Friday, March 23, 2018

Fri Mar 23rd Todays News

Don't give up on hope. It is said that a schoolboy prat prank of Anthony Eden on Churchill, giving Winston a birthday present of a realistic portrait sent Winston into retirement. But while Winston was great enough to recognise the meme, the prat like Eden was a hopeless failure as a leader. There was no replacement for Winston in that generation. Or the next. Thatcher was a good successor to Churchill, but no compelling conservative came in between or since in the UK. Great conservative leaders are not rare, but party politics winnows out many. Sometimes all. Party politics in the left is more bruising. It is hard to be a leader and agree with everything that is wrong. So which left wing leaders of the past fifty years recognised that it was wrong to deprive small business of profit in lieu of a quick result? I welcome suggestions. 

 The picture of Churchill was a good one, made by Graham Sutherland on order by both houses of UK Parliament. Churchill, himself an artist, took exception to it. Interestingly, President Obama commissioned something more extreme with similarities. It is as if both art works made similar statements regarding their subjects of being inappropriate for office.  Graham was a great artist and a good man, his art work was not to diminish Churchill, but to show a truth, a reality. But at 80 years of age, Churchill was no longer fit for office. And there was none to replace him. Kehinda Wiley intended a political statement in his portrait of Obama. Wiley placed African Blue lilies to remind the world of Obama's birthplace? 

 Newt Gingrich is publishing hypothetical alternative histories. What would have happened if Hillary had won election? What if Burr had not killed Hamilton? What if Soviets beat USA to moon? What if USA had not entered WW1? I'd like to consider a hypothetical of the Australian judiciary being competent. I've always been considered a dreamer. But, my challenge to Newt, "What if Churchill had defeated Attlee in 1945? Far fetched as Attlee had undermined Churchill during WW2 from Deputy PM's position, but moving forward, a conservative UK government making good post war choices .. no cold war? No Korean war? A unified India? Israel without Palestine?"
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 Amazing Grace 

"Amazing Grace" is a Christian hymn written by English poet and clergyman John Newton (1725--1807), published in 1779. With a message that forgiveness and redemption are possible regardless of the sins people commit and that the soul can be delivered from despair through the mercy of God, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.




=== from 2017 ===
London was victim to a lone wolf terrorist attack. The terrorist had been known to authorities. He drove a vehicle into a crowd in Westminster and then began stabbing people. He killed a policeman before he was stopped. At least four have died, including a mother of two who had gone to collect her children from school. The policeman was a dad. The terrorist had been connected years before with a terrorist group, and had been on the fringe. And it is almost certain the terrorist felt justified for his extremist views by left wing media pronouncements. In Melbourne today, another terrorist wannabe, an ISIS supporter, has been arrested for abusing his own children and murdering his wife. There is no faith justification for either activity. In Egypt, a fight between Egyptian special forces and ISIS supporters resulted in 10 Egyptian dead and at least 17 ISIS killed. ISIS had been building a bomb factory. ISIS are still strong in Libya where Obama supported them. 
=== from 2016 ===
There is no excuse for bad journalism. Miranda Devine's advocacy for Malcolm Turnbull is not the same as Savva's and so is not bad journalism. She is accurately reporting on what people have told her. So without abusing Devine, it is important to address the shortcomings of her position on Turnbull. It is as if Miranda feels that the binary position of Liberal supporters is they support Turnbull or they support Abbott. It is a false position. Turnbull does not now support or lead the Liberal Party, as he is still dividing it. Mr Abbott is calling for party unity while also defending himself and his record. The Devine position has it that one either supports Turnbull (who allegedly has a plan) or oppose the Liberals in support of Mr Abbott. It is the mirror of what Miranda should have noted when Abbott was leader. But then too, she was only reporting the thought bubbles of others. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility. 
=== from 2015 ===
One of the great international statesmen has died, old and blessed. Lee Kuan Yew was the founding PM of Singapore, and governed for three decades. He was the architect of modern Singapore. In '59, when Lee became PM, Singapore was a third world nation. Lee was strict with the media, and so didn't have to continually tack left under media criticism. He was a conservative, not a right winger. He wanted Singapore to be part of Malaysia, but Malaysia forced independence and Lee navigated a course with security and economic independence. The result was a trade block the envy of the world. To improve military security, Lee used Israeli expertise. Singaporeans are part of the reserve from age 18 to 35. Lee maintained corporal punishment in schools and society and even has it as an article of discipline in the military. Without buying into LGBT hysteria, Lee accepted homosexuals, saying if a member of his family were gay he would accept them. However there are legal restrictions on gays in Singapore. Water security is a big issue for Singapore, and they have recycling as well as other options. It is difficult to describe how valued Lee Kuan Yew was as an international citizen. His opinion was prized by Nixon, Margaret Thatcher and John Howard. Had he been born in another place or time, he might have been regarded as Clive Churchill. 
In December 2014, a man who had lost his penis in a botched circumcision when he was eighteen years old, was given a transplant after three years. As of 13th March it has been reported the transplant is fully functional. It is hard to keep a good man down. The article did not report if the transplant had been circumcised. Under Jewish tradition it is done after six days, which is why News Years Day in the Western Calendar is six days after Christmas.  But in some Christian traditions it is done older. The South African man had his own reasons for choosing eighteen. And now he is twenty one. We don't know when, but wish him a happy birthday and many happy returns. We also note researchers have not prohibited the possibility that multiple peni be transplanted to an individual. 
From 2014
It is a little discussed fact that when Patrick Henry gave his famous speech on this day in 1775, now known as "Give me liberty or give me death" he was employing rhetoric. He wanted liberty. He was willing to fight, and possibly die for it, but he had one goal. So too do the ALP. In South Australia, liberty is to be denied for another term of office. The election a week ago delivered no majority, although the ALP, with 35.3% of the vote, has the most seats of any party. More than the Liberal Party which got 45.1% of the vote, with over 90% of votes counted. This is a clear gerrymander and the electoral office has failed in its' duty. On the plus side, there will be a working example of failure that can be pointed to whenever some journalist chooses to say that the ALP would run the federal government better. It might be good for the second independent who is now in line to be speaker of an ALP administration again. His conservative seat will be impressed. The truth is if you want an ALP government then don't vote conservative. 

On this day in 1801, The Tsar, who loved marching a lot, and flogged anyone who made a mistake in a marching ceremony, was put to death excessively. His killers, including a nephew of his tutor, hit him with a sword in his bedroom, demanded he sign an abdication, then strangled and trampled him to death. Tsar Paul seems to resemble the Catch 22 character of Scheiskopf. Or maybe it is the other way around. Also excessive, happening on this day in 1908, Durham White Stevens, US ambassador to Korea, was holidaying with his sisters in San Francisco. Stevens had previously expressed the view that Japan's protectorate of Korea was working well. A few students disagreed. They challenged him over this, first making sure that he had said what they had heard. He corrected them, but they had heard enough. One night, they hit him with a chair. The next day they rushed at him and shot him a few times, before being stopped by a crowd. Stevens survived his wounds until the the 25th. However, the most bizarre excess happened on this day in 1909, one year after Stevens was assassinated. Former US President Theodore Roosevelt went on safari and was sponsored by National Geographic and the Smithsonian. That is right, the Smithsonian and National Geographic sponsored a holiday of shooting animals for sport. I don't think such enlightenment is possible today. 
Historical perspective on this day
In 1400, the Trần Dynasty of Vietnam was deposed after one hundred and seventy-five years of rule by Hồ Quý Ly, a court official. 1540, Waltham Abbey was surrendered to King Henry VIII of England; the last religious community to be closed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. 1568, the Peace of Longjumeau was signed, ending the second phase of the French Wars of Religion. 1708, James Francis Edward Stuart lands at the Firth of Forth. 1757, Capture of Chandannagar fort by British forces. 1775, American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivered his speech – "Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" – at St. John's Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia. 

In 1801, Tsar Paul I of Russia was struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death inside his bedroom at St. Michael's Castle. 1806, after traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their "Corps of Discovery" began their arduous journey home. 1821, Greek War of Independence: Battle and fall of city of Kalamata. 1848, the ship John Wickliffe arrived at Port Chalmers carrying the first Scottish settlers for Dunedin, New Zealand. Otago province was founded. 1857, Elisha Otis's first elevator was installed at 488 Broadway New York City. 1862, the First Battle of Kernstown, Virginia, marked the start of Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign. Though a Confederate defeat, the engagement distracted Federal efforts to capture Richmond. 1868, the University of California was founded in Oakland, California when the Organic Act was signed into law. 1879, War of the Pacific: The Battle of Topáter, the first battle of the war was fought between Chile and the joint forces of Bolivia and Peru. 1885, Sino-French War: Chinese victory in the Battle of Phu Lam Tao near Hung Hoa, northern Vietnam. 1888, in England, The Football League, the world's oldest professional Association Football league, met for the first time. 1889, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community was established by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Qadian, India. 

In 1901, Emilio Aguinaldo, only President of the First Philippine Republic, was captured at Palanan, Isabela by forces of General Frederick Funston. 1905, Eleftherios Venizelos called for Crete's union with Greece, and began what was to be known as the Theriso revolt. 1908, American diplomat Durham Stevens was attacked by Korean assassins Jeon Myeong-un and Jang In-hwan, leading to his death in a hospital two days later. 1909, Theodore Roosevelt left New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip was sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society. 1918, First World War: On the third day of the German Spring Offensive, the 10th Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment was annihilated with many of the men becoming Prisoners of war 1919, in Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement. 1931, Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were hanged for the killing of a deputy superintendent of police during the Indian struggle for independence. 1933, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933, making Adolf Hitler dictator of Germany. 1935, signing of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. 1939, the Hungarian air force attacked the headquarters of Slovak air force in the city of Spišská Nová Ves, killing 13 people and began the Slovak–Hungarian War. 1940, the Lahore Resolution (Qarardad-e-Pakistan or the then Qarardad-e-Lahore) was put forward at the Annual General Convention of the All India Muslim League. 1942, World War II: In the Indian Ocean, Japanese forces captured the Andaman Islands. 

In 1956, Pakistan became the first Islamic republic in the world. (Republic Day in Pakistan) 1965, NASA launched Gemini 3, the United States' first two-man space flight (crew: Gus Grissom and John Young). Also 1965, the first issue of The Vigilant was published from Khartoum. 1977, all 12 of the Nixon Interviews were recorded with British journalist David Frost interviewing former President of the United States Richard Nixon about the Watergate scandal and the Nixon tapes. 1978, the first UNIFIL troops arrived in Lebanon for peacekeeping mission along the Blue Line. 1980, Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvadorgave his famous speech appealing to men of the El Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing the Salvadorans. 1982, Guatemala's government, headed by Fernando Romeo Lucas García was overthrown in a military coup by right-wing General Efraín Ríos Montt. 1983, Strategic Defense Initiative: President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles. 

In 1991, the Revolutionary United Front, with support from the special forces of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia, invaded Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow Joseph Saidu Momoh, sparking a gruesome 11-year Sierra Leone Civil War. 1994, at an election rally in Tijuana, Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated by Mario Aburto Martínez. Also 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed in Siberiawhen the pilot's fifteen-year old son accidentally disengaged the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board. Also 1994, a United States Air Force (USAF) F-16 aircraft collided with a USAF C-130 at Pope Air Force Base and then crashed, killing 24 United States Army soldiers on the ground. This later became known as the Green Ramp disaster. 1996, Taiwan held its first direct elections and chose Lee Teng-hui as President. 1999, gunmen assassinate Paraguay's Vice President Luis María Argaña. 2001, the Russian Mir space station was disposed of, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Oceannear Fiji. 2003, Battle of Nasiriyah, first major conflict during the invasion of Iraq. 2005, Texas City Refinery explosion: During a test on a distillation tower liquid waste built up and flowed out of a blowout tower. Waste fumes ignited and exploded killing 15 workers. 2009, FedEx Express Flight 80: A McDonnell Douglas MD-11 flying from Guangzhou, China crashed at Tokyo's Narita International Airport, killing both the captain and the co-pilot.
=== 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 Stephen Tran, Truc Do and Danny BuTzka Georgiev. Born on the same day, across the years. But only Steve can successfully imitate Grumpy Cat
March 23: Republic Day in Pakistan (1956); Day of Hungarian–Polish Friendship in Hungary and Poland
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Live free or die. We own our faith. We set like concrete. We are resolved. We burn for each other. Let's party. 
Deaths
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Andrew Bolt 2018


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Tim Blair


RAINBOW RACER

Behold the 600-horsepower Australian social justice warrior wagon.
23 Mar  20 comments
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Andrew Bolt


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Malcolm Turnbull still can’t win over sore conservatives

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (12:16am)

YEP, Malcolm Turnbull had a plan. The last thing the man has ever lacked in his life is a plan. As he reportedly told colleagues: “Just because the press gallery doesn’t know what I’m doing doesn’t mean that I don’t know what I’m doing”.
 Continue reading 'Malcolm Turnbull still can’t win over sore conservatives'
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Schools curriculum creating a new class of victim

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (12:14am)

CALL me old-fashioned, but I think it’s a good idea to use schools to teach children how to read and write properly, and to understand maths, science and history.

 Continue reading 'Schools curriculum creating a new class of victim'
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ACCIDENTALLY ACCURATE

Tim Blair – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (3:58pm)

Jonathan Green’s unfortunate contraction of “journalism” is particularly applicable at the ABC.
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TINTIN IS SAD

Tim Blair – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (2:02pm)

A Eurowimp reaction to the Brussels slaughter:

The message from Islamic State is rather less conciliatory:

UPDATE. Iowahawk is on fire: 
• If only Twitter were around 75 years ago, we could’ve prevented WWII with poignant cartoons of crying pineapples.
• It’s time for the Symbolic Illumination phase of the Useless Gesture Pageant.
• Every jihad mass murder now prompts an open audition for a job at Hallmark greeting cards.
• Hey kids, let’s put on a narcissistic maudlin art show.
• Taste our hot tears of abstract cartoon sadness, genocidal lunatics. 
And from Autopen:
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RESTRAINED TO DEATH

Tim Blair – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (2:45am)

A perfectly gutless Guardian headline:

“The purpose of terrorism is not to destroy or kill,” writes the pathetic leftist paper’s Simon Jenkins, which explains why terrorism involves so little destruction and death. Jenkins continues: 
The blanket media coverage assured for any act of violence is reckless. 
I’d have thought acts of violence themselves – such as detonating explosives in a crowded airport or railway station – might be slightly more reckless, but that’s just me. Incidentally, the Guardian is running live blanket coverage of the attacks. 
The media must “report”, but it need not go berserk in revelling in the violence caused, as it manifestly has done to Islamic State brutality. More serious, the intention of the terrorist is clearly to shut down western society, to show liberal democracy to be a sham and to invoke the persecution of Muslims. Yet that is the invariable response of the security industry to these incidents. 
The “security industry”? More than 30 people have just been murdered in Belgium by psychotic bombers, and Jenkins is more concerned about those whose job it is to prevent such attacks. Perhaps he believes Europe is in thrall to the voracious capitalists of Big Doorlock. 
Convinced of its potency, it dare not admit there are some things against which it cannot protect us. So when incidents occur it jerks the knee and demands ever more money and ever more power. It must not be given them. 
Oh, of course not. The last thing we need now is greater security.
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HOUR OF SOUR

Tim Blair – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (2:13am)

Earth Hour chuckmops are crying because nobody cares about their little 0.0114 per cent per year climate change protest: 
The organisers of Earth Hour have hit back at criticism that the now nine-year-old campaign is a “silly fad” that should be “ignored”.
On Sky News’ Viewpoint program last night, host Chris Kenny joined social media naysayers and called out the campaign for being a “pet rock”.
Meanwhile, Earth Hour organisers have criticised Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for not switching offover the weekend “despite countless requests … to protect the places we love” and despite international momentum including support from the United Nations. 
The United Nations! 
Today, Earth Hour Australia’s Manager Sam Webb responded to the criticism, calling out Australian leaders – namely PM Turnbull – for “still dragging their feet”.
“There are some very cynical people in the world,” Ms Webb told news.com.au.
“There are also those who have very closely held interests that are threatened by the move away from fossil fuels on to clean, renewable energy. Sadly, a small number of powerful people make a lot of money from creating the pollution that is causing global warming and they are doing all they can to keep polluting, with no regard for the devastating impact this is having around the world.” 
I am among that small number of powerful people, and I’ve just cashed my latest $200,000,000 Big Oil cheque. 
Ms Webb said Australian leaders aren’t keeping “up with the demands of the Australian people by putting strong policies in place to transition Australia as a whole away from dirty fossil fuels that are causing rising temperatures and more extreme weather, and onto clean, safe, renewable energy”. 
More on this from Michael McLaren and me on 2GB.
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FISTS OF FARUQI

Tim Blair – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (1:25am)

Twitter tough guy Osman Faruqi is  at it again:

Faruqi is a frequent contributor to the Guardian, which recently announced 250 planned retrenchments. If ol’ Osman keeps working there, he’ll have to kneecap himself.
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SAFETY DAN’S A SAFETY MAN

Tim Blair – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (12:55am)

Victorian premier Dan Andrews is a big fan of the Safe Schools program: 
We will fund it fully and deliver it properly in every government secondary school across our state no questions asked. 
But why stop there? Quadrant‘s Roger Franklin demands that Andrews deliver the Safe Schools program “to all schools equally, without reservation, qualification or exemption”: 
Can we really proclaim ourselves a true multicultural society if Muslim kids are denied first-hand briefings on topics educational authorities regard as absolutely essential for the enlightenment of infidel peers. There can be no discrimination in the Garden State! Young Mohammad must be encouraged to veil-up and pretend he is Fatima, just as Little Johnny is playing at being gender-fluid Jenny. 
It’s only fair.
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CUBAN SISSY CRISIS

Tim Blair – Wednesday, March 23, 2016 (12:27am)

President Flappy O’Wristless girls it up in Cuba:

In the grip of an elderly Cuban dictator, Obama resembles a gay robot skeleton. 
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My Roman diary in last week’s Spectator, just popped onto the blog for archival reasons

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (9:54pm)

The George Pell witch hunt

I love Rome. I love how the old is woven into the new, so the ruins of some dead medieval building now form a wall of a living apartment block. I love how you can walk from where St Peter was buried, having been crucified upside down, to the hotel on the Via Nazionale where Cardinal George Pell was crucified last week. Such continuities help put things into context.

(Read the whole thing in the Spectator Australia, or read on below.)

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'My Roman diary in last week’s Spectator, just popped onto the blog for archival reasons'
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Turnbull now gives the advice he said Abbott should not

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (7:53pm)

Tony Abbott last year offered Europe good advice which Britain has since taken up:
FORMER prime minister Tony Abbott has warned Europe risks making a “catastrophic error” with its readiness to take in desperate refugees from war torn countries… 
“All countries that say “anyone who gets here can stay here” are now in peril, given the scale of the population movements that are starting to be seen,” Mr Abbott told the audience of conservatives… “This means turning boats around, for people coming by sea. It means denying entry at the border, for people with no legal right to come; and it means establishing camps for people who currently have nowhere to go.” 
Malcolm Turnbull said offering Europe advice on border control was the last thing he’d do:
“We had a very good discussion but I have no intention or desire to give advice on these matters to the German Chancellor,” Mr Turnbull said. 
“Each country faces very different circumstances, not least of which are geographic...”
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gives advice, blaming Belgium and European security agencies in part for yesterday’s slaughter:
I can assure Australians that our security system, our border protection, our domestic security arrangements, are much stronger than they are in Europe where regrettably they allowed security to slip… That weakness in European security is not unrelated to the problems they’ve been having in recent times.
The Belgian ambassador is not happy:
 ‘Failure is not the correct term,’ Ambassador Bodon said.
‘We can always do better.
‘If someone has the right formula to make sure there are no terrorist attacks, I am listening.
‘But I think everybody is exposed,’ he said. The Ambassador says Belgium was targeted by terrorists who attacked a train station and a Brussels airport simply because it is part of the coalition fighting against Islamic State.
Had Abbott said what Turnbull did within 24 hours of the Brussels slaughter, would he be forgiven by the media?
Why is Turnbull now in the business of giving Europe advice when he was so against Abbott doing the same?
And why characterise this as a failure of security services rather than a failure of programs of mass immigration from the Muslin third world?
UPDATE
Wow, that’s some awkward backpeddling by Turnbull:
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Don’t mention the war

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (5:43pm)

Philip Williams, the ABC’s European correspondent, manages to write an entire article discussing the implications of the Brussels slaughter without once mentioning the M word.
Euphemisms in this article, Brussels terror attacks are Europe’s problem, not just Belgium’s, include:
... suspects ... Paris-style attack ...  terror threats from within ... the 7/7 bombers ... the Madrid train bombers ...  radicalised youth ... those who aim to do great harm ... simply impossible to control the motives and movements of an entire population ... this ongoing threat ...
Only once does Williams explicitly mention the demography of Belgium, whose capital is the largest Muslim city in Europe. But when he does, it is only to miss the target by a deliberate mile:
Belgium’s problem is in part the simple demographic fact that it’s a small county with limited resources.
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The new racists claim another child

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (3:26pm)

The new racism is a disgrace, sacrificing even children to the ideology of the Left:
A 6-year-old California girl was removed from her long time foster family on Monday and will be sent to live with extended family in Utah who share her Native American heritage, according to court documents. 
An appeals court said last week the girl was subject to removal from her foster family’s home in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, under the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law that seeks to keep American Indian children with American Indian families.
The child cried as Los Angeles County social workers carried her from the home on Monday, while dozens of supporters of the family lined the block to protest against the court’s decision, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. The child is 1.56 percent Choctaw Native American, NBC News and the Los Angeles Daily News reported. She has lived with her foster family for the past four years.
We have seen the same obscenity here:
A senior departmental official yesterday told The Australian that the child involved was sexually abused at age seven and, as a safety measure, was put with various foster families, eventually ending up in 2005 with a non-indigenous family in Cairns. But she was returned nine months later to Aurukun, where she was gang-raped by the nine males. 
“These non-indigenous people were fantastic - ensuring she went to school, and the father actually took a year off his work to personally supervise this girl,” he said. “But two new social workers were appointed to the north and they expressed the view, which was repeated many times to the investigating committee, that putting an indigenous child with white foster parents was another stolen generation...” 
This girl was pack raped at 10, with a judge letting her nine rapists - one a 26-year-old - walk free because the girl, she said, had consented.
I have tried to warn against this racism for years, only to be called a racist myself. But last year the Chief Justice of Western Australia, Wayne Martin, dared to issue the same warning to a Senate committee:
Chief Justice Martin:  The real problem is finding safe places for Aboriginal kids [in trouble] in a culturally appropriate environment. There just are not enough. 
CHAIR:  Is it better to put them in a safe place that is perhaps not culturally appropriate?
Chief Justice Martin:  That is a very interesting question. I made some remarks on this observation that got me in trouble a few years ago. I will repeat it -
CHAIR:  That is the best way: when you are in trouble -
Chief Justice Martin:  I am already in trouble so I might as well. I think there has been an overreaction to the stolen generation which has resulted in people being too willing to allow Aboriginal kids to remain in environments that they would not allow non-Aboriginal kids to remain in.
What got me in trouble were some photographs at the prison that the Children’s Court sent to me - they were tendered in evidence before him - of an Aboriginal kid running around in what looked like a dump outside of Port Hedland. That kid was in the care of the state and the agents of the state had decided that that was an appropriate place for the Aboriginal child to remain. Ask yourself: if that were a non-Aboriginal kid, would the same decision have been made? The answer is, plainly: no. Because of the enthusiasm to leave Aboriginal kids with their family, for understandable reasons, to leave them in a culturally appropriate place, there is a danger that certain minimum standards of safety and minimum standards of health and welfare are not being met. That, in a sense, is a form of discrimination, because we are not requiring the same standards to be applied to Aboriginal kids as we do for non-Aboriginal kids. 
But the racists of the Left seem to think that poverty and neglect is somehow not so bad if the victim is an Aboriginal child.
(Thanks to reader Tabitha.) 
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Nothing is stopping Trump

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (3:07pm)

So much for the theory than Marco Rubio quitting would mean the anti-Trump voting uniting behind Ted Cruz, taking him to victory:
But Trump opponents aren’t giving up yet:
Arizona has already been called for Trump. Interestingly, Marco Rubio is running third, not far behind Cruz, in the early count. Clearly, this reflects early voting, which enables Trump to continue to benefit from a five-candidate field (Ben Carson also received more than a few votes) even though the field is now down to three. 
But Arizona is very good state for Trump, presumably because of all the illegal immigration. There’s an excellent chance he would have won a two-candidate race against Cruz in Arizona.  
But Steven Hayward is softening:
Darn that Donald Trump. He’s making it really hard not to warm up to him. 
First, last night in his CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer I thought he was pretty good overall....
But my favorite moment was when Blitzer asked Trump why Fox’s Megyn Kelly attacked him every night… 
And then there’s this, from ABC News: 
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump referred to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “the Indian” at a news conference on Monday just hours after she unleashed a Twitter tirade against him. “Who is that, the Indian? You mean the Indian?” Trump asked, referring to Warren, who has said she has Native American ancestry.
Trump knows that Warren is a fake indian—Fauxchahontas—as the story made clear later on: 
This is not the first time Trump has invoked Warren’s heritage. He did so in an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd published over the weekend. 
“I think it’s wonderful because the Indians can now partake in the future of the country,” Dowd quoted Trump as saying. “She’s got about as much Indian blood as I have.”
UPDATE
And Trump is the one candidate who seems serious about the lessons of Brussels - and Paris:
UPDATE
But Cruz looks set to stay in contention with a handsome win in Utah, where there were raucous protests against Trump:
Mormons sure don’t like Trump. Even Kasich is beating him. 
===

Turnbull cripples Morrison, too

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (11:54am)

Malcolm Turnbull destroyed the last Liberal leader. Now he’s destroying the next.
Dennis Shanahan:
No matter what Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison say, this is the quickest souring of a fresh partnership between prime minister and treasurer since at least World War II… 
The flashpoint in recent days has been the simple fact that ministers other than the Treasurer knew before he did that the budget was being brought forward from the scheduled May 10 to May 3 as part of Turnbull’s double-dissolution election strategy…
[Morrison] was made to look ridiculous, out of the loop, untrusted by the PM and not in “control” of the nation’s economic and budgetary destiny…
The differences go back further than just the budget, with Turnbull deciding to put a rise in the GST, changes to negative gearing and tax hikes for superannuation “on the table” and Morrison diligently pursuing and prosecuting the case for them until the moment his leader pulled them off the table.
Since, there has been ... a shift in authority from Treasury to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on tax matters, under former head of Treasury, the Turnbull appointee Martin Parkinson. This tension isn’t terminal, but it is real.  
The next battlefield:
Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison are struggling to decide a $1 billion health deal that will be central to a July 2 election ­campaign in another sign of their personal tensions… 
The Prime Minister and Treasurer are at odds over spending plans that will put hospital funding at the heart of the campaign, amid fears of incendiary attacks from the states over emergency ward cuts that could put lives at risk. State officials were told last ­Friday that Mr Turnbull was “fighting” for a better funding deal on hospitals and early childhood education but ...  there was “no appetite” around the federal cabinet table to offer a big funding boost, as Mr Morrison tries to clamp down on spending.
UPDATE
The Treasurer usually is - and should be - the second most powerful person in a government.
But he isn’t when he’s a potential rival to Malcolm Turnbull:
PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull has conceded that Treasurer Scott Morrison was not in the “very small circle” that was made aware of plans to bring the Budget forward on Monday morning… 
Mr Turnbull made the startling admission this morning under intense questioning from Today show host Lisa Wilkinson about his relationship with his Treasurer....
Specifically, she asked the PM who he phoned on the night before the announcement and, more importantly, who he did not…
“Why didn’t you bring [Morrison] in on the change? It is very embarrassing for him.... But you couldn’t make a phone call to him when you made that decision on Sunday night?” she asked.
[Turnbull replied:] “Well, I did not call Scott Morrison on Sunday night. No, I did not. It was a very small circle. I spent the evening, well, the bulk of my time with my ministerial colleagues. It was obviously spent with the Attorney-General, who provided the advice.”
“Scott Morrison is not in that small inner circle?” Wilkinson asked. “Look, Scott Morrison was fully aware of the likelihood of the Budget coming back to 3 May....”
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Islamic State claims the Brussels killings. But who imported this danger?

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (11:40am)

Not doing more to destroy the Islamic State is looking more catastrophic by the day:
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for co-ordinated attacks in Brussels, Belgium’s capital, which have left up to 35 people dead and about 190 wounded. A pair of bombings at Brussels airport at 8am local time (6pm Tuesday AEDT) were followed by a third bombing, at one of the city’s railway stations.
But here’s the near-insoluble danger: Brussels now has up to 300,000 Muslims. It is the biggest Muslim city in the European Union.  A poll two years ago found 16 per cent of young Belgian Muslims found terrorism acceptable. Terrorist networks responsible for the Paris slaughter and yesterday’s attacks in Belgium have enough supporters to hide in Brussels for months without detection or betrayal.
Europe opened its gates and now cannot eject the hostile culture it so foolishly admitted. The future for Belgium is clear: there will be more terrorism attacks.
And for Europe the illegal immigrant crisis has become even more dangerous. There is not just the threat of 1 million illegal immigrants a year to deal with but the increasing fear and hostility of Europeans. Weak leadership has left some European cities at the risk of a kind of civil war between Muslims and non-believers.
UPDATE
Too true:
Edwin Bakker, director of the Centre for Terrorism and Counter Terrorism at Leiden University in The Hague, said with the highest number per capita of extremists travelling to and from Syria, Belgium seemed to have lost control of the problem. 
“Apparently the intelligence position is not good enough to find these people or even to find the most wanted terrorist in Europe,” he said of Abdeslam, the Belgian-born French suspect who was arrested on Friday after a four-month manhunt.
“It took them several months and this guy was not hiding on his own…
“The events of today increase both worries about the intelligence position of Belgian authorities as well as how many supporters there are.
“They’re not that amateuristic either. These support groups are a big worry and in some countries they run in the hundreds if not the thousands and that’s too many for the authorities to monitor.”
Europe has tipped over the line between too few to worry about and too many to resist. Where is Australia?
UPDATE
After years of persecution for warning of this, Geert Wilders says there will come worse:
Dutch Party For Freedom (PVV) leader and prominent counter-Islamist campaigner Geert Wilders ... has lamented it is just the beginning of growing Islamist violence. 
Mr. Wilders said: “I fear that we ain’t seen nothing yet. According to Europol 3,000 to 5,000 European jihadists, who went to Syria to fight in the ranks of IS and similar terrorist groups, have meanwhile returned to Western Europe. Some of them hid among the hundreds of thousands of Islamic asylum seekers that entered Europe from Asia and Africa.
“Two of last November’s terrorist in Paris had fought in Syria. So had the terrorist who, last August, attempted to attack the high speed train between Amsterdam and Paris. So had the two terrorists who, in January 2015, massacred the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo. So had the terrorist who, in May 2014, shot four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels”. Belgian police have recently said at least 90 returned fighters from the Islamic State are living at liberty in Brussels, many of them in the infamous Molenbeek neighbourhood. 
UPDATE
Bernardi is right, but still being treated as a pariah:
Controversial Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi says Islam is responsible for a growing global problem and “mealy-mouthed” politicians who say otherwise are wrong… 
“I imagine it will only be a matter of time before the first mealy-mouthed, cultural-relativist politician will say religion has nothing to do with these most recent attacks,” Senator Bernardi writes in his “weekly dose of common sense” email.
“They are wrong, but it is the inconvenient truth that too few are brave enough to confront.” Senator Bernardi denies he is “picking on the Muslims” but says the West alone can’t fix the problem.
Only the Muslim population can “reject, refute and reform Islam”. “They also need to lend their support to an open discussion about the problem and the solution without the cacophony of abuse that inevitably follows questioning Islam.”
===

Spare us the Twitter sympathy. Back action instead

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (8:39am)

I’m completely over Leftist publications promoting meaningless expressions of sympathy for the latest victims of some Islamist atrocity rather than promoting solutions.
Forget this seeming good. The time is to do it.
Instead, the Sydney Morning Herald adores this twee sentimentality:
In response to the slaughter of French journalists and cartoonists the pro-censorship Age supported this fake expression of solidarity:
And The Age preferred to wring its hands as the West refused to rescue hundreds of Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram. It satisfied its conscience by promoting instead a smug “bringbackourgirls” Twitter sensation:
UPDATE
The Leftist pieties and romantic falsehoods must end. Take this extraordinary ad from the Brussels tourism department two months ago:
VisitBrussels, the city’s tourism department, crafted the #CallBrussels campaign in an effort to disassociate the city with Islamic terror after residents were linked to the November, 2015, Paris attacks and other extremist plots. 
As part of the campaign, VisitBrussels set up telephones across the city and invited people to call them in order to speak with Brussels passersby…
“After Brussels was linked to terror plots, the international media portrayed the city as a warzone,” the ad said. “We wanted to change this perception with an honest answer.”
The ad then shows interactions with (supposedly) random Belgians, who assure callers the city is completely safe.
UPDATE
A more rational reaction and plan for action:
Here are 10 steps to start with.
First: close the borders to mass immigration from the Muslim third world.
Second: expel illegal immigrants.
Third: end multicultural programs.
Fourth: defend, not destroy, Western values. Challenge the self-hatred preached in universities and end the war on Christianity.
Fifth: allow more free speech, and especially that which criticises hostile faiths.
Sixth: deport foreign hate preachers and let them exercise their free speech at home.
Seventh: help refugees where they are, and not by bringing them here.
Eighth: do more to destroy terrorism centres overseas, whether the Islamic State, Boko Haram or al Qaeda.
Ninth: end the police and media censorship over race-based and faith-based crime. Let people know the truth.
Tenth: stop demonising all critics of Islam as racists or bigots.  Scrap the laws used to prosecute them.
===

Liberals beware: this surrender is a warning of more

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (8:39am)

Right now the media thinks Turnbull is deeply embarrassed by Abbott’s (correct) claim that the Turnbull Government is campaigning on the Abbott Government’s policies.
But the media doesn’t think this is damaging simply because it reveals Turnbull’s own lack of leadership or even lack of a proper rationale for knifing Abbott.
Much of the Left thinks its embarrassing because it supported Turnbull not merely to become the more acceptable face of the Liberal Party - a man who could better sell Liberal values and policies.
No, that may have been the foolish hope of the 54 Liberal MPs, but much of the media wanted much more: they wanted Turnbull to actually dismantle those Liberal values and policies.
They did not want Abbott’s policies to remain, and especially those policies that that best characterise the Liberals.
And their nettling has worked, provoking Turnbull into giving the Left something of what it wants - and something that betrays the Liberals’ faith in free markets rather than government handouts, and which pays tribute to the Left’s great moral cause:
Malcolm Turnbull will set up a $1 billion fund to spur investment in renewable energy in a move that offers his first major policy on climate change since becoming Prime Minister, answering Labor taunts about his personal conviction on global warming. 
The funding will be spread over a decade and will draw on part of the borrowings meant to support the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a $10bn scheme that Tony Abbott vowed to scrap but which will be retained.
Liberals must realise there will be more such moves to placate the media Left should Turnbull be re-elected.
And the process that Maurice Newman describes will be accelerated:
Public servants, judges, military chiefs, church leaders, teachers, academics, journalists, union bosses and even captains of industry have progressively adopted a soft liberal position and provided momentum for more rapid social change… The Left’s conditioning has been so complete that today we mostly fear radicals on the Right.... 
Indeed, today’s Australia tolerates limited equality before the law, vanishing free speech, diminishing self-reliance and little application of free-market economics… After 50 years the people are noticing this role reversal. They feel powerless. The major parties are philosophically aligned. Voters can choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The Liberal Party may argue it’s still a broad church, but it preaches a narrowing set of beliefs. At heart it has lost faith in the core values that made it and Australia great. Allowing Turnbull to paint the church a deeper shade of socialist grey will encourage a growing number of disillusioned followers to search for a new religion.
===

Continuity and slogans.  UPDATE: And many Liberals aren’t impressed

Andrew Bolt March 23 2016 (8:12am)

Malcolm Turnbull six months ago, explaining why he had to replace Tony Abbott:
We need advocacy, not slogans.
Oh, really?
Malcolm Turnbull on the ABC’s 7.30 on Monday: 
Right across the board — between Tony and myself, Tony Abbott and myself — there is continuity. Of course, I was part of his government, part of his cabinet but there is also a great deal of change. So, as you go from one Liberal prime minister to another, you have continuity and you have change and there has been a lot of change.
Turnbull with Neil Mitchell on 3AW yesterday: 
As I said earlier today there is continuity and there is change … continuity and change … as I said, there is continuity and there is change … broadly speaking there is therefore strong continuity but also change, as you get with any prime minister.
And on ABC’s AM yesterday: 
The bottom line is there is continuity and there is change … There is continuity and there is change and there are many areas of change.
UPDATE
And it’s just one more reason for conservative Liberals to distrust Turnbull.
Maurice Newman:
If you read the letters to the editor, online commentary and listen to talkback radio, it is becoming clearer by the day that the 54 parliamentary members of the Liberal Party who voted to replace Tony Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull were seriously misguided. Even if a large discount is applied to words and who said what where, when it comes to the next election it seems an army of baseball bats will be waiting for Liberal candidates.... 
To overthrow Abbott, left-wing elites hyped Turnbull as the acceptable Liberal. With collaboration from within, they sealed Abbott’s fate. Now, just six months in, their candidate isn’t living up to expectations…

Worse, Turnbull’s reason for change, a new era of ­slogan-free, coherent economic leadership, already has failed the truth in advertising test. 
===

HEIL ONIONS

Tim Blair – Monday, March 23, 2015 (7:12am)

For the Prime Minister, the last couple of weeks have all been about onions and Nazis. It’s like a Paris restaurant in the early 1940s.

 Continue reading 'HEIL ONIONS'
===

CLEMENTINE’S DARLING

Tim Blair – Monday, March 23, 2015 (6:00am)

===

ELOMAR ELOMARRIES AN ELOMINOR

Tim Blair – Monday, March 23, 2015 (5:44am)

It’s Islamic State’s wedding of the year: 
Khaled Sharrouf’s teenage daughter has boasted about marrying his best mate Mohamed Elomar and posted photos of her young brother and a Yazidi slave child kneeling next to AK-47s. 
Must have been a wonderful wedding reception. It isn’t often that the head table features actual heads. And for the bridal waltz, celebrating the groom’s future encounter with incendiary Peshmerga artillery: Sharrouf, Sharrouf, Sharrouf Is On Fire. 
A Twitter account linked to the 14-year-old girl, who The Daily Telegraph has decided not to name, has claimed she is married to notorious Islamic State murderer Elomar, also known as Abu Hafs al Australi. 
Sharrouf’s daughter has maintained an active presence online since arriving in Syria with her four siblings. The Australian has previously reported that Sharrouf’s eldest daughter liked Sandra Bullock and was worried about the environment. 
Her main concern about the environment is that there’s not enough dead infidels in it.
===

COLVIN CHIPS CUT

Tim Blair – Monday, March 23, 2015 (4:58am)

Media Watch voiceover artist Will Colvin has now been cut from the program after working there for two years. But can anyone at the ABC explain why this vocally immature squeak merchant was hired in the first place?
===

INCITE FIRST, RECANT LATER

Tim Blair – Monday, March 23, 2015 (4:13am)

Academic and New Matilda national affairs correspondent Ben Eltham demonstrates the Sattler/Hodges method of inflammatory indigenous reportage:
===

OIL’S WELL

Tim Blair – Monday, March 23, 2015 (4:07am)

Crowds swarmed last week to the reopened Lindt Café, scene of December’s deadly Islamic terrorist attack. The decision by the café’s owners not to close their business was a brilliant one. Just as brilliant were Sydney’s people, who clearly will not be intimidated by acts of fundamentalist brutality.
Numbers may not be quite so large at an upcoming city art exhibition titled Our Water, Our Place.

 Continue reading 'OIL’S WELL'
===

NATION DESCENDS

Tim Blair – Monday, March 23, 2015 (3:02am)

Drunken British goons storm a London synagogue: 
A synagogue in the London suburb of Stamford Hill was attacked by a group of approximately 20 youths Saturday night.
The youths, who yelled “we will kill you”, beat worshipers and vandalized property including tearing apart prayer books … 
One local Jewish man who was passing by the synagogue at the time of the attack suffered hits to his face after being overwhelmed by the group of youths after trying to grab one of them to bring to the police. 
Six men have since been arrested over the attack.
===

Reading too much in Julie Bishop’s talking eyes

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (8:44pm)

Fairfax and the ABC have seized with glee on the Julie Bishop eye-roll, claiming the Foreign Minister was sick of being filleted by the Treasurer:
Ms Bishop’s burst of expression occurred when Treasurer Joe Hockey was making his tribute to Fraser and praised him for starting the Expenditure Review Committee, the sub-grouping of cabinet that runs the budget… 
... when Mr Hockey mentioned the budget committee, she proceeded to roll her eyes, shake her head, mutter under her breath, put her head in her hand and raise her eyebrows in dazzling and devastating succession…
It is ...  likely that she was referring to the morning’s papers, which carried the news that her already-diminished aid budget was to be cut further by the committee.
As she had earlier told the ABC, this was the first she’d heard of the idea.
“I’ll certainly be taking that up with the Treasurer to find the source of that story,” she warned.
Her subsequent eye rolling suggests their conversation isn’t going to be easy. 
But wait. Greg Sheridan of The Australian is the author of the story which had Bishop fumning. And this is the line that did it:
The $140m outlay over four years for the innovationXchange centre will come from the overall aid budget, which The Australian understands is likely to suffer a further small cut in the May ­budget.
Sheridan tonight on 2GB told me the source of that bit in bold - that Bishop’s adi budget would suffer a “small cut” - was neither Prime Minister Tony Abbott nor Treasurer Joe Hockey or anyone speaking on their behalf. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann notes that no such cuts have been discussed by the Expenditure Review Committee. Abbott has ruled out cuts.
Which makes this very much a storm in a teacup.
And which makes this comment by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Mark Kenny sound awfully like yet another of his increasingly shrill anti-Abbott beatups:
… the incident has fanned smouldering tensions within the government at the highest levels, revealing an absence of trust among Mr Abbott’s most senior leadership group. 
A source said relations between Mr Hockey and Ms Bishop were at an all-time low and that Ms Bishop’s relationship with Mr Abbott was also under strain - largely because of his office.
In Parliament, Ms Bishop, regarded by many Liberals as the government’s best performing minister, made no secret of her disdain for Mr Hockey when he praised Malcolm Fraser for initiating the review committee process. 
===

An onion to make you weep for the sanity of Abbott haters

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (11:30am)

It’s still just Monday, but Tim Blair has already written the line of the week:
For the Prime Minister, the last couple of weeks have all been about onions and Nazis. It’s like a Paris restaurant in the early 1940s.
UPDATE
I am struck by ABC host Annabel Crabb’s very different reactions to very different diets.
Crabb sympathises:
WE NEED to talk about Kevin. Specifically, that incident six years ago that barely anyone noticed at the time, but has since become something of a YouTube phenomenon…
I speak, of course, of ear wax; of Mr Rudd’s quest for nourishment from his own left aural canal…
Mr Rudd, when caught out in an act of shamelessness, has quite an endearing automatic response - he grins…
Thirty seconds of footage - shot years ago when you were tired or bored ...  - now has the power to leap out and crash-tackle you without warning…

No wonder viewers of the footage in question invariably crumple in dismay.
Part of the brain thinks: “Ear wax! Gross!”
The other part thinks, horrified: “Imagine if that happened to me.” It’s not much comfort, probably, but Mr Rudd is in reasonable company.
Compare that to Crabb’s reaction when Tony Abbott eats real food:
 Crabb jeers:
It’s been nine days since the Prime Minister travelled to a farm in Tasmania and ate an onion like it was an apple…
And yet the insistent simplicity, the metronomic weirdness of Friday-nine-days-ago at the onion farm cannot be forgotten… I find that I cannot read or think about anything the government does without thinking of that moment, and wondering who eats raw onions, and why, and what it might possibly mean for the nation that the Prime Minister is one of them…

...a PM who redraws social convention ambitiously enough to permit the on-camera consumption of an unpeeled onion is ... existentially alarming…
Two days after the onion-eating, when the Prime Minister on Sky News last Sunday declared his intention not to give a further inch on his higher education reforms, I was duly attentive but simultaneously conscious of a voice inside my skull murmuring, with quiet finality: “He ate an onion.”
On Monday, when Mr Abbott confirmed ...  the government would ...  sacrifice all its planned budgetary savings on university spending, my brain understood that this was a significant development, but the little voice would not let things rest: “It had the skin on. The SKIN.”
When the deal was struck on the government’s metadata legislation ...  it was hard to hear, with the voice – not just a voice now, more of a rowdy pub chimp – yammering “Even the onion guy did not think it was okay to eat an onion!…
All I can think of is onion… Is it possible that this man does not – socially, at least – answer to the same gods we answer to?
UPDATE
All this ABC freaking about Abbott eating an onion, yet no concern about the far stranger nourishment of Labor leaders:
(Thanks to reader Ed.) 
===

Don’t attack Abbott for not doing what Labor won’t let him

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (10:53am)

Henry Ergas on the terrible dilemma, caused in large part by the dangerous populism of Bill Shorten’s Labor:
With the global financial crisis precipitating unsustainable spending increases, governments face the dilemma succinctly expressed by Luxembourg’s long-serving prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker: “We all know what to do; we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it"… 
Abbott ... knows change is desperately needed; if he is stymied, it is not out of a reluctance to act but because the senate stands implacably in his way. That, no doubt, is its prerogative; but it would be wrong to view the impasse as merely the playing out of our constitutional arrangements…
With governments having responsibility without power, while the senate crossbench has power without responsibility, the consequences could only be disastrous; and that has become a certainty as fiscal constraints make it ever harder to rely on giveaways to muster the support reform requires. That Labor and the Greens think their interest lies in chaos only makes matters worse. Whatever may happen, there is no prospect of our major parties following the recent example of their Swedish counterparts and agreeing that the party of government will have the right to implement its fiscal program, allowing the electorate to hold it accountable for that program’s effects. 
This crunch comes closer, as David Crowe notes:
A SPIKE in government payments has shattered Tony ­Abbott’s hope of slashing outlays within a year as he prepares to ­reveal new spending on families to lift his political fortunes… 
Treasury charts ... show the government will not bring payments back to their long-term ­average as a share of the economy until 2021 at the earliest — well behind the plans set out in the budget last May.
The charts reveal the long-term impact of $13.7 billion in higher payments over the coming four years as well as a shortfall in tax revenue, threatening to widen future deficits…
The Treasury document highlights the “spending problem” at the heart of the budget at a time when government is struggling to convince voters to accept unpopular savings, raising questions about whether leaders are willing to take the political risks needed to contain spending pressures…
Senate negotiations have contributed to the problem after the government agreed to retain major spending measures — includin­g the Schoolkids Bonus — to gain votes in the upper house to scrap the mining tax....
[Assistant Treasurer Josh] Frydenberg [on yesterday’s Bolt Report] defended plans to spend more on childcare in the budget… Social Services Minister Scott Morrison ... is expected to argue that Labor should support last year’s changes to family tax benefits — including $5bn in savings stalled in the Senate — to free up funds for childcare services.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Shut up, the Left explained

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (9:37am)

The modern Left doesn’t do debate. It does the politics of shut-up instead.
Miranda Devine
The intimidation and silencing of contrary voices in the same sex marriage debate is despicable and desperate. 
The forced resignation of Mozilla’s CEO Brendan Eich after he was discovered to have once donated $1,000 to a political campaign against same-sex marriage is a case in point.
So is the taxpayer funded SBS’ refusal to run a gentle 30-second advertisement in favour of traditional marriage during its Mardi Gras coverage.
And the compulsory mediation Toowoomba physician David van Gend was forced to attend after he wrote an article saying a baby deserves both a mother and a father.
The latest targets of militant gay thought police are the Italian designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, who told an Italian magazine this month: “The only family is the traditional one.”
The condemnation was immediate, with an outraged Sir Elton John calling for a boycott.
It takes gay people to come out and say what straight people are too intimidated to say.  
Brendan O’Neill:
For an insight into the new intolerance, into the 21st century’s choking culture of ‘You Can’t Say That!’, look no further than the Dolce & Gabbana debacle. No sooner had the Italian Catholic designers of expensive clobber expressed their views on gay marriage, gay surrogacy and gay IVF use — in a nutshell they’re not a fan of any of it — than they were pounced upon by a right-on outraged mob led by national treasure cum national tyrant, Elton John. Demanding that Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana be harshly punished for holding the ‘wrong views’, for daring to cock a snook at received wisdom as defined by Elton and his fawning followers in the media, pop and Hollywood industries, this Down With D&G mob has called for a boycott of the fashion house, with the hope that its sales will plummet and, fingers crossed, its business will collapse. People of the world, you have been warned: defy ‘right thinking’ and you will be destroyed. 
With not so much as a smidgen of self-awareness, Elton and his pitchfork-wielding fanclub have described Dolce and Gabbana’s comments as ‘ugly’. When what’s been really ugly — and hysterical, too — has been the response to their comments. It has shown how thoughtless, how unreflective, how Pavlovian the playing of the ‘You Can’t Say That!’ card has become in the second decade of the 21st century. There was no consideration, no stopping to think, no offer to write serious, sensible responses to D&G that said ‘I think you’re wrong, and here’s why’. Instead, the outrage machine kicked in right away, churning out shrill condemnations, demands for retractions, and threats of hitting the pair where it hurts: in the bank. It all showed how much the intolerance of alternative views has become a kind of tic, a thought-free reflex that motors itself up almost the minute the other person opens his or her mouth to speak. ‘You think differently to me?! This mustn’t be allowed!’
(Thanks to reader John.) 
===

How hatred helped drive Malcolm Fraser to the Left

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (8:30am)

How the Left hates, Politics - federal

IT’S the mystery that’s puzzled journalists writing the obituaries for former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser.
How did a Right-wing politician turn into such a ferociously Left-wing activist?
How did Fraser become a frenzied critic of Australia, America and even his once-beloved Liberal Party, which he quit in protest five years ago, campaigning instead for the Greens’ Senator Sarah Hanson-Young?
It’s bizarre. As a politician, Fraser argued for sending troops to Vietnam and even advised the United States to consider dropping an atomic bomb.
But in retirement, he demanded we cut our defence ties with the US, and accused it of wild conspiracies.
He insisted there was a “major danger” of an aggressive US declaring war on China and even claimed the US had covered up a deliberate Israeli bombing of one of its spy ships.
Fraser eventually ticked all the Left’s boxes.
Republic — for. Boat turn-backs — against.
Nuclear power — no. Wind power — yes.
Global warming — alarm. Islamism — excuse.
Abbott — despise. Turnbull — support.
Israel — anti. China — pro.
This ideological inversion puzzled Greg Sheridan, foreign affairs editor of The Australian, who in a brilliant piece noted: “The astonishing political migration remains unexplained and the key mystery to Malcolm Fraser.”
But another obituary, by the Herald Sun’s John Masanauskas, gave what I think is a critical clue — one that also reveals something about the punishing savagery of the attacks on Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

(Read full article here.) 
===

Mob attacks London synagogue. UPDATE: Obama and even our Red Rattler Theatre allied against Israel

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (8:15am)

Jew-hatred is now inflamed by the Left, made lethal by the Islamist Right and made official by the United Nations. Result: Europe is becoming increasingly dangerous for the Jews.
Isi Leibler, former head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and chairman of the World Jewish Congress, told me last month that even Britain was fast becoming too dangerous, too, but Jews there keeping quiet and didn’t want to “face up to reality”.
I don’t think that their denial will last much longer:
 
A synagogue in the London suburb of Stamford Hill was attacked by a group of approximately 20 youths Saturday night. 
The youths, who yelled “we will kill you”, beat worshipers and vandalized property including tearing apart prayer books reported The Jerusalem Post.
One local Jewish man who was passing by the synagogue at the time of the attack suffered hits to his face after being overwhelmed by the group of youths after trying to grab one of them to bring to the police.,,
The Community Security Trust (CST), which records anti-Semitism and provides security for Britain’s Jewish community, said that 1,168 anti-Semitic incidents were reported over 2014.
It was more than double the 535 incidents seen in 2013, and the highest annual total seen since CST began records in 1984.
UPDATE

The Left in Australia gives more cover to the Jew-haters:
A SYDNEY theatre has refused a booking from a Jewish cultural group… Hilel, a not-for-profit Jewish educational and cultural organisation for students and young adults, approached The Red ­Rattler Theatre in Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner west, about hiring the venue for a series of performances dealing with the Holocaust. 
Their inquiry was dismissed with an unsigned email that read: “Our policy does not support ­colonialism/Zionism. Therefore we do not host groups that support the colonisation and occu­pation of Palestine.”
NSW Jewish Board of Deput­ies chief executive Vic Alhadeff ... has written to the theatre, explaining that the group is apolitical. He has also reiterated the board’s support for a two-state solution in the Middle East that would lead to the establishment of an independent Palestine. No response has been received to Mr Alhadeff’s letter or phone calls to the theatre.
Of course not! This isn’t really about such practical matters as Alhadeff presented.
Red Rattler Theatre does not realise how hypocritical it is in judging and punishing Jews here for Israel’s attempts to defend its very existence. From the Red Rattler Theatre’s instructions to patrons and performers:
The Red Rattler Theatre Inc is a licenced venue with the community at heart, we ask that all our guests abide by basic rules to ensure everyone has a good time, and no one gets hurt… 
- No judgement…
PERFORMER POLICY…
We ask you to join us in efforts to make this space welcoming, stimulating, and happiness producing to people regardless of their ethnicity.... 
UPDATE
Barack Obama is leading international attacks on Israel, undermining its very ability to survive:
Obama’s pledge to “reassess” America’s relationship with Israel cannot be taken lightly. Already paving the way for an Iranian nuke, ... [it] could mean American support for punitive Security Council resolutions or for Palestinian statehood initiatives. It could mean both, or something worse… 
His visceral dislike for Netanyahu is genuine, but also serves as a convenient fig leaf for his visceral dislike of Israel. The fact that it’s personal with Netanyahu doesn’t explain six years of trying to bully Israelis into signing a suicide pact with Muslims bent on destroying them. Netanyahu’s only sin is that he puts his nation’s security first and refuses to knuckle ­under to Obama’s endless demands for unilateral concessions…
Consider that, for all the upheaval around the world, the president rarely has a cross word for, let alone an open dispute with, any other foreign leader. He calls Great Britain’s David Cameron “bro” and praised Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, who had called Zionists, “the descendants of apes and pigs."…
Most troubling is Obama’s bended-knee deference to Iran’s Supreme Leader, which has been repaid with “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” demonstrations in Tehran and expanded Iranian military action in other countries.
The courtship reached the height of absurdity last week, when Obama wished Iranians a happy Persian new year by equating Republican critics of his nuclear deal with the resistance of theocratic hard-liners, saying both “oppose a diplomatic solution.” That is a damnable slur given that a top American military official estimates that Iranian weapons, proxies and trainers killed 1,500 US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who in their right mind would trust such an evil regime with a nuke? Yet Netanyahu, the leader of our only reliable ally in the region, is ­repeatedly singled out for abuse. He alone is the target of an orchestrated attempt to defeat him at the polls, with Obama political operatives, funded in part by American taxpayers, working to elect his opponent.
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill, Gab, Me2 and brett tr.) 
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Martin Ferguson demands a new cop for the lawless CFMEU. So why is Labor against it?

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (8:06am)

Why is Labor defending these thugs and leaving employers defenceless?
A former Labor minister speaks out:
FORMER ACTU president Martin Ferguson has backed the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, likening the ­actions of elements of the CFMEU to the outlawed Builders Labourers Federation and declaring the union must be “brought to heel’’. 
Mr Ferguson, the resources minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments, said that for the sake of the building industry, there had to be a “policeman on the beat’’…
“My position is one of consistency as a cabinet minister and, prior to that, as a shadow minister. I supported the Australian Building and Construction Commission.’’
Mr Ferguson’s comments come after Fair Work Building and Construction director Nigel Hadgkiss warned last week about increasing lawlessness in the industry, saying 75 CFMEU officials were before the courts, facing 403 alleged breaches of workplace laws. With parliament weighing up a crucial vote on the reinstatement of the ABCC to replace the Fair Work Building and Construction agency, ...  the government needs support of six of the eight crossbench senators… 
Wait. The only reason the Government will need the support of the crossbenchers is that Labor now opposes the ABCC. It does not want this policeman to stand watch over the lawless CFMEU, a major donor to the party.
Foul. 
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InvisiBill Shorten

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (7:56am)

If NSW Labor leader Luke Foley loses by a fair margin on Saturday - something like the 46 to 54 now suggested by polls - the heat will really go on another opposition leader who is likewise trying to steal government with deceitful scaremongering and bloody-minded opposition to real reform:
In opposition, Tony Abbott was accused of adopting a small-target strategy. 
But the current opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has made himself an even smaller target, giving at least 200 fewer interviews and perhaps as many as 400 fewer while avoiding hostile commercial media outlets and commentators such as Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and Ray Hadley.
An analysis by Fairfax Media of the pair’s media outings in 2011 and 2014 respectively – each man’s first full year as opposition leader after a federal election – has also prompted questions in the Labor caucus among MPs about the opposition’s strategy.
While Mr Shorten has promised 2015 will be a year of ideas for the ALP, some sections of the caucus believe the opposition is not capitalising on the Abbott government’s political woes to define itself and announce more policies. Labor has so-far released only a handful of policies, including on multi-national tax avoidance and $70 million extra for family violence critical services.The comparative analysis of publicly available published transcripts shows Mr Abbott gave 457 radio and TV interviews, press conferences and shorter “doorstop” interviews in 2011, while Mr Shorten gave just 265 in the equivalent 2014 period. 
Note that Shorten feels comparatively safer with the ABC and the Canberra press pack than with the media outlets that pitch more to Labor’s traditional working class.
The publicly available information shows both men faced the scrutiny of the Canberra press gallery about the same number of times – 47 times for Mr Abbott and 54 times for Mr Shorten – and both men spoke to the ABC about the same number of times – 40 times for Mr Abbott and 45 times for Mr Shorten.
UPDATE
Former Prime Minister John ­Howard yesterday:
ONE of the reasons we came back was that deep down, people didn’t think Kim Beazley — terrific bloke — stood for anything. And there’s a lot of parallels now. I don’t think Bill Shorten stands for anything. And I think one of the things that will increasingly be put in the spotlight is the policy vacuum of the Labor Party.
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Lee Kuan Yew dies

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (7:04am)

Didn’t like his authoritarianism at all, but cannot help but admire his final legacy:
SINGAPORE’S founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has died at the age of 91, the prime minister’s office says. 
Lee, as the founder of modern Singapore helped transform the sleepy port into one of the world’s richest nations.
Australia’s trajectory in the meantime?
The worst of Lee Kuan Yew:
The best:
The legacy:
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Faces of the modern Left

Andrew Bolt March 23 2015 (7:01am)

The Left purports to represent people with a more developed sense of morality.
You know, people with more compassion, a higher devotion to truth and a greater passion for peace.
Yet I cannot help suspecting that the Left is dragging back to barbarity.
Strange.
(Via Tim Blair.) 
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Shorten’s hypocrisy knows no bounds

Piers Akerman – Sunday, March 23, 2014 (5:51am)

FEDERAL Labor is asking way, way too much of the public with its high-minded moralistic posturing over Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos.
Sinodinos, who stood aside as assistant treasurer on Wednesday to give the government clear air in the lead-up to the May Budget, has been called as a witness in the current NSW ICAC hearings into whether former NSW Labor heavyweights Eddie Obeid, Joe Tripodi and Tony Kelly misused their positions to favour Australian Water Holdings.
No allegations of any criminal activity have been made against the NSW Senator, a former chief of staff to former prime minister John Howard, with an enviable reputation for honesty and integrity.
Yet former AWU boss and Labor leader Bill Shorten, who is likely to be called before the royal commission headed by former High Court justice Dyson Heydon into alleged trade union corruption, has occupied almost all Question Time with his attempts to besmirch Sinodinos and by association, Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
As Education Minister firmly told Parliament on Thursday, the Abbott government “will not be judged by the party of Craig Thomson, and the party of Michael Williamson, and the party of the AWU slush fund, and the party of Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald”.
Thomson, the former Health Services Union official and former Labor MP, has been found guilty in the Melbourne Magistrates Court of misusing union members funds to pay for prostitutes and personal expenses. He will be sentenced next Tuesday.
Williamson, a former national president of the ALP and a former head of the Health Services Union, pleaded guilty last October 15 to four charges of cheating or defrauding as a director, fabricating invoices and recruiting someone to hinder a police investigation.
His bail has been revoked and he in prison awaiting final sentencing this Friday.
The AWU slush fund affair is likely to see former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard called before the Heydon royal commission where she is likely to be asked to explain her role in assisting her then boyfriend Bruce Wilson establish a fund that was kept secret from both Wilson’s union, and Gillard’s employers, the Labor law firm Slater & Gordon.
Both Obeid and Macdonald were found to be corrupt by the NSW ICAC in connection with the issuance of mining licenses.
Little wonder that Pyne pulled Shorten up firmly.
Labor has clung to tainted MPs, even defended them, when the stench of corruption was evident to all (except, perhaps, Labor’s media arm, the ABC).
As Shorten and some unwise souls on the Opposition benches feigned outrage, Pyne walked through them through Labor’s sad record, reminding the smarting Opposition MPs that their party lacked all credibility and left itself shamefully exposed on the topics of ministerial accountability and parliamentary standards.
He said Labor presided over a “sewer” in the past three years with “an endless list of atrocities committed against this parliament”.
He reminded the House that Labor had not only suborned former Liberal MP Peter Slipper by offering him the Speakership (replacing the universally respected Labor MP Harry Jenkins) but had kept Thomson in their party room until April 29, 2012, even though there a cloud had been hanging over the former NSW Central Coast MP as early as January, 2009, well before the 2010 election, when the Fair Work Commission commenced its inquiry into the HSU’s Victorian No. 1 Branch.
So concerned was Labor about the allegations engulfing Thomson that former prime minister Gillard’s chief of staff Ben Hubbard rang the then Industrial Registrar Doug Williams in early 2009 to inquire into whether Thomson was under investigation – before the fraud allegations were made public.
Then, despite the New South Wales police launching Strike Force Carnarvon, in September, 2011, despite the Victorian police fraud squad’s confirmation of its investigation into Thomson in October, 2011, despite Fair Work Australia’s publication of its investigation into the HSU in April 2012, and its release of its investigation into the Victorian HSU No. 1 Branch, Labor continued to protect Thomson and his caucus vote.
No allegations, I repeat, have been made against Sinodinos. He has been called before ICAC as a witness.
Labor has had its share of MPs and ministers called as witnesses before ICAC, not least being former climate change minister Greg Combet who was questioned about a letter he wrote supporting a controversial mining licence sought by union official John Maitland.
The noisy Senator Doug Cameron was called to give evidence about the Obeids.
In neither case did the Liberals demand either be stripped or their responsibilities or disciplined.
The contrast between the behaviour of the two principal parties in Australian politics could not be greater.
Labor is the party of smear, innuendo and hypocrisy.
There is probably no greater example of Labor’s gutter tactics than the ugliness revealed by Gillard herself during the confected frenzy of her extremely personal tirade against Tony Abbott during which she falsely claimed he was a misogynist as she attempted to distract the public from her personal appointment of Slipper, a man who had made the most appalling references to women’s sexual organs, to the highest parliamentary office.
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man,” she shrieked. “Not now, not ever.”
Pathetic and baseless charges eagerly seized upon by the mindless twitterati who chose to ignore Gillard’s moral deceit and betrayal of principle in regard to Slipper’s promotion.
“Not now, not ever,” Gillard screeched theatrically.
Well, “not now, not ever”, should anyone from Labor try and lecture anyone about morality, about ethics or parliamentary standards.
Labor over the past six years has demonstrated it lacks all understanding of the terms. 
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CHURCH OF ONE

Tim Blair – Sunday, March 23, 2014 (2:47pm)

This won’t come as a surprise, but Peter FitzSimons worships himself: 
For the photo for my licence, I was asked to remove my bandanna …
The lady confirmed that in NSW exceptions were made for hijabs, so I said I wanted to wear my bandanna for my religion.
‘’And what is that?’’ she asked.
‘’The Me religion,’’ I said, deadpan.
She conferred with a colleague, and came back.
‘’OK, you can wear it,’’ she said. 
UPDATE. “You missed the best bit about the Fitzy column,” emails PWAF. “Read the Gillard segment aloud in a Jiminy Glick voice. You’ll thank me later.”
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1-800-MUTILATE

Tim Blair – Saturday, March 22, 2014 (11:47pm)

Britain’s female genital mutilation helpline receives an unexpected call: 
A suspect contacted an FGM helpline to request the procedure for his two daughters after misunderstanding the purpose of the service for victims. 
Mark Steyn comments: 
What an unfortunate “misunderstanding”. The gentleman had called the Female Genital Mutilation Helpline thinking it was a helpline set up by Her Majesty’s Government to help you find someone to genitally mutilate your daughters. In the rich, vibrant diversity of the modern multicultural state, it’s easy to see why the poor fellow might make that assumption. Just give it a couple more years, sir. 
It’s a life-imitates-art moment. Observe this scene from Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator.
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The Bolt Report today

Andrew Bolt March 23 2014 (6:31am)

On the show today:
Unwanted boat people - and a little chat about activists who cry “racist”.
Guests Josh Frydenberg, Peter Costello and Bruce Hawker.
In NewsWatch, Sharri Markson on the ABC’s weird war against the Murdoch media.
Plus Your Say - and a few hypocrites exposed.
On Network 10 at 10am and 4pm.
In my interview with Frydenberg we discussed the regulatory burden. I drew on figures supplied by Chris Berg of the IPA. Chris has written an excellent paper on the explosion of laws which you can read here.
The videos of the show appear here.
UPDATE
I think it is time other Jewish leaders stepped forward to support Josh and marginalise those pushing the extreme position. There must be room for compromise, because the damage being done by the uncompromisers is not just to the cause of free speech but to their community and their more reliable allies:
THE government’s only Jewish MP, Josh Frydenberg, has placed himself at odds with the nation’s Jewish leadership by backing the Coalition’s reforms to the Racial Discrimination Act. 
UPDATE
THE BOLT REPORT
23 MARCH 2014
INTERVIEW WITH JOSH FRYDENBERG
ANDREW BOLT, PRESENTER: The last Labor government said it was a success because of the number of laws it passed.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, LABOR FRONTBENCHER (FEB 2013): We’ve been stable. More than 430 pieces of legislation through the House of Representatives. (SEPT 2013) We got through almost 600 pieces of legislation.
ANDREW BOLT: That’s the kind of attitude that’s given us too many laws and too little freedom. Now let me show you. To set up and run Australia at the start of last century, our parliament passed 358 pages of legislation in the first two years. A pile of paper this high. But in the last full year of the Gillard Government, Parliament passed 8,150 pages of legislation. Have a look, pages of laws in our first two years, pages of laws in the last full year of the Gillard Government. Well, the Abbott Government will on Wednesday introduce another measure of government success - not passing laws but scrapping them - around 10,000 regulations and Acts of Parliament. Now, Josh Frydenberg joins me, he is the parliamentary secretary in charge of this annual bonfire of laws. Josh, you’ve promised to cut red tape by $1 billion a year. Your press release says that on Wednesday you’ll be cutting just about $700 million of red tape. Why have you fallen short?
JOSH FRYDENBERG, PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY: Well, we’re going to have two repeal days a year, Andrew, and the second will be in the second half of the year. And I’m hopeful that, by the end of the year, we would have met our $1 billion target. It’s an ambitious target. It’s, as you say, succeeding where Labor failed, and it’s really important to job creation in this country, to investment, to innovation in this country, even for the not-for-profit sector. They’re all going to benefit out of cutting red tape.
ANDREW BOLT: Maybe you fell short by failing to get rid of the gender reporting requirements, you know, forcing companies with 100 or more employees to say what they’re doing for female workers. Now, why did you back off such stupid nanny-ism?
Icon Arrow Continue reading 'The Bolt Report today'
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Independent calls sick in SA. Ugly draw now possible

Andrew Bolt March 23 2014 (6:27am)

South Australia might be headed to a fresh election to sort this out:
INDEPENDENT MP and powerbroker Bob Such is in hospital and likely to require extended sick leave from parliament — throwing negotiations to form the next state government into chaos. 
Dr Such is one of two independent MPs who hold the power to select the next state government, after last weekend’s state election ended in a hung parliament.
His sudden illness could even result in the state being forced back to the polls.Dr Such, 69, is in Flinders Medical Centre and Advertiser.com.au understands he will take sick leave that could last for months. The exact nature of his condition has not been revealed, but it is understood he has been scheduled for surgery in coming days… Dr Such’s absence throws open the possibility of another state election if Mr Brock decides to back the Liberal Party, resulting in a 23-23 deadlock… 
More:
Advertiser.com.au’s revelation yesterday that independent MP Bob Such is taking extended leave on health grounds ... piles immense pressure on the Port Pirie independent MP and reluctant kingmaker Geoff Brock. He now shoulders an even greater burden in this historic decision. 
If Dr Such is unable or unwilling to back either party to form government then Mr Brock, a former mayor from a conservative electorate, faces an diabolical choice.
He could back Labor and give it a clear two-vote advantage on the floor of State Parliament… If Dr Such remains absent, Mr Brock could throw his support behind the Liberals and deliver a 23-23 voting gridlock on the floor of Parliament. It would struggle to find a speaker as both sides refused to lose votes from the floor and a government would be hard to form in the mess.
Or he could just support neither, leaving Labor with most seats but no majority.
UPDATE
Brock makes the only call in the circumstances that avoids the risk of calling another election. He backs Labor, giving it 24 votes in all to the Liberals 22, with the other independent off sick.
Brock will be as nervous as hell that he’ll become another Oakeshott or Windsor, but in his press conference today insisted he’ll be free to vote against the government on every issue bar supply and a vote of no confidence. I suspect he’ll be looking at chances to prove he’s independent, too.
(Thanks to readers CA and Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Talking about “an unconscious bias”, dear Judge…

Andrew Bolt March 23 2014 (5:30am)

Hypocrite alert:
On Friday, [Queensland] Supreme Court of Appeal president Justice Margaret McMurdo questioned in a speech whether “an unconscious bias” by the LNP leadership meant women were being ignored for judicial ­appointments. 
It drew an angry response from the politicians yesterday… [Attorney-General Jarrod] Bleijie said Justice McMurdo had been consulted about a replacement when Justice Margaret White retired from the Queensland Court of ­Appeal last year, and did not recommend any women, but did mention her husband ­Justice Philip McMurdo…

“(She said) if I couldn’t appoint her husband, or promote her husband to the Court of Appeal … then I should appoint Justice Peter Lyons.... “She said ... you have to appoint the best people for the job, and the best person for the job is not a woman at the bar at the moment.”
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A natural misunderstanding

Andrew Bolt March 23 2014 (4:55am)

Mark Steyn on a little misunderstanding on the multicultural help line:
Meanwhile, across the North Sea, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service is bringing to court the first cases over female genital mutilation. But not for everyone: 
The CPS has decided to take no further action in four other cases of alleged FGM.
In one of those cases… a suspect contacted an FGM helpline to request the procedure for his two daughters after misunderstanding the purpose of the service for victims.
Oh, dear. What an unfortunate “misunderstanding”. The gentleman had called the Female Genital Mutilation Helpline thinking it was a helpline set up by Her Majesty’s Government to help you find someone to genitally mutilate your daughters. In the rich, vibrant diversity of the modern multicultural state, it’s easy to see why the poor fellow might make that assumption. Just give it a couple more years, sir.” 
(Thanks to reader Bruce.) 
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One of those rules we should worry were needed

Andrew Bolt March 23 2014 (4:51am)

The NSW Government actually needed to tell this to teachers?
T-shirts, ripped jeans, strapless dresses and mid-riff tops will be prohibited, with male teachers required to wear collars, while females must banish clothes that are “revealing or suggestive”. 
And although rubber thongs, singlets, tracksuits and clothes displaying alcohol advertising are also in the state government’s sights, the code does not go as far as banning tattoos and piercings.
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DID YOU KNOW?
What IS The Main Ingredient of WD-40?
Before you read to the end, does anybody know what the main ingredient of WD-40?
No Cheating.....

WD-40 ~ Who knew!

I had a neighbor who bought a new pickup.
I got up very early one Sunday morning and saw that someone had spray painted red all around the sides of this beige truck (for some unknown reason).
I went over, woke him up, and told him the bad news.
He was very upset and was trying to figure out what to do....
probably nothing until Monday morning, since nothing was open.
Another neighbor came out and told him to get his WD-40 and clean it off.
It removed the unwanted paint beautifully and did not harm his paint job that was on the truck. I was impressed!

WD-40 who knew?
"Water Displacement #40".
The product began from a search for a rust preventative solvent and degreaser to protect missile parts.
WD-40 was created in 1953, by three technicians at the San Diego Rocket Chemical Company.
Its name comes from the project that was to find a 'Water Displacement' Compound.
They were finally successful for a formulation, with their fortieth attempt, thus WD-40.
The 'Convair Company' bought it in bulk to protect their atlas missile parts.
Ken East (one of the original founders) says there is nothing in WD-40 that would hurt you.
When you read the 'shower door' part, try it.
It's the first thing that has ever cleaned that spotty shower door.
If yours is plastic, it works just as well as on glass.
It's a miracle!
Then try it on your stovetop.
It's now shinier than it's ever been.
You'll be amazed.

WD-40 Uses:
1. Protects silver from tarnishing.
2. Removes road tar and grime from cars.
3. Cleans and lubricates guitar strings.
4. Gives floor that 'just-waxed' sheen without making them slippery.
5. Keeps the flies off of Cows, Horses, and other Farm Critters, as well. (Ya gotta love this one!!!)
6. Restores and cleans chalkboards.
7. Removes lipstick stains.
8. Loosens stubborn zippers.
9. Untangles jewelry chains.
10. Removes stains from stainless steel sinks.
11. Removes dirt and grime from the barbecue grill.
12. Keeps ceramic / terracotta garden pots from oxidizing.
13. Removes tomato stains from clothing.
14. Keeps glass shower doors free of water spots.
15. Camouflages scratches in ceramic and marble floors.
16. Keeps scissors working smoothly.
17. Lubricates noisy door hinges on both home and vehicles doors.
18. It removes that nasty tar and scuff marks from the kitchen flooring.
It doesn't seem to harm the finish and you won't have to scrub nearly as hard to get them off.
Just remember to open some windows if you have a lot of marks.
19. Remove those nasty Bug guts that will eat away the finish on your car if not removed quickly!
20. Gives a children's playground gym slide a shine for a super fast slide.
21. Lubricates gearshift and mower deck lever for ease of handling on riding mowers...
22. Rids kids rocking chair and swings of squeaky noises.
23. Lubricates tracks in sticking home windows and makes them easier to open.
24. Spraying an umbrella stem makes it easier to open and close.
25. Restores and cleans padded leather dashboards in vehicles, as well as vinyl bumpers.
26. Restores and cleans roof racks on vehicles.
27. Lubricates and stops squeaks in electric fans.
28. Lubricates wheel sprockets on tricycles, wagons, and bicycles for easy handling.
29. Lubricates fan belts on washers and dryers and keeps them running smoothly.
30. Keeps rust from forming on saws and saw blades, and other tools.
31. Removes grease splatters from stovetops.
32. Keeps bathroom mirror from fogging.
33. Lubricates prosthetic limbs.
34. Keeps pigeons off the balcony (they hate the smell).
35. Removes all traces of duct tape.
36. Folks even spray it on their arms, hands, and knees to relieve arthritis pain.
37. Florida's favorite use is: 'cleans and removes love bugs from grills and bumpers.'
38. The favorite use in the state of New York, it protects the Statue of Liberty from the elements.
39. WD-40 attracts fish. Spray a little on live bait or lures and you will be catching the big one in no time. Also, it's a lot cheaper than the chemical attractants that are made for just that purpose.
Keep in mind though, using some chemical laced baits or lures for fishing are not allowed in some states.
40. Use it for fire ant bites. It takes the sting away immediately and stops the itch.
41. It is great for removing crayon from walls. Spray it on the marks and wipe with a clean rag.
42. Also, if you've discovered that your teenage daughter has washed and dried a tube of lipstick with a load of laundry, saturate the lipstick spots with WD-40 and rewash. Presto! The lipstick is gone!
43. If you spray it inside a wet distributor cap, it will displace the moisture, allowing the engine to start.

P.S.
As for that Basic, Main Ingredient.......
Well.... it's FISH OIL....
Who would have guessed ? ? ?
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March 23: Republic Day in Pakistan (1956); Day of Hungarian–Polish Friendship in Hungary and Poland
Eleftherios Venizelos
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“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” -Ephesians 6:10-11
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

March 22: Morning
"And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed." -Matthew 26:39
There are several instructive features in our Saviour's prayer in his hour of trial. It was lonely prayer. He withdrew even from his three favoured disciples. Believer, be much in solitary prayer, especially in times of trial. Family prayer, social prayer, prayer in the Church, will not suffice, these are very precious, but the best beaten spice will smoke in your censer in your private devotions, where no ear hears but God's.

It was humble prayer. Luke says he knelt, but another evangelist says he "fell on his face." Where, then, must be thy place, thou humble servant of the great Master? What dust and ashes should cover thy head! Humility gives us good foot-hold in prayer. There is no hope of prevalence with God unless we abase ourselves that he may exalt us in due time.

It was filial prayer. "Abba, Father." You will find it a stronghold in the day of trial to plead your adoption. You have no rights as a subject, you have forfeited them by your treason; but nothing can forfeit a child's right to a father's protection. Be not afraid to say, "My Father, hear my cry."

Observe that it was persevering prayer. He prayed three times. Cease not until you prevail. Be as the importunate widow, whose continual coming earned what her first supplication could not win. Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.

Lastly, it was the prayer of resignation. "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." Yield, and God yields. Let it be as God wills, and God will determine for the best. Be thou content to leave thy prayer in his hands, who knows when to give, and how to give, and what to give, and what to withhold. So pleading, earnestly, importunately, yet with humility and resignation, thou shalt surely prevail.
Evening
"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am." - John 17:24
O death! why dost thou touch the tree beneath whose spreading branches weariness hath rest? Why dost thou snatch away the excellent of the earth, in whom is all our delight? If thou must use thine axe, use it upon the trees which yield no fruit; thou mightest be thanked then. But why wilt thou fell the goodly cedars of Lebanon? O stay thine axe, and spare the righteous. But no, it must not be; death smites the goodliest of our friends; the most generous, the most prayerful, the most holy, the most devoted must die. And why? It is through Jesus' prevailing prayer--"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am." It is that which bears them on eagle's wings to heaven. Every time a believer mounts from this earth to paradise, it is an answer to Christ's prayer. A good old divine remarks, "Many times Jesus and his people pull against one another in prayer. You bend your knee in prayer and say Father, I will that thy saints be with me where I am;' Christ says, Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.'" Thus the disciple is at cross-purposes with his Lord. The soul cannot be in both places: the beloved one cannot be with Christ and with you too. Now, which pleader shall win the day? If you had your choice; if the King should step from his throne, and say, "Here are two supplicants praying in opposition to one another, which shall be answered?" Oh! I am sure, though it were agony, you would start from your feet, and say, "Jesus, not my will, but thine be done." You would give up your prayer for your loved one's life, if you could realize the thoughts that Christ is praying in the opposite direction--"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am." Lord, thou shalt have them. By faith we let them go.
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Agrippa 
[Ä‚grÄ p'pa] - one who at his birth causes pain.
Great grandson of Herod the Great. Agrippa's father was eaten by worms. See Herod (Acts 25:13-26; 26 ). Was Agrippa almost persuaded by Paul's eloquent witness to become a Christian? Bible scholars disagree on the point. There are those who affirm that the original language indicates clearly that Agrippa interrupted Paul to warn him that he was going too far in presuming that he was admitting his argument. "Too eagerly art thou persuading thyself that thou canst make me a Christian." The RV of 1881 has it, "With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian." However, the words of Agrippa as they stand in the A.V. have formed the basis of many an earnest and powerful gospel appeal.
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Today's reading: Joshua 10-12, Luke 1:39-56 (NIV)

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Today's Old Testament reading: Joshua 10-12

The Sun Stands Still
1 Now Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem heard that Joshua had taken Ai and totally destroyed it, doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, and that the people of Gibeon had made a treaty of peace with Israel and had become their allies. 2 He and his people were very much alarmed at this, because Gibeon was an important city, like one of the royal cities; it was larger than Ai, and all its men were good fighters.3So Adoni-Zedek king of Jerusalem appealed to Hoham king of Hebron, Piram king of Jarmuth, Japhia king of Lachish and Debir king of Eglon. 4"Come up and help me attack Gibeon," he said, "because it has made peace with Joshua and the Israelites."

Today's New Testament reading: Luke 1:39-56

Mary Visits Elizabeth
39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. 41When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!"


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Today's Lent reading: Matthew 27-28 (NIV)

View today's Lent reading on Bible Gateway
Judas Hangs Himself
1 Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people made their plans how to have Jesus executed. 2 So they bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate the governor.
3 When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 "I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood."
"What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your responsibility."
5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself....

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