Friday, August 04, 2017

Fri Aug 4th Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. While there are daily revelations that the safe schools program in Australia bullies children into adopting cross gender practices there is an older debate with the same actors. Drugs. Marxists and Stalinists are wrong to inflict their views of sex on children, and weaken families. To be fair, Fascists too try to do the same thing, and one extreme left group calling themselves anti fascists (Antifa) behave exactly as fascists. Drug supporters claiming Zero Tolerance is wrong and that a more compassionate way of dealing with the issue is to legalise it. Just as when Gillard claimed the Pacific Solution was harsh, and she would have a better way, but didn't when she tried to implement her way, a crowd of left wing activists are claiming that it is ok to take mind bending drugs. 

 There is a cost to drug taking, wether it is legalised or not is irrelevant, there is no benefit to society or individuals from drug use. Perhaps it lowers inhibitions and is a way for the young to engage in sex early in their lives, tying in with the safe school crowd. Drugs claim lives. Teen pregnancy, drug whores, overdoses, none of those are associated with abstinence. If you are outraged with Safe Schools bullying children into premature sexual activity, you should also be concerned with Bill Shorten and Dan Andrews advocating for so called 'safe drug use.' 
I am a decent man and don't care for 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 I'm A Sociopath 

KDMan gave me this great intro to icomps. He is the talent that gives you the sound here. I put some images to it, and the laugh  

http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=18157


=== from 2016 === 
When Malcolm Turnbull backstabbed Tony Abbott he gave no reason for doing so. Every substantive policy that had been pursued by the Liberal Party was retained. However, Turnbull gave performance indicators. Turnbull promised his government would explain policy better. Turnbull promised to be popular, and to work with the cross benches to pass legislation. Eleven months on, and Turnbull has failed every single one of his performance indicators. Turnbull has not explained the needs for spending cuts. Turnbull has not been popular. Turnbull has not been effective with the cross bench. Turnbull has not produced policy. Turnbull has not made important decisions in a timely manner. Sometimes, Turnbull has rushed mistakes. Other times, Turnbull has dithered. Even Bill Shorten has improved the ALP. The ALP have gone from their lowest electoral base in recent memory to their second lowest. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.  
=== from 2015 ===
While comparing Insiders opening with Bolt Report intro there are many enlightening differences. Bolt opened with himself. He listed what the program was to be about. He provided an editorial on Goodes and Aboriginal reconciliation. Bolt's arguments were reasonable and could be argued against without calling each other bad names. Bolt's arguments have substance. It isn't merely 'player is good, booing is bad.' Instead the self defeating arguments underpinning aboriginal reconciliation are provided and reasonable questions asked which lead the viewer to respond. Bolt then followed that up with an interview. Compare that with Insiders. News intro mistakenly positions Bronwyn Bishop's expenses scandal in which she spent travel expenses on travel. Then Barrie Cassidy lies about Bronwyn Bishop's expenses so as to make it sound like she had transgressed Mr Abbott's request that such expenses be moderate moving forward. Then Cassidy presents a tape where prominent enemies of the government give their view. It is said Mr Abbott had not spoken to the ABC about the issue. Malcolm Turnbull did a tweet and that was taken as a comment. Then three prominent left wing journalists, including News Ltd Malcolm Farr, all said how they didn't understand the expenses issue but it looked bad for the Government. Farr even read from his own paper's columns criticising the speaker for spending travel expenses on travel. There was no balance. The government view was not presented. Why are the ALP not questioned re their expenses? Are there others in the government with expenses issues? Only the Speaker had claimed travel? The ABC were not reporting, they were hounding. The youtube analysis will be posted in the next few days. 
From 2014
The hundredth anniversary of World War 1, when Germany invaded Belgium and England declared war on Germany. Sometimes referred to as Family Feud because many of the royal houses were first cousins thank to Queen Victoria's efforts. She would not have been amused. Germany was the most powerful nation in Europe and of the nearly 68 million soldiers mobilised, ten million dead and a further twenty million wounded. It was not an accident or afterthought, as some have said. It was necessary to counter the rapacious lawlessness of German ambition. But the war was mishandled and the peace was mishandled. And despite the collapse of Russia to the Soviet Union, the Great Game continued and today the politics of the Great Game are still being felt. Russia's position on Syria is why there is still fighting in Syria. Washington's stance on Ukraine is why there is still fighting in Ukraine. England's position on Israel is why there is still fighting in Israel. And each position defies logic unless one considers preceding politics. Israel should be whole and include Gaza, Jerusalem et al as her civic responsibility. Only London's intransigence in the thirties and forties, kowtowing to oil rich arabs has sacrificed stability for short term gain. Washington's support for a divided Ukraine in opposition to Russia despite the illegitimacy of the Ukrainian government is merely oppositional to Russia and instrumental in the deaths of civilians in MH17. Russia's cold war friendship with Syria and Iran is destabilising, but then that is what they need to enjoy Iranian oil. But it has nothing to do with Syrian peoples, or respect of Syrian culture. 

The porn industry is sick and rapacious. Models may have high work satisfaction, who wouldn't enjoy those happy endings? But that is not the apparent long term experience universally expressed by the actors. New model Alina Li at age nineteen has been in the industry for a year. She has merchandised and has accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Tumbler. She has apparently been well remunerated and has expressed she has enjoyed her work. But her recent experience with a kink team where she was publicly roughed up and humiliated, crying in front of the camera is, according to her, a reason to call it a day. She has worked too hard and no longer enjoys it. But then that is exactly what moralists who decry the industry warn .. the short term good feelings do not provide long term satisfaction. Alina has said she wants to lead a more normal life, maybe do some waitressing ala youtube sensation Caitlyn Hills. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. And then there are other models who express total satisfaction. It isn't a life I would want for my children. 

The commonwealth Games have ended and Australian Media predictably despised the second placing on the medals table. It is impossible to call Australia's performance poor, yet that is exactly the word news media apply, saying it is the worst performance since Bob Hawke was PM in '86. The weightlifting division under performed and track and field too .. but then Pearson's captaincy was never going to pay dividends .. she is too selfish and self absorbed. But for Pearson and a few involved with drugs, Australia's performance has been exemplary. I thank them and applaud them. They represented me in the field, and they did it well, giving up many hours over the years when they might rather have been doing something else. Australia may not have won many sprints, but she did win the marathon. 

On this day in 70 AD, the second temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Roman occupiers, with Jewish peoples scattered through the empire. The terrible penalty for uprising had followed Gaul's rebellion being put down after Nero's calamitous rule. A little competence elsewhere and the world might have been very different. Jewish peoples were attracted to Poland in the thirteen hundreds, which is why my people left Horovice for Minsk. My people were musicians and Rabbi and I believe were part of those who influenced classical musicians who in turn have given us modern music. I apologise, on my family's behalf for Justin Bieber .. and One Direction .. In 367, the ambitious Gratian made his eight year old son co ruler. In 598 the Emperor of Sui ordered his son and PM to take Korea. In 1265 the Batle of Evesham saw a prince defeat those vying for what would become his kingdom. But, in 1327, Edward I's Grandson, Edward III nearly died after losing a battle to James Douglas. In 1693 Dom Perignon is said to have invented Champagne. In 1789 in excessive revolutionary zeal, French members of the national constituent assembly pledge an oath to end feudalism. But they continued to argue and bicker over how that would be done. In 1892, the father and step mother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered. In 1944, Anne Frank and her family are arrested by Gestapo. In 1958, the Pop top 100 songs are bill boarded. In 1964, three civil-rights workers are found killed in Mississippi. 
Historical perspective on this day
AD 70 – Emperor Titus ends the siege of Jerusalemafter destroying Herod's Temple.
598 – Goguryeo-Sui War: Emperor Wéndi of Sui orders his youngest son, Yang Liang (assisted by the co-prime minister Gao Jiong), to conquer Goguryeo (Korea) during the Manchurian rainy season, with a Chinese army and navy.
1265 – Second Barons' War: Battle of Evesham: The army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies.
1327 – First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas leads a raid into Weardale and almost kills Edward III of England.
1532 – The Duchy of Brittany is united to the Kingdom of France.
1578 – Battle of Al Kasr al Kebir: The Moroccans defeat the Portuguese. King Sebastian of Portugal is killed in the battle, leaving his elderly uncle, Cardinal Henry, as his heir. This initiates a succession crisis in Portugal.

1693 – Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of champagne; it is not clear whether he actually invented champagne, however he has been credited as an innovator who developed the techniques used to perfect sparkling wine.
1704 – War of the Spanish Succession: Gibraltar is captured by an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles.
1783 – Mount Asama erupts in Japan, killing about 1,400 people. The eruption causes a famine, which results in an additional 20,000 deaths.
1789 – In France members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.
1790 – A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
1791 – The Treaty of Sistova is signed, ending the Ottoman–Habsburg wars.
1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: Napoleon leads the French Army of Italy to victory in the Battle of Lonato.

1821 – The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper.
1824 – The Battle of Kos is fought between Turkish and Greek forces.
1854 – The Hinomaru is established as the official flag to be flown from Japanese ships.
1863 – Matica slovenská, Slovakia's public-law cultural and scientific institution focusing on topics around the Slovak nation, is established in Martin.
1873 – American Indian Wars: While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custerclashes for the first time with the Cheyenne and Lakota people near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.
1889 – The Great Fire of Spokane, Washington destroys some 32 blocks of the city, prompting a mass rebuilding project.
1892 – The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.

1914 – In response to the German invasion of Belgium, Belgium and the British Empire declare war on Germany. The United States declares its neutrality.
1915 – World War I: The German 12th Army occupies Warsaw during the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive and the Great Retreat of 1915.
1924 – Diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Soviet Union are established.
1936 – Prime Minister of Greece Ioannis Metaxas suspends parliament and the Constitution and establishes the 4th of August Regime.

1944 – The Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.
1946 – An earthquake of magnitude 8.0 hits northern Dominican Republic. One hundred are killed and 20,000 are left homeless.
1947 – The Supreme Court of Japan is established.

1964 – Civil Rights Movement: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
1964 – Gulf of Tonkin incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joyreport coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1965 – The Constitution of the Cook Islands comes into force, giving the Cook Islands self-governing status within New Zealand.
1969 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnameserepresentative Xuân Thuỷ begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.

1974 – A bomb explodes in the Italicus Express train at San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Italy, killing 12 people and wounding 22.
1975 – The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the U.S. consul and the Swedish Chargé d'affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya.
1977 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
1984 – The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
1987 – The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrinewhich had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".

1991 – The Greek cruise ship MTS Oceanos sinks off the Wild Coast of South Africa.
1993 – A federal judge sentences Los Angeles Police Department officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.
1995 – Operation Storm begins in Croatia.
2006 – A massacre is carried out by Sri Lankan government forces, killing 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger (known internationally as Action Contre la Faim, or ACF).
2007 – NASA's Phoenix spacecraft is launched.
=== 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 Zion Joseph Milan Limbu, Robbie Petterson, Johnny Vuong, Darren Lee and Nestori Dez. Born on the same day, across the years. Along with Louis Vuitton (1821), John Venn (1834), Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (1900), Louis Armstrong (1901), Reg Grundy (1923), Barry Soetoro (1961, Kenya) and Jessica Mauboy (1989). On your day, Constitution Day in the Cook Islands (1965)
70 – First Jewish–Roman War: The Roman army, led by the future Emperor Titus, conquered the city of Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple.
1327 – First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas led a raid into Weardale and almost killed Edward III of England.
1783 – A cataclysmic eruption of Mount Asama, the most active volcano in Japan, killed roughly 1,400 people and exacerbated a famine, resulting in another 20,000 deaths.
1983 – A coup d'état organised by Blaise Compaoré and supported by Libya made Thomas Sankara President of the Republic of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).
2006 – Sri Lankan Civil War: Seventeen employees of the French INGO ACF International were massacred in Muttur. Your day has such hope .. for a rebuilt temple, for independence, for salvation from natural disaster, from oppression and from civil war. Live your dream. Realise hope.
Deaths
===
Andrew Bolt


SPECTATOR OUT: A WAR ON FRAUDS

Great reading in the new Spectator Australia. Such as: "Gays ... have become the latest ‘useful idiots’ in the Left’s jackboot-stomping march through [our] institutions.  In Adelaide’s City of Marion council, for instance, councillors are ... investigating organisations seeking grants to determine whether or not they fly the rainbow flag."
4 Aug
===

ABORIGINAL ART

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 04, 2016 (3:41pm)

When discussing the issue of personal responsibility in Aboriginal communities it is obviously appropriate to interview members of the Aboriginal community. Here’s Noel Pearson this week on the ABC: 
Blackfellas have got to take charge and take responsibility for their own children. 
Also this week, Marcia Langton spoke to The Australian: 
Marcia Langton distils simple truths others shy away from. She points to absolute failure of indigenous leadership to speak about personal responsibility.
“Instead of talking about personal agency, these people talk about self-determination. It drowns out any message about personal agency,” she says. 
Likewise, when drawing a cartoon about the issue of personal responsibility in Aboriginal communities it is obviously appropriate to depict Aboriginal people – as Bill Leak did today:

Naturally, this has caused screaming leftists to whip themselves into another Twitter tanty. The Guardian‘s Amanda Meade reports, as best as she is able: 
A spokesman for the Australian Press Council said the media watchdog had already receive complaints about the cartoon on Thursday morning. 
The Guardian loves to gloat over Press Council complaints, which mostly waste the time of everybody involved. But there’s no danger of any Guardian staff facing the same boring process: 
The Guardian Australia has decided not to join print and online watchdog the Australian Press Council arguing that its own self regulation is “adequate and proportionate”. 
How very responsible of them.
UPDATE. The Australian Press Council is Twitter’s judicial wing.
===

ONE DEAD, FIVE INJURED

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 04, 2016 (1:55pm)

Murder in London: 
A knife attack in London’s Russell Square has left at least one person dead and several injured.
One woman has been reported killed in what police say they are investigating as a potential terror attack. Gang violence is yet to be ruled out, however.
Initial reports state a suspect has been arrested.
London police say they received reports of a man with a knife attacking pedestrians at Russell Square about 10.30pm London time. 
Police at the scene apparently claimed that “a gang of some sort” was involved. CNN reports: “Based on early evidence, investigators believe the incident was a terror attack, according to officials briefed on the investigation.”
UPDATE. Police arrested a nineteen-year-old after a woman in her 60s was killed. A police statement: 
Mental health is a significant factor in this case. Terrorism remains one line of inquiry for us to explore. 
UPDATE II. Scotland Yard: 
Six people were injured during the incident, including the woman who died at the scene. Two other women and three men (no further information) received various injuries in the attack …
Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, from the Metropolitan Police, said: “As a precautionary measure, Londoners will wake up this morning to notice an increased presence on the streets of officers, including armed officers today. We would urge the public to remain calm, alert and vigilant.” 
Londoners will wake up to armed police at tube stations, travel disruptions and heightened security following the deadly knife attack in Russell square last night. 
Must be a lot of escaped mental patients about.
===

MAGICAL DAMS

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 04, 2016 (1:20pm)

Tim Flannery in 2007: 
Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems. 
And the latest weather news: 
Australia has just had its wettest May to July period on record. 
Greater Sydney’s current water storage level:

Demonstrating the gift for timing that is characteristic of the Turnbull government, science minister Greg Hunt has now directed the CSIRO to hire 15 new climate scientists. Maybe they can investigate why Flannery always gets everything completely wrong.
===

THURSDAY NOTICEBOARD

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 04, 2016 (11:29am)

According to US Homeland Security: 
ISIS has now been linked to 100-plus attack plots against Western countries, an unprecedented wave of terror …
In 2016, ISIS operatives managed to pull off 44 per cent of their attempted plots, compared to 31 per cent in 2015. The total number of casualties from the group’s anti-Western attacks more than doubled in just the first half of this year.
Attackers linked to the barbarous group have killed or wounded 875 in 2016 – more than the 750 killed across 2014 and 2015. 
How irritating.
===

CHRIS AMON

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 04, 2016 (10:34am)

The brilliant Chris Amon, who survived motor racing’s deadliest era before retiring to his New Zealand farm, has died at 73: 
Never have statistics lied more diabolically than when they summarise the F1 career of Amon 1963-1976. In a career encompassing spells at Ferrari and Matra, he didn’t win a single championship-status Grand Prix. Yet he is one of the greatest Grand Prix drivers who ever lived, one who reached heights that only a handful have ever done. In the period 1968-72 only Jackie Stewart produced a comparable number of virtuoso performances – races where the driver demonstrated a degree of ability beyond any of his peers on the day. But with Amon, none of those days were rewarded.

In the off-season Tasman races, he went wheel-to-wheel with Jim Clark and only narrowly lost out to him for the ‘67-68 title. One year on and he defeated Clark’s replacement in the works Lotus, Jochen Rindt, to take the title fair and square. Rindt once famously said the only drivers he considered rivals were Stewart and Amon. The great Jacky Ickx was paired alongside Amon at Ferrari in ‘68 and is quite frank in his admission: “Chris was faster than I was, a magnificent driver.” 
Amon was more fortunate away from F1, winning at Le Mans in 1966 alongside countryman Bruce McLaren and, as noted above, frequently succeeding in multiple Tasman series races. I saw him race just once, in 1975, when Amon was still competitive despite running a car that was 70kg heavier and 50 horsepower down on those of his rivals.
By his own account, the 1972 French Grand Prix was Amon’s greatest drive.
===

On The Bolt Report and radio tonight - Lushsux,Hanson and the persecution of Bill Leak

Andrew Bolt August 04 2016 (3:33pm)

On The Bolt Report on Sky News Live at 7pm tonight:
Editorial: Malcolm Turnbull veers Left, but his Senate has just got a lot noisier Right. Pauline Hanson’s four Senators will put the stick about.
My guests:
Artist Lushsux, who has outraged a Melbourne council and set the US alight with his murals. He actually makes a point or two.
Helen Andrews, from the Centre for Independent Studies, on her new study showing that our anti-discrimination laws don’t actually work - and have in fact become dangerous and unfair.
In Culture Wars, Rowan Dean on the disgraceful calls by the Greens and an ABC host to call the cops onto this “racist” cartoon:
The panel: John Roskam, head of the Institute of Public Affairs, and Janet Albrechtsen, the terrific columnist from The Australian. 
Podcasts of the show here. Facebook page here. 
On 2GB, 3AW and 4BC with Steve Price from 8pm.
The rise of Pauline Hanson. We interview her new Senator, Malcolm Roberts, who says global warming alarmism is a hoax and the science corrupted.
Listen live here. Talkback:  131 873.  Listen to all past shows  here.
===

Pleasing Tim Flannery, outraging conservatives

Andrew Bolt August 04 2016 (12:47pm)

Malcolm Turnbull’s hijacking of the Liberal party continues - and I wonder how much longer Liberal members will allow this to go on:
Climate Science lobby, The Climate Council said new Science Minister Greg Hunt ordering CSIRO head Larry Marshall to re-hire climate scientistswas a good step, but Australia needs to grow climate science capacity to meet international commitments. 
One of Mr Hunt’s first acts as Science Minister has been to order Mr Marshall to hire 15 new climate scientists and invest $37 million in research over 10 years.
Professor Tim Flannery from the council said the government had failed to stop the full extent of the job cuts to climate divisions. Mr Marshall announced in February that 350 jobs would go including in the Oceans and Atmosphere and the Land and Water divisions. This was then cut down to 275, with only a portion of those in the climate divisions.
===

Hanson gains third seat. UPDATE: And now a fourth

Andrew Bolt August 04 2016 (11:31am)

Pauline Hanson is a force for Malcolm Turnbull to reckon with:
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party has secured two Senate seats in Queensland, putting her party within striking distance of overtaking Nick Xenophon Team as the fourth-largest bloc in the upper house. 
The Liberal National Party won five Senate seats, while the Labor opposition won four, and Greens deputy leader Larissa Waters was also returned after preferences were distributed today. Ms Hanson, who will represent Queensland in parliament, is also awaiting the result in NSW, where she is tipped to win a fourth Senate seat.
UPDATE
Pauline Hanson now leads the fourth biggest political party in Parliament:
Malcolm Turnbull confronts a swollen Senate crossbench of 11 members – three more than the last parliament – after Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party emerged as the fourth largest upper-house voting bloc. 
The populist right-wing party snared four seats after preferences were allocated today - comprising two in Queensland, one in Western Australia and one in NSW – followed by the Nick Xenophon Team’s three and independents Jacqui Lambie of Tasmania, Derryn Hinch of Victoria, Family First senator Bob Day of South Australia and Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm.
The Coalition has secured 30 seats in its own right and therefore needs nine of the 11 crossbenchers to pass any laws opposed by both the ALP and the Greens.
The Labor opposition has won 26 seats (up one) and the Greens won nine (down one). They will need three crossbenchers to block legislation, or five to pass its own motions.
In getting anything through the Senate against Labor’s wishes, Turnbull has a choice: to get the backing of the Greens or Hanson and the rest. 
===

Savva on Turnbull: reverse pike with nervous splash

Andrew Bolt August 04 2016 (7:41am)

It is so embarrassing for a columnist to back a bungler.
Take, Niki Savva, who last week thought Malcolm Turnbull had finally, after 11 months as leader, shown the leadership she’d long predicted.
Fears that Malcolm Turnbull might have lost his compass as well as his confidence in the wake of the election were dispelled early on Tuesday morning when the Prime Minister announced a royal commission into the treatment of Aboriginal children in detention in the Northern Territory… 
At a time when he needs to rebuild his credibility as well as assert his authority, it was an important moment in his leadership. He did not miss it. Ultimately his fate will be determined by his performance. If he continues to make the right calls, makes them in a timely fashion (without the accompaniment of undisciplined ruminating) and does his utmost to deliver on his promises, he can begin to rebuild public trust in government. Across time, good opinion polls will follow, which will enhance his ability to prosecute his agenda in parliament.
Alas, just one week later and Savva must now chide Turnbull for a direct consequence of the haste she last week praised:
On the royal commission into the Northern Territory’s child protection and youth detention system, Turnbull was right to announce it swiftly, but greater care should have been taken when choosing the commissioner. 
Asked directly by Attorney-General George Brandis if there were any potential problems with his appointment, Brian Martin declared his daughter’s employment with the former Labor administration, but Martin was confident it would not be a problem.
Martin wobbled on Friday when the media zeroed in on the possible conflict. By early Saturday morning he wanted out.
And now Savva must defend the indefensible - with fingers crossed - to avoid admitting Turnbull’s second hasty pick isn’t an even bigger mistake:
The reflexive pounce on co-commissioner Mick Gooda over his tweet, posted minutes after the ABC Four Corners documentary on juvenile abuse that triggered the events, calling for the Territory government to be sacked, will also pass if Gooda fulfils his promise to keep his emotions in check. 
And I think I detect a new undertone of alarm that, really, this isn’t all turning out as Savva needs:
Panicking never helps, but it is time [for Turnbull] to get cracking because really — and it makes your eyes water thinking about it — the next election is not that far off even if the government runs full term. 
The PM, rapidly approaching his first anniversary in the job, has to be out there consistently, clearly setting out his agenda and his priorities, with the right mechanisms and personnel in place to help him shape and deliver them in an orderly manner.
===

Book attends christening

Andrew Bolt August 04 2016 (12:38am)

My book is living better than I am, visiting Ho Chi Minh City, Santorini, London, Lake Como, Ithaca, Scotland, the Bay of Naples, Dubrovnik, Fiji, Aileron and the Andes. In between, it’s done some work in  Kalgoorlie and the coal seam gas fields of Condabri, Queensland.

Now Worth Fighting For is travelling on the XPT from Newcastle to Brisbane - who knows, perhaps in time for tomorrow’s book launch - with Gil and wife Margaret:
Actually, Gil and Margaret were returning from the christening of their first great grandson.

To buy a copy for the new grandparents in your life, go here. A second edition will be printed soon, so don’t wait if you want one of the remaining first editions.
The third edition of the Bolt Bulletin, available to on-line buyers, went out last week. The fourth will go out to on-line buyers some time in August. 
===

No one this biased should head a royal commission. Gooda must go

Andrew Bolt August 03 2016 (11:46pm)

Culture wars, Malcolm Turnbull, The politics of race, three

 THE decision of Attorney-General George Brandis to make Mick Gooda a royal commissioner is a farce and a scandal.
How can Gooda, a professional Aboriginal activist, possibly be an impartial judge, jointly presiding over a royal commission into juvenile justice in the Northern Territory?
How can he be considered impartial when he’s already declared the key defendant guilty — attacking the Northern Territory Government as incompetent, vicious, dead to reform and needing to be sacked?
If Gooda does not resign, then Brandis must.
It is a sign of the desperation of the Turnbull Government — and of the poisonous influence of race politics — that Brandis has trashed one of the most fundamental principles of our justice system: that justice must be blind. A judge must — must — be impartial, and also be seen to be impartial, if we are to have faith that we’ll get a fair hearing.
(Read full article here.) 
===

Bernardi: no to Gooda

Andrew Bolt August 03 2016 (11:38pm)

Mick Gooda is a good man, but Cory Bernardi is right: he must go.
Jared Owens:
Cory Bernardi has questioned the appointment of Aboriginal leader Mick Gooda as a royal commissioner and lashed the ABC as biased for reporting torture-like conditions in juvenile detention system on the eve of a Northern Territory election. 
The conservative South Australian politician [on Wednesday] ... drew attention Mr Gooda’s “intemperate” tweet in the aftermath of last week’s Four Corners program that called for the sacking of the NT’s conservative government.
“I am most surprised that ancestry seems a more important qualification than judicial experience…
“The fact that he had already rendered his verdict via social media prior to his appointment may also concern some but this seems to have been excused by many as emotive intemperance.
“Perhaps not the ideal characteristic for an independent reviewer of a highly charged matter, however, the decision of appointment has been taken by the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General and we are reliant on their prudence and judgment in this instance.”.
And Bernardi is right about this, too, and hypocrisy of the ABC:protecting Bill Shorten but vilifying George Pell
Senator Bernardi criticised the ABC’s reporting of new allegations relating to Cardinal Pell as “filled with dramatic re-enactments and sinister claims without a single counter view presented”. 
“Now, whether or not you agree that broadcasting unsubstantiated 40-year-old allegations designed to smear a public figure is appropriate, one must surely contrast the treatment by the ABC of George Pell with their treatment of another high-profile individual…
“You may recall that a couple of years ago a ‘senior Labor figure’ was the subject of rape allegations dating back to the 1980s. The allegations were investigated by Victorian police who found there was no case to answer and no charges were laid. The law did its job.
“The media also did its job, choosing not to publicly smear this politician by mentioning his name in any of the stories that reported on the matter before the police investigation concluded. “How could such different treatment be handed out by our billion-dollar taxpayer-funded independent national broadcaster? Unfortunately, the answer is so clear to anyone who wants to see: the ABC’s bias is out of control.”
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Turnbull Government may consider a treaty with Aboriginal tribes

Andrew Bolt August 03 2016 (11:25pm)

Tell me this is not true. Tell me that no conservative government could possibly consider making a treaty with some of its fellow citizens - and on the basis of the “race” of some of their ancestors.
Belinda Merhab:
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion insists the federal government will consider a treaty if that’s what indigenous people want. 
Senator Scullion says he’ll await the outcome of the government’s Referendum Council, headed up by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. “If that’s what the process tells us to do, that’s what it is,” he told ABC radio on Wednesday.
How disgraceful.
Has the Turnbull Government no will of its own? Are its fundamental principles - as in one law for all, and opposition to racism - to be discarded at the whim of favoured activists?
And does Malcolm Turnbull not understand how this will be received by the Liberal base?
But I have warned from the start what Turnbull would do to the Liberals, and nothing he’s said since has reassured me. He has in every way been a man of the ABC Left on these issues. Remember he described the British settlement of Australia as an invasion?
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
Scullion says the government is open to a treaty. Turnbull says Australia was invaded. More than half the cabinet voted to support Rudd’s bid to head the UN. 
Considering just how far leftism has crept into the Liberals, it’s amazing Abbott stayed leader for as long as he did. It must have been a full time job just keeping a lid on the growing number of clowns in the federal party room.
John Howard said it well in 2000:
I think a treaty would be so divisive… [A] nation, an undivided united nation does not make a treaty with itself. I mean to talk about one part of Australia making a treaty with another part is to accept that we are in effect two nations.
And again I warn: we are on the road to apartheid.
UPDATE
There’s dissent in the Liberals over just the constitutional recognition plan. Wait until they hear of treaties, too.
Katharine Murphy:
Turnbull is facing a fresh outbreak of internal dissent over the proposal to recognise Indigenous Australians in the constitution before talks about the referendum on Thursday with the Labor leader, Bill Shorten.< 
The South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi told Guardian Australia on Wednesday "no case had been made" for recognising Indigenous people in the constitution…
Fellow Liberal senator James Paterson told Sky News on Wednesday he was yet to be convinced constitutional change was the appropriate way to proceed. "There is no place for race in our constitution," Paterson said. "There should be no negative references to race, there should be no positive references to race. [The constitution is] the rule book of Australia. I think there is a role for symbolism in public life but I'm yet to be convinced the constitution is the place for that.”
===
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

===

AS DOG IS MY WITNESS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 04, 2015 (6:25pm)

The dog in the lower left corner enjoys the show, as you would if you’re a dog. Then, when all hell breaks loose, there is initial shock followed by a look that plainly says: “Did you see that?”
===

NATION HORRIFIED BY EVERYTHING

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 04, 2015 (5:49pm)

An actual story in today’s Australian:
===

FOREVER IN THE PAST

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 04, 2015 (12:53pm)

On ABC News Breakfast, leftist academic Scott Burchill offers a surprise nomination for Bronwyn Bishop’s replacement: 
As hosts Michael Rowland and Virginia Trioli were discussing the likelihood of a Liberal MP being chosen, Burchill came in with: “Don Randall?” 
Randall died last month.
UPDATE. No comment yet from Burchill’s Twitter account.

===

A MINNESOTA DENTIST DID IT

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 04, 2015 (12:32pm)

Embraced elsewhere, hitchBOT meets its doom in the US: 
A hitchhiking robot that relied on the kindness of strangers to travel the world has been found with its head and arms ripped off, just two weeks into its first American tour.
The child-sized robot, known as hitchBOT, was found damaged beyond repair on the streets of Philadelphia early on Saturday. It had earlier hitched across the entire of Canada for 26 days and completed a hitchhiking adventure through Germany …
“We have no interest in pressing charges or finding the people who vandalised hitchBOT; we wish to remember the good times, and we encourage hitchBOT’s friends and fans to do the same,” the robot’s creators wrote in an update. 
(Via Adam I.)
UPDATE. The killing of hitchBOT.
===

Putin’s aide and the $843,000 watch

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (6:43pm)

Putin’s Russia:
It was the wedding of the summer. An Olympic gold medallist in ice dancing. A moustached aide to President Vladimir Putin. Pop stars and politicians gathered in Sochi, Russia’s Olympic dream city on the sea.
But as Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s personal spokesman, wrapped his arms around the bride, his right sleeve rode up his arm, revealing an expensive timepiece decorated with a “red gold skull” and a $843,000 question: How did he afford that?
None of the answers offered seem to gell. 
===

This is what reconciliation could ultimately deliver

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (6:16pm)

Where it will lead:
An Indigenous man who renounced his Australian citizenship to head a self-declared sovereign nation has been remanded in custody in Queensland after refusing to acknowledge his former name. 
Murrumu Walubara Yidindji – formerly press gallery journalist Jeremy Geia – was charged at Gordonvale in May after police allegedly caught him using number plates and a licence issued by the unrecognised Yidindji government.
When asked whether he was the man known as Jeremy Geia at Cairns local court on Monday, he replied: “I am Murrumu in the appropriate persona.”
The man, who faces a number of charges, including breaching bail, said he had been detained and held in captivity against his will. “I think the matter is of jurisdiction,” he said. “The Yidindji were excluded from the commonwealth constitution act of 1901.”
And:
ROSALIE KUNOTH-MONKS, ARRERNTE ANMATYERRE ELDER: I am absolutely thrilled that he [Murrumu ] has found truth in his journey. The truth is that we are sovereign people of this country, therefore we do not need to sought or to look for approval by anyone.... 
TONY JONES: Now Rosalie, do you think there’ll be groups in the Northern Territory who will watch that and think that’s a good idea, to completely secede from Australia?
ROSALIE KUNOTH-MONKS: I believe there will be a mixture…
TONY JONES: Tom Calma, let me bring you in, and on the Murrumu thing, I don’t imagine that’s something you’d encourage. TOM CALMA, CO-CHAIR, RECONCILIATION AUSTRALIA: Well, look, I think it’s important for everybody to create their own identity. This is why we’re so fortunate in Australia that we’re able to express who we are and not have any fear of reprisal from government and so forth. So, you know, if Murrumu and others want to go down that track of identifying as separate sovereign nations, so be it, that’s their right to do that.
Note how Tony Jones was not expecting this support for what is in fact the logical outcome of the reconciliation push. 
===

Burchill’s tip

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (3:11pm)

 Bit rough to criticise him. He’sjust another Left-wing politics academic, after all:
When asked to name a potential replacement for outgoing speaker Bronwyn Bishop on live TV ... Dr Scott Burchill, a senior lecturer in international relations at Deakin University in Victoria, named the late Don Randall… 
Mr Randall, the West Australian Liberal MP, died a fortnight ago after a suspected heart attack.
Still, we all have brain fades. 
===

Costello: Abbott should ditch the advisers who agreed to save Bishop

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (12:20pm)

Peter Costello says the Bishop scandal should help the Prime Minister to sort out the yes-men from the colleagues he should trust:
At the outset, [Tony Abbott] should note who showed judgment in the whole affair and who did not. The first group of people are his best advisers.

The expenses affair led to Bishop’s resignation 18 days after they were first published. That’s 18 days of public anger and political pain.... 
For starters, Bishop ... showed bad judgment to get into this situation and no judgment about how to get out of it.
Then there were the ambitious members of the Government, woodchucks desperate for advancement. They repeat everything, real or imagined, they think will please the Prime Minister. These people are now busily burying the transcripts where they predicted the whole thing was just a storm in a teacup. They are useful in carrying a line but no help making a decision.
Then there were the senior colleagues who gently, within the bounds of loyalty, suggested Bishop should go. These included Julie Bishop, who suggested Bishop should consider her position, Scott Morrison, who suggested she consult with her colleagues, and Joe Hockey, who suggested this would not pass the “sniff test”.
All these showed judgment. A leader’s best advisers are the ones prepared to tell him what he doesn’t want to hear… 

Abbott might [also] reflect on this. He needs someone who can counter-attack on his behalf. In the past he has led the negative campaign for the Coalition. Now he is PM it would help his image if someone shouldered this burden for him. 
===

Trump not far enough ahead to scare me

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (11:41am)

The latest Wall Street Journal poll shows Donald Trump still leading the huge crowd of contenders for the Republican nomination - but there is now much reason for hope:
Donald Trump - 19 percent 
Scott Walker - 15 percent
Jeb Bush - 14 percent
Ben Carson - 10 percent
Ted Cruz - 9 percent
Mike Huckabee - 6 percent
Rand Paul - 6 percent
Marco Rubio - 5 percent
Chris Christie - 3 percent
John Kasich - 3 percent
Rick Perry - 3 percent
Bobby Jindal - 1 percent
Rick Santorum - 1 percent Less than 1 percent: Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, Jim Gilmore 
But no reason to despair. Trump’s big mouth will embolden his rivals to speak with more clarity and force themselves. More importantly, many at the bottom of the list of 17 will inevitably bow out. The kind of supporters they attract will almost certainly not back Trump but one of his more credible rivals, who even now are not that far behind. Trump will be overhauled, and those who take the lead will be sharper for the scare, and will seem in contrast not at all so radical, after all.
Well, that’s if they don’t stuff it up, of course.
My tip on the figures and this analysis: Jeb Bush is the real frontrunner, followed by Walker and then Cruz, a distant third.
UPDATE
The latest Fox News poll is a bit scarier:
But if my previous analysis holds good, here are the names to watch out for:
What if Trump were out of the picture? ... Here’s how things stand without Trump: Bush gets 20 percent, followed by Walker at 13 percent, Carson and Cruz at 9 percent, Huckabee at 8 percent, Paul, Rubio and Christie tie at 6 percent, Kasich at 4 percent, and Perry, Fiorina and Santorum get 2 percent each.  
But, of course, Trump will stay in the picture for a long while yet, and probably to the end. The real key is whether those who drop out will send their supporters to Bush, Walker or Cruz, or whether those votes will leak to Trump. And then the frontrunner from the sensible candidates will have to persuade his key rivals to make a deal.
But good news - on the Democrat side Clinton is falling fast, albeit from a great height:
She receives 51 percent while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders comes in at 22 percent.  Yet that is Clinton’s worst showing—and Sanders’ best.  Support for Clinton was 59 percent two weeks ago, 61 percent a month ago—and has been as high as 63 percent in the months since Sanders entered the race.  Vice President Joe Biden, who is said to be considering a run, sits at 13 percent support.
(Thanks to reader Nathan.) 
===

Weak and contemptible: The Australian does it again

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (11:13am)

As I said yesterday, The Australian’s behaviour is weak and contemptible, and I wonder once again whether its leadership has run off course.
First was the paper’s repeated attempts to punish and bully me for pointing out that its damaging story on Tony Abbott’s “unilateral invasion” of Iraq was in fact clearly false, inherently preposterous and contradicted publicly by those involved.
That story, never corrected or apologised for, was pushed by editor in chief Chris Mitchell. I know how it started and the terrible toll it took on the story’s alleged “source”.
Then came the paper’s repeated blustering and bullying - even a suggestion my editors silence me for my “poison” - when I pointed out the dangers and plainly confused logic in its misguided support for race- based changes to the constitution.
That cause is promoted fervently by editor in chief Chris Mitchell.
Yesterday more of the same - The Australian doctored quotes from Miranda Devine and me to make it falsely appear we had contradicted ourselves over Adam Goodes. Weak and contemptible, and an apparent attempt to settle scores by joining in a media pack attack against its News Corp colleagues.
Today The Australian responds to my exposure of its tactics in a way many people (not least Robert Manne) will say is typical of the paper under Mitchell - not by confessing error but by going in even harder.
What is even weaker and more contemptible about this is, first, those responsible for today’s sliming do not put their name to it.
Second is that although Cut & Paste quotes me again, it refuses to quote the very bit  that exposes how it doctored my quotes to misrepresent my position. It refused to correct the record.
To “weak” and “contemptible” I now add “vindictive”.
And to the broader point: this is not just about me. Consider that this is also a taste of what the “reconciliation” movement will do to any of you, too, to get its way. It will crush, smear and scream racist at all those standing in its path. What it does to me it would do to you if you threatened its agenda, too.
Say no to racism. Say no to moves to change our Constitution to divide us by race and to give activists even more power.
Say no to The Australian’s campaign.  letters@theaustralian.com.au
UPDATE
Yesterday Cut & Paste cut off comments after 9am, with the trend once again running strongly against the paper line and its misrepresentation of me and Miranda. Today it has - of 11:20am - published just 20 comments, almost uniformly critical of the paper. This morning’s letter page led off with a letter critical of me - and I suspect from the comments not representative at all of its mail bag.  
===

Cruz missile could save the US from Obama’s legacy

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (9:45am)

I have found a candidate to back in the race to replace Barack Obama, who has weakened America abroad and now plans to weaken its economy, too:
Senator Ted Cruz on Sunday got perhaps the most enthusiastic applause of any Republican presidential candidate to appear before the 450 donors… with a point-blank denial of global warming.... 
The Texas senator, who dominated his time on stage, ... went on to deliver a full-throated denial of global warming and a scathing evisceration of its proponents…
Allen asked Cruz if he is concerned by a Boston Globe story published on Saturday that suggests Republicans will pay a price in 2016 for their skepticism about climate change. Cruz’s response? “Not remotely.”
He went on to recall the 1970s panic over global cooling and a coming ice age. “The solution they proposed was massive government control of the economy, the energy sector, and our lives. Then the data disproved it,” he said. “Then it became global warming. Interestingly enough, the solution was identical: massive government control over the economy, the energy sector, and our lives. Then the data didn’t support it, so they entered theory number three, climate change. Now, to any power-greedy politician, this is the perfect theory, it can never, ever, ever, be disproven, if it gets hotter, if it gets colder, if it gets wetter, if it gets drier.” ...
Asked whether the president is exaggerating [global warming], Cruz said, “You know, there’s a different word than exaggerating.” 
A very prominent Jewish leader recently told me that the most important quality of a Republican candidate was simply that he be able to defeat Clinton and restore America’s strength abroad after Obama’s disastrous years, where Clinton served as his secretary of state.
This assessment of Obama’s foreign policy is not just held by hawks. Hear it from David Rothkopf  editor of Foreign Policy magazine and a former staffer in Bill Clinton’s administration:
[Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran] could reduce the risk of a nuclear break out over the next 10-15 years but it will also provide a lot of cash to the Iranians and over the course of the past several decades the Iranians have used their resources to destabilise other parts of the region, whether it’s Lebanon, or Syria, or Iraq or Yemen or Gaza....
Well the worst case scenario I mean I could really curl your hair on it, I mean the Iranians could break out of the deal, produce nuclear weapons after having gotten the $150 billion cash windfall from this thing. So they get the benefit and the deal doesn’t work at all.
But I think the likely negative scenario is Iran gets the cash, builds up relationships, uses that for 10 years and then ten years from now starts to develop its nuclear capability again and then that in turn leads countries like Saudi Arabia and others in the region to develop their own nuclear weapons and so we end up with this deal having triggered a nuclear arms race in the region and simply postponing the kind of conflict that we’ve been most concerned about while strengthening Iran at the same time…
I think [Obama’s] foreign policy performance has been reactive; it hasn’t been strategic. I think that if you look at the Middle East you have a situation where respectively every country in the region is at war for the first time in history. And our relationships with virtually every ally we have in the region is worse today than they were before.
Vladimir Putin has taken advantage of the west in decision in Ukraine, and I worry that he is going to seek to do so in the Baltics. I think the Chinese have been testing the United States; I think all of this testing of the red lines has weakened the US and let to the perception that we don’t have a lot of resolve…
The possibility that the Iran deal goes off track are real, and so that may end up being [Obama’s] legacy. But I think his main legacy is going to be, people have realised during this period that the world needs a great power to lead and to help provide resolve when crises arise.
US hasn’t been up to that over the past five or six years…
At home, Obama meanwhile does a contra-Cruz, announcing a useless and expensive measure to stop a warming that’s actually paused for 18 years and counting:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Cruz missile could save the US from Obama’s legacy'
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Turnbull can’t be bothered rejecting leadership talk

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (8:20am)

Here we go again, and with Newspoll tomorrow bound to make things even worse for Tony Abbott:
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has declined to respond to a question from a member of the public on when he plans to challenge Tony Abbott for the top job.

The question from a man at a Politics in the Pub session in ­Adelaide was last night met with a raucous round of applause from about 100 attendees at the up-market Electra House bar in the city. 
“In the words of (ABC’s) Tony Jones, I’ll take that as a comment,” Mr Turnbull responded. 
Turnbull no longer cares to repeat the government lines he thinks will diminish him:
Tony Abbott’s ban on Liberal ministers appearing on ABC’s Q&A had not done the government any good at all, he said… 
“I don’t think the ban on Q&A has done us any good at all,” Mr Turnbull said. “I think the only beneficiaries were Q&A because their ratings have gone up...” 
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The Houli factor

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (8:10am)

Two things to love as a Tigers fan. First, the character of Bachar Houli:
In last Friday night’s blockbuster clash with Hawthorn at the MCG, Houli’s rebounding approach took on an added dimension. 
He was looking to bounce back from the bitter disappointment of the previous Saturday against Fremantle at the ‘G’, when his kick-in down the middle of the ground, with just over a minute remaining in the match, was turned over and resulted in the winning goal for the Dockers.
And, rebound, Houli most certainly did.  He made a valuable contribution to Richmond’s bold victory over the Hawks, finishing with 23 disposals, including a team-high eight rebound-50s, five intercept possessions, a game-high 10 marks, along with a crucial set-shot goal late in the third quarter.
During a post-match interview on SEN, Houli revealed he had handled the disappointment and subsequent criticism that he received from outside the Club, following the Fremantle loss, in a positive manner.
“I thought to myself, if I’m going to detour from people, that’s not the best thing to do,” Houli said on SEN.
“The first thing I did was face the media the following morning… I thought, this is a great opportunity to face and I guess man-up and take control, or take blame for that incident…

“The most important thing is the support I’ve had from my teammates and from family.  It’s just been second to none ...”
And that’s the second thing to love - the terrific team spirit. Watch the Richmond players’ reaction when Houli kicked that goal:
UPDATE
Not the first time I’ve admired Houli’s class - not to mention a quiet brand of advocacy that achieves change with unity. Champion man. 
===

The Premiers will cost us

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (8:02am)

The media applauded the Premiers last month for proposing more taxes. Simon Benson now reports the likely cost:
THE average working family would be forced to pay another $2000 a year in tax under a proposal being considered by state and federal governments to fix their spending blowouts by raising the Medicare Levy. 
Exclusive modelling [by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling] commissioned by The Daily Telegraph has revealed the proposal from the Labor states, which will again be considered at the next COAG meeting later this year, would raise almost $14 billion in annual revenue.
However, as an alternative to raising or broadening the GST, the higher Medicare levy plan would deliver a direct hit to the average family household of between $2000 and $4000 a year…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said he would prefer reform the GST over raising the Medicare levy but confirmed two weeks ago that it was on the table for discussion.  
(Thanks to reader John.) 
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Time for Labor to explain its own expenses or also quit

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (7:57am)

Bad news for Tony Burke - with Bronwyn Bishop gone, the spotlight now is on him:
Labor frontbencher Tony Burke, a key opposition attack dog in the Bronwyn Bishop affair, has come under further pressure over a family holiday he took to Uluru paid for by the public purse. 
More details of the 2012 Uluru trip show Mr Burke charged the taxpayer for his family to travel business class at a cost several times that available through regular economy travel packages.
Questions have also been raised over a week-long overseas trip to Europe by Mr Burke, during his time as environment minister, where his expenses averaged $10,000 a day.
Mr Burke made the Uluru trip between April 19 and April 22 that year, during school holidays, in what he says was a trip on government business when he was environment minister and in which he brought members of his family… (I)n 2012, the Finance Department papers show, Mr Burke charged $70,619.59 for a one-week trip in March that year to Switzerland, Britain and France “to attend the OECD environment policy committee ministerial meeting, the Planet Under Pressure Conference and to conduct a series of high-level meetings”.
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill, Dave and many others.) 
===

Why not Sarah Henderson?

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (7:50am)

The new Speaker will inevitably be a billboard of the values of the Abbott Government.
Bronwyn Bishop made sure of that, which turned out to be a problem. I liked her strength, but it is undeniable that she helped Labor to brand the Government as dated, mates-run and partisan. She also made the job highly visible.
That should guide the Liberals when choosing a replacement.
I’d suggest the next Speaker be relatively young, preferably female, sharp, engaging and fair. If they hold a marginal seat, all the better.
Who best fits that bill?
Steve Price on 2GB last night gave me one answer: Sarah Henderson, in the marginal seat of Corangamite.
UPDATE
Or Kelly O’Dwyer? Although, true, she is a new mother and probably doesn’t yet have the time. 
===

Yes, I did respond to Robert Manne’s third list of “stolen” children, too

Andrew Bolt August 04 2015 (7:31am)

Reader Frank makes a claim much repeated by Robert Manne and other “stolen generations” activists:
Andrew

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe you’ve ever-rebutted this thorough take down of your position on the stolen generations.

Given the issue has been raised again in recent days, what’s your detailed response?

https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2011/10/24/1319413522/name-ten-journalism-andrew-bolt
I’m happy to correct you, Frank, and to demonstrate why what you assumed is a “thorough take down” is anything but.
I responded to Manne’s article at the time - go here for a detailed rebuttal, with links - and republished that response in 2013. Earlier, I’d responded to another Manne list of “stolen children” in print and in a debate at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival (go here).
For much more from me, go here. For a summary of the “stolen generations” issues I’ve covered, with links, go here.  For a summary of the various court findings against the “stolen generations” claims, go  here and here, and to read the findings of the original - and failed - “stolen generations” test case go here.
And to understand the moral case for my disputing the “stolen generations”, go here for just one of the many articles I’ve written to show that the myth is actually killing Aboriginal children.  It may make you good to believe the “stolen generations”, but it’s murder on Aboriginal children.
UPDATE
Here, to save those who can’t be bothered clicking links, is the rebuttal I made to the article reader Frank mentions:

 Continue reading 'Yes, I did respond to Robert Manne’s third list of “stolen” children, too'
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HOME-GROWN HEAD HUNTERS

Tim Blair – Monday, August 04, 2014 (3:37pm)

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. David Hicks was raised in Adelaide, which might explain his early inclinations towards violence. The convicted terrorism supporter’s subsequent conversion to extreme Islam allowed Hicks to further indulge these tendencies. As Hicks himself explained four years ago: 
My motivation was not a religious search for spirituality; it was more a search for somewhere to belong and to be with people who shared my interest in world affairs. 
That’s a nice way of putting it. By “people who shared my interest in world affairs”, Hicks presumably means his training buddies in Lashkar-e-Taiba and al Qaeda, whose world affairs interests primarily involve the slaughter of infidels. It isn’t exactly a sophisticated geopolitical vision, but at least poor little David found “somewhere to belong”.
Sadly for Hicks, the peak moment of his international sharing seems to have been shooting at random Indian soldiers in 2000. It is unlikely Hicks even hit anybody, despite firing “hundreds of bullets”.
That’s probably as far as you’ll get in the caliphate caper with only an Adelaide upbringing and a few years of mosque attendance as inspiration. To generate completely barking mad levels of berserk bloodlust you need complete immersion in an extremist culture.
Such as you’ll find in certain western Sydney suburbs, for example.
 Continue reading 'HOME-GROWN HEAD HUNTERS'
===

BUDGET BUSTED

Tim Blair – Monday, August 04, 2014 (11:55am)

Fundraising for this month’s anti-Abbott march is running slightly below expectations:

(Via Gregoryno6)
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IT TOOK THEM MORE THAN A WEEK

Tim Blair – Monday, August 04, 2014 (12:56am)

The Sydney Morning Herald apologises for its bigotry: 
There has been widespread reader and community reaction during the past 10 days over a cartoon that was used to illustrate an opinion piece by columnist Mike Carlton on the conflict in Gaza …


The cartoon showed an elderly man, with a large nose, sitting alone, with a remote control device in his hand, overseeing explosions in Gaza. The armchair in which he was sitting was emblazoned with the Star of David, and the man was wearing a kippah, a religious skullcap. A strong view was expressed that the cartoon, by Glen Le Lievre, closely resembled illustrations that had circulated in Nazi Germany …
The Herald now appreciates that, in using the Star of David and the kippah in the cartoon, the newspaper invoked an inappropriate element of religion, rather than nationhood, and made a serious error of judgment.
It was wrong to publish the cartoon in its original form.
We apologise unreservedly for this lapse, and the anguish and distress that has been caused. 
Lapse? Try “pattern”.
UPDATE. Sharri Markson: 
Prior to the apology, the Herald’s deputy editor of the weekday paper, Ben Cubby, defended the cartoon and Carlton’s columns on Twitter, getting into heated arguments with readers who said they were offended …
The cartoon incident has exposed the loss of experienced editors at Fairfax, leaving the likes of Cubby, who was environment reporter two minutes ago, to respond to concerned readers. 
Meanwhile, Mike Carlton has written nothing about today’s apology. His silence speaks volumes.
UPDATE II. Carlton now detects racism where none exists.
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How Mike Carlton writes to a reader accusing him of writing anti-Jewish material

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (8:08pm)

I have avoided calling Mike Carlton an anti-Semite, even after his foul column a week ago, decorated with the disgusting cartoon discussed below. He seems to hate far too many people to accuse him of such particularism.
But then I read this exchange - and note very well Carlton’s final email:
On 27 Jul 2014, at 11:40 pm, Yury Glikin wrote:
It is most likely that you will not reply to this email, which is fine. I suppose engaging in lengthy discourse with you will be pointless as you seem to favour incendiary and grandiose statements, after which you retreat in order to hide behind a generic email address, a twitter handle and, I surmise, some sense of achievement (although I am not too sure of what exactly). 
As a man who has been a journalist for decades, to publish an article like the one you did on Saturday about Israel means one of 2 things. You either genuinely believe what you say, which means your understanding of history of the region is sadly lacking. To say things like Israel has never offered the Palestinians a state of their own for example, is such a gross misrepresentation of facts that it really doesn’t deserve further comment. There are so many factually incorrect statements, that it becomes more or less irrelevant, like something one would read on TMZ or a similarly banal and pointless publication. 
It may be argued that your commentary is deeply steeped in anti Semitism or general racism, but of course you know this and revel in the attention these statements get .. perhaps a slightly sad attempt of a journalist who was once relevant, to remain so by using inflammatory rhetoric. 
Alternatively, you don’t believe what you say, and you write what you write because Fairfax knows that it generates eyeballs and feeds the needs if its (mostly) liberal reader base. Fair enough, we all need to make a buck. But if this is the case, then you have already sold out. I am sure you convince yourself that having 85% of the people respond to your column with positive feedback, gives you some sort of victory. I assure you, it’s a pyrrhic one at best, because your credibility as a journalist, someone that people should listen to, is already dead. 
I have no desire to call you names or threaten you, as this feeds your ego and helps you to validate what you do. I also am not misguided enough to say stupid stuff like “we’re the chosen people, deal with it”, as this no doubt gives you some macabre pleasure and allows you to reinforce your belief into you own perceived self-importance. 
Sadly, SMH will no doubt continue to give you voice in order to help sell page banner impressions. But I am comfortable knowing that Israel will endure many people like you and will continue, whereas you are already immaterial .... but what’s best of all is that deep inside, just before you fall asleep at night ... I know that you already know this. 
Yury
On 28 Jul 2014, at 5:45, Mike Carlton wrote: 
How arrogant and foolish you are. 
Mike Carlton 
Sent from my iPad
On 28 Jul 2014, at 6:56 am, Yury Glikin wrote: 
Perhaps 
But I’ll take that any day over being a sad and irrelevant old man, full of hate and bile.
From: Mike Carlton
Date: 28 July 2014 7:17:21 AEST
To: Yury Glikin
Subject: Re: Irrelevant
You’re the one full of hate and bile, sunshine. The classic example of the Jewish bigot.  Now f..k off.
Mike Carlton
Sent from my iPad 
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Another asylum seeker try-on

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (6:21pm)

It sounds to me like a great rort, funded by taxpayers:
A MOTHER and son are among delegates who stayed behind from an international AIDS conference intending to apply for asylum in Australia.  

UP to 30 delegates did not fly home after the conference ended on July 25 and have asked the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) for help. 
If the delegates, mostly from African countries but some also from Asia, apply for asylum, they will live in the community while their claims are assessed. ASRC justice programs director Hayley Mansfield ...  said a similar thing had happened after the Homeless World Cup in 2008, where a number of competitors stayed behind to apply for asylum. 
One of the delegates is from Tanzania, for heaven’s sake, claiming he’s fleeing “albino persecution”. He’s left his wife and three children behind. Funnily enough, he’s not actually an albino himself. He just works with them - work I suggest he could simply stop if that’s his real problem.
Even stranger, while witchdoctors in rural areas have had a liking for body parts from albinos, many thousands of albinos have managed to get on with their lives in Tanzania - and work for improvements with the help of their government:
Some albinos living in Dar es Salaam say Tanzania’s cities have become more accepting in recent years. 
“Before, we couldn’t share the same seats on a town bus for example. If I sit here, no one will set next to me,” said Abdilm Omari, treasurer of the 12,000-member Tanzania Albino Society based in Dar es Salaam. Omari says it used to be that people wouldn’t patronize businesses owned by albinos, or wouldn’t employ them at all.
But today, “There is less ignorance,” he says. Discrimination toward albinos seems to have declined drastically since the passing of the April 2010 Persons With Disabilities Act, which explicitly forbids employers from discriminating against albinos and even requires companies to allocate at least 3 percent of their positions to people with disabilities. That law was championed by Al-Shaymaa Kwegyir, Tanzania’s first albino member of parliament. 
Exactly how present is the danger?
Two witch doctors in Tanzania have been arrested after a woman with albinism was hacked to death, police say… According to Under the Same Sun, which campaigns against the discrimination of people living with albinism, the last killing of an albino in Tanzania was in February 2013.
If this albino-helper had the best case, I wonder about the other 29.
If this is the game, then future conferences should be held in some place like Addis Ababa. It should cut the number of useless conferences, the number of freeloading delegates and the number of “asylum seekers”. It will also steer good money to poor countries.
By the way: don’t these AIDS delegates have a responsibility to fight the disease back in their home countries? Wasn’t this conference called to help them and others do just that? 
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ABC falsely claims Israeli ‘strike on a UN run school’

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (5:43pm)

It is increasingly difficult to trust the ABC’s reporting on Gaza.
Take this World Today report (and I heard similarly false claims made in other ABC reports today. UPDATE And on Channel 9):
NICK GRIMM: To Gaza, where Israelis this morning have said they’ll hold fire in most areas of the enclave for what they’ve termed a seven-hour “humanitarian window” ... 
The announcement comes after an unusually strong censure from Washington at the apparent Israeli shelling of yet another UN-run shelter, which killed at least 10 people…
Barney Porter reports.
BARNEY PORTER: It was the second strike on a UN run school in less than a week.
Shelling “of” a shelter? A strike “on” a shelter?
In fact, the very same report goes on to suggest that both claims are false:
This time, at least 10 people were killed and about 30 others were wounded when an Israeli missile struck the entrance of the facility in the southern Gaza Strip.
So now it’s not a strike on the facility, but the entrance. Or not even quite that:
TAMER BADARWEEL (translated): The street was full of children buying sweets from the shop that’s by the main gate.
The ABC’s AM gives us more reason to doubt other ABC reports of a strike “on” or “of” the shelter, or even of the entrance::
When the explosion happened, it killed at least 10 people as they sat outside the school. 
Now Israel denies that it fired into the shelter but it appears to have targeted a motorbike just as it was passing by the UN shelter. Now Israel says that that motorbike was carrying three members of Islamic jihad and it was the shrapnel that did the damage, obviously killing the civilians inside.
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Latest excuse: global warming causes no global warming

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (5:24pm)

Global warming - propaganda

Does The Age, the centre of global warming alarmism in Australia, realise how stupid it’s starting to sound?:
Still, this is progress. It wasn’t so long ago that The Age was still pretending there wasn’t a pause at all.
Meanwhile:
Melburnians have trembled through their coldest consecutive mornings for 17 years.
And:
Adelaide has woken to its coldest start to an August day in 126 years …
UPDATE
Meanwhile, the warmist Science magazine catches up with an argument against the great islands-are-drowning scare:
In 1999, the World Bank asked [University of Auckland geomorphologist Paul Kench] to evaluate the economic costs of sea-level rise and climate change to Pacific island nations. Kench, who had been studying how atoll islands evolve over time, says he had assumed that a rising ocean would engulf the islands, which consist of sand perched on reefs. “That’s what everyone thought, and nobody questioned it,” he says. But when he scoured the literature, he could not find a single study to support that scenario. So Kench teamed up with Peter Cowell, a geomorphologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, to model what might happen. 
They found that during episodes of high seas—at high tide during El Niño events, which raise sea level in the Central Pacific, for example—storm waves would wash over higher and higher sections of atoll islands. But instead of eroding land, the waves would raise island elevation by depositing sand produced from broken coral, coralline algae, mollusks, and foraminifera. Kench notes that reefs can grow 10 to 15 mill imeters a year—faster than the sea-level rise expected to occur later this century. ”As long as the reef is healthy and generates an abundant supply of sand, there’s no reason a reef island can’t grow and keep up,” he argues.
(Thanks to readers Brian, Steve and Rocky.) 
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CFMEU accused yet again

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (5:12pm)

This kind of stuff must be crushed:
THE powerful construction union “lawlessly” pressured the clients of a Queensland crane company to boycott the business unless it gave in to union demands on enterprise bargaining and a multi-million dollar redundancy fund, a royal commission has heard.

Albert Smith, the managing director of a company that owns Universal Cranes, was the first witness to give evidence at this week’s Brisbane hearings of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, which is examining explosive allegations against the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union in Queensland. 
“The process was that the union would advise the clients not to hire us,” Mr Smith told the inquiry. “Clients wouldn’t use Universal Cranes so we lost several customers and, in some cases, customers that were in the bag. The union made it clear to the clients they wouldn’t allow us to be on the site.”
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Gaza outrage: it’s really just about the Jews, isn’t it?

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (4:28pm)

With footage from Gaza, Europe and Sydney that Australians really need to see before blaming the usual suspects:
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Brandis denounces. UPDATE: Fairfax finally caves

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (4:03pm)

Absolutely right:
THE Attorney-General, George Brandis, has accused Fairfax Media of publishing anti-Semitic coverage of the Middle East, and denounced a cartoon in The ­Sydney Morning Herald depicting a Jewish man with an exaggerated nose as comparable to propaganda from Nazi Germany.
In an extraordinary attack, Senator Brandis said coverage in Fairfax papers of the Gaza conflict was “overtly anti-Semitic”.
“I… would have thought that a responsible media organisation would have a very good look at itself when it publishes cartoons (of) the kind we haven’t seen since Germany in the 1930s."… The Australian Jewish News has called on readers to cancel subscriptions to Fairfax. The cartoon illustrated a column by Mike Carlton, which ran in the paper’s July 26 edition. ­Created by illustrator Glen Le ­Lievre, the cartoon also ran on the website of Victorian masthead The Age, which is also published by Fairfax.  
UPDATE
Revulsion:
One of Australia’s leading immu­nologists, highly regarded professor Ron Penny, and his wife, Naomi, said they stopped their subscription last week after a life spent reading The Sydney Morning Herald… 
“After reading the Mike Carlton article and seeing that cartoon, we decided that whatever happens we cannot possibly subscribe to a publication that could print anything as totally ignorant and ­odious as that. “Thank god we can live without that horrible publication.” 
UPDATE
After a whole week, the editor apologises:
The cartoon showed an elderly man, with a large nose, sitting alone, with a remote control device in his hand, overseeing explosions in Gaza. The armchair in which he was sitting was emblazoned with the Star of David, and the man was wearing a kippah, a religious skullcap. A strong view was expressed that the cartoon, by Glen Le Lievre, closely resembled illustrations that had circulated in Nazi Germany… 
The Herald now appreciates that, in using the Star of David and the kippah in the cartoon, the newspaper invoked an inappropriate element of religion, rather than nationhood, and made a serious error of judgment.
It was wrong to publish the cartoon in its original form. We apologise unreservedly for this lapse, and the anguish and distress that has been caused. 
But the deputy editor, a warming catastrophist, can’t see what the fuss is about:
Prior to the apology, the Herald’s deputy editor of the weekday paper, Ben Cubby, defended the cartoon and Carlton’s columns on Twitter, getting into heated arguments with readers who said they were offended. 
Cubby told one reader, Bryan Gaensler, a former Young Aus­tralian of the Year and a highly ­respected scientist to, “Give it up mate”.
“Bryan with respect I think you’re overreaching with these Nazi references. Let’s just agree to disagree,” he said in another tweet. Inflaming the situation further, Cubby tweeted on Saturday: “Great column by Mike Carlton again today.”
We dealt with this on yesterday’s NewsWatch, Miranda Devine was very strong:
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Wake up Labor, see the threat

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (9:37am)

 A COUPLE of hundred men marched past the Lakemba Hotel in Sydney a week ago, chanting their support for Gaza, and with it a threat.

Here is what they shouted while waving black flags of jihad — and pray Labor finally listens:
Palestine is Muslim land 
The solution is Jihad ...
You can never stop Islam
From Australia to al Sham (Syria)
One umma (Muslim community) hand in hand
From Lakemba to Gaza
One call “khalifa” (Caliphate)
That chant is a wake-up for a political class now too cowed or craven to judge between the civilised and the primitive.
Yes, we really do now have hundreds of people who feel free to demonstrate a common cause with terrorists waging the most hideous wars in Gaza, Syria and Iraq.
I can hear the usual “but but but” already, as in: but you’re ignoring that most Muslims are peace-loving, and saying such things risks alienating them or encouraging racists.
And there’s truth to that, which is why we’ve left the problem to fester to the point where we’ve had scores of jihadists fight in Syria and Iraq, including two suicide bombers and two beheaders.
But we’ve done more than simply ignore something that threatens our physical safety.
(Read full column here.) 
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Prove this isn’t just about Jew-hatred. Protest these killings, too

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (9:02am)

Where are the protests? Or is killing Muslims only a crime when Jews do it?
HAMAS shot some 20 Palestinians on Monday night for protesting against Hamas for the massive destruction inflicted on their neighbourhood in Shejaia by the IDF in the past weeks, Channel 10 reported on Tuesday. Over the past few days, Hamas has executed more than 30 civilians from various parts of the Gaza Strip which it suspected of collaborating with Israel, unidentified Palestinian security sources told the Palestine Press News Agency.
UPDATE
About that wicked Israeli “blockade” of Gaza that protesters demand be lifted:
Customs officials at southern Israel’s Ashdod port discovered hundreds of ball-bearings and cement mixers in a Turkish shipment of “humanitarian aid” to Gaza on Wednesday , raising fears the cargo could have been used by Hamas to support its ongoing war against Israel, according to Channel Two. While both items have civilian uses, both have played a central role building Hamas’s rocket arsenal and its vast network of “terror tunnels” into Israel. Terrorists in Gaza regularly use ball-bearings to maximize the lethality of locally-made, short-range Qassam rockets.
UPDATE
Wouldn’t it make more sense to cancel their passports once they’re safely in the Middle East?
THE nation’s top spy agency has stripped almost 70 passports from Islamic extremists, prompting fears the grounded radicals will now lead attacks on Australian soil. 
Remind me again why it’s terrible to argue that mass immigration from the Middle East makes us less safe:
Algerian-born Abdul Nacer Benbrika, who led a terror cell planning to bomb the MCG on Grand Final day, is believed to still hold a strong influence over young extremists in Victoria, despite being held in the high-security unit at Barwon Prison. 
Several devotees in Melbourne’s northern suburbs of Preston, Brunswick and ­Coburg have praised Ben­brika as their spiritual leader online. They labelled the cult figure a “king” and a “martyr” on several Facebook pages… Last week, the Herald Sun revealed two of Benbrika’s followers — the Raad brothers, Ahmed and Ezzit — who had been released from jail, had close ties to Adam Dahman, 18, of Northcote, who detonated a suicide bomb in Iraq on July 17.
(Thanks to reader Gab.) 
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Being green should not be a get-out-jail card

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (8:57am)

A very important point by Henry Ergas, as a court once again discounts a sentence because of the green politics of the law-breaker:
‘‘IF you are going to steal,’’ they say in America, ‘‘steal big.’’ Jonathan Moylan did just that: by issuing a fraudulent ANZ press release claiming the bank had withdrawn its support from the Maules Creek mining project, he knocked $300 million off the market capitalisation of Whitehaven Coal.

But far from imposing the maximum penalty for market ­manipulation of 10 years in jail, the NSW Supreme Court has now let him off with a gentle slap on the wrist, releasing him from a sentence of 20 months’ imprisonment in exchange for $1000 and a two-year good behaviour period. 
Moylan, you see, is a green; and although “the market was manipulated, vast amounts of shares were unnecessarily traded and some investors lost their investment entirely”, the court concluded leniency was warranted, as the anti-coal activist, who has a long string of trespass offences to his name, did not act for or obtain a personal financial gain.
No, Moylan wasn’t motivated by a thirst for yachts, fast cars and the company of starlets. He gets his kicks dreaming of a world without coal.
But if fanaticism excuses crime, are jihadists now entitled to issue misleading financial information about Jewish-owned companies in their quest for the global ­caliphate? Or is there one law for the ­zealots of Gaia and another for everyone else?
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Abusing our good nature

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (8:37am)

SOMEONE must think we’re idiots. Why are 157 Sri Lankans given refuge in India now demanding we house them instead?
Why have refugee activists taken up their cause, rather than that of the countless real refugees in real danger right now?
Why are we now keeping these 157at our expense in Nauru, when they should have been flicked right back to India?
This is an abuse of our good nature and our reason.
Australia has always been prepared to help people fleeing for their lives. But these people?
(Read full article here.) 
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Islamic State advances

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (7:19am)

This is worse than the threat of the Taliban, so where is the West’s response?
Capture of the Mosul Dam after an offensive of barely 24 hours could give the Sunni militants the ability to flood major Iraqi cities, sharply raising the stakes in their bid to topple Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government. 
Islamic State, which sees Iraq’s majority Shi’ites as apostates who deserve to be killed, also seized the Ain Zalah oil field, adding to four others already under their control, and three towns.
Obama’s premature abandonment of Iraq could be his most catastrophic mistake.  
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I despise Oldfield for many reasons. This speech is up there. There are sick people in this world. Confusing that with an immigration scare helps nothing. Anybody travelling to a 3rd world nation could track a disease here .. they don't have to come by boat. But the veiled racial hatred of a cultural supremacist just can't help itself. - ed
Illegal immigrants: The disease threat to Australia

August 3, 2013 · by David Oldfield · in Multiculturalism, Politics 

Despite all the politics and promises, the fact remains thousands of people continue to arrive illegally in Australia and many more await the opportunity to make the trip.

They’ve been called asylum seekers, economic refugees, unauthorised arrivals and country shoppers, but whatever one might call this threat to Australia, knowledge of one particular serious danger has been largely denied the Australian people. That is the issue of diseases that also arrive with the un-invited.

It should be noted that arriving with claims for ‘Asylum’ allows access to Australia by people with diseases that prevent such access by anyone wishing to migrate through legitimate means!

Boat arrivals have brought diseases that have overwhelmed medical resources, financially and otherwise, and yet this ever present costly danger is conveniently overlooked.

I have warned of this imported disease time-bomb for years – here is a speech I wrote and delivered in Parliament on June 19 2002.

Given the tens of thousands, in just the last few years, who have arrived by boat from life threatening disease ridden places, the deadly cost of this issue is even more outstanding today!

The Hon. DAVID OLDFIELD [10.38 p.m.]: Last week I put on the record various facts to bring perspective to the pervading nonsense about the emotional hype generated in support of those whom I have termed “asylum-class tourists”. On the same theme it is also appropriate to consider the terrible effect of ill-considered immigration and multicultural policies pursued by governments without consultation. These policies have resulted directly in social and health problems of a magnitude so great that recovery may not be realistically achievable. One cannot fix a problem one refuses to acknowledge. Although the public at large is greatly impacted by horrendous problems such as ethnic crime and imported diseases, no government has moved to resolve the issue. Instead we have seen the cowardly approach of political correctness result in ineffective treatments and no cures.

Without dramatic changes to immigration and the removal of multiculturalism in favour of assimilation and integration, the future is bleak. Successive Australian governments of both political persuasions imported those who were clearly going to have difficulty assimilating. This problem could have been overcome given time and the right approach. However, the introduction of multiculturalism, and hence the removal of any need to assimilate, has destroyed any chance of a cohesive society. Even John Howard noted in 1988 that multiculturalism tended to highlight people’s differences rather than unite them. It is a shame that the Prime Minister no longer makes such concerns public.

As to immigration—albeit supposedly legitimate or otherwise—undoubtedly the issue about which the Australian people are most uninformed is the level of government-sponsored imported disease. One of the best examples is hepatitis B, which until about 25 years ago was virtually unheard of in Australia. Today Australia has over 400,000 carriers of hepatitis B. Each year another 30,000 people are infected and 1,200 die. This disease on its own is estimated to cost the health budget $100 million every year. In 1992 a medical team tested 2,290 inner-city Sydney school children aged between 12 and 14. The result should have been headline news for every newspaper, radio and television station in Australia, but, like so much bad news on immigration, especially 10 years ago, the report never saw the light of day in the mainstream press. Of the 2,290 children, 27 per cent of all those born overseas were carrying tuberculosis. In contrast, only 1 per cent of Australian-born children were carrying the disease. Even so, 1 per cent for Australian-born children was considered very high.

The campaign in Australia in the middle of last century to eradicate tuberculosis was essentially successful, yet in 1992 conclusive research clearly showed that a large proportion of Sydney’s overseas-born children were tuberculosis carriers. These terrible facts, which have been largely hidden from the Australian people, are not my facts; rather, they come from Monash University demography papers, People and Places, and the Australian Medical Journal.

Should we discriminate on the basis of political correctness? Certainly to choose not to discriminate on the basis of political correctness is to discriminate against Australians who are already living in this country and are as yet uninfected. A couple of years ago an illegal immigrant with tuberculosis was tracked down on the Queensland Gold Coast, and the only reason the authorities caught up with him was because he died—funnily enough, of tuberculosis. This particular highly infectious illegal immigrant was working in a shop and his death resulted in the health department having to screen an estimated 300 people who were understood to have come into contact with his coughing and spluttering. That man was an illegal immigrant and should not have been in Australia. That point is clear. But what of the thousands like him roaming free? What diseases are they spreading?

If not for any other reason, mandatory detention of so-called asylum seekers is of paramount importance for health screening to protect the Australian population. We should not allow political correctness or misplaced compassion to cause us to ignore the fact that many of those illegally entering Australia come from places where hepatitis B, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and AIDS are so prevalent that it is very common for them to have at least one of these infectious and deadly diseases.
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“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival...
"There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.” Winston Churchill
I like generalisations. That’s because they point out a general truth.
Like the fact that, generally speaking, fair skinned people will sunburn more easily than those with darker skin. That statement neatly sums up a well known truth.
It is also true that a bunch of people – generally left-wing, gender-studies, academic types – will be inclined to write volumes on their belief that such a statement is inherently discriminatory.
And it is generally true that their work is absolute rubbish. Every bit of it.
Here’s another generalisation that should not be easily dismissed: the Islamic community supports the military efforts of Australia’s enemies. And, by doing so, it represents the first time in Australian history that a discrete and identifiable segment of society has provided recruits and aid to organisations that seek to overthrow our democratic government.
Despite this, our government is allowing large-scale Islamic immigration and now the Australian Defence Force is actively seeking Islamic recruits.
That’s right. Our military wants to enlist the enemy.
This situation is completely at odds with all reason. It is akin to opening the doors to Japanese migrants during World War Two, providing them with free health care, education and welfare benefits and turning a blind eye while funds and recruits are sent back to Japan for training, indoctrination and use in the Japanese war efforts against Australia.
Oh yeah, and with all this going on, the government also deciding to actively recruit Japanese patriots into the Australian military.
The reason this did not happen in World War II was because our nation had not lost its senses. It was not in the grip of PC BS. Unfortunately, this ideology defines Australia today.
If you think this is insane, you are right. Pat yourself on the back.
If you think this is great for a multicultural society, then you have strayed far too past stupid to be of any use, and should probably not read further unless you are prepared for a shock.
These are the facts. The stone cold, hard facts:
The 2011 census recorded that out of Australia’s population of 21.5 million, about 476,000 were Muslim.
Australia’s population now stands at just over 23 million. Based on even rates of population growth, there are now about 512,000 Muslims who call Australia home.
This population of 23 million supports a military of 58,000. So there is one person in the military for every 400 Australians.
But there are only 88 Muslims in the Australian Defence Force. It is a reality that the Islamic Community, on the whole, is much less patriotic than the rest of Australia. There is only one Muslim serving in uniform for every 5820 Muslims in this country. Muslims are 14 times less likely to enlist than other Australians.
Furthermore, there are 2530 Australians currently serving overseas on military operations. This means that our participation rate in conflict is rather low: one soldier is deployed for every 9,143 Australians.
However, the same cannot be said for the Islamic community.
ASIO has repeatedly warned that hundreds of Australian Muslims are fighting in Syria, many with al Qaeda-linked groups.
If we assume the best possible case that by ‘hundreds’ ASIO means the lowest possible multiple of hundred, then there are 200 Muslims involved in that conflict. This means that the Islamic community is sending its sons off to war at a much greater rate than the rest of Australia: Islamic militant groups are picking up an Australian recruit for every 2,561 Muslims living in this country.
Just in case maths is not your strong point, let me put it this way. Per capita, the Islamic community is sending three terrorists off to fight with Islamist groups for every soldier the rest of this country sends overseas to wage war against them.
On the whole, it all seems rather crazy that alarm bells aren’t ringing out across the countryside.
But they aren’t and, instead, the Australian Defence Force is now trying to actively recruit Muslims.
In fact, the Royal Australian Navy has just appointed a Strategic Adviser on Islamic Cultural Affairs.
Part of her job will be to bridge the ‘misperceptions’ and ‘misunderstandings’ that are apparently limiting the number of Muslims in uniform.
I respectfully submit that the reason young Muslim men are not joining up like the rest of Australians is not because of misunderstandings about the Australian military. On the contrary, this target group understands it very well. It’s just that the flower of Australia’s Islamic youth are too busy fighting for the enemy to worry about bothering the Defence Force’s recruiting agencies.
They might have an Australian passport but their allegiance is not to our flag.
Yet the military is so intent on recruiting from the Islamic community that it now allows them to wear a different uniform. And these are not my words. They come straight from the Royal Australian Air Force’s webpage devoted to diversity, in the section about religious dress:
“No matter which uniform our Air Force members wear, they wear their uniform with pride, and inherit a proud tradition that was established by the generations before us.”
If the goal of Islamic recruitment is to integrate this community into Australian society, giving them a separate uniform hardly seems like a sensible idea. But hey, maybe integration is not what this is about after all.
Generally speaking, if a soldier in a Western nation has his head hacked off while strolling home from his barracks, there will be a Muslim at the scene of the crime.
And, generally speaking, if a soldier runs around a Western military barracks shouting Allah Akbar while gunning down his comrades, there will be a Muslim pulling the trigger.
And, generally speaking, if a military installation in a Western nation is the target of a terrorist threat, a bunch of Muslims will be planning it.
With all that in mind, generally speaking, if you increase the number of Muslims in Western countries you will probably see more of these atrocities in the future. And if you are dumb enough to put these people into uniform, then there is also a fair chance the military will change as well. Not for the better, either.
Later this year, Australia will withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan. You could say it’s a sign that the ‘War on Terror’, started when western aircraft hijacked by Islamic pilots smashed into the Twin Towers, is over.
I’d say it’s probably just begun. And that efforts to date have been a complete and utter strategic failure.
Because the Islamic population in Australia has doubled during this war. And when Australia’s soldiers return home, it is highly likely that this country’s largest armed commitment overseas will be comprised of Islamic Australians soldiering on with al Qaeda in Syria.
Hardly a sign of victory.
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Most people don't care how strong our faith is in good times, they want to know if our faith works in bad times...Let me tell you this!!!! I'm walking through hell, Vultures every where!! and I'm amazed that I'm not falling, each minute of everyday God strengthens me over and over again... His promise is indeed true, follow Me and I God will hold you.... Praise the Lord..
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Pastor Rick Warren'
Truly talented entertainers amaze audiences. Those without talent can only shock.
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A young girl stepped up to a karaoke machine in the food court at a mall and left everyone with their jaws hanging open! 

Wait for the 2:40 mark - YOU'LL GET CHILLS!
www.godtube.com/watch/?v=000291NU
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Painting detail of a blind man
The Blind Leading the Blind is a painting of 1568 byFlemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Executed in distemper on linen canvas, it measures 86 cm × 154 cm (34 in × 61 in). It depicts the Biblical parable of the blind leading the blind from Matthew 15:14. Considered a masterwork for its composition and accurate detail, the painting (detail pictured)reflects Bruegel's mastery of observation: each figure has a different recognizable eye affliction, including corneal leukoma, atrophy of globe and removed eyes. The diagonal composition reinforces the off-kilter motion of the six figures falling in progression. It was painted the year before Bruegel's death, and has a bitter, sorrowful tone. This may be related to the establishment of the Council of Troublesin 1567 by the government of the Spanish Netherlands, which ordered mass arrests and executions to enforce Spanish rule and suppress Protestantism, but it is not clear if the painting was meant as a political statement. The work has inspired poetry by Charles Baudelaire and William Carlos Williams, and a novel by Gert Hofmann. It is part of the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy. (Full article...)
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August 4: Civic Holiday in most areas of Canada (2014);Constitution Day in the Cook Islands (1965)
USS Maddox (DD-731)
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“But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”” 1 Samuel 16:7 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"The Lamb is the light thereof."
Revelation 21:23
Quietly contemplate the Lamb as the light of heaven. Light in Scripture is the emblem of joy. The joy of the saints in heaven is comprised in this: Jesus chose us, loved us, bought us, cleansed us, robed us, kept us, glorified us: we are here entirely through the Lord Jesus. Each one of these thoughts shall be to them like a cluster of the grapes of Eshcol. Light is also the cause of beauty. Nought of beauty is left when light is gone. Without light no radiance flashes from the sapphire, no peaceful ray proceedeth from the pearl; and thus all the beauty of the saints above comes from Jesus. As planets, they reflect the light of the Sun of Righteousness; they live as beams proceeding from the central orb. If he withdrew, they must die; if his glory were veiled, their glory must expire. Light is also the emblem of knowledge. In heaven our knowledge will be perfect, but the Lord Jesus himself will be the fountain of it. Dark providences, never understood before, will then be clearly seen, and all that puzzles us now will become plain to us in the light of the Lamb. Oh! what unfoldings there will be and what glorifying of the God of love! Light also means manifestation. Light manifests. In this world it doth not yet appear what we shall be. God's people are a hidden people, but when Christ receives his people into heaven, he will touch them with the wand of his own love, and change them into the image of his manifested glory. They were poor and wretched, but what a transformation! They were stained with sin, but one touch of his finger, and they are bright as the sun, and clear as crystal. Oh! what a manifestation! All this proceeds from the exalted Lamb. Whatever there may be of effulgent splendour, Jesus shall be the centre and soul of it all. Oh! to be present and to see him in his own light, the King of kings, and Lord of lords!

Evening


"But as he went."
Luke 8:42
Jesus is passing through the throng to the house of Jairus, to raise the ruler's dead daughter; but he is so profuse in goodness that he works another miracle while upon the road. While yet this rod of Aaron bears the blossom of an unaccomplished wonder, it yields the ripe almonds of a perfect work of mercy. It is enough for us, if we have some one purpose, straightway to go and accomplish it; it were imprudent to expend our energies by the way. Hastening to the rescue of a drowning friend, we cannot afford to exhaust our strength upon another in like danger. It is enough for a tree to yield one sort of fruit, and for a man to fulfil his own peculiar calling. But our Master knows no limit of power or boundary of mission. He is so prolific of grace, that like the sun which shines as it rolls onward in its orbit, his path is radiant with lovingkindness. He is a swift arrow of love, which not only reaches its ordained target, but perfumes the air through which it flies. Virtue is evermore going out of Jesus, as sweet odours exhale from flowers; and it always will be emanating from him, as water from a sparkling fountain. What delightful encouragement this truth affords us! If our Lord is so ready to heal the sick and bless the needy, then, my soul, be not thou slow to put thyself in his way, that he may smile on thee. Be not slack in asking, if he be so abundant in bestowing. Give earnest heed to his word now, and at all times, that Jesus may speak through it to thy heart. Where he is to be found there make thy resort, that thou mayst obtain his blessing. When he is present to heal, may he not heal thee? But surely he is present even now, for he always comes to hearts which need him. And dost not thou need him? Ah, he knows how much! Thou Son of David, turn thine eye and look upon the distress which is now before thee, and make thy suppliant whole.
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Today's reading: Psalm 63-65, Romans 6 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 63-65

A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.
1 You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you....

Today's New Testament reading: Romans 6


Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ

1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life....
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Joel

[Jō'el] - jehovah is god or the lord is god.
  1. The first-born son of Samuelthe prophet (1 Sam. 8:2; 1 Chron. 6:33; 15:17). Called Vashni in 1 Chronicles 6:28.
  2. A Simeonite prince (1 Chron. 4:35).
  3. The father of Shemaiah, a Reubenite ( 1 Chron. 5:4, 8).
  4. A chief Gadite (1 Chron. 5:12).
  5. An ancestor of Samuel the prophet (1 Chron. 6:36).
  6. A chief man of Issachar, descendant of Tola (1 Chron. 7:3).
  7. One of David's heroes and a brother of Nathan (1 Chron. 11:38).
  8. A Gershonite in David's time ( 1 Chron. 15:7, 11; 23:8).
  9. Another Gershonite, keeper of the treasures of the Lord's house (1 Chron. 26:22).
  10. A prince of Manasseh in David's reign (1 Chron. 27:20).
  11. A Kohathite who assisted Hezekiah in the cleansing of the Temple (2 Chron. 29:12).
  12. One of Nebo's family who had taken a foreign wife (Ezra 10:43).
  13. A son of Zechri, and overseer of the Benjamites in Jerusalem (Neh. 11:9).
  14. Son of Pethuel, and prophet in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah (Joel 1:1; Acts 2:16).

The Man Who Foresaw Pentecost

Because nothing is known of Joel beyond what the opening verse of his book states, he has been styled "The Anonymous Prophet." Scripture is silent as to his birthplace, parentage and rank. All we know is that he was a son of Pethuel, or Bethuel as the LXX expresses it. But who Pethuel is no one knows. Its meaning, however, is significant, "vision of God," and springs from a word implying "to open the eyes."
Joel was a common name among the Hebrews and is still so among the Orientals. The use of his name as "the son of Pethuel" was necessary to distinguish him from the other Joels we have considered. It would seem as if his home was in Jerusalem or its immediate neighborhood. Thus he speaks repeatedly of Zion (Joel 2:1, 15, 23; 3:16, 17, 21), the children of Zion (Joel 2:23), Judah and Jerusalem (Joel 2:32; 3:1-20), the children of Judah and Jerusalem ( Joel 3:6, 8, 19).
It may be that Joel was a Jew of Jerusalem, and owing to his peculiar mention of priests, a priest-prophet himself (Joel 1:9, 10). His references to the Temple and its worship are frequent (Joel 1:9-16; 2:14, 17; 3:18). It is also likely that he lived and prophesied in the early days of Joash and Jehoida, 870-865b.c., while the victory of Jehoshaphat was fresh in the nation's memory. For this reason he is termed "The Pioneer Prophet."
Dr. A. B. Simpson says,

Amos begins his longer message with a direct quotation from Joel, as a sort of text for his whole book. Isaiah expands the thoughts which Joel uttered into the larger and loftier message of his pen. Peter, on the Day of Pentecost quotes the prophecy of Joel as the very foundation of the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, which had occurred and which was to continue through the whole New Testament age. And even the great Apocalypse of John is but a larger unfolding of the promise of the Lord's coming which Joel gave in brief outline.

What is God's call to us through the Prophet Joel?
I. There is the call to repentance ( Joel 2:25-27).
II. There is the promise of refreshment (Joel 2:28, 29).
III. There is the message of deliverance (Joel 3:1).
IV. There is the secret of rest (Joel 3:17-21).
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