Thursday, November 03, 2016

Thu Nov 3rd Todays News

IPA Review features a Richard Allsop “Golden Age” review of Frank Bongiorno’s “The Eighties: the decade that transformed Australia” It is hard to know if Frank Bongiorno is the son of Paul Bongiorno, the partisan left winger of the ABC program the Insiders, but his presentation of history is as one sided. The book begins in 1983 where Bob Hawke won an election for the ALP. It details every claim to greatness of the ALP government years it examines. It even extends to cover so called gaffs of conservatives, like Joh for Canberra or Fightback (which was early ‘90s). It fails to examine in detail questions of responsibility for good decisions, where parliament passed good choices that bolstered the economy because the conservatives were amenable. A strong contrast to now, where the ALP will not pass legislation in the national interest. One might read with interest of a time when small parties, like the Democrats, called the honest conservatives ‘bastards.’ Or when the Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP) put the future inept ALP Minister Peter Garrett number one on their ticket. NSW was saved from terrible building society collapses because the Liberal Government run by Nick Greiner made good fiscal decisions. Every other state ALP government suffered terrible reversals related to their corruption. But Bongiorno gets lost in the detail and doesn’t notice the thread. One can tell how close Bongiorno is to unions, when he seems to eulogise the destruction of the corrupt BLF. Bongiorno seems to feel that struggling workers benefitted by being subjected to exploitative, murderous corruption. Just like Shorten does today in opposing the ABCC. And so we see the lie that Bongiorno did not notice. Neither Hawke nor Keating were great, and Shorten is as incompetent as they were.

Mainstream media are struggling to digest the ineligibility of Hillary Clinton for office. They know nothing now they did not know a fortnight ago. Only, they haven’t reported it. So they claim confusion and say Trump will be ineligible for office. This confuses people who don’t know that Trump is not being investigated by the FBI, but the Clinton foundation has five ongoing FBI investigations that are so serious that the FBI have admitted they will likely indict. In response CNN interview a female Trump supporter who runs a business and ask her how she feels about sexual allegations. CNN also do an article on people breaking Trump signs, and claim that it is concerning that one person used fire crackers and electricity to protect their Trump signs. Media are protecting themselves by butt covering, but they are still campaigning against Trump, possibly because Hillary can’t and Democrats aren’t.

Meanwhile, one of the all time great major league baseball games closed the 2016 World Series. Chicago Cubs defeated Cleveland in the tenth innings. Cleveland played bravely. Cleveland will hurt for a while, but they won’t have to wait forty more years, as Chicago Cubs have, for that win. Their first since 1908. It seems a year for underdogs. Sharks in ARL, Bulldogs in AFL and .. #Trump4President2016 next Tuesday and finally #Hillary4Jail2016

Australia is poorly positioned to capitalise on a Trump Presidency with both the foreign affairs Minister Julie Bishop and the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull talking out to personalise antipathy to Trump. One understands they prefer Hillary Clinton because they prefer working with corruption. They had insisted Abbott give over $10 million aid to the Clinton Foundation in 2014, and rolled Abbott after he stopped the payments. But neither Bishop nor Turnbull has explained how Australia will be better off with a corrupt Clinton as President, compared to a GOP backed Trump. Trump is not Reagan. Trump is very good at negotiations and knows how to run an executive team. Reagan was more reliant on insiders from GOP. Trump can deliver on promises better than Turnbull can. Turnbull has portrayed himself as being a good business executive. With Trump as President we will see a real one. Trump would never have put himself in the ridiculous position Turnbull has. All Turnbull can do now, constructively, is resign.

Meanwhile Trump’s progressive opponent is loved by the press and demonstrably corrupt. And the Libertarian candidate is trying to find Aleppo. Or a head of state.
Rumour now runs internationally that the apparent Saudi Spy who partners Hillary Clinton kept a life insurance policy of emails left in her ex husband’s computer. And the FBI found it. And so the insurance policy has been cashed in early. And the FBI investigating a witch on Halloween have found incriminating evidence on her familiar’s Weiner.

One person who knows how to profit from central planning is Hillary Clinton. The Chicago Tribune is withdrawing support from her, and suggesting that Democrats replace Hillary. But corrupt news, like the Tribune, knew everything now known about Hillary as they supported her days ago. Maybe they are only backing a tribe, but not a policy? And Maybe they want to find another crook. I note that press, who had accepted Hillary's corruption, are now denouncing her Saudi Spy Handler

Donald Trump's speech at Gettysburg is frightening media. They have supported and protected insider corruption for a long time. Trump will clean up the festering wound, and make America great again. 
=== from 2015 ===
Australia is considering tax reform. Already there are many making demands that are not good for Australia. What is strongly being examined at the moment is a GST of 15%. The promise is that the increased GST, possibly spread to include food and education, could replace inefficient taxes like stamp duties and company income tax. Libertarians oppose an increased tax take, pointing out that Australia has a spending problem, not an income problem. But what the Libertarians wilfully misunderstand is that the current senate is blocking cutting spending. Reform is a way of changing things to improve things. It is possible that there will be a higher tax take. But with an obstructive senate refusing to cut spending, that is what the people have voted for. However, a more efficient tax would increase tax take even if there was a dollar for dollar trade off with inefficient taxes. Stamp duty on conveyancing costs $1.70 for each dollar collected. Company income tax costs $1.50 for each dollar collected. Income tax and GST cost about $1.20 for each dollar collected, while land tax only cost $0.90 for each dollar collected. So by cutting stamp duty and company income tax and increasing GST commensurately, more money would be raised. an extra fifty cents for Stamp Duty and an extra 30 cents for company income tax on average. 

Only, when 10% GST was introduced, the same arguments were mounted. The ALP forced a compromise and the states held onto their inefficient taxes too. It isn't a trade off or reform if the bad taxes are retained. The information presented here is from the government white paper compiled while Abbott was PM, and so is reliable. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
From 2014
We are all going to die!
Coal or death? Choose coal. The choice was delivered by Australian Green's leader Milne. But the choice was made before the alternative of death was given. Coal is cheap, reliable and long lasting. It also produces plant food. It doesn't kill birds like a windmill or solar power station. It is just better for the environment. Luckily China is building a lot of those beasts.

One month before the world ends according to the Rudd Government's CSIRO chief scientist Penny Sackett. She made the rigorous scientific declaration on December 3rd 2009. She had given us five years to avoid it. The modelling is in. The science has settled. Remarkably, the 2 degrees centigrade rise she predicted with such deadly accuracy hasn't arisen. Neither has ice shrinkage, ocean warming or dam crippling droughts. The ABC has suggested we should succumb to such terror, where against terrorists they prescribe quiet stoicism and appeasement. Gaia will not have mercy, but luckily will not have wrath either.

Sunni shoots Shiite in Sydney as a father of many is shot outside a prayer hall which media do not call a mosque. A young daughter is interviewed and she seems to blame anti Muslim sentiment as the camera focuses on her undeveloped chest and not her possibly obscured face. Meanwhile, a 15 yo boy in cadet uniform in UK selling Remembrance Day poppies is approached by a hooded person and burned by a lit aerosol can. The hooded person is described as possibly black or Asian, which is code which may include Pakistani or Afghan.

ISIL kills people with wrong last name. The victims are Sunni but their village chief had resisted ISIL. The victims include women and children, lined up and shot, numbering in the hundreds. Dozens of Australians are supporting ISIL. Many of those Australians were on welfare, some claimed to be unable to work for their disability.
Following the rules
Crazy ALP and Green local councils love legislation and rules for constituents. They make decisions about placing tables next to each other in diners, or the number of chairs patrons are allowed at those tables in those diners. Marrickville is one of the more ridiculous councils, having supported a BDS against Israel and successfully forcing an Israeli company to not employ some 650 Palestinian employees. The council has also approved signs claiming it is Coal Seam Gas free, which it isn't, accepting some 5% energy from CSG. They have rules, but don't follow them either.

ALP backed by pokies in Victoria? Racing identity and former Crown Casino boss Lloyd Williams has claimed James Packer is backing the inept, corrupt, unreformed and sleazy ALP in Victoria. ALP had initiated Crown after they had spent other income sources. But Libs offer fiscal responsibility and seem to offer better prospects for all. Lloyd might not speak for James.

Shorten has failed to account for his union activity to the Royal Commission into union corruption. Shorten had been quoted as having said to turn a blind eye. If he didn't, he should say so. If he did, he should explain why. Them's the rules for leaders .. and everyone else who is functional.

Robert Manne has been declared as Australia's foremost intellectual. But he is extraordinarily fact challenged. Not solely on Global Warming where he falsified a hockey stick graph, but also in the Stolen Generation Myth and so called 'Asylum seekers.' Manne seems to enjoy people dying from bureaucratic ambivalence. But that might be left wing ideology unsupported by facts which left wingers mindlessly embrace. 

Bureau of Meteorology has consistently miscalled weather, favouring warmer. On any day, they are consistently ten degrees out on overnight lows, almost always claiming it will be warmer. But their forecasts are badly wrong, murderously so when Brisbane flooded. Time for research into the fidelity of the bureau to reporting fact.

Julia Gillard questionable, but protected by left wing mainstream media. Would she have become PM if it were known generally she had created a slush found to allow stand over tactics to be employed to misappropriate funds meant for the poorest workers? It is as if she smoked cigars while stealing from children under her care.

ABC's love affair with NK leader extends to the production of a film which made tribute to NK's oppressor. The film maker described being denied choice by a stalinist government as a "detox" and "serene."

Russell Brand is merely parroting what the left wing claim and although fact checking him shows he is wrong, he will believe it and say it anyway. It is as if an opinion is not backed by reality but vehement assertion.
Uncomfortable truths
Questioning the need for a racist constitution. Australia has prospered from a constitution which has allowed basic freedoms, secular authority and the rule of law. It doesn't need to define race. It doesn't need to distinguish between races. Calls to create a constitution which isolates and favours one race over others will not address basic needs of the poorest, but will prevent the poor from prospering.
From 2013
The way wharf side unionists behaved in WW2 was despicable. Protected by leftwing media from questioning, it is too late to do anything about it, except to correct history. Another shameful period in the history of unions. I feel that the success of unions 120 years ago is over stated. Stand over tactics did not make mining safer. The reason for conditions is more political and less union action .. but it is a moot point. They are worse than useless today .. they weaken worker conditions through corruption. In contrast is the diggers work in Afghanistan. The longest engagement in Australian history, one is able to see how administrations affect soldiers. forty died under ALP government, none under Liberal administrations. If the ALP were not going to support them, they should not have kept them there. Regardless, they served with honour. Why would Burnside spit on them?

Clearly the media are not reporting on issues in a way that readers want. The result is falling readership. The media would rather cut their own throats rather than give up preaching to the left. There are too many cats paws in this world.
Historical perspective on this day
Not done
=== 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.
===
Thanks to Warren for this advice on watching Bolt
Warren Catton Get this for your PC or MAC https://www.foxtel.com.au/foxtelplay/how-it-works/pc-mac.html Once you have installed it start it up and press Live TV you don't need a login to watch Sky News!
===
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 Remy Ilona, Petra Borén Supparo, Allan Joe Blo and Betty Nguyen. Born on the same day, across the years, along with
November 3: Culture Day in Japan
Pervez Musharraf
We have fought valiantly and won. We communicate well. Godzilla is elsewhere. The Silent Majority will not protest. We are safe. Let us party.
Deaths
===
Andrew Bolt

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NO PAYNE, NO GAIN

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 03, 2015 (3:13pm)

This morning’s editorial in the Daily Telegraph: 
Today many of Sydney’s once-a-year gamblers will doubtless be attracted to Prince of Penzance, this year’s clear sentimental favourite. 
And the result: 
Princess of the turf Michelle Payne has created racing history by becoming the first woman rider to have won a Melbourne Cup.
Payne guided outsider Prince Of Penzance home for Ballarat trainer Darren Weir at the odds of $101. 
Michelle Payne’s beautiful victory was shared with her brother Steve. This is the feel-good story of the year.
UPDATE. The Paynes are sensational.
UPDATE II. “Everyone else can get stuffed because they think women aren’t strong enough …


“… but we just beat the world.” 
===

MEET THE CLIMATE CHANGE REFUGEE AND TELL HIM HOW MUCH YOU CARE

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 03, 2015 (3:53am)

Labor leader Bill Shorten will this week visit Kiribati as part of his ridiculous Pacific island climate change devastation holiday.
During that visit, I wonder if Shorten will discuss climate change issues with Kiribati’s most prominent claimed victim of climate change. Because that could be slightly problematic. 
Ioane Teitiota was sent back to the tiny Pacific island this afternoon after a last minute appeal to let him and his family stay in New Zealand on humanitarian grounds was denied.
However revelations have been made against Mr Teitiota by a former employer saying he sexually assaulted a female co-worker and violently assaulted other colleagues before being fired from a west Auckland market garden.
Labour’s Phil Twyford, his local MP, says Mr Teitiota had an “exemplary work record”.
However Frank Argent, owner of Barefoot Gardens, says he “has a dark underbelly that most people have never seen”.
He hired Mr Teitioata over four years ago, and was “bitterly disappointed” after an appeal to let him stay in the country in 2013 was denied.
Mr Argent says he made a “throw away” line about being an environmental refugee and “they ran with it”.
He says in October last year a female worker complained about Mr Teitioata, and a month later another female worker alleged he bailed her up in a shed, came onto her and sexually assaulted her.
He was fired and police were informed, but the case did not proceed due to lack of evidence. 
Further co-worker claims were made against the attempted climate change refugee: 
“They filed affadavits stating one of them was threatened to have his throat cut,” Mr Argent says. 
Readers are invited to ask Shorten and his accompanying Labor colleagues Tanya Plibersek and Richard Marles if a meeting with tragic climate change sufferer Teitioata is scheduled – and if not, why not.
===

WE WILL SING OUR OWN SONG

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 03, 2015 (3:06am)

Australians have a fine record when it comes to dealing with bossy foreign types who would meddle in our affairs.
For example, Australians overwhelmingly rejected Labor’s ambitious attempt to outsource our immigration systemto various Ratus, Iskandars and Susilos operating on the Indonesian coasts. We’re unimpressed when Zimbabwean David Pocock demands we change our marriage laws. And we don’t much care for it when prissy New York Timesjournalists condemn our successful border protection policies as “unconscionable” and “inhumane”.
If New Yorkers want their beaches to be covered in dead bodies, they’re more than welcome to put in place the appropriate asylum seeker lures. Over here in Australia we prefer to keep our territorial waters corpse free, thank you very much. We just think they’re nicer that way.
Australians also enjoy having a functioning economy, with lots of jobs and investment. It’s worked pretty well for us over the past 200 or so years, and will probably continue to do so – unless we allow the United Nations to bully us into sabotaging our own major industries.
Later this month the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place in Paris. The aim of this conference, which will be attended by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, is to make everyone pay money to stop the world from becoming too toasty.
Or, as the conference’s official website puts it: “The 2015 Paris Climate Conference will, for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, aim to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.” What will the punishment be for nations that breach this “legally binding and universal agreement”? Maybe something truly brutal, like being forced to endure live speeches from environment minister Greg Hunt.
“We have a very solid policy base,” Hunt said on the weekend, “but Malcolm Turnbull has a very clear, strong, passionate view about climate change, reducing emissions, innovation and the opportunities that are there.” A quick Google search for “Malcolm Turnbull” plus “innovation” turns up nearly half-a-million matches. A genuinely innovative government would find an alternative word.
Turnbull, Hunt and the rest of the government’s big girl’s blouse faction can’t wait for the Paris conference, where hordes of Gustavs, Jumaanes and Astrids will tell them how to treat their fellow Australians. It is exactly the opposite of a democratic process, which presumably is why so many Fairfax and ABC staffers adore it so.
(Continue reading We Will Sing Our Own Song.)
===

PODCAST THAT STOPS A NATION

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 03, 2015 (1:53am)

Enhance your Melbourne Cup Day experience by listening to Joe Hildebrand and me discussing all sorts of stuff we really don’t understand. Includes bonus insults about dead communist hypocrites.
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THE OFFENDED DOWAGER

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 03, 2015 (1:33am)

We now cross live to Clementine Ford’s ongoing battle with terrible male oppressors who just won’t take her seriously for some reason:

UPDATE. Further outrage developments. Click. Must read.
===

THE ONLY POLL THAT MATTERS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 03, 2015 (1:29am)

The nice people who run the Centre for Independent Studies recently invited me to lunch. I’ve been to a few CIS functions over the years, and even spoken at one or two of them, but this lunch came with a catch.
It would be in the company of federal Attorney-General George Brandis.
Now, I used to have some time for Brandis when he was Arts Minister, mostly because he upset arts grant moochers by taking some of their money away. They’re still infuriated, even though Brandis has been moved on and replaced as Arts Minister by Mitch Fifield.
The problem is that Brandis voted for Malcolm Turnbull in the government’s cowardly Labor-imitating leadership shift back in September. It’s difficult to eat anything in the presence of people who ought to be so ashamed that they don’t dare leave their homes. Ideally, Turnbull backers should be living on pizzas, flounder, pancakes or anything else flat enough to slide under a door.
Unable to decide, I threw the question open to my Daily Telegraph blog readers, in the form of a poll: “Should Tim go to lunch with George Brandis? Yes, there’s free food. No, there’s George Brandis.”



Readers quickly made their feelings clear. “Only 12 hours into the poll, and it’s already 70:30 that you’re coming,” emailed a CIS organiser. “We’re going to applaud the binding aspect of the result!” By late Sunday, the numbers were well and truly in. More than 3300 voted yes, while just 1478 voted no.
So I’m off to lunch this Friday. But Brandis and the Turnbull government should not regard this as an endorsement from my readers, who remain hostile to anti-conservative antics and won’t even tolerate any lapses from me, let alone from any jumped-up Queensland law-talking blokes.
(Continue reading The Only Poll That Matters.)
===

PAY UP, LOSERS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 03, 2015 (1:02am)

Deadbeat students owe us billions: 
Student loans will blow out to a staggering $70.4 billion by 2018 – double the amount of just two years ago – and more than one quarter of it is not expected to be repaid.
About 2 million Australians are already in debt to the government for student loans under the HECS-HELP program, including 26 per cent of people aged 18 to 54, for an accumulated total of $50.3 billion.
The starting point for student loan repayments is an annual income north of $54,126, but due to incompetence many dimmer former students take years to reach even this modest salary. Here’s an idea: 
Perhaps one way of speeding up repayments would be to add a time limit on student loans, as well as the existing income trigger introduced when Labor first established the HECS scheme.
It is apparent that Labor did not anticipate the rise in soft humanities degrees that frequently do not deliver high-earning graduates. Therefore these graduates often remain below the income threshold.
A five-year post-graduation time limit for the commencement of loan ¬repayments, regardless of income levels, might encourage students to pursue more career-focused courses. 
Alternatively, we could just auction all of their possessions. (By the way, the inspiration for this Daily Telegraph piece was a comment from a reader at this site. Much thanks to that reader, whose identity I cannot presently locate.)
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PEAK FLANNERY

Tim Blair – Tuesday, November 03, 2015 (12:11am)

Following recent and continuing rainfall, Sydney’s water storage level officially remains above the 90 per cent Flannery Elevation:

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Cow drops mark

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (5:01pm)

Nat Fyfe deserved better support with his first kick after leg surgery:
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First woman to win the Cup

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (4:11pm)


Couldn’t happen to a nicer jockey. And her brother Steve will be stoked. Her mother, she thinks, rides on her shoulder.
UPDATE
Inspiring speech:
===

No joke. No word of a lie. Joe Aston is out of control

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (7:38am)

Vomiting Joe Aston of the Financial Review first tried to imply Tony Abbott was having an affair with Peta Credlin. This astonishing defamation was made to look ridiculous by further information Aston later felt obliged to post.
Yesterday came another Aston car crash:
Followed just hours later by this:
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Wind don’t blow, South Australia don’t glow

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (7:03am)


South Australia’s Premier likes to boast his state has more wind power than any other:
Renewables now account for 39 per cent of our electricity generation which is way ahead of the original target we set of 20 per cent. We now have the highest rate of solar penetration per capita of any country in the world and we have the second highest rate of wind farm penetration per capita than any country in the world.
What he doesn’t add is that this not only gives South Australia  the country’s highest power prices and a dependency on Victoria’s coal-fired power. It also gives it power that can’t be relied upon, as locals found out yesterday:
POWER has been restored to most South Australian homes after a widespread blackout put thousands into darkness, when the state lost electricity supply from Victoria. 
A spokesman for SA Power Networks said the state lost supply from “upstream” when the interconnector shut down, triggering an automatic loss of power — load shedding — in SA, resulting widespread outages… When the Victorian system shut down, 160 megawatts of energy was lost and wind power did not supply energy because it often does not start until 3am.
(Thanks to reader Low Profile.) 
===

Media failing Shorten’s climate test

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (6:32am)

Yesterday I said Labor leader Bill Shorten had set the media a test:
LABOR leader Bill Shorten will test the honesty of journalists this week when he tours Pacific Islands he claims are drowning. 
Will they dare report that most of the islands are in fact growing or stable? Or will they again prove they cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the global warming scare?…
Professor Paul Kench, an Auckland University coastal geomorphologist, along with colleagues in Australia and Fiji, has now studied more than 600 coral reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
His findings: about 40 per cent have grown in size. Another 40 per cent have stayed stable. Just 20 per cent have shrunk… And, if anything, [the IPCC says cyclones] are getting fewer: “Over periods of a century or more, evidence suggests slight decreases in the frequency of tropical cyclones making landfall in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific.”
Let’s review the results so far:

ABC AM:Fail.
Sydney Morning Herald: Fail.
ABC News: Fail.
ABC Radio National Breakfast: Fail.

The Guardian: Fail.
New Matilda: Fail.
But The Australian’s Rowan Callick: Pass:
When in Marshall Islands, the Labor group should talk with the veteran editor of the Marshall ­Islands Journal, Giff Johnson. 
He wrote recently in an article for the Vanuatu-based Pacific ­Institute of Public Policy that “an increasing number of atoll studies are not supporting claims of ­Pacific island leaders that islands are sinking”. A credible study on the ground showed, he said, that “23 of 27 atoll islands across Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia either ­increased in area or remained stable over recent decades”.
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Q gets A

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (6:25am)

On Q&A last night:
Jones: “Paul, can I just interrupt you?” 
Ehrlich: “No, I don’t like to be interrupted, actually.”
Try to get Paul Ehrlich, this notorious doomsayer, to admit error and you’ll be disappointed:
Jones: “Can I just mention one to you. 1971, you said that by the year 2000 the UK would be a small group of impoverished islands inhabited by 70 million hungry people. Was that just wishful thinking?” 
Ehrlich: “They’re not hungry but otherwise it’s accurate...”
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“External factors” destroyed Russian jet

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (6:16am)

If this is indeed an Islamist attack on Russia, now heavily engaged in the Syrian war, the implications are very serious:
Suspicions that foul play or terrorism caused the passenger jet crash in Egypt were growing on Monday as the Russian airline’s owners said the plane could only have been brought down by “external factors”. 
“We rule out a technical fault of the plane or a pilot error,” Alexander Smirnov, deputy general director of Metrojet, told a news conference in Moscow.
The claim, which appears to support the theory that the Airbus was destroyed by terrorists, was immediately rebuffed by Egyptian investigators as “speculation” and came as fresh allegations of mismanagement drew the company’s safety record into question…
An affiliate of the Isil terror group in the Sinai peninsular has claimed responsibility for bringing down the plane, but US officials have dismissed the group’s claim as not credible… Viktor Yung, a deputy director general at the Russian airline Metrojet, said its plane crew did not send a distress call and did not contact Egyptian traffic controllers before the plane crashed into the Sinai.  
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Palestinian stabs 80-year-old Jew

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (6:08am)

The latest wave of Islamist attacks suggest the idea Palestinians cannot live in the same territory as Jews:
A Palestinian stabbed and wounded a 70-year-old man in northern Israel before being shot by officers, police said Monday just hours after another Palestinian knifed several people, including an 80-year-old woman, in a stabbing spree near Tel Aviv, the latest attacks in more than a month of violence. 
The attacks came after Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian who they say tried to stab a soldier in the West Bank.
The media, usually so fast to denounce any perceived Israeli “provocation” is remarkably silent on the role of the Palestinian authority in inciting and legitimising the terrorism:
In the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, Palestinian security forces held a military salute at a funeral ceremony for two Palestinians killed by Israeli fire. One had tried to grab a soldier’s rifle in Jerusalem, and the other had tried to stab a soldier at a West Bank checkpoint, according to the Israeli military. 
The Palestinian Authority has been holding official funeral parades in recent weeks in order to prevent militant groups like Hamas from using such ceremonies to whip up popular support, a senior Palestinian security official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the practice.
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A $13.5 billion investment lost

Andrew Bolt November 03 2015 (5:57am)

Clearly universities have failed to teach many students to pay their own way:
STUDENT loans will blow out to a staggering $70.4 billion by 2018 — double the amount of just two years ago — and ­more than one quarter of it is not ­expected to be repaid. 
About 2 million Australians are already in debt to the government for student loans under the HECS-HELP program, including 26 per cent of people aged 18 to 54, for an accumulated total of $50.3 billion.
But research by UNSW Business School analysts Neil Warren and Richard Highfield has found that amount will balloon at an astronomical rate wreaking havoc on the nation’s budget. As the debt soars the proportion considered to be unrecoverable is forecast to rise from $13.5 billion this financial year to almost $19 billion in 2017/18 ...
The Daily Telegraph suggests some causes - such as the explosion of soft arts degrees that add little to the sum of human knowledge and nothing to Treasury:
...many former students who owe debts for their expensive education are suspected of delaying the lodgement of their tax returns to avoid repayments which are triggered when their annual income goes beyond $54,126… 
As for the lost $20 billion, however, ... Labor did not anticipate the rise in soft humanities degrees that frequently do not deliver high-earning graduates. Therefore these graduates often remain below the income threshold.
(Via Tim Blair.) 
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Not just the handguns are imported

Andrew Bolt November 02 2015 (8:04pm)

The crackdown shouldn’t be just on guns, of course, but perhaps also on the kind of culture that uses them so freely:
POLICE will push for a further gun clampdown in the wake of a series of shootings including six since Friday… 
Acting Commander Peter De Santo said ... “The shootings are not at random and are usually drug related and at the current time we believe they are associated around gang activity, middle eastern organised crime figures and their links into the outlaw motorcycle gangs.”
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COAL EQUALS LIFE: MILNE

Tim Blair – Monday, November 03, 2014 (3:26pm)

Christine Milne endorses coal in the strongest possible terms: 
Australia needs to choose between coal and death, according to Greens Leader Christine Milne ...
“Do you want death or do you want coal?
“That’s what we’re talking about here,” she told reporters in Hobart.
“Tony Abbott wants coal.” 
Given the alternative, who wouldn’t?

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MEN OF NO MOTIVE

Tim Blair – Monday, November 03, 2014 (2:03pm)

Muslim against Muslim in Sydney’s west: 
Witnesses claimed that a number of people had driven past the Islamic centre on Rosedale Avenue in Greenacre just hours before the shooting, chanting in Arabic that “ISIS [terrorist group Islamic State] is coming” and “ISIS will stay”.
The 47-year-old shooting victim, an Iraqi Shiite who is a leader at the centre, was shot in the face and shoulder as he was locking up the centre about 1.15am on Monday …
He was expected to undergo surgery on Monday to remove pellets from his face and shoulder, and is expected to survive, police said. 
According to Shiite community member Jamal Daoud: 
“These people have been conducting a campaign of intimidation for the past few weeks. I talk to many of the people in the community, and they’re very concerned and they’re very scared.” 
In fact, the anti-Shiite campaign – involving firebombings, beatings, extortion and death threats – has been running for years. Naturally, authorities remain mystified: 
Police are unsure what led to the attack.
“At this point in time it does not appear that there is any type of motivation for the shooting,” Inspector Dave Firth said. 
There never is.
===

ONE MONTH REMAINS

Tim Blair – Monday, November 03, 2014 (3:18am)

I don’t mean to frighten anybody, but we’re all about to be destroyed. Our time is almost up.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'ONE MONTH REMAINS'
===

LONG AND SHORT OF IT

Tim Blair – Monday, November 03, 2014 (2:26am)

A roadside conundrum spotted by Kae near Hatton Vale in Queensland:

===

SYDNEY’S CRAZIEST COUNCIL

Tim Blair – Monday, November 03, 2014 (1:45am)

Treasurer Joe Hockey recently revealed his personal council bylaws ordeal. It seems that Hockey and his family wanted to join another family enjoying pizzas outdoors, but not only did bylaws prevent connecting two tables, but the treasurer was also banned from obtaining an eighth chair.
That kind of meddling micromanagement is standard for most Sydney councils, which are basically kindergartens for future state and federal government social engineers. The worst of all our councils might be Marrickville, where a grand tradition of idiocy continues to this day.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'SYDNEY’S CRAZIEST COUNCIL'
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Surely Packer can’t want Labor, and vice versa

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (3:59pm)

Id have assumed James Packer had better judgement than what Lloyd Williams suggests:
RACING identity Lloyd Williams has told Daniel Andrews that James Packer “will kick every goal he can” for the Opposition Leader. 
The former Crown Casino boss, who is still close to Mr Packer, was speaking in Macedon at a photo opportunity with Mr Andrews when he was picked up on a Channel Ten microphone.
With his hand on Mr Andrews’s back Mr Williams told him; “You should probably know I am on the executive of the Packer estate, and James is going to kick every goal he can for you”. The apparent endorsement for the Opposition Leader comes after an eight month stand-off between the Napthine Government and Crown Casino over its tax rates that ended in August.
Still, we shouldn’t forget that Labor brought pokies to Victoria, having typically run out of cash. 
===

Cadet selling poppies set alight. UPDATE: Sydney shooting

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (2:35pm)

In multicultural Britain:
A 15-year-old boy was burned with a lit aerosol can while selling Remembrance Day poppies yesterday evening… 
The teenager, who is an Army Cadet, suffered burns to his face and singed hair during the unprovoked attack at a bus stop near Manchester Art Gallery at 6pm.
The boy, who was wearing his uniform while selling poppies, was approached by a man who lifted an aerosol can and lighter and sprayed him with the lit fumes.The offender, described as black or Asian, 5ft 8in tall and wearing a dark hooded top, then walked away from the bus stop on George Street without saying a word.
“Asian” in Britain refers also to people of Pakistani or Indian background.
UPDATE
Meanwhile in Sydney, our wonderful immigration and refugee programs continue to bring us some of the gifts of Middle Eastern culture:
A man who was shot outside an Islamic prayer centre in Sydney’s west was targeted as he locked up the building following a night observing the holy ritual of Ashura, one of the most important holidays for Shiite Muslims, according to a community member. 
Witnesses claimed that a number of people had driven past the Islamic centre on Rosedale Avenue in Greenacre just hours before the shooting, chanting in Arabic that “ISIS [terrorist group Islamic State] is coming” and “ISIS will stay”.
Islamic State is an extremist organisation made up of Sunni jihadists and is involved in a violent conflict against Shiites and other groups in Iraq.

The 47-year-old shooting victim, an Iraqi Shiite who is a leader at the centre, was shot in the face and shoulder… Jamal Daoud, a prominent member of Sydney’s Shiite community, said a group of “extremists” had been targeting Shiite Muslims trying to enter the centre to observe Ashura, a 10-day ritual to commemorate the death of Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad.
Then again:
Hours earlier, occupants inside a car shouted “ISIS will live forever” and “we’ll kill you” outside the hall, Nine News reports, but detectives are also investigating whether a dispute among those running the centre could be behind the shooting as rival factions have been fighting over the management of the hall.
Note that for all the complaints from Muslim leaders of racism from non-Muslim, the greatest danger they actually face comes from fellow believers. 
===

The Bolt Report yesterday

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (11:35am)

For those who missed out on yesterday’s Bolt Report repeat after the basketball ran over time, here are:
My editorial on Labor’s deadly refusal to face facts on boats.
My interview with Attorney-General on Julia Gillard, the royal commission into union corruption and free speech.
The panel, Janet Albrechtsen and Sean Kelly, on the Abbott Government’s direct action “win” and governing with Clive Palmer.
The panel on Gillard in trouble at the royal commission, the Nova Peris scandal and the refusal of Julie Bishop to identify as a feminist.
Piers Akerman on the Peris emails. Should the media have published?
UPDATE
Sorry about that. Links now fixed. 
===

Why has Bill Shorten still not given the royal commission his answer?

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (10:24am)

When will Bill Shorten answer a request for information from the Royal Commission into trade union corruption?
One scandal the royal commission is investigating is the use of a slush fund by Julia Gillard’s then boyfriend and client, AWU state secretary Bruce Wilson, to rip off $380.000. Eventually the AWU discovered Wilson had been using an association misleadingly called the Australian Workers Union Workers Reform Association for his ripoffs. But rather than go to the police, it paid Wilson a $55,000 redundancy to quietly go away.
Counsel assisting the royal commission, Jeremy Stoljar, on Friday noted:
[AWU official Bob] Kernohan was appalled by what he had discovered on receipt of the court documents. In particular he was appalled by the fact that redundancy payments had been made to Mr Wilson and others. He deposes that he had a conversation with Mr Shorten and others in which he said words to the following effect: 
I told them it was a bloody disgrace that they received redundancy payments whilst they were internally investigated for fraud. 
Mr Kernohan deposed that Mr Shorten (then a junior official in the AWU) told him in essence not to take it any further and that ‘we are all just moving on’.  At the time of writing these submissions evidence had been sought but not yet received from Mr Shorten on this topic.

When will Shorten give his account of that conversation to the royal commission? And on oath? 
===

Is something wrong with the Bureau’s models?

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (9:07am)

The Sydney Morning Herald, July 24:
The worst of the winter is likely to be over, with the outlook pointing to warmer and drier than normal weather over coming months… 
Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist with Weatherzone [using Bureau of Metereology data says"] “It looks like all of winter’s strong cold fronts could be confined to July."…
Meanwhile, conditions in the Pacific remain primed for an El Nino, a weather event that typically leads to warmer and drier conditions across eastern Australia… Models run by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, NOAA and other agencies continue to tip the likelihood of an El Nino forming later this year. 
October 15:
The NSW SES reported unseasonally heavy snowfall of up to 20cm in parts of the Blue Mountains including Lithgow. A warning was issued for people to avoid the area due to snow causing branches to fall on cars and also local roads closures.
October 22:
Weather models are now showing an El Nino is unlikely to develop this year.
Reader Mark M:
When will questions be asked about the continual failure of the BoM’s carbon(sic) forced computer models? The Queensland floods of 2011 stand as another monument to the BoM’s deadly failed predictions. 
===

The questionable Julia Gillard

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (9:07am)

The AWU scandal

 JULIA Gillard would never have become prime minister had we known then what the royal commission into union corruption showed us last week.

But even now, Gillard can count on some in the media to go soft on what most of the Canberra press gallery for so long refused to even cover.
“Trade union royal commission clears Julia Gillard of any crime,’’ announced the ABC.
Well, not quite. Counsel assisting the commission, Jeremy Stoljar, simply asked royal commissioner Dyson Heydon not to recommend Gillard face charges.
Stoljar concludes from the evidence that Gillard “did not commit any crime and was not aware of any criminality” when, as a solicitor, she provided advice about setting up a slush fund for her then boyfriend, Australian Workers’ Union official Bruce Wilson, and his sidekick Ralph Blewitt.
He says she had no idea the two would use that association to bill construction giant Thiess for “training” and “consultants” they never supplied.
More than $380,000 went into the pair’s pockets, and even today some is still missing.
In fact, thanks to a union cover-up, neither Wilson nor Blewitt “have ever been called to account”, says Stoljar in his recommendation, released on Friday.
Worse, the AWU, after detecting the rip-offs, sent Wilson and Blewitt away with handsome redundancies — $55,000 for Wilson and $30,000 for Blewitt — and when one AWU official protested, another, now Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, allegedly told him: “We are all just moving on.”
So does Gillard emerge from this as spotless as she always claimed, the victim of a baseless witch hunt?
No.
(Read full column here.) 
===

The ABC way: using North Korea’s help to make us poorer

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (8:25am)

 The ABC yesterday screened a tribute to one of the world’s most savage dictators:
ABOUT THE FILM
AIM HIGH IN CREATION! is a revolutionary comedy about the cinematic genius of North Korea’s late Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il, with a ground breaking experiment at its heart: a propaganda film, made according to the rules of his 1987 Manifesto The Cinema and Directing.
Determined to stop a new gas mine near her Sydney home, director Anna Broinowski (Forbidden Lie$) goes to North Korea to learn from the masters of propaganda cinema. In a worldwide first, Pyongyang’s top directors, composers and movie stars take her to script rehearsals, Taekwondo stunt fights, group dances, drunken picnics, and a film shoot on a real-life captured US spy ship – to teach her Kim ass="spellchecked_word">Jong ass="spellchecked_word">Il’s techniques.
Back in Sydney, Anna’s fearless cast follow the North Koreans’ instructions to produce a didactic socialist melodrama, full of song and kick-ass fights, in which “heroic workers” rise up to defeat the “evil, gas-fracking miners.”
Through the shared love of cinema, AIM HIGH! forges an astonishing new bond – between North Korea’s hidden filmmakers, and their collaborators in the Free World. Revealing an unexpected truth about the most isolated nation on earth: Filmmakers, no matter where they live – are Family.
Broinowski explains why she made her film, and how being denied choice by a Stalinist government is a “detox” and “serene”:
I was experiencing capitalism despair [in Australia]. Every time I turned on the news I’d see oil tankers washing up on pristine reefs, or a McDonald’s being built in a hospital, the mining giants doing whatever they wanted - and a coal seam gas mine had just been approved 200 metres from my house. It felt like capitalism was on steroids… 
[North Korea] was like a 3½-week capitalism and materialism detox… If you remove the brutality of the regime, which I didn’t see, it was serene and beautiful to be in a country with no internet, no advertising. ‘I not an apologist by any means… ‘I know it’s an evil, repressive place as well, where 200,000 people are political prisoners and it’s brutal. However, I don’t think we’re getting the real story about the rest of North Korea. 
Broinowski did her best to sanitise her film to minimise offence to Dear Leader:
Despite the fact that we removed several things from the film that could potentially get our collaborators “into trouble”, and respected the way we were told to film images of the Dear Leader, I am certain that the commentary about him, and certain moments in the film, remain too (inadvertently) offensive for it to ever be shown to North Koreans.
Yes, some of the insights Broinowski’s film give of North Korea are fresh and intriguing, showing North Koreans are not all programmed automatons. Yet would we accept a sweet and unquestioning documentary on Hitler’s filmmakers?
And doesn’t it seem rather sick for a taxpayer-funded Australian filmmaker to user North Korean help to destroy the kind of wealth they’d desperately want themselves?
(Thanks to reader Kev.) 
===

The Left can’t disown Russell Brand. His madness is theirs

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (8:12am)

 Brendan O’Neill says the Left shouldn’t complain that Russell Brand is destroying its image. Brand is simply the logical creation of its own flight from reality:
All that Brand does is regurgitate to the twenty-first-century left, in super-flowery lingo, its own thoughtless prejudices and feeling of exhaustion with humanity. He’s copped a lot of flak for hinting that 9/11 might have been an inside job - but from Occupy’s handwringing over the Octopus-like banker cliques that control the world to the New Statesman’s claims of a ‘Kosher conspiracy’ of ‘Big Jewry’ that dominates political discourse to Labour MP Tom Watson’s barking ramblings about the Murdoch Empire ‘orchestrat[ing] public life from the shadows’, conspiratorial thinking has become rampant on the modern left. He’s been bashed for his ‘1920s and 1930s’-style rantings about wicked corporations brainwashing the little folk - but from Owen Jones’ recent book about the ‘shadowy and labyrinthe system that controls our lives’ to everything Naomi Klein has ever written about the masses becoming enslaved by consumerism and wealth envy, the notion that secret gangs of financial folk control everything is an article of faith among pretty much everyone who identifies as left today. 
Notably, Brand hasn’t received quite as much of a pounding over his eco-bollocks, his claim that we live in ‘a spherical ecosystem, suspended in, as far as we know, infinite space, upon which there are billions of carbon-based lifeforms, of which we presume ourselves to be the most important, and a limited amount of resources’ - and that’s because this, too, this humanity-defaming idea that we are just ‘lifeforms’ recklessly raiding Mother Nature’s larder and using up all her stuff, is a brainfart that lurks not only in Brand’s head but in the heart and manifesto of everyone who calls himself a progressive these days.
So take a long, hard look at yourselves:
Far from destroying left-wing thought, Brand embodies the misanthropy and naturalism that were once characteristics of Romantics and the right but which now pass for ‘left-wing thought’. You’re a leftist who has been rattled by Russ’s book? Then pull up a chair, plonk it in front of a mirror, and take a good, long look. For it was your own movement’s jettisoning of its principles and positivity and progress that paved the way for the rise of the ugly misanthropy of Brand and all the rest who have turned ‘left’ into a codeword for anti-humanism.
(Thanks to reader John.) 
===

Government closing gap: now 49 to Labor’s 51

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (7:54am)

Bit by bit, the Abbott Government has inched back from the depths:
The first Fairfax Ipsos nationwide poll shows Mr Abbott and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten are now tied as preferred prime minister… 
Overall, the poll of 1401 voters, conducted between Thursday and Saturday, shows the Coalition trails Labor 49 per cent to 51 per cent...
Small sample, of course, but all the momentum is with the Liberals. Labor, meanwhile, is painting itself into a corner - opposing boat policies that work, opposing the budget repair that’s urgent, demanding another carbon tax in the form of emissions trading. 
===

From the enemy we are fighting. And which some Australians are fighting for

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (7:43am)


Dozens of Australians are fighting for the Islamic State. From last week:
Militants from the Islamic State lined up 30 Sunni men in a town west of Baghdad and shot them dead this morning, an Iraqi official and residents said…
It is understood the murdered men were mainly local tribal leaders who had allied with the Iraqi government and were helping to organise anti-ISIS operations in the embattled town.
More news today:
THE Islamic State jihadist group has in recent days executed more than 200 members of an Iraqi tribe that fought against it, officials and a tribal leader say.

Accounts varied as to the exact period in which the Sunni Albu Nimr tribesmen were killed in various areas of Iraq’s Anbar province, but the executions were all said to have been carried out within the last 10 days. 
Police Colonel Shaaban al-Obaidi said there were more than 200 people killed, while Faleh al-Essawi, the deputy head of the Anbar provincial council, put the toll at 258.
The victims, “including women and children, all of them from the Albu Nimr tribe,” were killed “during the past three days,” Essawi said. 
===

What good will a racist constitution do?

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (7:35am)

John Roskam on a great folly - the attempt to make the constitution divide us by race:
Exactly how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders will be recognised in the Constitution is not yet known. Nor what such recognition will achieve.Indigenous recognition is a lot like the carbon tax — whenever its advocates were asked what difference it would make to the world’s temperature, they refused to answer.
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The evidence of global warming is the hot words, not the temperature

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (7:02am)

The BBC, reporting on yesterday’s IPCC, points to the evidence of global warming:
The language in the UN’s climate reports has been steadily ratcheted up over the years...
The temperature, however:
UPDATE
The IPCC claims 15 years of no warming is too short a period to mean anything:
In addition to robust multi-decadal warming, the globally averaged surface temperature exhibits substantial decadal and interannual variability (Figure 1.1). Due to this natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] °C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] °C per decade...
The IPCC should give warming a deadline.  How many years of non-warming can we see before we conclude the warmist theory is broken?
UPDATE
Former warmist scientist Dr Judith Curry questions the IPCC report:
Here is why it is increasingly unlikely that that we will reach the 2C danger limit by 2040: 
- the ongoing surface temperature hiatus, which may continue until the 2030’s or even 2040 if the increasing number of hypotheses about AMO, PDO and natural internal variability are correct.
- the growing number of observation-based climate sensitivity studies that find lower values of transient and equilibrium climate sensitivity ...
- unrealistic scenarios of future coal burning by the IPCC…
- underestimate by 16% of plant CO2 absorption
UPDATE
But readers report an ABC in ecstasy.
Reader Robert:
The first item on ABC breakfast was the IPPC report and the need to stop using fossil fuels, or else. Nothing much about the lack of evidence of any temperature increases for the past 18 years. It’s pure conjecture and politics, nothing much to do with science.
Reader Ubique:
This IPCC report has taken up 90% of the ABC Breakfast Show this morning.  
Reader Lisle:
It is absolute joy over at ABCNews24 Breakfast this morning as Trioli makes sure we all know about this report and its contents. Too much talk, Virginia, to persuade me. 
===

Victorian Liberals way behind

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (6:47am)

Inertia, in-fighting and no clear sense of direction have crippled the Victorian Liberals, despite their careful minding of our money:
Newspoll shows that Labor is now holding a comfortable two-party-­preferred lead of 54 per cent to 46 per cent, and that the Coalition’s primary vote is languishing at less than 40 per cent for the fifth ­survey since Aug­ust last year.
It no longer is enough to simply say you are good economic managers. And so Labor with its big-spending promises, record of waste, global warming enthusiasm and ties to militant unions looks set to take over unless the large number of undecided voters get nervous. 
===

Peter Craven on Robert Manne’s abuse

Andrew Bolt November 03 2014 (5:02am)

Peter Craven on Professor Robert Manne, twice voted by peers as our leader public intellectual:
In practice, [Paul] Kelly’s Triumph and Demise is such an authoritative art­iculation of what happened [under the Rudd and the Gillard government] and the subsequent testimony of the players themselves that it was a bit boggling to see the book dismissed with such inflamed outrage by Robert Manne in October’s The Monthly....
But I have seen Manne’s decline into the most intemperate and fact-challenged polemics that now so distinguishes the far Left.
Craven had a box seat:
I was editor of Quarterly Essay in 2001 when [Manne] wrote the first one, about the Stolen Generations, and I left three years later at the time of his second essay, about asylum-seekers. 
Manne, of course, has famously failed to meet my challenge to name even 10 children stolen as he describes. He has repeatedly failed.
Craven proceeds to fillet Manne all over again.... 
===
Pew’s Dishonest Comparison of Jews and Evangelical Christians on Israel
http://www.israpundit.com/archives/58237
Daniel Greenfield, FPM Pew’s headline, “More white evangelicals than American Jews say God gave Israel to the Jewish people” has spawned any number of stories. It’s easy to see why the comparison is blatantly dishonest. Evangelical Christians are
faulty analysis is behind lots of bad policy. An illusion got Reagan to panic spend on education when statistics showed a fall in standards, Thing was .. every single ethnic subgroup .. and 'other' improved in those categories. The difference in results highlights a fact of math .. averages don't compare across different populations .. what had happened was the number of low performing ethnic subgroups had increased relative to high performers (more blacks and hispanics, fewer Asias and caucasian). Another truth is that people look for what they want to see .. ed
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Pastor Rick Warren
=
When you be who God made you to be, you compete with no one.

(great photo by Dietmar Rogaki)
=
How do I know when I'm a legalist? When I'm harsh on others. 
How do I know when I'm living by grace? I'm gracious to others
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Bob Carroll
 #startreklove
Pakistani Taliban reportedly replace leader killed in US drone strike
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/11/02/pakistani-taliban-reportedly-replace-leader-killed-in-us-drone-strike/
A senior Taliban source has confirmed that a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan killed the head of the Pakistan Taliban Friday.
===
The Average Women Faces in Different Countries
http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/09/the-average-women-faces-in-different-countries.html?m=1
FaceResearch.org, a site run by two psychologists at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, features software that can average together faces from thousands of photos. These images purportedly show the average face of women from 40 different nationalities.
The Average Women Faces in Different Countries
 I gather they were all 18-20. I'd be proud if my daughter looked like any of 'em - ed
===
David Bowles
Ender's Game: better than it had any right to be, but not quite as good as fans would have liked. Given that the much slimmer Hobbit is being made into THREE movies, I'd have liked another 30 minutes of character development and battle room stuff (and a less ADHD editor). The last half hour was really compelling.
I like the writer's short stories "Maps in a mirror" I didn't take to Ender's game for no good reason .. I didn't like the hyper awareness of characters to nuance .. same thing made Dune series dull for me .. but a ripping yarn with excellent character - ed
===
The Five Top Dying Regrets
http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2013/11/the-five-top-dying-regrets.html
If you had only few hours to live, what would be your top regret?
===
Underage Kids Taught How to Brew Beer in School
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/11/02/underage-kids-taught-how-brew-beer-school
A Colorado mom is expressing her outrage after a Colorado biology teacher instructed high school students on how to brew beer.
 Don't confuse teaching and learning. Unless the students raise the hops and build the still .. it is only words - ed
===
Meh, propaganda .. ed

Mandy Mclean they got the colours wrong!

David Daniel Ball The colours are a longstanding thing .. Libertarians approval of drug use is not the solution they claim. Their opposition to zero tolerance is stupid. But I get it they are trying to appeal to hipsters

Mandy Mclean I agree with you on that!

Jason FoNg If this is a US chart, technically, the blue overlap with the left are moderate "left-liberals", not libertarians. Libertarians are a right-wing concept and are not the same as liberals. Left-liberals focus more on civil liberties and individual freedoms relating to the person like privacy, sexual freedom etc while (right) libertarians focus more on the economic: lower taxes, less regulation and proprietary rights. Unlike left-liberals who believe more in the state intervening to protect their freedoms while (right), libertarians believe in zero or minimal government. Ron Paul is a great example of a pure libertarian. I personally stand right in the border between libertarian and right.

Jason FoNg In Australia of course, it gets very confusing with "liberal"meaning conservative.
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===
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9 NIV
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"I am the Lord, I change not."
Malachi 3:6
It is well for us that, amidst all the variableness of life, there is One whom change cannot affect; One whose heart can never alter, and on whose brow mutability can make no furrows. All things else have changed--all things are changing. The sun itself grows dim with age; the world is waxing old; the folding up of the worn-out vesture has commenced; the heavens and earth must soon pass away; they shall perish, they shall wax old as doth a garment; but there is One who only hath immortality, of whose years there is no end, and in whose person there is no change. The delight which the mariner feels, when, after having been tossed about for many a day, he steps again upon the solid shore, is the satisfaction of a Christian when, amidst all the changes of this troublous life, he rests the foot of his faith upon this truth--"I am the Lord, I change not."

The stability which the anchor gives the ship when it has at last obtained a hold-fast, is like that which the Christian's hope affords him when it fixes itself upon this glorious truth. With God "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Whatever his attributes were of old, they are now; his power, his wisdom, his justice, his truth, are alike unchanged. He has ever been the refuge of his people, their stronghold in the day of trouble, and he is their sure Helper still. He is unchanged in his love. He has loved his people with "an everlasting love"; he loves them now as much as ever he did, and when all earthly things shall have melted in the last conflagration, his love will still wear the dew of its youth. Precious is the assurance that he changes not! The wheel of providence revolves, but its axle is eternal love.

"Death and change are busy ever,
Man decays, and ages move;
But his mercy waneth never;
God is wisdom, God is love."

Evening

"Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law."
Psalm 119:53
My soul, feelest thou this holy shuddering at the sins of others? for otherwise thou lackest inward holiness. David's cheeks were wet with rivers of waters because of prevailing unholiness, Jeremiah desired eyes like fountains that he might lament the iniquities of Israel, and Lot was vexed with the conversation of the men of Sodom. Those upon whom the mark was set in Ezekiel's vision, were those who sighed and cried for the abominations of Jerusalem. It cannot but grieve gracious souls to see what pains men take to go to hell. They know the evil of sin experimentally, and they are alarmed to see others flying like moths into its blaze. Sin makes the righteous shudder, because it violates a holy law, which it is to every man's highest interest to keep; it pulls down the pillars of the commonwealth. Sin in others horrifies a believer, because it puts him in mind of the baseness of his own heart: when he sees a transgressor he cries with the saint mentioned by Bernard, "He fell today, and I may fall to-morrow." Sin to a believer is horrible, because it crucified the Saviour; he sees in every iniquity the nails and spear. How can a saved soul behold that cursed kill-Christ sin without abhorrence? Say, my heart, dost thou sensibly join in all this? It is an awful thing to insult God to His face. The good God deserves better treatment, the great God claims it, the just God will have it, or repay His adversary to his face. An awakened heart trembles at the audacity of sin, and stands alarmed at the contemplation of its punishment. How monstrous a thing is rebellion! How direful a doom is prepared for the ungodly! My soul, never laugh at sin's fooleries, lest thou come to smile at sin itself. It is thine enemy, and thy Lord's enemy. View it with detestation, for so only canst thou evidence the possession of holiness, without which no man can see the Lord.
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Today's reading: Jeremiah 27-29, Titus 3 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Jeremiah 27-29


Judah to Serve Nebuchadnezzar

1 Early in the reign of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 This is what the LORD said to me: “Make a yoke out of straps and crossbars and put it on your neck. 3 Then send word to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon through the envoys who have come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. 4Give them a message for their masters and say, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Tell this to your masters: 5 With my great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and its people and the animals that are on it, and I give it to anyone I please. 6 Now I will give all your countries into the hands of my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; I will make even the wild animals subject to him. 7 All nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his land comes; then many nations and great kings will subjugate him.
8 “‘“If, however, any nation or kingdom will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon or bow its neck under his yoke, I will punish that nation with the sword, famine and plague, declares the LORD, until I destroy it by his hand. 9 So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your interpreters of dreams, your mediums or your sorcerers who tell you, ‘You will not serve the king of Babylon.’ 10 They prophesy lies to you that will only serve to remove you far from your lands; I will banish you and you will perish. 11 But if any nation will bow its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let that nation remain in its own land to till it and to live there, declares the LORD....”’”

Today's New Testament reading: Titus 3

Saved in Order to Do Good
1 Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, 2 to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone.
3 At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. 4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.
9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. 10 Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. 11 You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned....
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Naboth
[Nā'bŏth] - prominence. A Jezreelite of the tribe of Issachar, whom Jezebel, wife of Ahab, caused to be put to death to obtain his vineyard adjoining the palace (1 Kings 21; 2 Kings 9:21-26).

For this dastardly act doom was pronounced upon Ahab and his house by Elijah. "The murder of Naboth seems to have deeply impressed the popular mind," comments W. F. Boyd, "and the deaths of Joram and Jezebel near the spot were regarded as Divine retribution on the act."
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