas were “Ayers’s proven abilities as a writer.” Noting that Obama had already taped interviews with many of his relatives, Andersen elaborated, “These oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes were given to Ayers.”
I’ve read  The Audacity of Hope. It wasn’t just turgid and platitudinous. The personal anecdotes struck me as formulaic and not particularly resonant or revealing. Now I realise that Bill Ayres couldn’t be a mindreader as well as a ghost. 
===

Bashir quits over Palin abuse - but two weeks too late

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (9:03am)


 The vileness of the abuse is just astonishing. What kind of hate-culture licensed it?
Had it been directed at a woman of the Left by a loudmouth conservative we’d have never have heard the end of it – and it would not have taken two weeks for the resignation: 
Just over two weeks ago, MSNBC host Martin Bashir delivered a harsh piece of commentary that culminated in the suggestion that someone should “s-h-i-t” in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin‘s (R-AK) mouth. Bashir offered an abject apology on his next broadcast, but a chorus of critics continued to demand action against the host. After a reported “vacation” for the host earlier this week, Bashir announced, in a statement to Mediaite Wednesday afternoon, that MSNBC and Martin Bashir are parting ways.
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Save our retailers. Keep taxes here. Impose the GST on on-line shopping

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (8:55am)

Terry McCrann says the Federal Government must impose the GST to on-line retailing if local retailers are to stay in business:
The early dismissal of the idea from Treasury and the Tax Office, and so from the federal government, was that the cost of collection would actually exceed the revenue raised. 
While that still wouldn’t answer the basic fairness argument: sorry, local producer, wholesaler and retailer, you all have to go out of business, and courier services can thrive, because we’ve got a tax that’s ‘too difficult’ to apply against your foreign competitors…
Except that it’s an argument, that if it ever had validity, no longer does. The spectre of having to employ thousands of customs officers to open every one of the millions of packages that arrive in Australia is a furphy.
Applying the GST on online purchases could be done relatively simply and with the cost born by the foreign seller, in MOST cases.
It’s about these things called computers, bar codes and internet service providers.
Amazon already has to do it for US state governments, adding the state-based US sales tax to sales and remitting the revenue. We ‘just’ require it to do the same with our GST.
It doesn’t want to play ball? Well then, any parcel arriving from Amazon WOULD have to be opened, with the full cost borne by the buyer. Any download emanating from Amazon, would be locked until the GST was paid. For the Amazons and Ebays that WERE prepared to play ball, their parcels, their downloads, would have a computer-scanned or embedded clearance.
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ABC-speak shows just what’s wrong with the ABC

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (8:40am)

Culture wars, Media

image
A REVOLT against the ABC has caught the $1.2 billion-a-year behemoth by surprise. Liberal MPs demand its sale. Conservatives around the country are not just screaming “bias” but some even “traitor”.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott attacks its “judgment” in publishing our spying secrets and even Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the ABC’s favourite Liberal, doubts it is fulfilling “its obligation to give fair treatment to both sides of politics”.
ABC boss Mark Scott, who this year claimed not to detect the Leftist bias of his presenters, is in denial again about this latest criticism, which ranges from the ABC’s capture by the Left to its suffocating size.
It’s really just a Murdoch plot, he suggests: “There is (sic) some people in News Corp who have a deep ideological opposition to public broadcasting and the ABC.”
Yeah, sure, Mark. The delegates at the Victorian Liberal Party state conference who last weekend voted to privatise the ABC? Just Murdoch minions, brandishing flags stitched together from my collected columns.
There’s plenty wrong and potentially dangerous with the ABC, but here’s one small example of ABC-speak that illustrates the big picture.
(Read full article here.)  
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How we spent more on schools but got worse results

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (8:33am)

FIRST the Rudd Government launched the Digital Education Revolution - $2.4 billion to give secondary students computers.
But computers don’t teach.
Then the Government launched the Building the Education Revolution - $16 billion for school halls and libraries.
But buildings don’t teach.
Result? The OECD’s latest PISA tests of 15-year-olds in 65 industrialised nations show our students slipping badly.
Our students were ranked 13th in reading last year, down from 9th in 2009; 19th in maths, down from 14th; and 17th in science, down from 10th.
Billions spent for no result. But the wrong lessons are being drawn.
The Australian Council for Educational Research warned the PISA result showed the Government had to spend billions more as the Gonski review suggested - on “equity”. On helping poor, migrant and Aboriginal students.
But wait.
(Read full article here.) 
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UNICEF: global warming makes children freeze to death

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (8:28am)

Global warming - propaganda

Children die of cold. UNICEF blames the usual bogeyman: 

When we think of climate change we often think of rising temperatures, but children are also affected in colder climates, experiencing harsher winters and declining water resources.... 
In western Mongolia in 2010, heavy snow, strong winds and extreme cold created crisis conditions in over half the country’s provinces… The crisis, known locally as a “dzud”, killed at least nine children in one province...
(Thanks to reader Dave A,) 
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Was this really sport’s “blackest day”? Wild claims, damaging leaks, private deals and a scapegoat

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (7:55am)

I agree that Essendon’s program of supplements was recklessly and slackly administered. But I remain astonished that 10 months after the Gillard Government staged a dramatic press conference allegeding widespread doping in sport, along with matching fixing and links to organised crime, that not a single sportsman has been charged.
And I am deeply suspicious of the scapegoating of Essendon, the deal-making that the AFL passed off as justice, the strategic leaking by the AFL to favored journalists, and the role of the Australian Sports Commission in keeping a lid on what it surely must want exposed.
From Chip Le Grand’s excellent report:
It was a Sunday, August 25, the day before Essendon, [coach James] Hird ... [was] due at AFL headquarters to answer charges of bringing the game of football into disrepute… 
Hird wanted to present his side of a complex story… What soon became clear in [a meeting in AFL deputy chief executive Gillon] McLachlan’s house was that guilt and punishment had been assigned… Hird would be banned from football for a year, no less. It was non-negotiable…
As late as August 21, when the AFL upped the ante in negotiations with Essendon by releasing a 34-page statement of grounds containing the full allegations against the club and its officials… Essendon chairman Paul Little was livid. He publicly accused the league of being belligerent… He called on AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick to intervene.
Confronted with a collapse of negotiations and a Supreme Court writ lodged that morning by Hird’s lawyers, Fitzpatrick ... and Little established their own negotiations, with Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie as intermediary…
The AFL wanted the scandal kept out of open court. Hird’s writ contained allegations that Demetriou had tipped off Essendon about an Australian Crime Commission investigation, potentially in breach of federal law.
Demetriou denies the allegation but any court case promised to be a bruising affair for the AFL and its senior executives. There had to be a deal.
Fitzpatrick ... placed his faith in Wylie, a fellow Rhodes scholar and a close friend…
Within two days, a secret peace offer had taken shape. Under terms proposed by Wylie and Little, Hird would be the face of the scandal but he would be well looked after. The Essendon coach would be fully paid throughout his 12 months on the sidelines, spend part of his year under suspension being educated at one of the world’s finest universities and keep his place in the AFL Hall of Fame…
Both the offer and the email correspondence [from the AFL to Little] make clear that if Hird accepted the penalty, he would not be found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute. In the final settlement on August 27, no Essendon officials were found guilty of any charge, despite Demetriou’s public comments to the contrary…
Throughout negotiations between the club and the AFL, Hird was told that if he didn’t agree to terms, he would not coach in the AFL again, that Essendon would be wiped from the 2014 season and that players would be dragged into a witness box by AFL lawyers. He feared he would never be welcomed back at the club…
The formal charges against Essendon and its officials, publicly announced by Dillon on August 13, were preceded by regular, damaging leaks to the Fairfax press which portrayed Hird as the architect and chief proponent of the club’s supplements program…
The role of Wylie, Australia’s most senior sports official, in brokering a deal between the AFL, Essendon and Hird, will raise eyebrows within the Abbott government, which was nonplussed when the previous Labor administration called sporting, police and anti-doping chiefs to Canberra on February 7 for the release of an Australian Crime Commission report into the links between sport and organised crime. Nearly 10 months later, the report has not resulted in criminal charges being laid in any jurisdiction.
UPDATE
Sinclair Davidson:

It looks like the previous government and the AFL stuffed up so badly and got themselves in so much trouble that they’ve had to pay top dollar to stay out of court. 
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Waiting for the cuts

Andrew Bolt December 05 2013 (7:37am)

The sin with the Abbott Government’s Gonski promise was to have made it in the first place. But that done, it was obliged to honor that promise.
That aside, I tend to share David Uren’s concern: 

THE Gonski backflip brings to $16.5 billion the cumulative damage to the budget bottom line from discretionary decisions taken by the government in the three months since its election. 
The additional $1.2bn in education spending follows the $8.8bn cash injection to the Reserve Bank, the decision to defer the $5.2bn in public spending cuts and abandoning a series of tax increases at a cost of $1.3bn.
So far, there has been no sign of the political steel that will be required if the budget is to be brought under control. The audit commission has been given sufficiently broad terms of reference to generate recommendations that would restore the health of public finances, and the government has flagged that next May’s budget will be the time for unveiling its response to them.
However, the decisions made to date show the pressures that are pushing public spending relentlessly higher and highlight the government’s susceptibility to political pressure.
But I think Niki Savva is close to the mark. Each decision taken so far can be rationalised. The trouble is that very few so far - other than, say, axing the green spending and schoolkids bonus - have the stamp of a government seriously concerned by debt and the urgent need to make business easier:
JOE Hockey’s decision on GrainCorp could prove in time to be the right one if he uses it as leverage to drive through other tough decisions and reforms. 
It is up to the Treasurer to disprove accusations that blocking the GrainCorp takeover by US food behemoth Archer Daniels Midland showed he lacked ticker. He can do it by convincing cabinet and Tony Abbott to refuse to give Holden a single dollar more, to refuse going guarantor for Qantas and by taking the knife to public spending, even if it slices into the Nationals’ interests.
A caveat, though: the Government believes that clobbering the economy now, before Christmas, with deep cuts could clobber the confidence retailers are banking on. The deficit, after all, is easier tackled by getting an economic lift than in simply slashing.
This means the real test comes in the May Budget. So judgements really need to be suspended until then. 
===

The daily Fairfax hate

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (9:06pm)

This extraordinary stream of abuse of Christopher Pyne by a former ABC staffer was deemed fit to print by Fairfax - and featured high on the home page. Had any conservative written the like - with far greater justification - of Julia Gillard we’d have been denounced as shock jocks of print. But this passes for quality: 

...the prissiest, most precious and precocious petal ... his antics ...  perpetually juvenile… stunning incompetence ...  slapstick performance ... incompetently ... the most incompetent joker in the pack ... boorishly ... startling idiocy ... ridiculous ... perception that he’s shallow, superficial and trivial has now become political reality.... 
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image
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Triple killer Leslie Camilleri sentenced to another 28 years for schoolgirl Prue Bird's murder
http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/triple-killer-leslie-camilleri-sentenced-to-another-28-years-for-schoolgirl-prue-birds-murder/story-fnii5sms-1226776244437
TRIPLE killer Leslie Alfred Camilleri has still not told the truth about how and why he killed Glenroy schoolgirl Prue Bird, a Supreme Court judge said today.

No possibility of redemption. Even now, he shields others who are guilty. - ed
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Controversial Bisphenol A in water bottles could be causing migraines
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/controversial-bisphenol-a-in-water-bottles-could-be-causing-migraines/story-fneuz9ev-1226775854588
DRINKING water from plastic cups or bottles could be giving millions of people migraines.

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Amnesty International release secret satellite images of North Korea's repressive prison camps
http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/amnesty-international-release-secret-satellite-images-of-north-koreas-repressive-prison-camps/story-fnjwnfzw-1226775843496
IT HOUSES more than 50,000 prisoners who are forced to live in subhuman conditions before being made to dig their own graves prior to execution.

This is important .. and illustrates why it is wrong for Amnesty to over inflate on places like Gitmo - ed
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Seven things you should never, ever bring up in conversation
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/seven-things-you-should-never-ever-bring-up-in-conversation/story-fnet0he2-1226775816787
THERE is a great bit in Downton Abbey when the acid-tongued Dowager Countess overhears a boring conversation at a party and rightly remarks "Some people's small talk is <​i>very <​/i>small".

I can talk about anything .. but all you guys talk about is politics. - ed
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An enterprising 11-year-old girl from Oregon who was selling mistletoe to raise money for braces at a weekly market in downtown Portland was told that she couldn't sell the hand-cut greenery without a permit. She was informed by a security guard that she could, however, beg for money on the city's streets. 

Is the city out of line? Read the full story and give us your reaction.
Oregon Girl Told She Can't Sell Mistletoe, But Can Beg for Money
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/03/oregon-girl-told-cant-sell-mistletoe-but-can-beg-for-money/
A Portland Parks Bureau spokesman told the station that begging is a form of free speech and is protected by the First Amendment.
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Burma is rated a top 10 worst country for human rights in the 2014 Human Rights Risk Atlas, a project of global analytics firm Maplecroft. And yet the US Administration continues to ignore the Burmese government and military's human rights violations in its quest to "support the reform process" and "extend the hand of friendship."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/human-rights-risk-atlas-2014-violations-maplecroft_n_4374133.html
The number of countries at risk for human rights violations has increased in recent years. In its 2014 Human Rights Risk Atlas, global analytics firm Maplecroft revealed that in the past six years, there has been a 70 percent rise in the number of countries with an "extreme risk" of human rights off...
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Burma listed as one of the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International:

"Myanmar internal corruption, known as “tea money” culture, largely stems from the prevalence of bribery and a lack of a legal framework and political will to confront it.
No one apart from high-ranking government officials knows how much public revenue Myanmar collects. Every level of public official, especially those in departments regulating mining, oil, and gas, have been accused of transferring public revenue to their private overseas bank accounts."

The 23 Most Corrupt Countries In The World
http://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/the-23-most-corrupt-countries-in-the-world
Transparency International has published its annual list of the world's most corrupt countries. It's the only list of its kind and scores countries on a scale of 0 to 100, based on survey s...
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Save the ABC!
https://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/media/save-the-abc--2/save-the-abc
The push is on to cut funding to our ABC. Sign this petition to save it!

There should be a commission first, examining their decision making process. Then, bit by bit, parts should be chopped off. Gotta love a drawn out death scene. Ala Iago in Othello. - ed
Dean Hamstead I like the band aid philosophy... one quick removal.
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Orbital | Wonky | Official Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9675nvyses&feature=youtu.be
Official Video for 'Wonky' (Feat. Lady Leshurr). The new album 'Wonky' is out now and available from: Webstore - http://orbitalofficial.com/shop.asp iTunes -...

Trippy. This leaves Bill Gates, rockets past Steve Jobs into River Pheonix atmosphere .. ed
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The 97% consensus myth - busted by a real survey
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/20/the-97-consensus-myth-busted-by-a-real-survey/
We've all been subjected to the incessant "97% of scientists agree ...global warming...blah blah" meme, which is nothing more than another statistical fabrication by John Cook and his collection of...

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Bold 'Razzle Dazzle' Camouflage Fools The Eye
http://www.livescience.com/41659-razzle-dazzle-camouflage-fools-eye.html
A controversial form of camouflage meant to confuse the viewer's sense of speed and motion actually exists, new research finds. Locusts exposed to motion dazzle camouflage are less likely to escape a predator.

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Woman snaps the most selfish selfie ever
http://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/woman-snaps-the-most-selfish-selfie-ever/story-fn6vihic-1226775641875
Don't jump — until I get this picture lined up!

It wasn't an accidental capture .. but deliberate. - ed
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It is appalling what happens when some Jewish women go to celebrate Hanukkah at their temple mount. It is wrong the UN accepts this appalling behaviour. Freedom of worship is a human right. It should not be displaced by a freedom to abuse - ed
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Video: Jerusalem’s Best-Kept Secret
http://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/united-with-israel/video-jerusalems-best-kept-secret/2013/10/24/
Until you come to see it in person, enjoy Jerusalem’s Botanical Garden virtually via this video!

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Frank Severino
Atoms are letters, molecules are words, proteins are sentences, bones are structure, organs are chapters, and people are novels. Food is new material, and pooping is editing.
Sigh, I seem to have an eternity of editing .. ed
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United Church of Canada Launches BDS Campaign
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/174798
Largest Canadian Protestant denomination boycotts 3 Israeli companies, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center decries as anti-Semitism.

I disown them. We have very different faiths. I am Christian. They apparently worship the opposition. - ed
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“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”” John 8:12 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"I have much people in this city."
Acts 18:10

This should be a great encouragement to try to do good, since God has among the vilest of the vile, the most reprobate, the most debauched and drunken, an elect people who must be saved. When you take the Word to them, you do so because God has ordained you to be the messenger of life to their souls, and they must receive it, for so the decree of predestination runs. They are as much redeemed by blood as the saints before the eternal throne. They are Christ's property, and yet perhaps they are lovers of the ale-house, and haters of holiness; but if Jesus Christ purchased them he will have them. God is not unfaithful to forget the price which his Son has paid. He will not suffer his substitution to be in any case an ineffectual, dead thing. Tens of thousands of redeemed ones are not regenerated yet, but regenerated they must be; and this is our comfort when we go forth to them with the quickening Word of God.
Nay, more, these ungodly ones are prayed for by Christ before the throne. "Neither pray I for these alone," saith the great Intercessor, "but for them also which shall believe on me through their word." Poor, ignorant souls, they know nothing about prayer for themselves, but Jesus prays for them. Their names are on his breastplate, and ere long they must bow their stubborn knee, breathing the penitential sigh before the throne of grace. "The time of figs is not yet." The predestinated moment has not struck; but, when it comes, they shall obey, for God will have his own; they must, for the Spirit is not to be withstood when he cometh forth with fulness of power--they must become the willing servants of the living God. "My people shall be willing in the day of my power." "He shall justify many." "He shall see of the travail of his soul." "I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong."

Evening

"Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."
Romans 8:23
This groaning is universal among the saints: to a greater or less extent we all feel it. It is not the groan of murmuring or complaint: it is rather the note of desire than of distress. Having received an earnest, we desire the whole of our portion; we are sighing that our entire manhood, in its trinity of spirit, soul, and body, may be set free from the last vestige of the fall; we long to put off corruption, weakness, and dishonour, and to wrap ourselves in incorruption, in immortality, in glory, in the spiritual body which the Lord Jesus will bestow upon his people. We long for the manifestation of our adoption as the children of God. "We groan," but it is "within ourselves." It is not the hypocrite's groan, by which he would make men believe that he is a saint because he is wretched. Our sighs are sacred things, too hallowed for us to tell abroad. We keep our longings to our Lord alone. Then the apostle says we are "waiting," by which we learn that we are not to be petulant, like Jonah or Elijah, when they said, "Let me die"; nor are we to whimper and sigh for the end of life because we are tired of work, nor wish to escape from our present sufferings till the will of the Lord is done. We are to groan for glorification, but we are to wait patiently for it, knowing that what the Lord appoints is best. Waiting implies being ready. We are to stand at the door expecting the Beloved to open it and take us away to himself. This "groaning" is a test. You may judge of a man by what he groans after. Some men groan after wealth--they worship Mammon; some groan continually under the troubles of life--they are merely impatient; but the man who sighs after God, who is uneasy till he is made like Christ, that is the blessed man. May God help us to groan for the coming of the Lord, and the resurrection which he will bring to us.
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Today's reading: Ezekiel 47-48, 1 John 3 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Ezekiel 47-48


The River From the Temple
1 The man brought me back to the entrance to the temple, and I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was coming down from under the south side of the temple, south of the altar. 2 He then brought me out through the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate facing east, and the water was trickling from the south side.
3 As the man went eastward with a measuring line in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits and then led me through water that was ankle-deep. 4 He measured off another thousand cubits and led me through water that was knee-deep. He measured off another thousand and led me through water that was up to the waist. 5 He measured off another thousand, but now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross. 6 He asked me, “Son of man, do you see this?”

Today's New Testament reading: 1 John 3

1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him....
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