Monday, June 12, 2017

Mon Jun 12th Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. The Queen's Birthday in Australia means honours are bestowed on some who are not worthy of them. An actress who strongly defends AGW theory, Cate Blanchett is a recipient of an award. Also Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas and gay activist who insists Qantas employees wear steel rings for Qantas' stance on gay marriage. Why does an airline have a position on gay marriage? Why does an actress care about spending $US100 trillion to cool the atmosphere by a fraction of degree in a hundred years time? Usually, the only reason why either would do anything is if they were paid for it, or it mattered. If someone truly loves another, they don't require government approval. Throwing away $100 trillion after taking it from the world's poorest people is not going to save the world. But awarding them honours for bullying people devalues the honour. It is wrong to have a republican like Turnbull as PM. Turnbull may not have picked these recipients, but the Finkel report is an example of where, when given choice, Turnbull chooses wrong. 

I am very good and don't deserve the abuse given me. I created a video raising awareness of anti police feeling among western communities. I chose the senseless killing of Nicola Cotton, a Louisiana policewoman who joined post Katrina, to highlight the issue. I did this in order to get an income after having been illegally blacklisted from work in NSW for being a whistleblower. I have not done anything wrong. Local council appointees refused to endorse my work, so I did it for free. Youtube's Adsence refused to allow me to profit from their marketing it. Meanwhile, I am hostage to abysmal political leadership and hopeless journalists. My shopfront has opened on Facebook.




Here is a video I made The General

 Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC (8 September 1886 -- 1 September 1967) was an English poet and author. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I. He later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston Trilogy".

“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
“He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

=== from 2016 ===
A young artist was killed recently, targeted outside a performance centre. Christina Grimmie had been signing marketing paraphernalia when a gunman opened fire on her, killing her, and then suiciding. She was Christian. A personal choice. The gunman left a note outside his door stating what he would do. But it doesn't make sense. And it shouldn't. There will be no justice. And the scars felt by her family and loved ones won't heal quickly. But life goes on. And the question will be asked, why would God allow this? It suggests God is powerless and is enervating to say that God could have prevented it and didn't. Except the God that atheists don't believe in does not exist. God exists, and has authority. And there are terrible, sick tragedies that are part of our world which God did not cause to happen, although they have. God does not cause tragedy, but it is to His glory that tragedy happens. Because we cannot right this wrong, but God will. All of them. In the same way He beat the devil at the cross. I am sorry Christina's life has been stolen. I wanted her to have the joys of family and long life. But I know He will make it right. 

As for her killer, and those who revel in such cruelty, they will lose everything they have. 
=== from 2015 ===
AWU admits that Shorten era deal for workers is very bad. They have rushed to the Fair Work Commission to terminate it. Since 2006, the deal meant AWU were paid $25k a year so that no industrial action followed the company involved denying worker rights up to the value of $2 million a year. The details are what Shorten is struggling to address. Does he remember it? Are there other deals like it? Will he arrange compensation to the workers for it? The ABC is ignoring the issue, at the moment, relative to how they'd pursue it were Mr Abbott to have been responsible for it. 

Race should not matter if there is to be progress. But people can profit from race politics. And the racists are not on the 'side' of conservatism. Maybe it wasn't great, a Black man was voted President of the United States. Maybe it would have been better for a good man to have been elected President. Or a kind or gracious man. But racists vehemently disagree. 

It is high time to recognise that there is no valid reason for terrorism or jihadism. Islam precludes terrorism in scripture, but apostate Islamics call it jihad. The West has not inspired jihad. Jihadis are the largest single killer of Muslims. The UN has endorsed terrorism in crusade against Israel. Islam and the UN have to progress or fall to evolution. 
From 2014
I do not know precisely how it happened, but it was only a few days before her camp was liberated by the Allied forces. It happened sometime in March 1945. Her mother, Margaret, had died, falling from a bunk. There was typhoid killing many. And a few days later, Anne Frank died. Two years earlier, on this day, her thirteenth birthday, she had been given a diary by her dad. She was born in 1929, and saw many terrible things in her fifteen years. My Dutch Jewish family had been located in Amsterdam too. The only survivor of the holocaust in my family had been a member of the resistance. Another lived in a house similar to one in which Anne's family had hidden. But he was alone, and went mad. 

They killed a fifteen year old girl. They killed her family. They tortured her. But her spirit, indomitable, survives. She wasn't the only child to be murdered by the Nazis. Another young girl is referred to in the documentary The World at War. She was ordered to strip naked in a mixed crowd, but her modesty kicked in. She joked with a few guards that she was a virgin. They pulled her aside, beat her then made her to strip. Some old folk shielded her. And they were all gassed that way. Once dead, any gold teeth implants were removed. Hair was harvested for material, and the bodies dumped in a mass grave. 

It wasn't for her religion, Anne was not particularly devout, but might have become so had she been able to make adult choices. The cruelty and callousness was not sanctioned by Christian churches, although infamously they had turned their backs at senior levels. Many fine individuals worked despite great peril to save many. But not enough. They killed a fifteen year old girl. 

The killing was not for a functional purpose. It did not aid a war effort. It was not for law and order. It was an abuse of power. Some, many had admired the abuse of power as being efficient and effective, but they were wrong. It wasn't noble. It wasn't smart. A high price was paid at defeat. But the high price was not proportionate. There was an unsettled debt. They killed a fifteen year old girl. 

A relative of mine, sick and elderly was taken by the Nazis some time in '42, I suppose, and afterward, her family was sent demands by the Nazis for medication .. but it is thought they had already killed her. They killed a sickly old woman, and a fifteen year old girl. 

Today, laws are passed in Europe preventing Jewish people from practicing their faith. Some states try to prevent male circumcision which is a health factor which improves the health of adult males. But governments deny it because they don't know how to ban the barbaric practice of female circumcision otherwise. Some governments ban Kosher foods. The religious observance of Jews is not a hindrance to modern government. There is no practical need to limit it. Nations with Jewish peoples seem to prosper. Can Jews complain to anyone about the anti semitic laws in Europe? Some say, when Jews complain, they are being disproportionate. How is one proportionate in addressing the torture and murder of a fifteen year old girl, and her family? 
Historical perspective on this day
In 1381, Peasants' Revolt: In England, rebels arrived at Blackheath. 1418, an insurrection delivered Paris to the Burgundians. 1429, Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc led the Frencharmy in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk in the second day of the Battle of Jargeau. 1550, the city of Helsinki, Finland(belonging to Sweden at the time) was founded by King Gustav I of Sweden. 1560, Battle of Okehazama: Oda Nobunaga defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto. 1653, First Anglo-Dutch War: The Battle of the Gabbard began and lasted until June 13. 1665, England installed a municipal government in New York City (the former Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam). 1758, French and Indian War: Siege of Louisbourg: James Wolfe's attack at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia commenced. 1775, American Revolution: British general Thomas Gagedeclared martial law in Massachusetts. The British offered a pardon to all colonists who laid down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged. 1776, the Virginia Declaration of Rights was adopted. 1798, Irish Rebellion of 1798: Battle of Ballynahinch.

In 1860, the State Bank of the Russian Empire was established. 1864, American Civil War, Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor: Ulysses S. Grant gave the Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee a victory when he pulled his Union troops from their positions at Cold Harbor, Virginia and moved south. 1889, eighty were killed in the Armagh rail disaster near Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland. 1898, Philippine Declaration of Independence: General Emilio Aguinaldo declared the Philippines' independence from Spain. 1899, New Richmond Tornado: The eighth deadliest tornado in U.S. history killed 117 people and injured around 200.

In 1922, at Windsor Castle, King George V received the colours of the six Irish regiments that were to be disbanded: The Royal Irish Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, the South Irish Horse, the Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment, the Royal Munster Fusiliers and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. 1932, a ceasefire was negotiated between Bolivia and Paraguay, ending the Chaco War 1939, Shooting began on Paramount Pictures' Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in three-strip Technicolor. Also 1939, the Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, New York. 1940, World War II: Thirteen thousand British and French troops surrendered to Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux. 1942, Anne Frankreceived a diary for her thirteenth birthday. 1943, Holocaust: Germany liquidated the Jewish Ghetto in Brzeżany, Poland (now Berezhany, Ukraine). Around 1,180 Jews were led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot. 1944, American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secured the town of Carentan.

In 1954, Pope Pius XII canonised Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at the time of his death, as a saint, making him the youngest unmartyred saint in the Roman Catholic Church. 1963, Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith. 1964, anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa. 1967, the United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declared all U.S. state laws which prohibited interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. Also 1967, Venera program: Venera 4 was launched (it would become the first space probe to enter another planet's atmosphere and successfully return data). 1972, the fast food restaurant chain Popeyes was founded in Arabi, Louisiana. 1978, David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer in New York City, was sentenced to 365 years in prison for six killings. 1979, Bryan Allen won the second Kremer prize for a man powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross. 1987, the Central African Republic's former Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa was sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule. 1987, Cold War: At the Brandenburg Gate U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachevto tear down the Berlin Wall.

In 1990, Russia Day: The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty. 1991, Russians elected Boris Yeltsin as the president of the republic. Also 1991, 1991 Kokkadichcholai massacre: The Sri Lankan Army massacred 152 minority Tamilcivilians in the village Kokkadichcholai near the eastern province town of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. 1993, an election took place in Nigeria which was later annulled by the military Government led by Ibrahim Babangida. 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson was later acquitted of the killings, but was held liable in wrongful death civil suit. Also 1994, the Boeing 777, the world's largest twinjet, made its first flight. 1996, in Philadelphia, a panel of federal judges blocked a law against indecency on the internet. 1997, Queen Elizabeth IIreopened the Globe Theatre in London. 1999, Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian began when a NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFor) entered the province of Kosovoin Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 2009, a disputed presidential election in Iran led to wide ranging protests in Iran and around the world.
=== 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 Aprille Love. On your day in 1776, The Fifth Virginia Convention adopted a declaration of rights, a hugely influential document that proclaimed the inherent rights of men. In 1954, Pope Pius XII canonised Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old when he died, to make him the youngest non-martyr saint in the Roman Catholic Church. And in 1963, African American civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith. All of which suggests to me that you, though young, are mighty. And stand for the oppressed. Thank you.
Deaths
June 12: Dia dos Namorados in Brazil; Independence Day in the Philippines; Loving Day in the United States
U.S. President Ronald Reagan speaking in front of the Brandenburg Gate at the Berlin Wall
The peasants are revolting. Tornado are like Vegas: What goes into a tornado, stays in a tornado. Diary is growth. The wall was torn down. Don't mail bombs. Let's party. 
===
Tim Blair



DIVERSITY IN DEATH

Following London’s Islamic terror attack in March, journalist George Eaton took comfort in the “magnificent diversity” of the killer’s victims.
12 Jun  74
===
Andrew Bolt



===

The man who brought the CFMEU to its knees

Miranda Devine – Saturday, June 11, 2016 (11:06pm)


In a way, this double dissolution election has come about because of the courage of Mike Kane, the American-born CEO of Australian concrete company Boral, who stood up to the standover merchants of the CFMEU.

 Continue reading 'The man who brought the CFMEU to its knees'
===

MUSIC FOR ONE, PAID BY ALL

Tim Blair – Sunday, June 12, 2016 (2:43pm)

“The music that interests me is not the sort of music that the majority of citizens care to listen to or enjoy,” declares Jon Rose. Nevertheless, the majority of citizens end up paying for it. Do hit that link and celebrate Australia’s rich cultural atonal scrapings.
===

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

Tim Blair – Sunday, June 12, 2016 (2:38pm)

Joseph Wakim, Christian founder of the Australian Arabic Council, in 2015: 
We are so hasty to roll out the loaded labels, such as “terrorist” and “gunman”, even when referring to a 15-year-old boy. 
Who, in that case, happened to be both a terrorist and a gunman. It now emerges that Wakim is quite the expert on teenage boys: 
On Boxing Day, the day after he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old boy in the child’s own bed, Joseph Wakim sent him an email.
“On Christmas Day I watched another miracle,” Wakim wrote.
“There is so much I would like to share with you; [you are a] caterpillar emerging from the cocoon and shining as a glorious butterfly.”
The court was told the boy and his family had been left devastated at their betrayal by Wakim, 53, who has been a multicultural community leader, media contributor and public figure for more than 20 years.
In 1995, Wakim was made a member of the Order of Australia for his work on addressing racism.
But on Friday, the County Court heard disturbing details about Wakim’s treatment of a vulnerable 13-year-old boy, and Judge Amanda Chambers accepted his guilty plea for the sexual penetration of a child younger than 16.
He faces a maximum jail term of 10 years. 
Wakim has resigned as a Justice of the Peace, handed back an Order of Australia medal, quit his advisory role with NSW police and been sacked from his job at a logistics company.
===

YOU LIE, YOU DIE

Tim Blair – Sunday, June 12, 2016 (2:26pm)

The bankrupt Gawker slur empire receives a friendly note from Col Allan. Via an impressed Iowahawk.
===

The Liberals are not serious with their quack cure - or secret plans for cuts

Andrew Bolt June 12 2016 (11:19am)

The Liberals just aren’t serious about cutting this mad spending if these keep subsidising quack cures:
From Turnbull’s doorstep yesterday:
JOURNALIST:… 
One thing that Labor did do [on Friday] is announce that they ... would halt the private health insurance rebate for natural therapies. Why should taxpayers subsidise things like aromatherapy and pilates?
PRIME MINISTER: Well look we have a Budget. We have a clear economic plan, it is all set out in the Budget and we are not going to be making any changes to that now.
Pathetic.
Turnbull is privately assuring his team they will make spending cuts after the election, and they must avoid ruling out changes as Tony Abbott did to his cost.
But this means the Liberals are not asking for a mandate for changes, either, which will make them seem sneaky after the election - and will give a hostile Senate good reason to savage them.
UPDATE
Dennis Shanahan:
Encouraged by the lower vote quota needed to win a Senate seat this election and by record dis­affection with the major parties, smaller parties hope to see an increase on the seven independents elected to the Senate in 2013. 
The conservative and outspoken Liberal-National MP for the Queensland seat of Dawson, George Christensen, said the Coal­ition was losing support to groups such as the Australian Liberty Alliance and One Nation.
He said Australia had entered “a danger zone on political correctness” that was feeding radical Right groups… On the progressive side, declar­ations of “war” against the Catholic Church over same-sex marriage, aims to stifle freedoms of religion and speech, and radical climate-change and immigration policies are reflecting European trends and threatening the ALP…Of the existing independents, Senator Xenophon is sure to be ­returned with possibly two or three running mates, Senator Lambie is likely to be returned in Queensland and David Leyonhjelm (Liberal Democrats) and Bob Day (Family First) are chances in NSW and South Australia.
This would help form a Senate likely to smash a Turnbull Government for its deceit.
True, Turnbull will count a win as a win, and power will be his ultimate reward. But I wonder how much he will enjoy the next three years, and how quickly his party will lose patience with him.
Adam Gartrell:
Once [Turnbull] wins the election – still the most likely result of this eye-glazing, never-ending campaign – things will change. The real Malcolm will emerge from his conservative chrysalis like a beautiful socially progressive butterfly and lead us into a bright, shining future. 
This seems to be the hope – or even the assumption – among many left and centre [?] voters who still want to believe in Turnbull. That once he’s won his own mandate at the ballot box, his conservative colleagues will calm down and fall in line; that he’ll finally have the power and authority to lead them, rather than be led by them…
Don’t be so sure. It’s time to consider the very real possibility that this is as good as a Malcolm Turnbull prime ministership gets: cautious, indecisive, uninspiring and unprincipled. Hostage to the right and haunted by Tony Abbott’s ghost…
The best he can really hope for is that he limits his losses to a handful of seats. Most governments go backwards in their second terms ... so it would be hard to hold him responsible for a natural correction of four or five seats… But if the polls are correct he’s on track to lose more seats than that. He may scrape back in on a knife-edge. He may even lose his majority and be forced into some sort of deal with the crossbench. This sort of result would not give him the authority he needs to take the party – or the country – in a new direction.
The conservatives would be emboldened, rather than quieted. Abbott’s supporters would claim their guy could have done better. They’ll point to 2013 and say actually, he already did. It wouldn’t take long for Turnbull’s leadership to come under pressure. That’s not to say he’d face a challenge in the near future – the party will not return to Abbott and the other contenders are more long-term propositions – but leaders without internal authority must always watch their back… In this scenario, Turnbull would be stuck in survival mode. His top priorities would be holding on to his job and keeping his party together. That’s not a recipe for a bold, innovative government – it’s a recipe for inertia. 
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Green loose with dole truth

Andrew Bolt June 12 2016 (11:15am)

Typical Green - on the taxpayer teat and telling an untruth about it:

Liberal Senator James McGrath was accompanying Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull on a walk through the Nambour Show when a woman dressed in Greens garb began questioning the PM about withdrawn funding for the local hospital. 
In a statement echoing Paul Keating’s “go and get a job” line, Mr McGrath said to the woman: “who pays your dole?”
“I’m not on the dole mate,” the woman responded. “What sort of ridiculous question is that? How do you know where I’m from, how rude are you."…
Following the confrontation at the Nambour show in Queensland, Greens activist Frances Law told News Corp she was in fact receiving dole payment. “The fact is I am on a Centrelink payment because I have a hip injury so I can’t work, but that’s not relevant,” the 49-year-old said.
(Thanks to reader RJ of Winsto.) 
===

The real story of battler Turnbull’s hard-luck childhood

Andrew Bolt June 12 2016 (11:00am)

Malcolm Turnbull last Sunday released a video portraying himself as a child of a broken home, raised by a battler dad.
But biographer Paddy Manning says the truth doesn’t quite fit this victim narrative:
The ­exercise was well calculated, but a couple of lines, about Bruce Turnbull in particular, were noticeably selective. 
“We didn’t have much money. He was a hotel broker and for most of that time he was battling like a lot of people are — a lot of single parents are, certainly. He did well after a while. In the latter part of his life he kicked a few goals after a lot of effort …”
Turnbull the politician has consistently downplayed his father’s success as a small businessman, and the substantial inheritance he received when Bruce died in a plane crash near Gloucester in 1982, age 56..
Bruce truly was self-made. He married Coral [Lansbury] a year after Malcolm was born in 1954 and for the most part the couple lived in a flat on New South Head Road, Vaucluse, in Sydney’s salubrious eastern suburbs, which land title records show Bruce co-owned through a private company…
Bruce’s hotel business really hit its straps and by 1970, when Malcolm was in Year 10, he had bought a luxurious three-bedroom apartment in Point Piper — a stone’s throw from the waterfront mansion Malcolm Turnbull lives in now. The apartment had smashing water views and cost Bruce $36,000. Today it is worth millions…
Bruce ...  almost doubled his money on a slice of the historic Hermitage ­Estate in Vaucluse, which he sold within 18 months to a company owned by Kerry Packer…
A glowing 1988 magazine profile estimated Turnbull inherited about $2 million when his father died, which would be worth almost $7m in today’s dollars. To inherit such a sum at the age of 28 is a life-changing event in anyone’s language. Turnbull went on to make a motza, but people who knew both father and son well point out, “he inherited a motza, too"…
Certainly Turnbull carried some resentment at his father. A flash of insight comes from an unpublished screenplay about the 1986 Spycatcher trial, by Turnbull’s old friend the late Bob Ellis and Stephen Ramsay. The script was written with the creative collaboration of Malcolm. It is fascinating to read a section where Malcolm, talking to his wife during a low point in the trial, throws down his whisky glass in despair, smashing it, and tells Lucy: 
Malcolm: I wish dad was alive. Lucy: (alarmed by this) You hated him. 
Malcolm: I know. (Getting up, punching the door) But I didn’t want him dead. Not so soon.
... Could Turnbull have done it all without his inheritance? Given his abilities, connections and prodigious work ethic, almost certainly yes. But did he? No.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Turnbull to put the Greens last

Andrew Bolt June 12 2016 (10:30am)

Good - because politics in the end must be about the contest of ideas, and a sense of which are too reckless or immoral to give oxygen:
PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull will today pledge to preference the Greens last or behind Labor in every House of Representatives seat across Australia despite fears it could bolster Bill Shorten’s chances of forming a minority ­government.
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Shorten promises yet more borrowed billions - but finally backs off that fake Gillard promise

Andrew Bolt June 12 2016 (10:10am)

A kind of admission that the $80 billion was never affordable - but, then again, nor is Shorten’s latest $5 billion spend, either:
The Labor Party this morning says it will restore up to $5 billion in health funding, cut from previous budgets, during the next four years if re-elected to government. 
The Abbott Government cut $80 billion from health and education funding that goes to the States shortly after the last election.
Does Labor have any idea how this looks - this almost daily promising of yet more promised billions? Reckless is too mild a word. 
===

Labor losing

Andrew Bolt June 12 2016 (10:05am)

To repeat, Labor is just not gaining in the marginal seats it needs to win:

The Coalition is set to retain the Brisbane seat of Bonner comfortably, in a sign Labor is failing to make inroads in the key Queensland marginals it needs to win to be in with a chance on July 2. 
While the seat has changed hands at every election since it was created in 2004, new ReachTel polling commissioned by Fairfax Media shows the Liberal National Party’s Ross Vasta on track to win easily…
The poll shows Mr Vasta leading Labor’s Laura Fraser Hardy by 56 per cent to 44 per cent on a two-party preferred basis, which would be an improvement of his 54/46 result at the 2013. 
In other marginal seats the same story:
How on earth did Labor managed to choose such a poor candidate in Cowan, by the way? I suspect we will hear more about this apologist once the parties pass the deadline for nominating - or replacing - candidates.
But a note of caution: this spread of seats is not truly representative of where Labor most expected to do well - NSW, Queensland and Tasmania.
UPDATE
I don’t have much faith in extrapolating like this from the overall poll numbers - which suggests, with a loss of seats in Tasmania and possible one on South Australia, that Labor could form a minority government:
Reachtel polls in the battleground states of NSW and Queensland predicted big swings to Labor that could ­deliver a swag of seats to the ALP… The new poll suggests Labor’s support is 50:50 in NSW — a result that would still deliver up to 11 seats to Labor — and 51:49 in Queensland, a result that would also deliver up to six seats. Labor needs 21 seats to form government in its own right.
UPDATE
As I’ve said for a couple of weeks, the Liberals will almost certainly win - but without a mandate for change or a Senate they control.
Peta Credlin:

MORE than halfway through this interminable election campaign, it’s obvious that many Labor voters don’t like Bill Shorten and many Liberal and National voters are still not sold on Malcolm Turnbull...;

The problem for our country when an election becomes a choice between big party leaders perceived to be “bad versus worse” is that voters look elsewhere… The most confident prediction anyone can make so far, with 25 per cent of voters opting for neither the Coalition nor Labor, is that the new Senate will be even more populist than the last…

Neither side has a credible tax reform plan, even though lower, simpler, fairer taxes are essential for our long-term prosperity… The Coalition accepts that taxes are too high but is paying for a company tax cut in 10 years’ time with a superannuation tax increase now… Both sides accept that the deficit has to be dealt with but, petrified by the sabotage of the 2014 budget, neither is prepared to take anything away from anyone — except from self-funded retirees whom the Coalition thinks it can’t lose and Labor thinks it can’t win.
No wonder Turnbull is running from scrutiny:
In the five weeks of this campaign so far, Turnbull has given just nine electronic media interviews. In the five weeks of the 2013 campaign, apart from the daily press conferences that leaders can’t avoid, Tony Abbott gave over 70 radio interviews and 27 TV interviews (that’s right, 97 to Turnbull’s nine)
Peta Credlin will be one of my guests on The Bolt Report on Sky News Live tomorrow at 7pm. UPDATE
More evidence that the Senate will be all for more spending and taxes and against spending cuts:
Another single-seat poll published on Friday evening conducted for the Seven Network in the regional South Australian Liberal jewel of Grey put the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) candidate easily ahead of the sitting member Rowan Ramsey. 
And that increases the chances of a hung parliament after July 2 in which the Coalition falls short of the 76-seat minimum needed and a clutch of independents and Xenophon-aligned lower house MPs would decide who becomes prime minister.
The surprisingly strong NXT vote in Grey and Mayo suggests the new group’s statewide support could be even stronger than predicted and perhaps enough to see the high profile senator re-elected along with as many as three of his running mates giving it significant power in both houses
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

BALI BOYCOTT BUSTED

Tim Blair – Friday, June 12, 2015 (3:14pm)

Remember the Boycott Bali movement? It was all the rage just a few weeks ago: 
A campaign to boycott Bali and Indonesia, the most popular overseas holiday destination for Australians, has  exploded on social media following the executions for drugs offences of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. 
And here’s the result: 
In the clearest sign yet that the Boycott Bali social media campaign is a major fail, new travel booking data has revealed a big increase in numbers heading to the Indonesian island since the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. 
===

STEREOTYPE REINFORCED

Tim Blair – Friday, June 12, 2015 (2:51pm)

A stout defence of political correctness from achingly earnest Clementine Ford: 
To be politically correct means to not discriminate against or further oppress those same people who are already marginalised and trodden on by the whims of capitalism, patriarchy and heteronormativity. 
Er, OK. Clementine’s stand was provoked by Jerry Seinfeld’s recent comments on the PC student crowd, with whom Ford still identifies: 
You see, Seinfeld is a straight, white, able-bodied, cisgendered man with a massive fortune and access to every political and media platform the world has to offer. So he understands political correctness and oppression in a way that weird niche people like chicks and coloureds and homos just don’t. He knows what he’s talking about. He has the objectivity to be able to tell when something’s really offensive, because he’s not all wrapped up in silly hurt feelings or sensitivities. 
As reader Dub notes: “What would a Jew know about discrimination?” The other Clementine’s view is more Seinfeld-supportive: “We talk a lot about the blokiness of the comedy scene, and how hostile TV comedy is to women both behind the camera and in front of it, which makes Elaine’s sustained presence on Seinfeld all the more remarkable (and is yet another reason to love its creators, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld).” And now back to Ford, whose response to jokes is dependent on skin colour: 
When comedians supported by the structures of white supremacy make ‘daring’ jokes about racism, they’re almost always reinforcing the invisible hierarchy which keeps them in power. When black people make those same jokes, it’s far more likely to be as a commentary on racism while also confronting white people with the realities of structural inequality and white supremacy. 
Way to demolish that stereotype about humourless feminists, Clementine.
UPDATE. Clementine’s sister in struggledom, Millie Tant, continues the fight against oppression.
===

FLIGHT OR FRIGHT

Tim Blair – Friday, June 12, 2015 (2:01pm)

Roger Franklin examines recent windfarm reporting: 
The next time you read some puffery on behalf of the wind-industry’s rent seekers, wonder why it is a crime to shoot a wedgetail but not worth mentioning when they are killed by wind turbines. 
Do read on. Meanwhile, in South Australia: 
SA spent $250m on a wind farm that employs ... 3 people. 
===

MORE OF YOUR TAXES FOR JONATHAN

Tim Blair – Friday, June 12, 2015 (3:20am)

Wealthy leftist Jonathan Green, who enjoys tormenting animals until they are killed, is the new editor of tax-supported leftist Meanjin magazine. He will remain as a tax-funded presenter on the ABC.
UPDATE. Green’s wife, Sally Heath, is Meanjin‘s executive publisher.
UPDATE II. “Get a good job?” asks Jonathan. “No, marry well.”
===

THEY DON’T LIKE BEING TOUCHED

Tim Blair – Friday, June 12, 2015 (9:20pm)

Today is International Hug a Climate Scientist Day. Sadly, Australia’s Asperger’s-addled climate science community has rejected this gesture of normal human affection, instead announcing a brutal campaign of industrial chaos: 
Hundreds of scientists from CSIRO and other government agencies will begin walking off the job next Thursday …
CSIRO is one of 16 public sector organisations and departments locked in a dispute over pay and conditions under the Abbott government’s public-sector bargaining policy, which prohibits wage increases unless they are traded for conditions or productivity increases.
Scientists and researchers from the Bureau of Meteorology, the Department of Environment, the Australian Antarctic Division, Geoscience Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics will also down tools. 
Which, theoretically at least, should place them at even greater risk of being hugged. Except I don’t really think our sissy climate scientists will go through with it. Everybody knows that climate scientists have been too frightened to emerge from their fortified panic rooms since the Great Death Threat Alarm of 2011 – which eventually turned out to have been caused by a misheard conversation about Canberra’s marsupial population.
===

AWU junks Shorten-era dodgy deal as bad for workers. UPDATE: but ABC can’t see a story

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (6:31pm)

The AWU now admits the Cleanevent deal signed under Bill Shorten’s watch is not good for workers:
The Australian Workers Union ... rushed to the Fair Work Commission yesterday to terminate the agreement with cleaning company Cleanevent after it fell under the spotlight of the royal commission investigating union corruption. 
AWU officials admitted before the commission that the agreement remained alongside an “untoward” side deal under which Cleanevent paid the union $25,000 a year to ensure there would not be any industrial action.
The Fair Work Commission heard yesterday that the union now conceded workers did not gain any benefit from the 2006 agreement remaining in place, and it would be in employees’ best interests for it to be scrapped as soon as possible....
The union applied to terminate the 2006 agreement last week, after the royal commission heard Cleanevent had paid it up to $25,000 per year in a deal that traded off the penalty rates of cleaners to save the company $2 million.
AWU senior national legal ­officer Stephen Crawford told the FWC yesterday the only purpose the 2006 agreement was serving was to deny employees access to improved weekend and public holiday penalty rates.
“It’s obviously quite clear that it would be to the benefit of all employees for the agreement to be terminated,” he said… The Australian has asked Mr Shorten’s office to confirm whether he was responsible for the 2006 agreement, but did not receive a direct response.  
UPDATE
But the ABC seems bored to tears with any story involving dodgy union deals or Labor figures selling out workers:
To judge by the little AM and PM have put to air over the past 48 hours of sensational revelations, union corruption is small beer, certainly nowhere near so important as Treasurer Joe Hockey’s bluntly accurate advice that homes are expensive and those who wish to buy one had best hold steady jobs… 
[T]he ongoing hearings of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption ... has lately been making a number of Labor leaders more than a little uncomfortable… In Victoria, Government Whip Cesar Melhem has been forced to relinquish his post, while on the national stage former AWU chieftain Bill Shorten has been, if not lost for words, certainly running a deficit in candour.
So the national broadcaster will be all over these revelations of workers stiffed by union bosses, of shady deals and shakedowns, right? ... Don’t be silly! ...
Yesterday (June 10), AM‘s news list devoted three slots to stories about Hockey and house prices, the topic consuming more than half the 45-minute broadcast.
And of Shorten and the TURC hearings? Not a peep.
Today (June 11) the focus on housing and Hockey continued, with two more extended items. And once again, TURC coverage didn’t get a look-in.
As for PM, it did a little better, but not by much. A full day and a half after Melhem’s anticipated resignation was tendered and accepted, the news show finally reported that he was in a bit of strife. As to Shorten, Melham’s ally and the man who passed him the baton to serve as AWU leader, there was this and only this: 
BILL SHORTEN: In my time working as a union official, I always put the interests of my members first every time, every time. I have no time for any workplace corruption, whoever is guilty or found to be doing it full stop.
And that was it. Bill Shorten is, by Bill Shorten’s accounting, an honest man. Having ticked that box, PM returned to pursuing some of its pet passions, which yesterday included the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef and the Liberal government of Tasmania’s plans to destroy forests in the name of tourism, jobs and vile commerce, each item running longer than the brief and day-old report of the TURC revelations. 
UPDATE
The ABC continues to ignore or play down this important story. Reader Trevor monitors Radio National’s The World Today new list from noon today:
12.00 payment to asylum seekers (critical Neil Mitchell interview played PM under fire)
12.14 terrorism laws (critical Neil Mitchell interview played PM under fire)
12.18 US to build more bases in Iraq
12.25 laws regarding copyright
12.29 orange bellied parrot (I’m not kidding and I wonder how many have been knocked off by wind turbines)
12.31 war memorabilia heist in SA
12.35 Rupert Murdoch to step down for sons (yawn, and of course Stephen Mayne is interviewed)
12.40 Greek debt
12.45 Chinese official jailed
12.48 French proscecuters investigate liability re German Wings flight
12.51 Starvation diet (scientists contradict previous dogma)
12.55 Treasure ship exhibition in SA (doesn’t look like old Bill is gunna get a mention)
UPDATE
The ABC may be bored, but the royal commission isn’t:
Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten will testify before the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption after being asked to do so late Thursday.
(Thanks to reader brett t r.) 
===

Family says victim of “racism” isn’t actually of the “race” she claims

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (6:23pm)

Er, far be it from me to say anything:
 Controversy is swirling around one of the Spokane region’s most prominent civil rights activists, with family members saying the local leader of the NAACP has falsely portrayed herself as black for years.
Rachel Dolezal is president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, chair of the city’s Office of Police Ombudsman Commission, and an adjunct professor at Eastern Washington University.
The Spokesman-Review reported Thursday that questions have arisen about her background and her numerous complaints to police of harassment. The story was first reported by the Coeur d’Alene Press.
Dolezal’s mother, Ruthanne, says the family’s ancestry is Czech, Swedish and German, with a touch of Native American heritage. Dolezal has identified herself in application materials as white, black and Native American.
It’s the kind of story you can more safely report in the United States, where freedom of speech is better protected.
The video is fascinating. Watch the end, where after a long and sympathetic interview about how racists are terrorising this “mother of blacks sons” she is asked to identify a picture of her father. A silence, a stutter and a walkout soon follow.
UPDATE
Ouch:
An NAACP leader and prominent civil rights activist in Washington state has been pretending to be black for years, her parents told local media Thursday. 
Rachel Dolezal, who heads Spokane’s NAACP chapter and teaches Africana studies at Eastern Washington University, refused to directly answers any questions about her alleged racial ruse after it was reported....
The question of her race “is not as easy as it seems,” Dolezal told the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
“We’re all from the African continent,” she added.
Dolezal’s parents, who are both white, provided a birth certificate and childhood pictures of their daughter to the Coeur d’Alene Press to back up their claims she has been grossly misrepresenting herself… 
Her parents also alleged a much wider web of warped lies Dolezal spun about her background. A black man who Dolezal has publicly claimed to be her son is in fact her adopted brother, they said — a fact Dolezal confirmed to the paper.
Dolezal also lied about growing up in a teepee, hunting for her own food with bows and arrows, being abused by a stepfather and once living in South Africa, her parents said… Dolezal is an adjunct professor at Eastern Washington University’s Africana Education program. Her bio on the school’s site says she is a widely popular speaker and visual artist whose “efforts were met with opposition by North Idaho white supremacy groups, the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo Nazis and the Aryan Nations, and at least eight documented hate crimes targeted Doležal and her children during her residency in North Idaho.”
(Thanks to readers Trevor and MD. No comments.)  
===

Why go on Sky if you know so little?

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (6:06pm)

Wow. People can say such fact-free and improbable slurs without feeling the slightest shame or need to research? From Gerard Henderson’s fine Media Watch Dog, to which I’ve added the bolding to indicate what is untrue:
While on the topic of PR types who contribute to what passes for discussion on Sky News, consider the case of Andrea Clarke. This is what she had to say about asylum seekers, the Australian Navy and all that on Hinch Live last Sunday. Let’s go to the transcript: 
Andrea Clarke: Well, I think the propaganda that the [Abbott] government has been banging on about, and how these boatloads of terrorists are coming over. It’s just complete, it’s complete rubbish. And we’ve allowed boats to smash up against reefs and watch people drown. 
Derryn Hinch: We didn’t, we didn’t allow the boats, who said we allowed the boats, the government didn’t say “Hey, try and come to that risky area there”. 
Andrea Clarke: Well they certainly didn’t make any effort to rescue them. 
Derryn Hinch: No you had people risking their lives to try and save those people on that boat, it was a terrible situation. The locals there were risking their own lives trying to get lifejackets to those drowning people. 
Martine Hart: I don’t think anyone would think that the Australian Navy would condone the drownings or the death of – 
Andrea Clarke: No but I think that they all knew they could have acted sooner before they got close to shore.
So there you have it. According to Hinch Live “expert” Andrea Clarke, the Abbott government has “allowed the asylum seeker boats to smash up against reefs” and been prepared to “watch people drown”. She also asserted that the Abbott government “made no effort to rescue” drowning asylum seekers. And Ms Clarke accused the Australian Navy of not acting earlier to prevent drownings at sea. All without evidence, of course. And Ms Clarke forgot to mention that all the drownings which have occurred in recent years took place when the Labor/Greens government was in office. 
===

Why must doctors preach on global warming?

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (5:44pm)

Why must a doctors’ union form an official view on whether the global warming scare is really, really real?
What on earth it its expertise in climate science, and why must its members have a collective view?
And can Brian Owler rule out standing for Labor preselection?
There has been no real warming of the atmosphere 17 years now. Shouldn’t Owler be asking instead why the predictions he touts should be believed when the models have been so wrong for so long?
And shouldn’t he actually assure patients here that a warmer world is probably a healthier world?
(Thanks to reader JC.) 
===

On The Bolt Report on Sunday, June 14

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (5:30pm)

On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm.
Editorial: Did Bill Shorten sell out his union members?
My guest: Christopher Pyne, Education Minister and acting Employment Minister.
The panel: former Treasurer Peter Costello and former NSW Labor Treasurer Michael Costa. Did Kevin Rudd save us from recession?  Should people smugglers be bribed to turn around? Is the economy finally kicking into life? And how much trouble is Bill Shorten in?
NewsWatch: Piers Akerman,  Daily Telegraph columnist, on the Hockey scandal and more.

The videos of the shows appear here.
===

Why don’t the cleaners march on Shorten’s office instead?

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (12:50pm)

The cleaners’ union announces a protest:
Cleaners all over the world celebrate International Justice for Cleaners Day on 15 June 2015… 
But major employer groups, like the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, want penalty rates abolished.... We will ... march to the Australian Chamber of Commerce’s Melbourne headquarters in East Melbourne and let employers know that we will not stand for this attack.
Shouldn’t the union end its march at Bill Shorten’s office instead?:
The 2004 Cleanevent enterprise agreement is signed by Shorten. It is a document that benefits the employer and disadvantages some workers. 
The agreement allows for a cheap way for the employer to work [cleaning] staff around the clock, for up to 12 hours at a time, and up to 60 hours a week, without award penalties or loadings.
Piers Akerman explains:
As the trade union royal commission has heard, the Australian Workers Union’s Victorian branch traded workers’ benefits worth about $6 million in wages and penalty rates which should have flowed to some its lowest-paid members in exchange for ­employer contributions worth $225,000… 
Counsel assisting the commission Jeremy Stoljar has ­detailed the 2010 agreement between the giant cleaning contractor Cleanevent under which it provided lists of names of cleaners and paid union fees to the AWU, without their knowledge and ­despite some of them already paying union dues.
The cleaners were then paid about a third of what they would have received under a more modern award…
Cleanevent was in no doubt about the advantage of the sweetheart deal with the union bosses, with its then general manager of operations, writing in a June 25, 2012, email that the benefit to the company ‘‘by not having the EBA and employing labour through the modern award is circa $2 million (per annum)’’…
However, the secret 2010 deal revealed by the commission merely extended the 2006 agreement, with some adjustments, made when Opposition leader Bill Shorten was Victorian and national secretary of the AWU and it was Clause 39 of that original agreement which removed all protected award conditions, including penalty rates. 
(Thanks to reader Jason.) 
===

We are not “alienating” jihadists. They are rejecting us

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (9:08am)

Why did the Abbott Government bring out Abdul-Rehman Malik? Why did the ABC give him an easy ride? If this is the moderate voice, repeatedly turning the criticism on the West, what hope of integrating the radicals?
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: My two guests tonight were both invited by the Australian Government to speak at the Sydney summit on countering violent extremism.  Abdul-Rehman Malik is a London-based journalist and educator. He’s programs manager for Radical Middle Way, a group trying to encourage young Muslims to embrace social inclusion and reject violence… Now, Abdul-Rehman first to you, the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop today said the first question she’s always asked on this topic is what motivates young Australians to leave our safer and tolerant society as she put it to join a violent and unforgiving organisation thousands of miles away?… 
ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: ... For some it’s exercising a sense of adventure. For others it’s a sense of returning back to an imagined homeland or an imagined utopia which they can’t find here.  But for many, it’s alienation from the societies that they live in; it’s economic, social and cultural marginalisation…
Well I think first we have to question whether this is a cult or not.  I think to call it a death cult, as the Australian Prime Minister does, is a complete misnomer and actually feeds in to IS propaganda.... The fact is that IS- Daesh absolutely a brutal force but it’s not an irrational force.  It has a political agenda. It has an agenda which emerges from an existing political context which is absolutely chaotic, linked right back to the invasion of Iraq, to the sectarian division, to political divisions that are- that have been in Syria and Iraq and in the Levant for decades, maybe even longer… You know you talk about the barbarity of the beheadings and the brutality of the images that they’re shown. They will come back and you and say look at Abu Ghraib, look at Guantanamo, look at drone attacks that have destroyed families and destroyed villages.  Look at the invasion of Iraq that killed anywhere between half a million to a million innocent people… You’re talking about morals and ethics to kids who think there’s no morals and ethics in the world to begin with.  Now, that as much our problem as is as it is their problem. 
This is too much like the victimology on which the radicals feed. The West’s invasion of Iraq did not kill anywhee near that number of “innocent people”. The dead were in fact mostly the victims of jihadists and Sunni extremists. Nor is the slaughter of Shiites by Sunnis “linked right back to the invasion of Iraq”. It has been going on for centuries, and some of the worst occurred under Saddam Hussein. Nor is “marginalisation” the main driver of Islamist extremism in the West, when the recruits include university students, doctors and the children of doctors. “Marginalisation” is in many cases actually “rejectionism” - of, not by, the West.
Rejectionism is the problem, and its origins are in Islam and in the cultures from which so many jihadists or the families come. Why are we importing speakers who are only too keen to blame the West? 
===

Help the hospice

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (8:35am)

A great charity which I donate to, and hope you might, too:
A CHARITY supporting Victoria’s sickest children will have a permanent home after the Federal Government gave $4 million to the Very Special Kids Hospice.

The hospice, in Malvern, has been rented by the charity for more than 20 years, but the government grant will allow the charity to buy the building, providing certainty for the charity, its volunteers and the 900 families they support each year. 
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the Very Special Kids Hospice offered 24-hour nursing care for children with life-threatening conditions, and a family services clinic.
Services provided free of charge include counselling, specialist care, sibling support and bereavement support… Mr Abbott said 70 per cent of Very Special Kids’ operating budget was raised through fundraising by volunteers, community supporters and ­donors.
===

Cold, not heat, is the big killer. But warmist scientists have a “resistance” to this truth

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (8:29am)

Associate Professor Adrian Barnett makes an admission:
Most people are acutely aware of the toll the heat can take on human life, particularly since the extreme heat of Black Saturday in 2009 and the European heatwave of 2003. So it may come as a surprise that more Australians die from the cold than the heat. 
A new study published in The Lancet shows 6.5% of deaths in this country are attributed to cold weather, compared with 0.5% from hot weather. Most deaths will be from cardiovascular and respiratory disease, as it’s the heart and lungs that struggle when we are outside our comfort zone.
But read carefully what he adds. Note his admission that scientists are reluctant to admit truths that may lead you to question the global warming scare:
I expect some climate change deniers will leap on this result and suggest we shouldn’t worry about extreme heat since the cold is a bigger killer. But this argument doesn’t hold. 
On the other hand, it seems very likely that a warmer world will reduce the number of deaths due to cold. I’ve sensed some resistance to this prediction among some researchers, perhaps because they are reluctant to admit any potential benefit of climate change because of the ammunition it gives to the deniers.
What other information are you being denied by researchers with this “resistance” to truths that undermine their warming faith?
(Thanks to reader John C.) 
===

Troy Grant should fight for reason, not follow the green rabble

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (8:22am)

You can neither fight superstition or give in to it. But your reaction determines whether you really are a leader or a windsock:
DEPUTY Premier and Nationals leader Troy Grant has split the Baird government by calling for coal-seam gas mining to be banned in the state’s north, which would damage the NSW economy and cost taxpayers up to $140 million. 
The technology Grant now wants banned?
An inquiry by NSW Chief Scientist Mary O’Kane failed to identify a single incident of contamination by fracking in the 2.5 million wells drilled around the world.
Add this to the mad, quasi-religious scares over nuclear power, gm crops and nuclear waste facilities that have cost this country billions of dollars. 
===

In the end, the ABC’s The Killing Season still spins the Labor line

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (8:10am)

The Killing Season does indeed outline the enmity between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. How could it ignore the bleeding obvious?
Yet here again is the ABC presenting Labor in the best possible light, making it seem - incredibly - a wise guardian of our economy, saving us from recession with Kevin Rudd’s massive spending spree on handouts, overpriced school halls, free insulation and more.
Terry Barnes:
Through her choice of voices, grabs and narrative, [reporter Sarah] Ferguson concludes that while almost every other developed economy were headless chooks, Rudd and Henry ... saved Australia from economic catastrophe… 
The proof of the Dynamic Duo’s brilliance? The simple criterion offered by Ferguson, and supported by Rudd and Henry, is that Australia’s economy kept growing… No dissenting economic or partisan voices were presented....
[It is] hard to accept the Rudd-Henry GFC thesis at face value… Rudd, Gillard and Swan inherited from Howard and Costello zero net government debt, and had the unheard-of luxury of a budget surplus of $12 billion… And the robust underlying health of our financial sector was underpinned by policy and prudential reforms undertaken by Rudd and Henry’s predecessors - Howard,..
In other words, it may be an inconvenient truth but much of the fireproofing of the Australian economy had already been done before Rudd sat in the prime ministerial chair.
The most disturbing comment in The Killing Season’s first episode was Henry’s conclusion that no one will ever know whether Rudd’s cash splash was right enough, too much or too little. If so, what was all that frantic, chaotic and crude stimulus, with its huge cost in financial and political capital, let alone the lives lost in the rush to shovel taxpayers’ money out the door, really for? How much of a difference did it really make? If Henry himself can’t even answer those questions, what are the rest of us supposed to think now, when the political and fiscal damage cannot be undone?

===

Contribute to the overheating of the warmist campaigner. Buy a copy, too

Andrew Bolt June 12 2015 (8:02am)


Pretty cool. A book I helped to write is now the top-selling book on environmental science on the Amazon Kindle list. Good reviews, too.  Just the news to drive warmists nuts.  
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WARM HUGS

Tim Blair – Thursday, June 12, 2014 (5:20pm)

Let’s hug ‘em and pet ‘em and squeeze ‘em:


Be careful, everybody. Physical contact may be interpreted as an act of violence. 
===

MINDLESS SLOGAN URGED

Tim Blair – Thursday, June 12, 2014 (4:12pm)

The ABC’s Jonathan Green offers advice to the US president ahead of his meeting with Tony Abbott: 
Barack, you might like to try this as an opening gambit: “Tony, there are no jobs on a dead planet.” It might help break the ice, it might not. It’s entirely possible that our PM might just blink uncomprehendingly at first mention, but as with any decent slogan, repetition is the key, so keep nagging away, again and again until you think the thing is so worn with use that it might fall apart at the softest touch. Then say it again. 
Your taxes paid for this.
===

SURFBOARD ONE

Tim Blair – Thursday, June 12, 2014 (3:14am)

Whatever your opinion might be of Tony Abbott or Barack Obama, there is no doubt that this is a killer surfboard:


Shown with the board – presented by Abbott to President Obama this week and inspired by the design on Air Force One – are Greg Bennett and Tom Wentworth from Manly’s Bennett Surfboards. Great work.
UPDATE. The Australian‘s surfing editor Fred Pawle predicts: 
Obama will nervously accept the board, not sure of the most stylish way to tuck it under his arm, and crack a joke about rising sea levels one day making it possible to surf out the front of the White House.
But Abbott’s point will have been made. Having established that he’s the Bra Boy, Mick Fanning and surfing tycoon in this situation, they can now get down to business. 
===

THE HOWLING

Tim Blair – Thursday, June 12, 2014 (3:00am)

In his illustration for this week’s Miranda Devine column, John Tiedemann included a personal detail:


“The screaming kids in the Defender silhouette,” emails John. “That’s me.”
===

PLEASE END SOON

Tim Blair – Thursday, June 12, 2014 (2:34am)

For those keeping track of Margo’s moods:
Children are being crushed, people! Be alert for squished kids at intersections and other areas where loss of traction may present motoring hazards.
No. Margo must continue forever. 
===

HE SHOULD BE THE AMBASSADOR TO THE US

Tim Blair – Thursday, June 12, 2014 (1:54am)

Sir Les Patterson reviews cultural and diplomatic issues:

Further from Sir Les, and a delightful song from Dame Edna. 
===

What dead planet is this man on?

Andrew Bolt June 12 2014 (5:20pm)

Media

Jonathan Green proves why he’s a better ABC presenter than he’d ever be an American president - or, actually, why he shouldn’t be either. 
===

Bruce Wilson gives evidence

Andrew Bolt June 12 2014 (11:23am)

The AWU scandal

Michael Smith is live-blogging on Bruce Wilson’s evidence to the royal commission into union corruption. Wilson has admitted he was paid by Theiss for services not actually delivered.
Watch Wilson’s evidence live  here.
From Smith’s account so far:
Wilson states Ms Gillard filled in more forms at a meeting in Perth for the purpose of incorporating the association.  Wilson is questioned about the certification that the association has more than 5 members.  he sees that the certification is present on the form.  Wilson admits that the association did not have more than 5 members.  he knew that the certificate was false - he didn’t think in terms of it being a false certification, just that he didn’t have 5 members. 
Wilson is being hammered about the falsehoods in the application.
Wilson is questioned about being in a room with Ms Gillard when the false application was made.
He said yes he was.... you accept that no training work was done in january to march.  yes.  you accept that the invoice was false.  that was the agreement with Thiess that we would invoice them from the beginning of the contract to the end.
UPDATE
Smith now liveblogging the next session of the royal commission, with Bruce Wilson shown a document he wasn’t aware of that seems to contradict some important parts of his evidence so far.
UPDATE
Ouch:
BRUCE Wilson, former boyfriend of ex-PM Julia Gillard, has been confronted with a denial from beyond the grave by the man he says was central to a purported workplace safety scheme that has been described as a corrupt union slush fund.

Mr Wilson told the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption today that the late Glen Ivory had been appointed as training officer on a Western Australia building site on behalf of the Workplace Reform Association (WRA) — an organisation he set up with the assistance of his then-girlfriend and union lawyer Ms Gillard. 
However, Mr Wilson was presented with a statement, made by Mr Ivory before his death, in which the one-time president of the WA branch of the Australian Workers’ Union said no training officer was ever appointed and he was never aware of around $2000 a week billed to construction firm Thiess to pay for the role. Mr Ivory died in 2004 but in a statement given to West Australian police in 1997, said the union had never authorised establishing the WRA or opening bank accounts in its name. 
UPDATE
Michael Smith liveblogs the session after lunch.
===

What royal commission? What union corruption? What claims against Gillard?

Andrew Bolt June 12 2014 (9:50am)

Media, The AWU scandal

I thought the ABC’s astonishing reluctance to cover the allegations against Julia Gillard at yesterday’s royal commission into union corruption could not be matched.

ABC TV’s Queensland and South Australian main news bulletins at 7pm did not cover any of yesterday’s news from the commission. The flagship World Today program also ignored the commission. So did  7.30.
But today an even more startling example of don’t-mention-the-war: today’s edition of The Age, fanatically of the Left, does not have a single word about the royal commission in all its 48 pages.
No, wait: there is one exception: a page three advertisement placed by the commission itself to appeal for witnesses to give yet more evidence that The Age will deliberately bury.
In case you assume that this refusal to report just reflects an absence of any news, here is just some of what the royal commission was yesterday told - but which The Age refused to print:
JULIA Gillard was handed “a large amount of cash” to pay for renovations on her Melbourne home by her then boyfriend, union official Bruce Wilson, a builder who did the work told the royal commission yesterday.

Athol James said during evidence to the royal commission into union corruption that the ­future prime minister told him during renovations on her house in 1993 that payments were coming from Mr Wilson. 
He also saw the Australian Workers Union official give Ms Gillard “wads of notes” on two ­occasions to cover cheque payments she made to him, he said.
The evidence from Mr James — during the commission’s investigation into a union slush fund set up by Mr Wilson with legal assistance from Ms Gillard that amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars — is potentially very damaging to the former Labor prime minister.
It directly contradicts her claims over the years that she paid for the renovations herself.

Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten was also dragged into the slush fund scandal yesterday when former AWU official and whistleblower Bob Kernohan claimed Mr Shorten was part of an attempted cover-up when he was an up-and-coming official with the AWU in Melbourne in 1996…
“Bill Shorten looked at me, and he said, ‘Look Bob, a lot of people are going to get hurt if this is pursued. No one wants to go any further with this. You know, Bruce Wilson and the others have gone’.
“I said, ‘Gone? Gone with a payout. With their record, they should be bloody well being investigated and locked up for this sort of conduct’.
“And Bill — this is what shocked me more than anything — Bill said, ‘Well, Bob, think of your ­future, you’re going into parliament shortly’. And by all reasonable chances I would have entered parliament.”..
The Labor leader, who rose to be the AWU’s national and Victorian secretary before entering parliament in 2007, denied through a spokesman in February the claim by Mr Kernohan that he told Mr Kernohan to “move on” from the slush fund issue in 1996… Wayne Hem, a former AWU official, told the commission yesterday that he paid $5000 into Ms Gillard’s bank account on the orders of Mr Wilson in late 1995… Ms Gillard has said she had no recollection of this deposit.
UPDATE
Hedley Thomas:
These two witnesses yesterday were unhelpful for Gillard’s position that she had never benefited from Wilson’s slush fund. Thousands of dollars in cash from union figures paying off tradesmen at her house could cause the royal commission to see her role in a different light. For natural justice, and to be true to the inquiry’s terms of reference, the former PM will have to be called to respond to these alle­g­ations and others.
That would pose a dilemma for The Age. How could it refuse to report even the former Prime Minister in the dock? 
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Memo to ABC: Obama is in no position to lecture Abbott on global warming

Andrew Bolt June 12 2014 (9:27am)

Global warming - propaganda, Media

The ABC is campaigning for Tony Abbott to make global warming the true focus of his US trip to promote business and trade, and is salivating at the prospect of him being lectured by Barack Obama.
It’s so obsessive.
Lateline:
EMMA ALBERICI: One area where the two leaders could have some disagreement is over the issue of climate change. How prominent is that likely to be in their discussions? 
MICHAEL VINCENT: It will be a - I would suspect, a significant element of their discussions. 
AM:
JAMES GLENDAY: The PM is now starting the pointy end of his trip. He’s in the capital for a series of top level talks. The centrepiece will be a meeting with Barack Obama tomorrow… But even friends have differences. Senior democrat Henry Waxman’s labelled the PM a “lagger”, not a leader, on climate change. 
7.30:
SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: This time tomorrow, Tony Abbott will be preparing for his Oval Office meeting with President Obama and the gulf between the two leaders on climate change has never been wider… All eyes will be watching to see how the two men resolve the difference… 
SABRA LANE: The most sensitive issue that Mr Abbott will face when he gets to Washington is the issue of climate change, with the Abbott and Obama administrations opposed in how to respond to it. Mr Abbott meets the President tomorrow with his desired carbon tax repeal within sight… That comes as President Obama bypasses the US Congress to impose strict regulations on power stations to cut their CO2 output by 30 per cent by 2030… The US is keen for climate change to be on the official G20 agenda in Brisbane in November, but the host, Tony Abbott, wants other priorities addressed, like growth and infrastructure. 
7:30 again:
SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: Democrat Congressman Henry Waxman has been one of the biggest players in US climate policy for decades....  How important is climate change policy now to President Obama? 
HENRY WAXMAN: This is the most important issue for him, for his legacy, and quite frankly, it’s the most important issue of our time....
SARAH FERGUSON: A number of senior Australian ministers have said they don’t want climate change on the agenda at the G20, that it will get in the way. What’s your response to that?…
SARAH FERGUSON: Does that mean now that the Australian Government is effectively in opposition to the US Government on climate change?…
SARAH FERGUSON: So how damaging is it to have Tony Abbott and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on a unity ticket on this issue?… SARAH FERGUSON: Given how important you say this policy is to President Obama, what sort of reception do you except Tony Abbott to get in Washington? 
AM again:
CHRIS UHLMANN: Finally, should climate change be on the G20 agenda? 
JOE HOCKEY: No, the G20 is an economic forum. CHRIS UHLMANN: That’s a massive economic issue, isn’t it? 
PM:
JAMES GLENDAY:… The PM faces an all together tougher task from tomorrow night when he flies out to the United States. There, the tricky issue of action of climate change is likely to be on the agenda.
But Niki Savva says the ABC’s green God has oily feet:
BARACK Obama is in no position to lecture anybody, including Tony Abbott, for not doing enough to tackle climate change…

Six years ago, on June 3, 2008, when he won the Democrat nomination for the presidency, Obama promised people would look back and see “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. 
Three years after that, on September 21, 2011, he revealed it was a tad harder than he expected to stop the waters rising or even part them a fraction: “We’ve got enough challenges. It is technically difficult to figure out how we are going to deal with climate change — not impossible, but difficult.”
Now, with time running out, not for the planet but for himself, Obama finally announced something dramatic, by directing that existing American power plants should reduce emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels [by 2030] ... Apart from placing the major burden for delivery on the states, there is still a risk it will be blocked by congress…
So suggestions that US-Australia relations are threatened by Abbott’s approach, or that Australia will be humiliated if climate change is not placed prominently on the G20 agenda are so much gaseous emissions…
Abbott at least is trying to keep his promise to repeal the carbon tax. Despite action pledges during two campaigns, Obama has previously made clear there will be no carbon tax under a government he leads.
On November 12, 2012, a journalist asked Obama if the political will existed in Washington to legislate “some kind of a tax on carbon”.
The short answer was no, but this is what Obama actually said: “….that if the message is somehow we’re going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don’t think anybody is going to go for that. I won’t go for that …. we’re still trying to debate whether we can just make sure that middle-class families don’t get a tax hike.” Abbott couldn’t have put it better himself.
UPDATE
Greg Sheridan, as usual, punctures the hype with some reality:
IN foreign policy terms, Tony Abbott is having an extremely successful trip… The Prime Minister presided over pretty much the full repair of relations with Indonesia at the start of his trip.
In Europe, he honoured the Australians who died in France in World War I and ... had good meetings with Euro­pean leaders.
In Canada, Abbott pioneered an altogether new level of intim­acy with Ottawa.
In the US, he is doing two somewhat unusual things. One, he has taken a substantial business delegation with him. And two, he is making a serious pitch for US investment… The most important aspect of the relationship is the security alli­ance, and that will get a lot of atten­tion when Abbott meets US President Barack Obama… However, you would know very little of this from Fairfax (The Australian Financial Review excepted) or the ABC. Melbourne’s The Age, in particular, perhaps now Australia’s weakest and feeb­lest major newspaper, has run a series of front-page stories saying that Australia’s relationship with the US is in jeopardy because Abbott’s view of climate change is different from Obama’s. There is no factual basis to this assertion. 
Sheridan points out another ABC fraud:
This week has seen another colossal episode in ABC and Fairfax climate propaganda, devoid of facts. Here are a few facts. 
According to tables developed by Australia’s Environment Department, the US, even with Obama’s latest announcements, will by 2020 have reduced its 1990-level greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent. Australia will have reduced its emissions by 4 per cent over the same period.
Given Australia’s high rate of population and economic growth, and the structure of our economy, that is basically a dead heat…
Half the ABC’s commentators this week have been talking as though China is committed to a national emissions trading scheme and is phasing out coal. In fact, the seven city- or province- based trading schemes in China give out almost all their carbon permits for free. Yes, for free. One day, in 50 years time or so, these schemes may mean something. Right now they mean nothing.
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Obama pulled out, Islamists moved in - and now Iraq may fall

Andrew Bolt June 12 2014 (8:00am)

One of the reasons given for the US invasion of Iraq was that it couldn’t be allowed to develop chemical and biological weapons which would one day fall into the hands of Islamist terrorists.
But the next worst has now happened:
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (Isis) has become the richest terror group ever after looting 500 billion Iraqi dinars - the equivalent of $429m (£256m) - from Mosul’s central bank, according to the regional governor. 
Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi confirmed Kurdish televison reports that Isis militants had stolen millions from numerous banks across Mosul. A large quantity of gold bullion is also believed to have been stolen.
Something is seriously wrong with Iraqi security forces:
Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. 
UPDATE
Frida Ghitis suggests Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama’s former secretary of state, will distance herself from Obama’s foreign policy disasters:
On Syria, Clinton was one of the early advocates of arming moderates fighting President Bashar al-Assad. Obama chose to largely stay out, while declaring that al-Assad must go. 
Now, in what should be a profound embarrassment for the administration, Obama’s man in Damascus has turned on the President.
Former Ambassador Robert Ford said he resigned because “I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend American policy.” Terrorist groups are running free. “We warned this would happen, and it has,” Ford said. “The State Department thought we needed to give much more help” to the opposition. That is what Clinton has recommended.
Another area of disagreement was Afghanistan. Clinton supported Obama’s 2009 surge, but she opposed his decision to announce an early date for the troops’ withdrawal… Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote that she “argued forcefully” against the Afghanistan withdrawal date.
Obama’s decision to announce an Afghanistan withdrawal date sent a message to the Taliban that they could wait out the U.S. presence, undermining the impact of Obama’s surge, as Clinton warned. Obama’s reluctance to take on a more assertive international leadership position, to follow a more muscular foreign policy - which she had advocated—arguably empowered extremists everywhere.
She also advised Obama against turning his back on Egypt’s Mubarak, urging the President to advocate a more gradual transition to democracy. Obama rejected her advice and things did not go well for Egypt or for relations between the two countries.
Clinton recommended that the U.S. leave behind a substantial residual force in Iraq to help prevent a return to sectarian violence and terrorism, a version confirmed by former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey. Obama sought a smaller force. In the end, the two countries could not reach agreement and all Americans left. Perhaps it would not have been possible to keep a U.S. force there, but recent events underline that her instincts were correct. Iraq is now teetering, with an al Qaeda spin-off gaining key territory from the central government.
I’d actually argue Obama should have held his nose and support Assad in Syria rather than arm insurgents only too prey to Islamist extremists. But into the general vacuum left by Obama has stepped militant Islam.
But if Clinton was the hawk of the Obama administration, be very afraid. Here is her astonishing defence of the swap of five top Taliban terrorists for one US deserter, Bowe Bergdahl:
 HILLARY CLINTON: These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them.
Releasing terrorists who threaten the security of Pakistan and Afghanistan is no problem to Clinton - or to the US? Were threats to the security of Iraq of no concern to Obama - or to the US?
UPDATE
Charles Krauthammer:
This is an issue of national security of the United States in the Middle East. What we’re seeing now, al Qaeda has control of the largest city it has ever controlled in its history. It has control of the largest area of territory—from the outskirts of Aleppo in the west to Mosul in the east—than it ever has in its history. 
This is an enormous threat and it is a direct result of the two decisions that Obama made. Leaving Iraq, he says he ended the war in Iraq. No. David Petraeus ended the war in Iraq. He defeated al Qaeda and ended the civil war. Obama threw away the fruits of victory as General [Buck] McKeon said when he did not negotiate a status of forces agreement, which he argues in Afghanistan is necessary as a way to retain our gains and to redeem our sacrifices… At the same time, you have an attack on Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, an attack on the airport. You’ve got—and that is a country with nuclear weapons. The al Qaeda is arguably now the strongest it has ever been and it’s a result of Obama’s policies.
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Mark Scott should do his job - and tackle ABC bias

Andrew Bolt June 12 2014 (7:41am)

The ABC is running an absurd jihad to force Tony Abbott to make global warming the focus of his economic meetings. It is running dead on the royal commission exposing union corruption and ties to Labor figures.
To make this bias more troubling, the ABC is by far the biggest news organisation in the country, with twice as many Canberra journalists as its nearest rival. It is suffocating political debate.
So I fully understand not just the concern but the alarm of Coalition MPs:
THE ABC should concentrate on key services and tackling claims of bias instead of publicly whingeing, angry government members have told managing dir­ector Mark Scott. 
Mr Scott used a forum on public broadcasting in London on Tuesday to take a thinly disguised swipe at his critics in the Coalition
“At times, I’ve felt in Canberra that they’re not quite attuned in the way our audiences are attuned to the breadth of ABC content,” Mr Scott said.
“...At times, I think the focus is too narrowly on political programming and political coverage."…
Queensland MP George Christensen described Mr Scott’s funding remarks as “in­appropriate”. “...The continued political war that the ABC seems to be waging against the government since it got elected really brings into question whether he should stay.”
South Australian senator Anne Ruston acknowledged that the ABC enjoyed broad support but warned of “constant questions over bias” in some programming.
“Maybe Mr Scott needs to address himself to those issues ...”. Her remarks were echoed by former minister Ian Macdonald, who praised much of the ABC’s programming, but said: “Their flagship current affairs programs, they just lack balance. Their lack of balance is just patent… I have the suspicion that, quite frankly, Mark governs as part of a collective, that he’s not really the boss.”
The taxpayer-funded ABC, unlike the Age newspaper, is not entitled to be biased:
THE Age newspaper has defended its decision to run a double-page feature by a union secretary on the eve of budget rallies aimed against the Abbott government — and give the details of where to meet for the protest. 
The article by United Voice Victoria secretary Jess Walsh details personal stories of some of the union’s members who will join the “Bust the Budget” protest in Melbourne today, highlighting their fears about the federal budget changes.
UPDATE
Greg Sheridan is right, of course:
Indeed, the ABC seems to have lost all sense of restraint, professionalism, fairness or even decency in relation to Abbott, routinely mocking and insulting the Prime Minister, not only in its dreary satire programs, but in what are meant to be serious news and current affairs broadcasts.
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It wasn’t sexism. Voters just disliked Gillard because she was no good

Andrew Bolt June 12 2014 (7:33am)

 ANYONE elected prime minister cannot be much of a victim. But Julia Gillard is now trading furiously on her scars. Her soon-to-be-released biography, My Story, promises to tell of the “resilience and dignified courage” she showed against “the vicious hate campaigns directed against her”.
I suspect she’s also mentioned her supposed suffering to former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who in her own book, Hard Choices, complains: “Even leaders like former prime minister Julia Gillard of Australia have faced outrageous sexism which shouldn’t be tolerated in any country.”

But this whingeing is a con. For a start, the sexism Gillard encountered was as likely to help her as hurt. From the start she enjoyed the support of Emily’s List, which backs only female politicians, and throughout most of her prime ministership she had more support from women voters than men.
That was often interpreted as men disliking her simply because she was a woman. In fact, it was more likely that women tended to vote for her simply because she was a woman.
Tellingly, Gillard didn’t complain about sexism while her poll figures were high.
(Read full article here.) 
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“No-friends” Abbott has too many for alarmist Tanya Plibersek

Andrew Bolt June 12 2014 (7:26am)

Global warming - general, Politics - federal


I APOLOGISE to Tanya Plibersek, Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman. I had thought she was just another global warming liar.
But the truth is now clear. No, she’s simply spectacularly ignorant of the most basic facts about climate science and politics.
No liar with brains would tell a lie on Saturday knowing just two days later it would probably be exposed on almost every TV bulletin. But there was Plibersek on Saturday, mocking the Prime Minister and his plan to scrap Labor’s carbon tax.
“As the rest of the world moves forward on climate change, Tony Abbott is Nigel No-friends on the world stage,” she jeered.
Really? No friends?
(Read full article here.)   
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ABORTION GILLARD’S LOWEST CARD YET

Just when you think she can’t stoop any lower, she goes and does it. Her promotion of late- and up to full-term abortion has been no secret. It was integral to her Socialist Forum manifesto and she promoted it as a leader of the AUS along with her claims that “married women are whores” and “a heterosexual relationship should be the non-preferred option for young people”.

This base woman is a disgrace and an embarrassment to all decent Australian women. Men now treat her with disdain.

Now that she is politically cornered the real Julia is shining through in all her glory. Polls indicate the vast majority of Australians, despite the plans of John McTernan, discovered the real Julia long ago.

If McTernan had thought that we ex-convict, dumb Aussies would be putty in his hands, he has experienced a nasty surprise. We won’t cop his contemptible campaigning style.

I have wrestled with showing a pic of a late-term abortion and chickened out... Facebook would not be suitable.

I will apologise in advance for showing it atwww.pickeringpost.com (a warning, this pic may cause distress) but I believe words alone can never describe the horror of Gillard’s ideal world.

A late-term abortion shows an empyreal disrespect for life itself. Instruments are inserted to dismember the baby before extracting it in small pieces. It's small limbs are easily torn from its underdeveloped torso.

The child has a functioning nervous system so pain is experienced during this horrific process but it can’t express it, it can’t breathe, it suffers, muted, without anaesthetic.

The process of cattle slaughter horrifies Gillard and her followers but not the process of slaughtering babies. She demands men have no say, yet a man’s genes are 50% of the unborn child’s.

Couples go through hell in in-vitro programs experiencing year after year of disappointment only to concede heartbreaking defeat while a baby they longed for is somewhere in bloody pieces on a floor.

Okay, so I’m venting an unpopular bigotry, but it's one I will never retreat from, and I squirm in my seat when I see Gillard caressing a beautiful child for political gain.
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Your job as a Christian, is not to make a non believer believe... That's way too hard!!!... you just spread His word the best way you can, and let God do the rest...
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During a robbery in Guangzhou, China, the bank robber shouted to everyone in the bank: "Don't move. The money belongs to the State. Your life belongs to you."

Everyone in the bank laid down quietly. This is called "Mind Changing Concept” Changing the conventional way of thinking.

When a lady lay on the table provocatively, the robber shouted at her: "Please be civilized! This is a robbery and not a rape!"

This is called "Being Professional” Focus only on what you are trained to do!

When the bank robbers returned home, the younger robber (MBA-trained) told the older robber (who has only completed Year 6 in primary school): "Big brother, let's count how much we got."

The older robber rebutted and said: "You are very stupid. There is so much money it will take us a long time to count. Tonight, the TV news will tell us how much we robbed from the bank!"

This is called "Experience.” Nowadays, experience is more important than paper qualifications!

After the robbers had left, the bank manager told the bank supervisor to call the police quickly. But the supervisor said to him: "Wait! Let us take out $10 million from the bank for ourselves and add it to the $70 million that we have previously embezzled from the bank”.

This is called "Swim with the tide.” Converting an unfavorable situation to your advantage!

The supervisor says: "It will be good if there is a robbery every month."

This is called "Killing Boredom.” Personal Happiness is more important than your job.

The next day, the TV news reported that $100 million was taken from the bank. The robbers counted and counted and counted, but they could only count $20 million. The robbers were very angry and complained: "We risked our lives and only took $20 million. The bank manager took $80 million with a snap of his fingers. It looks like it is better to be educated than to be a thief!"

This is called "Knowledge is worth as much as gold!"

The bank manager was smiling and happy because his losses in the share market are now covered by this robbery.

This is called "Seizing the opportunity.” Daring to take risks!

So who are the real robbers here?
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Heavenly Father, I thank You that deep within me, You never stop working, completing what You have begun, and that nothing can foil Your perfect plan. Help me to be patient not only with others, but with myself. Strengthen me to resist frustration and self-condemnation and replace them with glory and praise for what You are doing, and will ever continue to do in the process of making me a new creation in Your Son. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
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American, Jewish student detained at Heathrow after hijab clad private security contractor notices that his passport indicates visits to Israel. After being detained for several hours and subjected to bad treatment, he is turned away from the UK without explanation & sent back to the US.===
POOR TASTE: A menu from a Liberal National Party event containing derogatory references to the Prime Minster has spread like wildfire after being leaked over social media.

The menu was used at a Brisbane fundraiser for Mal Brough back in March, and contains offensive descriptors of the PM, Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan and the Greens.

Mr Brough has confirmed the menu was used at his event, while Opposition leader Tony Abbott has since condemned it. More Federal Politics coverage in 9 News at 6pm on Channel 9.
Turns out it was a fake .. will Channel 9 apologise? - ed
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June 12: Dia dos Namorados in Brazil; Independence Day in the Philippines; Russia Day in the Russian Federation; Loving Day in the United States
Boeing 777
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“He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”” Psalm 46:10NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"We love him because he first loved us."
1 John 4:19
There is no light in the planet but that which proceedeth from the sun; and there is no true love to Jesus in the heart but that which cometh from the Lord Jesus himself. From this overflowing fountain of the infinite love of God, all our love to God must spring. This must ever be a great and certain truth, that we love him for no other reason than because he first loved us. Our love to him is the fair offspring of his love to us. Cold admiration, when studying the works of God, anyone may have, but the warmth of love can only be kindled in the heart by God's Spirit. How great the wonder that such as we should ever have been brought to love Jesus at all! How marvellous that when we had rebelled against him, he should, by a display of such amazing love, seek to draw us back. No! never should we have had a grain of love towards God unless it had been sown in us by the sweet seed of his love to us. Love, then, has for its parent the love of God shed abroad in the heart: but after it is thus divinely born, it must be divinely nourished. Love is an exotic; it is not a plant which will flourish naturally in human soil, it must be watered from above. Love to Jesus is a flower of a delicate nature, and if it received no nourishment but that which could be drawn from the rock of our hearts it would soon wither. As love comes from heaven, so it must feed on heavenly bread. It cannot exist in the wilderness unless it be fed by manna from on high. Love must feed on love. The very soul and life of our love to God is his love to us.
"I love thee, Lord, but with no love of mine,

For I have none to give;

I love thee, Lord; but all the love is thine,

For by thy love I live.

I am as nothing, and rejoice to be
Emptied, and lost, and swallowed up in thee."

Evening

"There brake he the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle."
Psalm 76:3
Our Redeemer's glorious cry of "It is finished," was the death-knell of all the adversaries of his people, the breaking of "the arrows of the bow, the shield, and the sword, and the battle." Behold the hero of Golgotha using his cross as an anvil, and his woes as a hammer, dashing to shivers bundle after bundle of our sins, those poisoned "arrows of the bow;" trampling on every indictment, and destroying every accusation. What glorious blows the mighty Breaker gives with a hammer far more ponderous than the fabled weapon of Thor! How the diabolical darts fly to fragments, and the infernal bucklers are broken like potters' vessels! Behold, he draws from its sheath of hellish workmanship the dread sword of Satanic power! He snaps it across his knee, as a man breaks the dry wood of a fagot, and casts it into the fire. Beloved, no sin of a believer can now be an arrow mortally to wound him, no condemnation can now be a sword to kill him, for the punishment of our sin was borne by Christ, a full atonement was made for all our iniquities by our blessed Substitute and Surety. Who now accuseth? Who now condemneth? Christ hath died, yea rather, hath risen again. Jesus has emptied the quivers of hell, has quenched every fiery dart, and broken off the head of every arrow of wrath; the ground is strewn with the splinters and relics of the weapons of hell's warfare, which are only visible to us to remind us of our former danger, and of our great deliverance. Sin hath no more dominion over us. Jesus has made an end of it, and put it away forever. O thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end. Talk ye of all the wondrous works of the Lord, ye who make mention of his name, keep not silence, neither by day, nor when the sun goeth to his rest. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
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Today's reading: Ezra 1-2, John 19:23-42 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Ezra 1-2


Cyrus Helps the Exiles to Return

1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:

2 "This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:

"'The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. 3 Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the LORD, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them. 4 And in any locality where survivors may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.'"


Today's New Testament reading: John 19:23-42

23 When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
24 "Let's not tear it," they said to one another. "Let's decide by lot who will get it."
This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said,
"They divided my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment."
So this is what the soldiers did.
25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, "Woman, here is your son," 27and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home....

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