Friday, November 11, 2016

Fri Nov 11th Todays News

Leonard Cohen has died aged 82, old and blessed. His life struggle was a form of classical Liberalism which many on the left may aspire to, but few understand. Cohen was a Zen Buddhist and a faithful Jew. It is worth reflecting on his life, his path was not an easy one, he was a poet. He had many relationships and children. But he wasn’t self absorbed or self destructive, so much as cognisant of the disparity between the dream of iconic love, and the fact of compromise. Everybody knows of what Cohen sang. It was personal, and explicit. The song Hallelujah took some five years for him to write, and includes many more verses than what are used in the variations sung. Cohen has given a gift of his legacy. His last album was “You want it darker.” And so it is.

Doing his bit from Melbourne on 3aw, Neil Mitchell interviews a Bernie Sanders supporter who claims he was a “Never Trump,” except “Never Trump” people are GOP supporters who oppose Trump. The idiot being interviewed was a Democrat supporter who felt Clinton had stolen preselection. She had. But that is no excuse for disrupting NYC in protest of President elect Trump. But that makes him interview material for Neil Mitchell who seems to go far to find people who don’t get Trump, but won’t interview someone who does. We are being told that the lesson of Brexit and the Trump election is that political elites need to listen to the average person. One gets the feeling that Mitchell never listens to the exceptional or gifted, and only really interviews himself or people that are safe for him. A little under half of all who voted supported Trump. Maybe Mitchell might interview one of them to get answers to his concerns.

IPA Review (Aug 2016) features an Elle Hardy article on “The Rise of Identity Politics” which is nominally about Trump but really about Bernie Sanders. Only the Trump platform and Sanders platform are very different. Trump’s base crosses the left right divide. Trump was on insider terms with left wing politicians, and his support helped fuel their corruption and helped make him rich. Trump is a neo con by literal definition. Trump aims to be pragmatic and will negotiate in a way one feels Libertarians should cheer if they understood him, instead of hating him. By way of contrast, Sanders is a carbon copy socialist who offers nothing beyond hyperbole. Sanders draws on a tradition of left wing ascendancy drawing on the peace movement of the sixties. There is no policy he has that would be successful, but spending a lot of money from tax must appeal to many. In gushing for Sanders, Elle got to quote Australian art critic Hughes. But to understand Trump, one need only see the slogans #MakeAmericaGreatAgain and #DrainTheSwamp Recognise Sanders is a swamp creature.
=== from 2015 ===
It is remembrance day in Australia. There is a poem read out at ceremonies everywhere at eleven am on the eleventh of the eleventh month. In 1918, the ceasefire for the first world war came into play. A US General lead an assault in the hours prior, killing over two hundred of his own men. Many died in the minutes leading up to the ceasefire. Some shortly after. War involves sacrifice and the poem reflects that. My Grandfather fought for England at the Somme, and was still fighting in 1918. He was in artillery, and tasked with working with the horses. He loved those horses and was bitten by the gambling bug. He served again in WW2, Australia, with Roden Cutler's mob in the middle east. The poem is "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon. Written in 1915. 

Miranda Devine is a great journalist, like her dad. I rarely disagree with her, but have. Like when she openly criticised Mr Abbott for the same thing she praised John Key, in restoring knights and dames. But it probably isn't her opinion, but the opinion of many she is reporting. And it must be remembered that the chief difference between the two policies, one for NZ, one for Australia, is that Malcolm Turnbull was undermining the one in Australia. It was a good policy. Except for making the former governor general a dame, the choices were sound. But it was opposed for no good reason, and Devine joined in those cat calls. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
From 2014
Remembrance Day
In cultural asset terms, today is one of the most important of the year. The 2013 tribute written below is worthy. However there are other modern events needing to be written about. Tasmanian PUP senator Lambie has publicly asked for people to turn their backs on conservative politicians at ceremonies honouring the day. Apparently few people did, if any. Lambie went to a service and participated. Nobody followed her suggestion there, and it seems hypocritical that she was there at all. She has claimed no conservative was at the ceremony she participated in and so saw no need to follow through with her own suggestion. Lambie's position on the soldiers getting a pay rise from the government in line with other public service rises is wrong headed. Soldiers deserve more pay, is a truth the government agrees with. The budget needs to be balanced is another truth Lambie has ignored, opposing reasonable budget cuts now, meaning larger cuts will be required in the future. Clive Palmer has distanced himself from that PUP on this issue. However, both are united in their intention to extract as much as they can from the government before passing any benefit to the economy. Only conservatives are addressing the budget deficit issue. 

Remembrance Day, remembering those fallen in war and the hope that war is ended forever is a cultural asset, but secular atheists are attacking the institution by ascribing secular as atheism and denying worship for believers. So a school celebration honouring Remembrance Day is cancelled because it is deemed too religious. It is hard to dispute that honouring the dead is religious, but a secular society embraces such events, because we all live together. To prevent the ceremony on the specious argument that some child of an atheist might find religion is irrelevant as that can happen regardless of any ceremony. The celebration itself is secular anyway and offers much to atheists too. Some who died in service to the state were atheists. 
Delivering Hope and Change
Obama promised hope and change, and finally those mid terms suggest a deliverance. However his debt legacy won't disappear for generations. His policy on climate change was not implemented fully, but still cost billions of dollars tossed away, never to be retrieved. His decisions to support business badly has meant he has misallocated funds that will never be retrieved. Detroit will rise again, but it will have to endure deep fiscal pain before then. The GOP Hari Seldon's warned the people, but their foundation failed to avert the tragedy. Obama's skin colour is not the only symbol for hope and change, and although the media despise them, GOP have much hope and change to offer, backed with reality and offering prosperity, but only after the hurdles are negotiated. And debt is the crippling reality that must be faced. 

The empty, expensive global warming policy is highlighted by the snap cold which North America is again experiencing. Sydney's Daily Telegraph, a balanced paper having all points of view, including the left's various fantasies, has a story claiming Global Warming is to blame for the record cold. It kind of fits with the theology. Green faith has it that it is compassionate to drown poor desperate people that have been subjected to piracy by people smugglers. Or, that it is ok to kill rare birds if it is with a useless windmill or solar power station. Or, that it is wrong to FRACK but ok to use geothermal power which is based on the same techniques. For political expression, Greens will say anything, but graffiti labelling them 'morons' is apt. 

Delivering hope and change from environmental menace is a burgeoning industry. One idiot suggests that eating cane toads will rid Australia of their menace. Them first. Another idiot suggests populating Tasmania, which is the size of Sri Lanka but a population smaller than a Sri Lankan city, with illegal boat people. The reasoning being that people living below the poverty line will bring money to a Tasmanian economy that is struggling. 

ABC and Fairfax are left wings
Paul Keating is desperate to be loved, even as much as Robin Williams was. But Williams had talent. Keating struggles to be the same in ability as Wayne Swan was as treasurer. Both obstructed reform and made Australia slow down. Keating used a recession to slow the economy, Swan gave money to the corrupt. Keating got to be PM, Swan supported two PM's to the detriment of the nation out of party loyalty. But Keating can criticise another incompetent PM, Hawk, and it will be reported as news. Keating was party loyal to the inept too. But the ABC and Fairfax papers can be relied on to lovingly support both Keating and Swan. 

Ten years on and the ALP still don't understand a trade deal with China. There are ins and outs, but trade with a billion people expands the Australian market. A big difference between Australia and Texas, both with similar populations and industry profiles is market size. And the Texas economy is much bigger as a result. But the ABC and Fairfax will act to protect Shorten from criticism of his stance of ignorance. Penny Wong is joining in too, on radio national, having lost over a hundred and six billion dollars, Penny wants the world to know that ten years is not enough for her to understand a trade deal. 

ABC lies to hit miners. Fairfax partisan and unhappy. ABC cuts too small. Good articles follow by Bolt and Blair. Also, more Islamic attacks around the world. 
From 2013
Remembrance day affects people. Some have family connections with loss. Some not connected with a direct action, and yet all are part of a larger body which has endured loss. Endurance suggests continuity, and there is the rub. For we who stand, now is the time to reflect on those who cannot. Australians who participated in the First World War were volunteers. And yet not all so, for civilians got caught in the battles too. Some of the great poets of the age arose from the war. Some lost to it. All sacrificed much. Ginger Mick was a fictional character who asked for nothing from me. Yet I would give him his life if I could. He didn't want to be called a hero. Yet he died one. 

What can be said in such a sacred day of former PM Paul Keating branding ALP with a speech writer's words to associate with Remembrance Day? He did not write those words "He is one of them. He is all of us" for the unknown soldier. ALP don't have a proud history of governance with serving troops. Sacrificing many in Singapore, abandoning POWs, Union strikes organised to hinder troops, shaming soldiers who chose to fight. In recent years, Australia has been involved in her longest armed conflict in Afghanistan. Six years under the conservatives, and six years under the ALP. Forty deaths under the ALP, none under the conservatives. It is a compelling soccer score for people like Keating who view lives as a game through which ALP must triumph in memory. Probably it best to view Keating in paraphrased terms "He is one of them, against all of us"

Australian troops achieved much in WW1, but were quite humble. They didn't treasure awards, possibly disgusted at the reality and the cost which such things entailed. And what award compensates for the loss? I thank those who were awarded. They definitely earned it. As did many who never were given one. Some complain of the atrocities committed. Such things happen in war, but overwhelmingly, Australians fought with honour. I write 'Australians' and many might point out so many weren't, being from NZ, England, South Africa, PNG, India .. I know not the full allegiance, but I give them this gift. For the war ended at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month on 1918. Today, Australia has wounds from her local petty battles. We don't really know who is ridgy didge. Our future is clouded. And yet in freedom and liberty, we rule. People come to our land from places thousands of years rich in history. Risking all. Because of the sacrifice of those soldiers. They might not have had Australia in mind, and yet they gave her this rich gift. A bowl, drenched in their blood, giving us a drink of hope for tomorrow. 
Historical perspective on this day
In 308, at Carnuntum, Emperor emeritus Diocletian conferred with Galerius, Augustus of the East, and Maximianus, the then recently returned former Augustus of the West, in an attempt to restore order to the Roman Empire. In 1100, Henry I of Englandmarried Matilda of Scotland, the daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council met, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ. in 1500, Treaty of Granada – Louis XII of France and Ferdinand II of Aragon agree to divide the Kingdom of Naples between them. In 1620, the Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod. In 1634, following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passed An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery. In 1673, second Battle of Khotyn in Ukraine: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth forces under the command of Jan Sobieski defeat the Ottoman army. In this battle, rockets made by Kazimierz Siemienowicz are successfully used. In 1675, Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x). In 1724, Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, a highwayman known for attacking "Thief-Taker General" (and thief) Jonathan Wild at the Old Bailey, is hanged in London. In 1750, Riots broke out in Lhasa after the murder of the Tibetan regent.Also in 1750, the F.H.C. Society, also known as the Flat Hat Club, is formed at Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Virginia. It is the first college fraternity. In 1778, Cherry Valley massacre: Loyalists and Seneca Indian forces attack a fort and village in eastern New York during the American Revolutionary War, killing more than forty civilians and soldiers.

In 1805, Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Dürenstein – 8000 French troops attempt to slow the retreat of a vastly superior Russian and Austrian force. In 1813, War of 1812: Battle of Crysler's Farm – British and Canadian forces defeated a larger American force, causing the Americans to abandon their Saint Lawrence campaign. In 1831, in Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising. In 1839, the Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia. In 1864, American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea – Union General William Tecumseh Sherman began burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south. In 1865, Treaty of Sinchula was signed by which Bhutan ceded the areas east of the Teesta River to the British East India Company. In 1869, the Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act was enacted in Australia, giving the government control of indigenous people's wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the mythical Stolen Generations. In 1880, Australian bushranger Ned Kelly was hanged at Melbourne Gaol. In 1887, Anarchist Haymarket Martyrs August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were executed. Also in 1887, construction of the Manchester Ship Canalbegan at Eastham. In 1889, the State of Washington was admitted as the 42nd state of the United States.

In 1911, many cities in the Midwestern United States break their record highs and lows on the same day as a strong cold front rolls through.In 1918, World War I: Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ended at 11:00 a.m., (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) and this is commemorated annually with a two minute silence. The war officially ended on the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. Also in 1918,  Józef Piłsudski assumed supreme military power in Poland - symbolic first day of Polish independence. Also in 1918, Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquishes power. In 1919, the Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington results the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the Industrial Workers of the World. Also in 1919, Lāčplēša day – Latvian forces defeated the Freikorpsat Riga in the Latvian War of Independence. In 1921, the Tomb of the Unknowns was dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1926, the United States Numbered Highway System, including U.S. Route 66, was established. In 1930, Patent number US1781541 was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator. In 1934, the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia was opened. In 1940, World War II: Battle of Taranto – The Royal Navy launched the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto. Also in 1940, the German cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail, and sends it to Japan. Also in 1940, Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard killed 144 in the U.S. Midwest. In 1942, World War II: Nazi Germany completed its occupation of France.

In 1960, a military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam was crushed. In 1961, thirteen Italian Air Force servicemen, deployed to the Congo as a part of the UN peacekeeping force are massacred by a mob in the course of the Kindu atrocity. In 1962, Kuwait's National Assembly ratified the Constitution of Kuwait. In 1965, in Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), the white-minority government of Ian Smithunilaterally declared independence. In 1966 NASA launched Gemini 12. In 1967, Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war were released by the Viet Cong and turned over to "new left" antiwar activist Tom Hayden. In 1968, Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated. The goal was to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail, through Laos into South Vietnam. Also in 1968, a second republic was declared in the Maldives. In 1972, Vietnam War: Vietnamization – The United States Army turned over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam. In 1975, Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the government of Gough Whitlam, appointing Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister and announced a general election to be held in early December. Also in 1975, Independence of Angola. In 1981, Antigua and Barbuda joins the United Nations. In 1992, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to allow women to become priests. In 1993, a sculpture honoring women who served in the Vietnam War was dedicated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. In 1999, the House of Lords Act was given Royal Assent, restricting membership of the British House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage. In 2000, Kaprun disaster: 155 skiers and snowboarders died when a cable car caught fire in an alpine tunnel in Kaprun, Austria. In 2001, journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Suttonand Volker Handloik were killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy they were travelling in. In 2004, New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was dedicated at the National War Memorial, Wellington. In 2004, the Palestine Liberation Organizationconfirmed the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas was elected chairman of the PLO minutes later. In 2006, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth IIunveiled the New Zealand War Memorial in London, United Kingdom, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand Army and the British Army. In 2008, RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) set sail on her final voyage to Dubai.In 2012, a strong earthquake with the magnitude 6.8 hit northern Burma, killing at least 26 people.
=== 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.
===
I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January. 

Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?

January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
===
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 a free kindle version.

List of available items at Create Space
Happy birthday and many happy returns Kathy-Kim Pham. Born on the same day, across the years, along with
November 11: Armistice Day in Belgium, France, New Zealand and Serbia; Independence Day in Angola (1975) and Poland (1918); Veterans Day in the United States
Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne
Sometimes it is better to not fight. It is nice to know how when needs must. We are in the right state. We remember. We are lords of our own will. Let's party. 
Deaths
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Tim Blair

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Andrew Bolt

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Will Australia finally become a republic?

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, November 10, 2015 (11:19pm)

NOT long after his failed republic push, I sat next to Malcolm Turnbull at a dinner to commemorate the Battle of the Coral Sea and watched him stand and toast the Queen, with barely a flicker of regret.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Will Australia finally become a republic?'
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Why give more power to ICAC?

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, November 10, 2015 (11:18pm)

Why is the Baird government in such an unseemly rush to give ICAC new powers when the anti-corruption body has been castigated by everyone from the High Court down for misusing the extraordinary powers it already has?

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Why give more power to ICAC?'
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STOP VIOLATING ME WITH YOUR DIFFERENT OPINIONS

Tim Blair – Wednesday, November 11, 2015 (1:35pm)

A chilling experience for Neel Kolhatkar:



(Via Andrew Bolt.) 
===

THE ADVENTURES OF EARNEST GIRL

Tim Blair – Wednesday, November 11, 2015 (12:55pm)

Armed with super social justice powers and awesome weather-changing skills, Miss Fetchet prepares for Paris:

Jacqueline, who believes trees “hold so much wisdom”, further claims that “trees continue to be my grounding, my motivation and my spirit.” So why she’s going to tree-murdering France is anyone’s guess. The former law student may be this conference’s version of little Gracie.
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BOOTS WERE MADE FOR TALKING

Tim Blair – Wednesday, November 11, 2015 (12:09pm)

The ABC farewells a long-term tax recipient: 
Kerry O’Brien is hanging up his hosting boots. 
O’Brien fearlessly wore those mighty boots for about 90 seconds one night per week, asking only for hundreds of thousands of dollars in return. They belong in a museum.
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WHO WILL BE NEXT

Tim Blair – Wednesday, November 11, 2015 (11:27am)

Gosford’s bloodthirsty Anglicans kill and kill again:


They’re the Manson Family of the NSW central coast.
UPDATE. In other reffo developments, Chris Kenny receives another apology.
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PALMER PROVOKED

Tim Blair – Wednesday, November 11, 2015 (10:27am)

It’s bad enough that Stephen Long took a bicycle owned by his ABC colleague Tim Palmer, but must he continue tormenting the poor fellow with insensitive bike barbs? 
TIM PALMER: The Reserve Bank left the cash rate on hold at its record low of 2 per cent, surprising some pundits who thought it might cut again to offset rate rises by the major banks.
Joining me to analyse the RBA’s decision to stay is our correspondent Stephen Long.
STEPHEN LONG: It’s a bit of a surprise because you had those out-of-cycle rate rises by the banks. 
You’re a cruel man, Mr Long.
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HAND OVER THE LEG

Tim Blair – Wednesday, November 11, 2015 (9:57am)

Spending other people’s money is a perfectly appropriate way to celebrate a unionist family: 
A union boss reduced his mother to tears of joy when he had a tattoo of her and her late union chief husband etched on his leg, paid for with a union credit card.


Derek Belan was state secretary of the National Union of Workers when he paid $432 for the full calf tattoo that he told the artist made his mother cry because it made her look “so young and beautiful”.
Mr Belan finally appeared at the royal commission into trade union corruption yesterday to answer questions about $500,000 in payments on his union credit card including almost $40,000 spent on online shopping, holidays, dating websites, private investigators and the tattoo. 
Union members paid for that tattoo. They are the rightful owners of Belan’s leg and should demand possession. For his part, Belan declares: “I’m no thief.”
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10 minutes of Cross Crotty

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (5:58pm)

Associate Professor Martin Crotty is very, very cross with me. Ten minutes of cross.
Apparently I am a tool of Power, cracking down on dissent to impose The Dominant Narrative of the Anzac legend. What’s odd, though, is that the dissent I’m allegedly cracking down on is actually the group think Crotty defends, and which is the dominant narrative in academia and even in great swathes of journalism. This becomes clear from Crotty’s lengthy roll call of all the academics that have fallen in the Bolt War.
So may I hesitantly suggest that the “questioning voice” Crotty claims to defend is actually the one he abuses?
Anyway, hear his angry complaints for yourself, and ask whether he himself is in fact the monster he attacks:
UPDATE
I couldn’t imagine what I’d done that had upset Crotty so disproportionately. But then I searched the archives. Apparently I’ve occupied a large part of his mind ever since.  
===

So what’s Turnbull’s plan B on tax?

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (12:23pm)

So now what for the Turnbull Government’s GST plans?
Labor says it’s against.
The Greens say they’re against.
Now four crossbencher Senators - Nick Xenophon, Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus - say they are against as well, when the Government would need to convince all crossbenchers bar two to overcome a Greens/Labor block in the Senate.
Turnbull’s yabber now meets an obstacle. What next?
UPDATE
As readers below point out, next is putting the case to the voters at an election. But doing so with almost every non-Coalition party and independent fighting it. 
===

Modern Educayshun

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (11:36am)

 Brilliant.  Australian comedian Neel Kolhatkar wrote, produced, directed, and stars in Modern Educayshun, an updated version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in which the madhouse is a modern university campus.
Much like the University of Missouri in the post below. 
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Ask Lomborg who really is being shut down. So where’s the Australian Academy of Science?

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (7:38am)

Tony Thomas on the hide of climate scientists claiming to be the persecuted:
Why is the Australian Academy of Science going off the deep end claiming “reprehensible vilification” of warmist scientists? It’s now saying they’re being so threatened and harassed that their ability to do science is in jeopardy. Academy President Andrew Holmes, addressing a greenhouse conference in Hobart on October 27, claimed 
The costs to individuals can be high. It is therefore critical that as scientists and experts we stand together. The ability of scientists to conduct their work, free of fear or hindrance, is vital to the future wellbeing of our community, and the Academy will continue to advocate for academic freedom… “As the International Council for Science proclaims, the free and responsible practice of science is fundamental to scientific advancement and human and environmental well-being.
I thought at first he was chastising the academics at University of Western Australia over their successful witchhunt against non-sceptic Bjorn Lomborg, or that he was chastising academics at University of Melbourne for wanting punitive fines to drive sceptics out of the media. Or maybe rebuking US academic peers who wanted sceptic corporations to be prosecuted under the Racketeering and Corrupting Influences Act (that exercise backfired spectacularly). But I erred, Holmes’ victimology includes only orthodox climate scientists as its purported casualties.
Read on.
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Labor smashes Turnbull’s Budget savings. But the media spins something else

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (6:55am)

Malcolm Turnbull couldn’t get a friendlier press gallery if he paid them.
Many of the headlines today report a success - Labor support at last for a reform that Tony Abbott couldn’t get through:
If Tony Abbott were still in charge, though, the headlines would almost certainly be more like this:
Abbott Budget in crisis as Labor says no
Labor says no to Abbott cuts
Abbott’s Budget gets $4 billion hole
Labor saves families from Abbott cuts
Let’s check the ABC’s spin against the facts contained in its own report.
The false headline:
Federal Opposition agrees to scrap Family Tax Benefit B
The first two spinning paragraphs:
The Federal Opposition has agreed to scrap a welfare benefit worth thousands of dollars for some families, but says it wants single parents and grandparent carers protected. 
Last month the Government proposed scrapping Family Tax Benefit B when a family’s youngest child turns 13.
But in the body of the report, the substance - Labor actually opposes more than $4 billion of cuts to Family Tax Benefit B that the Government desperately needs, by refusing to take the benefit from single parents and grandparent carers once the youngest child turns 13, let alone the originally proposed 6:
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said his party would support the plan, but not for single-parent families or grandparents who are primary carers… 
Social Services Minister Christian Porter welcomed the announcement, but said it did not go far enough. “Your alternative proposal is to turn $4.7 billion worth of savings into $500 million worth of savings,” he said in Question Time.
Yet note how little coverage was given to Turnbull’s most significant knockback yet from Labor.
The fact is Turnbull has just been reminded that he faces the same feral Senate that wilfully blocked Abbott’s attempts to cut our out-of-control spending. The Liberals have changed their leader but not the Senate - and Labor and the Greens, at least, are determined to stop Turnbull’s savings, too.
True, Turnbull still has one hope - to get the votes of six of the eight crossbench Senators, and doing all he can to charm them as Abbott could not:
Malcolm Turnbull has given the crossbench senators a room with a view. Overlooking trees and lush green soccer fields, the specially dedicated meeting room on the first floor of Parliament House is part of the Turnbull government’s new charm offensive to woo the eight independents… 
On Monday, Mr Turnbull ­visited the crossbenchers in their room and stayed for a 45-minute informal chat, discussing policy concerns and his agenda… While some crossbenchers ­refuse to speak badly of Mr Abbott and his negotiating style, most were upset at one point or another by the former prime minister’s lack of communication and ­occasional attacks, such as when he described the Senate as “feral”. 
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Socialist Melbourne gets a Monopoly that won’t offend the poor

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (6:39am)

The new Melbourne Monopoly avoids giving offence in this oh-so-sensitive days, where lawyers can act for the aggrieved. It won’t rank our streets by their worth and social standing:
A takeaway coffee cup, a football, Phar Lap, a spray paint can, tram and a book - according to Monopoly, those are the items that symbolise Melbourne. 
They were revealed as the player tokens for the Melbourne edition of the world’s most popular board game… While the original edition featured the streets of Atlantic CIty and the version most Australians know and love takes you on a tour of London from the Old Kent Road to Mayfair, Melbourne Monopoly is made up of tourist destinations. These include the Queen Victoria Market, Shrine of Remembrance, Etihad Stadium, St Kilda beach and the Arts Centre plus a few non-metropolitan destinations including the Great Ocean Road.
Compare, for instance, the British edition with Melbourne’s:
RED 
London: Trafalgar Square, The Strand and Fleet Street Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, Arts Centre Melbourne and Royal Exhibition Building
YELLOW 
London: Picadilly, Leicester Square and Coventry Street 
Melbourne: Brighton Bathing Boxes, Bells Beach and St Kilda
GREEN
London: Regent Street, Oxford Street and Bond Street
Melbourne: The University of Melbourne, Shrine of Remembrance, and Melbourne Zoo
DARK BLUE
London: Mayfair and Park Lane
Melbourne: MCG and Federation Square
It makes no sense in the context of the game, of course. How can a player buy the Shrine of Remembrance?  
===

Calling the cops to kill debate

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (6:21am)

This email from the University of Missouri police is political correctness to a sinister degree. The opportunities for politically motivated bullying are endless:
Jonathan Chait warns:
The student protest at the University of Missouri began as a response to a serious problem — outbursts of vile racism on campus — and quickly devolved into an expression of a renewed left-wing hostility to freedom of expression. At the protest on Missouri’s campus yesterday, on a space that is expressly open to free expression, protesters barred journalists from covering the demonstrations. In one scene, protesters surrounded and harassed Tim Tai, a photographer with the student newspaper, chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, journalists have got to go.” The scene is captured on a video here, which rewards close watching until the end, where Melissa Click, a professor of mass media working with the protest movement, calls out, “Help me get this reporter out of here. I need some muscle over here.” 
It is possible — and, for many sympathizers on the left, convenient — to dismiss these sorts of incidents as just so much college high jinks… It is probably true that a strange and sudden new hypersensitivity among young people has produced a widespread expectation of a right to be protected from offense. It is also undeniably true that outbursts of political correctness disproportionately take place in campus settings. In recent weeks, UCLA, Wesleyan, and Yale have seen left-wing student activism aimed at shutting down the expression of contrary viewpoints.
Even if it were the case that political correctness was totally confined to campuses, it would not make the phenomenon unimportant. Colleges have disproportionate influence over intellectual life, and political movements centered on campuses can spread well beyond them (anti-Vietnam began as a bunch of wacky kids, too). But to imagine p.c. as simply a thing college kids do relieves us of taking it seriously as a coherent set of beliefs, which it very much is. Political correctness is a system of thought that denies the legitimacy of political pluralism on issues of race and gender. It manifests itself most prominently in campus settings not because it’s a passing phase, like acne, but because the academy is one of the few bastions of American life where the p.c. left can muster the strength to impose its political hegemony upon others. The phenomenon also exists in other nonacademic left-wing communities, many of them virtual ones centered on social media, and its defenders include professional left-wing intellectuals. The upsurge of political correctness is not just greasy-kid stuff, and it’s not just a bunch of weird, unfortunate events that somehow keep happening over and over. It’s the expression of a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism.
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A debate out of control

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (5:58am)

Graham Richardson warns:
There is no question that Malcolm Turnbull is riding the crest of a wave. Yet if he allows the GST debate to continue to run wild, he risks being heavily dumped. 
Our Prime Minister would be wise not to misread his standing in the polls… While it may sound democratic and well-intentioned, the idea of listening to every citizen with every crackpot idea is not very bright.
The GST debate is completely out of control and in any period where there is confusion and uncertainty, it is impossible for governments to prosper. Inevitably it is the government that wears the blame for creating fertile grounds for fear. Scare campaigns — no matter how spurious or untruthful they may be — have a real chance of success when the people in charge don’t have a plan and debate drifts all over the place… At the very least, the Treasurer should rule out broadening the base to include food, rent, education and health. That is where the real fear lies and once it takes root and the mob have made up their minds, even the considerable verbal skills of Turnbull and Morrison may prove inadequate to the task of turning them around.
I suspect the real danger is in raising so many conflicting expectations that inevitably will be disappointed.
Janet Albrechtsen, well disposed to Turnbull, lists just some of the expectations Turnbull has let loose:
Turnbull is still to prove his reform mettle. Right now the Prime Minister is standing at the bottom, looking up at the precipitous slopes, the absence of footholds and bad weather closing in fast. The ascent only begins when he and Scott Morrison decide what belongs on the tax reform table, what gets binned and how to sell reforms to an increasingly entitled and mollycoddled electorate. 
Suggestions are piling up. Broaden the GST base. Hike up the rate. Don’t touch fresh food or education. Include financial ser­vices. Cut corporate tax, and personal rates while you’re at it. Index tax thresholds. Hand the new money to the cash-strapped states. No, wait, don’t do that. Reform superannuation tax breaks. But only retrospectively…
And… the crunch: there’s no point talking about jobs, growth and innovation as a reason for tax reform unless you confront the country’s spending problem…
We’ve doubled education spending in the past decade to $40 billion. Welfare now accounts for more than a third of the federal budget. No doubt much of it is needed, but the real test is asking where and when federal spending should stop. Only when Turnbull and Morrison start addressing that question will they be some way on the ascent towards reform. 
True, Turnbull is trying to first get agreement on the challenges in front of us, to build an appetite for change. But his efforts are very unfocussed. Do we have a spending problem, as Treasurer Scott Morrison first suggested, or a revenue problem, as the Premiers insist? Do we need to raise taxes or cut them? Is the problem our debt or the rising bill for health and education?
This debate is out of control. As former Treasurer Peter Costello said on my show last Sunday, Turnbull must name the problem he is trying to fix. 
===

The Age of entitlement is alive in the union movement

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (5:45am)

Union members’ money - case 1:
Former Labor MP Craig Thomson’s use of hundreds of thousands of dollars of union members’ money for his electoral campaign was more serious than using credit cards for prostitutes, a court has heard. 
The Federal Court judge deliberating on costs and penalties in the Fair Work Commission’s civil case against Thomson yesterday castigated him over the money spent on his campaign for the NSW federal seat of Dobell. “This is not a momentary weakness where you get an escort or something,” judge Christopher Jessup told Thomson’s lawyer Chris McArdle during the Melbourne hearing. “This is a long-term, systematic operation, with somebody else’s money, to get your client into parliament.”
In September, Justice Jessup found Thomson had used more than $300,000 of Health Services Union funds to pay for prostitutes and his election campaign during his time as national secretary ­between August 2002 and his election in December 2007.
Union members’ money - case 2:
He used National Union of Workers funds to pay for a striking tattoo of his mother and ­father and confessed to having $25,000 sitting in his car from a union-linked slush fund, but former NSW boss Derrick Belan has declared to the trade union royal commission, “I’m no thief”. 
Mr Belan yesterday blamed his downfall after 11 years as state secretary of the NUW’s NSW branch on the niece he appointed union bookkeeper, Danielle O’Brien…
Mr Belan took the stand in suit and tie to deny any part in the spending of union funds on “personal” items from shopping to dating websites, and denied a claim he funnelled branch money to Ms O’Brien through PayPal to pay his bills....
A P&O cruise Mr Belan took, paid for on his own union credit card, he claimed to have thought was a “gift” from Ms O’Brien, who has previously wept openly on the stand while apologising for using her credit card to buy personal items, and his brother, NUW ­organiser Nicklouse.
Mr Belan said he used the union card to pay for groceries when he “ran out of money” on holiday, and also for a $432 tattoo at the Buen-Arte tattoo studio in Emu Plains when a nearby ATM “didn’t have any cash”, but he insisted he “informed Danielle that was done and asked her to remove it out of my wages"…

Mr Belan was asked by counsel assisting the commission, Sarah McNaughton SC: “It’s all Danielle’s fault is it?”
“I believe it is,” he replied.
Documents tendered to the inquiry earlier yesterday revealed former assistant Wayne Meaney, now NSW secretary, agreed to a $328,000 termination payout on Mr Belan’s resignation from the union on October 26. The termination payout, which has not been awarded, was accompanied by a legal document protecting Mr Belan from any legal action taken by the union that was later torn up by the NUW’s national office. 
Taxpayers’ money:
Embattled Labor MP Cesar Melhem has hired ex-AWU colleague Frank Leo on the public payroll, despite his friend facing possible criminal charges over allegedly corrupt conduct in securing a deal with Chiquita Mushrooms. 
The move has outraged Labor insiders, who are declaring it is time for Mr Melhem — who is also possibly facing criminal ­charges stemming from the trade union royal commission — to ­resign from ­parliament. The ­Australian has learned that Mr Melhem has given Mr Leo, who was pushed out of the AWU under current Victorian secretary Ben Davis, a soft landing by taking him on as a part-time electorate officer.
Mr Leo, a veteran AWU official who has served under Bill Shorten and Mr Melhem, is slated in the recent report by counsel ­assisting the royal commission for having engaged in “corrupt” conduct by facilitating six $4000 payments for the AWU from Chiquita Mushrooms for training that never eventuated. Mr Leo denies there was anything illegitimate about the payments, but Labor insiders say he has no business working in an MP’s office.
===

Rudd approves of Turnbull

Andrew Bolt November 11 2015 (12:18am)

Kevin Rudd approves of Malcolm Turnbull, and apparently sees his real enemies as members of Turnbull’s own party:
Kevin Rudd says his former rival, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, has made a good start in the nation’s top political job - but he has warned him to watch out for the “nut jobs” in his own party… 
“He has to deal with the lunar right of his party and there are some serious nut jobs there, we all know that...” 
My concerns about Turnbull in a nutshell.
UPDATE
Rudd believes Cardinal Pell should convert to a new faith:
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has unleashed an excoriating attack on George Pell, accusing Australia’s most senior Catholic of being a “radical climate sceptic” and saying the cardinal’s “inflated rhetoric” can no longer go unchallenged on the role of the Church in the climate change debate… The former Labor prime minister said George Pell needed an “ecological conversion”… 
For Rudd to accuse anyone of “inflated rhetoric” is a joke. And it is a sin against science to attack those sceptical of a proposition, especially one this at odds with fundamental facts. 
===

Surprised? Then you’re not qualified to run a country

Andrew Bolt November 10 2015 (10:31pm)

Hands up anyone who’s surprised:
Fears that Islamic terror groups might be entering Europe on migrant boats appear to have been confirmed after police in Sicily identified a convicted terrorist among asylum seekers arriving from Libya. The Tunisian, Ben Nasr Mehdi, was first arrested in Italy in November 2007 and sentenced to seven years for planning terror attacks for a group that has since been linked to Isis. After his release from the high-security Benevento prison in southern Italy, he was expelled from the country. 
But it has emerged that he has attempted to enter Italy again, following his arrest last month by Italian authorities after arriving at the island of Lampedusa, off Sicily. He was among 200 migrants rescued at sea by a navy vessel on 4 October. Despite giving a false name and claiming that he was seeking asylum in northern Europe to escape political persecution, finger prints revealed his true identity. 
Remember this, from 2009?:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called on Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull to withdraw preselection support for Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey. 
The call comes after Mr Tuckey commented that terrorists were masquerading as asylum seekers in a bid to enter Australia.
There were “narrow odds” that terrorists were aboard vessels being intercepted, Mr Tuckey said today… “I’m a bit amazed that apparently when the federal police write a report that infers that there could be an occasional terrorist in a boatload of people, that that’s so unique that it needs to be classified,” he said. Mr Rudd described the comments as “divisive and disgusting” ...
Seeming good, achieving insecurity. 
===

Christians being wiped out in the Middle East

Andrew Bolt November 10 2015 (9:29pm)

A media that persecutes Christians here naturally can’t get excited about Christians persecuted elsewhere:
The dwindling Christian population of the Middle East could vanish completely within a decade unless the global community intervenes, say alarmed aid groups who say followers of the Bible are being killed, driven from their land or forced to renounce their faith at an unprecedented pace. 
The world has largely stood by as a dangerous tide of intolerance has washed over the region, according to a new study by the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need…
The Christian population in Iraq has plummeted from 1.5 million in 2003 to current estimates of 275,000 and could be gone for good within five years, according to the report....
In Syria,… an estimated 15,000 Christians have left their villages to seek refuge in Homs, Zaidal and Fairouzeh in recent days, according to Syrian Orthodox Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh. He told the charity Christians are terrified that ISIS, in a constant see-saw battle for territory with government forces, will capture their villages and kill all non-Muslims… While the situation is most dire in the Middle East, Christianity is under assault in Africa and Asia, too, according to the Aid to the Church in Need study. It cited persecution at the hands of Islamist terror groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and other extremists in Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and other parts of the continent. Asia’s Christians have been targeted by nationalist religious movements—Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist—in such countries as Pakistan, Hindu and Myanmar. Many of these groups increasingly view Christianity as a foreign, “colonial” import, and believe its practitioners are doing the bidding of the West, said Clancy. 
Few journalists, I suspect, realise how Christianity produced societies marked by the freedoms they now take for granted. And how certain other faiths - one in particular - threaten them. 
===

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 11, 2014 (2:17am)

He promised hope and change in 2008 and, Gaia bless him, US President Barack Obama has finally delivered.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'BETTER LATE THAN NEVER'
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AD NOW INCLUDES FACT

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 11, 2014 (1:07am)

Annoyingly, every time I left my Melbourne hotel on the weekend I was confronted by a Greens election billboard. On Sunday night, however, an unknown critic fixed it:

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CAPTAIN KROTE’S CHOCOLATE CRAPAUD CRISPIES

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 11, 2014 (12:58am)

According to Professor Philip Hayward, there is an easy solution to the cane toad menace. The Southern Cross University academic says we should eat them.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'CAPTAIN KROTE’S CHOCOLATE CRAPAUD CRISPIES'
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LET THE TRUTH BE TOLD

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 11, 2014 (12:18am)

On Saturday I attended the most important journalistic event of 2014:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'LET THE TRUTH BE TOLD'
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ABC budget to be cut with a butter knife

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (5:28pm)

Sounds big until you work out it’s at worst just a 4.3 per cent cut over five years:
The ABC and SBS are facing swingeing cuts of up to $200 to $300 million over five years in the mid-year budget update, as the federal government prepares to announce the second round of savings it will demand of the broadcasters… 
It’s understood the government will make the case for the cuts in the context of the two broadcasters being slated to receive an overall $6.9-billion, five-year funding allocation.
In contrast Fairfax lost 5.5 per cent of its revenue in just the past financial year alone. 
===

Fairfax unhappy with the boot on the other foot

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (3:21pm)


Kevin Rudd’s RM Williams boots were too trivial for for Fairfax pro-Labor shill Mark Kenny to even notice.
THE moment best displayed what Barack Obama had called ”a great meeting of the minds”.
The American President and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday had remained a diplomatic distance apart during a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House. As about 30 reporters and photographers filed out and they were almost alone, they relaxed and leaned towards each other, heads almost touching.
But when Liberal PM Tony Abbott also wears boots to a meeting with Obama, suddenly Kenny becomes the boot fascist:
Abbott sat by awkwardly, his dull and inappropriate RM Williams wedge beneath him and frankly, looking a bit silly, next to the president’s gleaming black lace-ups.
Kenny is so partisan that he even admired Julia Gillard’s schoolgirl crassness:
OPINIONS on vegemite and a wayward football are the most notable diplomatic rifts between Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama. 
President Obama has described Australia’s national spread, Vegemite, as “horrible” and joked that the Prime Minister had nearly smashed a “bust of (Abraham) Lincoln” as she kicked an Aussie rules football around in the Oval Office. The good natured ribbing of Ms Gillard came as the two leaders met in the White House for 40 minutes and then proceeded to a high school in neighbouring Virginia, where they fronted a class of students and took questions.
UPDATE
How did Fairfax become so infantile and so crude?
Now Clementine Ford, fresh from printing and selling “F… Abbott” t-shirts, Tourettes on Twitter:
It’s even an old joke. But isn’t the Fairfax board embarrassed that someone so foulmouthed represents it to the public?

(Thanks to readers Dan and Andrew.) 
===

No anti-fossil fuel story too fake for the ABC

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (2:21pm)

The whole premise of yet another anti-carbon “news” report by the ABC is false but the propaganda is run anyway, with the truth relegated to an afterthought paragraph at the very end:
Reader Andrew of Randwick explains:
The Claim and the Call to Action = 666 Words 
Australian taxpayers foot three billion dollar bill for fossil fuel exploration: report 

CHRIS UHLMANN: A new report says exploration by coal and energy companies is subsidised by Australian taxpayers by as much $4 billion every year.  London-based think tank, the Overseas Development Institute, and the green lobby group Oil Change International estimates G20 countries are propping up oil, gas and coal explorers to the tune of 100 billion Australian dollars a year. They want the money spent on funding renewable energy projects. 

[and so on]
The Response = 35 Words 
And the Minerals Council of Australia says the productivity commission has found the industry receives negligible subsidies, and the department of finance says tax breaks for exploration aren’t subsidies, but legitimate tax deductions for business.
UPDATE
Professor Sinclair Davidson has nailed the lie:
The mining industry pays a lot of tax and pays close to the statutory rate of 30% of its taxable income in corporate income tax. The mining industry is not the beneficiary of special measures that substantially reduce its tax burden.... 
Estimates of subsidies to the mining industry range from about $4 billion each year to as high as $10 billion. Most of these claims are limited solely by the imagination of the analyst undertaking the analysis. Official estimates by Treasury and the Productivity Commission are much lower and reflect features of the tax system that mostly apply across the whole economy. Hence the mining industry is not the beneficiary of large amounts of government subsidy or special privilege.  
Unlike green power, for instance.
Davidson gets specific:
As a major off-road user of diesel fuel, the mining industry is the single largest user of the fuel tax credit scheme. In 2010-11, the industry claimed $2 billion compared to the second largest user Transport, postal and warehousing at $988 million.
Excise on diesel was introduced in 1957 to help fund the development and maintenance of public roads. In line with the policy intent, diesel excise was only applied to on-road uses of diesel and a scheme was set up to provide an exemption of excise for all off-road users of diesel fuel.... It is important to recognise that fuel tax credits are an economy-wide scheme and as such do not constitute an industry-specific subsidy. Neither Treasury nor the Productivity Commission recognises the fuel tax credit scheme as being government assistance or a tax subsidy… 
UPDATE
The ABC’s bias is out of control. Now its Brisbane 612 is whipping up protests for the Brisbane G20 meeting:
Protesters are already on the streets of Brisbane but how can you make your voice heard. 
Tell us your favourite protest song so we can play it on Afternoons. The song/s with the most votes will get a run. 
UPDATE
ABC24 asks an odd and oddly negative - question:
Paul Zanetti anwers:
(Thanks to reader Alan RM Jones.)  
===

Clive Palmer distances himself from bogan Senator Jacqui Lambie

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (12:47pm)

Jacqui Lambie has no class or judgment:
VETERANS should turn their backs on government “cowards” this Remembrance Day, according to Jacqui Lambie.  The outspoken Palmer United Party Senator has condemned the decision to award ADF members a 1.5 per cent pay increase, below inflation.
Clive Palmer sends his Senator Jacqui Lambie a message:
UPDATE
If Lambie wants soldiers paid more, how about she come up with the savings and productivity reforms that would give this broke government the cash?
And how about she come up with arguments about why the military is underpaid?
Senator David Leyonhjelm says many Australians would envy the deal the armed forces get as taxpayers’ expense:
A private, with no Year 12 qualification and straight out of basic training, is paid $57,346 a year. If the private is promoted to the rank of corporal they can get a six-figure salary. And for higher ranks, there are higher salaries.
This is not bad when you consider that typical full-time pay in Australia is about $61,000.
On top of that, military personnel receive accommodation and medical benefits, and the government tops up their superannuation by no less than 18 per cent of the salary. Military personnel on deployment are also paid allow­ances of up to $200 a day, tax free…
The now approved 1.5 per cent salary increase for military personnel is lower than the rate of general price increases. However, it follows years of solid pay increases, when the military was exempted from the efficiency dividends that applied to the rest of the public sector. And while military personnel are to receive a small salary increase, other government employees will be stuck on their existing salaries for the indefinite future… In addition to a pay freeze, civilian government employees face involuntary redundancy — a phenomenon well known in the private sector. 
UPDATE
Reader Michael protests:
ADF Rates of pay ... [show] that no Corporal (CPL), or equivalent rank, in the ADF earns a six figure base salary.  In fact all unskilled, low education requirement jobs fall between bands 1 -6.  Either the good senator is talking out his back passage, or he has been misquoted. 
Now you will get no argument from me that, for an 18 year old straight out of home, around $50,000 dollars a year is a good salary.  However the terms of the job make it an unfair comparison to use ‘the average wage’ as a benchmark.  Yes, there are a lot of associated benefits that come with the job, but there are also many conditions that, were the same expected of any civilian, are not compensated equivalently.
For starters, part of an ADF member’s conditions of service is that he or she be available to be recalled to work at a moments notice 24/7. ... And lets not forget, part of working for the ADF requires you to uproot your life every 3 years to post to a new work location several thousand kilometres away....
Yes a private soldier, deployed to a warzone such as Afghanistan, can earn over $100,000 for his 8 month deployment, but there’s no guarantee that you will get onto a deployment.  If you do, then your life is on hold for a full year ... Even in barracks, as a salaried employee, you get no penalty loadings for working nights or weekends.  Guard duty, for instance, often requires the soldier to work a full day, then stay overnight to provide security and a point of contact after hours.  
UPDATE
But reader Terry points out that a private in the US army earns less than $18,000 a year.
UPDATE
Do not vote for any candidate prepared to hijack Remembrance Day for their own political protests:
The South Coast Labour Council’s Arthur Rorris along with local ALP candidate, Fiona Phillips, both wearing Remembrance Day poppies, led a protest outside the office of South Coast MP Shelley Hancock starting just before midday (TUE 11/11). 
The rally was organised to protest government policies affecting TAFE, electricity workers and nurses. Bob Morris of the Korean War Veterans Recognition Committee was in disbelief that the Labour Council and local ALP candidate would politicise a day that is set aside to remember those who gave so much to our country.
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The Left’s fear of diversity and debate

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (9:42am)

Nick Cater on the Left’s capture of the cultural institutions - and the funds:
WHEN a student turns up for a social science class at an American university there is an eight to one chance the lecturer will be a Democrat voter… (T)he proportion of American academics prepared to out themselves as conservative is between 4 per cent and 8 per cent. 
It would be no surprise to anyone, inside or outside the academies, if a local study produced much the same result. Australian academics too fancy themselves as progressives, or liberals in the American parlance. Universities, and other cultural institutions such as the ABC, are uncomfortable places for conservatives.
This is odd, really, since no ­university these days would be complete without a solemn commitment to diversity....(T)he right to be an intellectual bigot is steadfastly upheld in almost every cultural institution in the country. The conventional wisdom on everything from climate change to the supposed depravity of the Catholic Church is enforced, often unconsciously, in multiple ways… When ABC staff look around them, for example, it surely would not escape their attention that conservatives are somewhat thin on the ground. It must feel a little odd to work in a building where hardly anybody admits to voting for Tony Abbott. They must realise, surely, that many of their listeners and viewers (and an increasing number of ex-listeners and ex-viewers) see the world in a different light, and that they cannot all be stupid.
Why the Left’s fear of debate and diversity? Is it that they really don’t trust themselves to win an argument?
I wonder how this country would be if the Left had to argue its positions as conservatives largely must - without the help of taxpayer funds administered by the ABC, SBS, Australia Council and universities.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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More Islamist terror attacks

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (9:30am)

More Islamist terror attacks in Israel:
An Israel Defense Forces soldier was stabbed in an apparent terror attack near the Haganah train station in south Tel Aviv on Monday afternoon. Almog Shiloni, 20 of Modi’in, was evacuated to hospital in critical condition succumbed to his wounds in the evening… 
The suspect in the attack was named as Nur a-Din Hashiya, from the Askar refugee camp in Nablus.. The attack took place hours before another stabbing incident near the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut. 25-year-old Dalia Lamkus was killed and two other people were wounded. 
Another in Nigeria:
At least 46 students have been killed by a suicide bomber at a school assembly in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Potiskum, police have said. 
A suicide bomber dressed as a student is believed to have caused the blast at the boys’ school in Yobe state ..
Boko Haram has targeted schools during a deadly five-year insurgency aimed at establishing an Islamic state. It is waging a sustained campaign to prevent children from going to school. It believes girls should not attend school and boys should only receive an Islamic education.
UPDATE
Kill the children, rap two Palestinian sub-humans:
 
A duo of Palestinian singers has posted a song that encourages Palestinians to commit infanticide by using their cars to ‘run over’ Israeli babies, apparently inspired by a recent incident in which a Palestinian driver did just that. “Run over, run over the 2-month-old baby girl – that’s how we get back at them,” went the lyrics according to a report on the song by Israel’s Channel 2 News.
(Thanks to readers Cb1982 and Bob Gorovoi.) 
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Christianity banned at school’s Remembrance Day

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (9:22am)

If we don’t remember the inspiration of so much of our freedom, compassion and wealth we risk forgetting what we must defend. And the militancy and intolerance here is a warning of what will come in its place:
A NSW school has banned hymns or prayers from its Remembrance Day service today because families of pupils are supposedly “overwhelmingly secular”.

Until this year, pupils from Carrington Public School, near Newcastle, were integral to an annual public service at the suburb’s cenotaph, but principal Meredith Lindsay ruled this year that the school would no longer take part. 
Instead, the school will hold its own service on school grounds after refusing to include a request by ex-serviceman and organiser Morrie Whitten to have the Lord’s Prayer and a hymn included in the runsheet.
(Thanks to reader Jackpott.) 
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Global warming blamed for the cold

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (9:00am)

Global warming - propaganda

The world’s atmosphere actually hasn’t warmed for at least 16 years. And winters in the northern hemisphere have been chillier lately.
News Corp’s resident alarmists are embarrassed but determined never to doubt:
GLOBAL warming could be making parts of the world colder. Yes, you read that right. Here’s why this is not a crazy thing to say.  

There’s a strong outbreak of cold weather across parts of the United States this week. It’s similar in some ways to last year’s so-called polar vortex — that conveyor belt of frigid Arctic air which parked itself on top of large parts of the United States, bringing bitter cold for days. 
This week’s cold outbreak is much weaker, but it’s again making people question the widely accepted narrative of global warming…
The world definitely is warming, according to just about every reputable science body, including our own Bureau of Meteorology, which says Australia’s climate has warmed by 0.9°C since 1910, with more extreme heat and fewer cool extremes.
Colder, warmer, wetter, drier - it’s global warming, dammit, even when there’s actually been no warming for many years.
Just believe.
(Thanks to reader Mike of NQ.) 
===

Ten years later, Labor is still in no rush to even understand a trade deal with China

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (8:04am)

Labor seems determined to criticise a trade deal it doesn’t understand and on grounds that are plainly absurd:
Yes, nobody briefed Bill Shorten. ABC radio’s AM yesterday: 
BILL Shorten: ... what’s happened with the new tariffs that China placed on our iron ore ...
Chris Uhlmann: What tariffs on our iron ore? I am aware of ones on coal but not on iron ore.
Shorten: Well, my concern is that in the last few weeks China has introduced new tariffs in terms of a …
Uhlmann: On coal.
Shorten: Yeah, (in) terms of our minerals industry, you’re right, I should’ve said coal, not iron ore ... 
Don’t rush! ABC RN Breakfast ­yesterday:
SENATOR Penny Wong: A trade agreement with China has been over 10 years in the making ... that shouldn’t be rushed ... 
Presenter Fran Kelly: But you can hardly say this is rushed ... they’ve been doing it for 10 years to be fair.
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Can someone please tell Paul Keating, yes, he’s a clever boy?

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (7:54am)

There is something disturbing about Paul Keating’s craving for approval and his venomous fury at those who won’t admire him. And there’s something boring about his umpteenth tantrum against Daddy:
PAUL Keating has hit back at his prime ministerial predecessor Bob Hawkeover the stewardship of the 1980s Labor government, saying that “no apologia by his mates” can verify Mr Hawke’s efforts to rewrite history… 
He launched a withering ­critique of both Mr Hawke and his wife, the author Blanche d’Alpuget, saying they had “baited” him once too often.
Mr Keating dismissed remarks by former ministers Gareth Evans, Ralph Willis and Kim Beazley in defence of Mr Hawke, calling them “rusted-on Hawke mates"… Mr Keating was replying to The Australian’s report yesterday of the current ABC Australian Story two-part Hawke program in which the three former ALP ministers reject the Keating claim that Mr Hawke was politically immobilised from 1984-89, with the treasurer effectively taking charge of the government… “Even a quick overview of the issues would make clear to the most dispassionate observer that, as treasurer, I was both initiating the policy and superintending its management,” Mr Keating said.
Truly pathetic. Hawke was in every way Keating’s superior as a leader. Keating’s rage against reality is just one measure of the weakness that made him a lesser leader - and man.
UPDATE
Paul Keating demands a lolly:
I was both initiating the policy and superintending its management ... I was central in choosing ...  I undertook single-handedly ...  I was the progenitor of the policy responses ...
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The parties of spend-spend need to cut instead

Andrew Bolt November 11 2014 (5:21am)

Labor, the Greens and Palmer United are helping to turn Labor’s crippling debt legacy into a full-blown crisis:
The Senate and the deteriorating iron ore price have knocked a $51 billion hole in Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first budget, an independent analysis has found.... 
[I]t shows the growth outlook for Australia has slipped, with growth of just 2.1 per cent expected in 2015-16 instead of the 3 per cent forecast in the budget. When the budget was struck in May the iron ore price was $US103 ($119) a tonne. It has since fallen to $US83 taking as much as $10 billion out of tax revenue and helping push wage growth to its lowest level in a decade. 
It will only get worse. David Uren: 
This year’s deficit will be $5bn worse than expected, while the deficit in 2017-18, which Treasury had forecast would have been whittled away to just $2.8bn, is instead on track to reach $24bn, according to analysis by consulting firm Macroeconomics… 
The deficits could last at least until the middle of the next decade, it warns, with estimates that the blowout will start climbing from 2018-19 as the full cost of commitments such as disability ­insurance and lifting defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP start to be felt...The measures blocked in the Senate, including the Medicare co-payments, unemployment benefit restrictions and reform of higher education will add only about $1bn to the deficit this year, but the cost will rise to about $10.8bn by 2017-18… The run of budget deficits between 2008 and 2013 reached a total of $168bn. Macroeconomics expects a further $111bn will be added over the next four years, lifting net government debt to $314bn.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Fighting Stick Figure photo stickfighters_av.gif
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Births[edit]

Deaths[edit]

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During the early days of the Second Battle of Ypres a young Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on 2nd May, 1915 in the gun positions near Ypres. An exploding German artillery shell landed near him. He was serving in the same Canadian artillery unit as a friend of his, the Canadian military doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae.
As the brigade doctor, John McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service for Alexis because the chaplain had been called away somewhere else on duty that evening. It is believed that later that evening, after the burial, John began the draft for his now famous poem “In Flanders Fields”.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row.
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below....
We are Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
We will always remember them.
Lest We Forget
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With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
• For The Fallen was first published in the Times on September 21 1914. Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) wrote it while working at the British Museum, and did not go to the western front until 1916, as a Red Cross orderly. The poem's fourth verse is now used all over the world during services of remembrance, and is inscribed on countless war monuments
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“God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’”Job 37:5-6 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"The eternal God is thy refuge."
Deuteronomy 33:27

The word refuge may be translated "mansion," or "abiding- place," which gives the thought that God is our abode, our home. There is a fulness and sweetness in the metaphor, for dear to our hearts is our home, although it be the humblest cottage, or the scantiest garret; and dearer far is our blessed God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. It is at home that we feel safe: we shut the world out and dwell in quiet security. So when we are with our God we "fear no evil." He is our shelter and retreat, our abiding refuge. At home, we take our rest; it is there we find repose after the fatigue and toil of the day. And so our hearts find rest in God, when, wearied with life's conflict, we turn to him, and our soul dwells at ease. At home, also, we let our hearts loose; we are not afraid of being misunderstood, nor of our words being misconstrued. So when we are with God we can commune freely with him, laying open all our hidden desires; for if the "secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," the secrets of them that fear him ought to be, and must be, with their Lord. Home, too, is the place of our truest and purest happiness: and it is in God that our hearts find their deepest delight. We have joy in him which far surpasses all other joy. It is also for home that we work and labour. The thought of it gives strength to bear the daily burden, and quickens the fingers to perform the task; and in this sense we may also say that God is our home. Love to him strengthens us. We think of him in the person of his dear Son; and a glimpse of the suffering face of the Redeemer constrains us to labour in his cause. We feel that we must work, for we have brethren yet to be saved, and we have our Father's heart to make glad by bringing home his wandering sons; we would fill with holy mirth the sacred family among whom we dwell. Happy are those who have thus the God of Jacob for their refuge!

Evening


"It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master."
Matthew 10:25

No one will dispute this statement, for it would be unseemly for the servant to be exalted above his Master. When our Lord was on earth, what was the treatment he received? Were his claims acknowledged, his instructions followed, his perfections worshipped, by those whom he came to bless? No; "He was despised and rejected of men." Outside the camp was his place: cross-bearing was his occupation. Did the world yield him solace and rest? "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." This inhospitable country afforded him no shelter: it cast him out and crucified him. Such--if you are a follower of Jesus, and maintain a consistent, Christ-like walk and conversation--you must expect to be the lot of that part of your spiritual life which, in its outward development, comes under the observation of men. They will treat it as they treated the Saviour--they will despise it. Dream not that worldlings will admire you, or that the more holy and the more Christ-like you are, the more peaceably people will act towards you. They prized not the polished gem, how should they value the jewel in the rough? "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?" If we were more like Christ, we should be more hated by his enemies. It were a sad dishonour to a child of God to be the world's favourite. It is a very ill omen to hear a wicked world clap its hands and shout "Well done" to the Christian man. He may begin to look to his character, and wonder whether he has not been doing wrong, when the unrighteous give him their approbation. Let us be true to our Master, and have no friendship with a blind and base world which scorns and rejects him. Far be it from us to seek a crown of honour where our Lord found a coronet of thorns.
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Today's reading: Jeremiah 48-49, Hebrews 7 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Jeremiah 48-49


A Message About Moab

1 Concerning Moab:

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says:
“Woe to Nebo, for it will be ruined.
Kiriathaim will be disgraced and captured;
the stronghold will be disgraced and shattered.
2 Moab will be praised no more;
in Heshbon people will plot her downfall:
‘Come, let us put an end to that nation.’
You, the people of Madmen, will also be silenced;
the sword will pursue you.
3 Cries of anguish arise from Horonaim,
cries of great havoc and destruction.
4 Moab will be broken;
her little ones will cry out.
5 They go up the hill to Luhith,
weeping bitterly as they go;
on the road down to Horonaim
anguished cries over the destruction are heard.
6 Flee! Run for your lives;
become like a bush in the desert.
7 Since you trust in your deeds and riches,
you too will be taken captive,
and Chemosh will go into exile,
together with his priests and officials.
8 The destroyer will come against every town,
and not a town will escape.
The valley will be ruined
and the plateau destroyed,
because the LORD has spoken.
9 Put salt on Moab,
for she will be laid waste;
her towns will become desolate,
with no one to live in them....

Today's New Testament reading: Hebrews 7

Melchizedek the Priest
1 This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, 2 and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, the name Melchizedek means “king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.” 3 Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.
4 Just think how great he was: Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder! 5 Now the law requires the descendants of Levi who become priests to collect a tenth from the people—that is, from their fellow Israelites—even though they also are descended from Abraham. 6 This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi, yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. 7 And without doubt the lesser is blessed by the greater. 8In the one case, the tenth is collected by people who die; but in the other case, by him who is declared to be living. 9 One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, 10 because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor....
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Abiathar

[Ăbī'athär] - father of superfluity orexcellent father. Son of Ahimelechand the eleventh high priest in succession from Aaron (1 Sam. 22:20-22; 23:6, 9).

Abiathar escaped and fled to David in the cave of Adullam when Doeg the Edomite slew his father and eighty-five priests. He went back to Jerusalem with the Ark when David fled from Absalom. He was joint high-priest with Zadok and conspired to make Adonijah king. He rebelled against David in his old age, was spared by Solomon for the sake of his first love, but dismissed from office for his treachery at the last.
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