Monday, June 28, 2010
Bill O'Reilly: "The Obama Administration Is Confusing Me!" - 06/25/10
Because Obama does not stand for anything.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Headlines Sunday 27th June 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Sir Robert William Duff, GCMG, PC (8 May 1835 – 15 March 1895) was a Scottish Liberal Party politician.Duff was appointed Governor of New South Wales in March 1893 and was subsequently awarded the GCMG. He reached Sydney to take up his duties on 29 May 1893. In February 1895, he became ill while visiting Hobart and returned to Government House in Sydney, where he died of multiple hepatic abscesses and septicaemia on 15 March. He was interred in Waverley Cemetery. He is the only NSW Governor to have died in Office
=== Bible Quote ===
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”- Leviticus 19:18=== Headlines ===
A French dancer strips off atop Australia's most sacred rock, saying she put on the impromptu performance as a tribute to Aborigines and their culture and to fulfill a lifelong dreamChina Vows Not to Fold to Currency Reform Pressures
China is vowing not to bow to outside pressure for more currency reform, which the United States and others say is crucial to global economic recovery.Is Another Disaster Looming in the Gulf?
Forecasters aren't clear if Tropical Storm Alex — the first of Atlantic Hurricane season — will hurt cleanup efforts
Gov. Brewer Defends 'Drug Mule' Comments
Gov. backs comments that most illegal immigrants entering Arizona are smuggling drugs, a remark blasted by critics as racist
Ghana Knocks U.S. Out of World Cup
Ghana eliminates U.S. from the Wprld Cup for the second straight time as Asamoah Gyan scored 3 minutes into overtime, leading the team to a 2-1 victory
Gillard dumps 'Big Australia'
PRIME Minister tells voters there will be no "hurtling towards" population of 36 million. - but she keeps the ALP's death grip on big business - ed.
Hardline protesters set fire to a police car and scuffle with riot officers at the G20 World Summit in Toronto as talks begin. - They don't like Swan's policies either - edAussie soccer fans robbed at gunpoint
GUNMEN tied up tourists in South African hotel after Roos match, sexually assaulting one victim.
Last-ditch appeal to find baby's mother
BEAUTIFUL pic of 12-week-old Adam for only one person - the woman who abandoned him.
The wives betrayed by disgraced DJs boss
MARK McInnes's first wife warns young women not to have office affairs with lecherous bosses.
Australia to ban ultra-skinny models
THIN models could be banished from catwalks and magazines under overhaul of fashion industry.
'No one to blame' for 12-hour traffic jam
INQUIRY says communications breakdown caused chaos but critics label report a white-wash. IT WAS a freeway traffic jam that lasted 12 hours and left dehydrating children physically sick but an official inquiry has found that nobody was to blame. Former NSW police commissioner Ken Moroney's report into the handling of the crash - involving a B-double fuel tanker at Mount White, north of Sydney, at 11.40am on April 12 - identified a breakdown in communications between key agencies as responsible for the chaos. But his report claims disgraced former roads minister David Campbell acted "within accepted ministerial norms" in his handling of the situation and RTA chief Michael Bushby acted appropriately, in response to advice provided to him on the day. Mr Bushby, who was suspended on his full pay of $1400 a day after the debacle, will now resume his role within the organisation. Mr Moroney's report says the decision by the Roads and Traffic Authority, NSW Fire Services, NSW Police and other agencies to set up separate command posts led to long delays in informing the public about the mounting traffic chaos and delayed the decision to introduce contraflow traffic arrangements to reduce the 10km line of motorists stranded in their vehicles. - Moroney often seems to be an ALP police minister when he was police chief - ed.Bloody saga of real-life killers
THEY created one of the bloodiest periods in NSW history. Now, DK's Boys are the focus of the final of Underbelly: The Golden Mile.
World leaders condemn North Korea, Iran
GROUP of Eight nations criticise sinking of South Korean warship and call on Iran to do more to respect human rights.
Why is this six-year-old on 'no fly' list?
A TRAVEL agent tells a surprised family that their young daughter is on a list of restricted fliers.
=== Comments ===
UNDER THE SEATim Blair
A post-warming novel from author Kat Falls:
Ty has lived under the ocean for his entire life. Following global warming and the rise of the seas, his family joined an underwater community in hopes of living in the new frontier of the ocean floor. But When Ty meets Gemma, a girl from “topside”, who is searching the seas for her brother, she quickly makes his life very complicated.Those topside girls … they’re always trouble.
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They pay these pundits to predict
Andrew Bolt
Gerard Henderson checks the form of some Fairfax pundits:
Peter FitzSimons On Why Kevin Rudd Will PrevailLooking forward to Gordon’s apology to me tomorrow.It’s about the Rudd thing. I just don’t get how a bloke who had nigh on record popularity only a short time ago can so suddenly be on the nose with so many voters when, to my eyes, nothing has particularly changed, apart from the mining tax. And I know, I know, the mining magnates are saying it is the end of the world as we know it if a larger chunk of the common wealth of the country goes to the Commonwealth of Australia to pay for schools, roads and hospitals, instead of into their pockets. But why do such a broad mass of people seem to be saying that, too? Particularly when they must know that if the money doesn’t come from the likes of the magnates then it will have to come from you, me and them. My bet is that if the government sticks to its guns, the electorate will realise exactly that, and Rudd’s numbers will rise again.That was on Sunday. The office removalists arrived at the Prime Minister’s office on Wednesday.
[Peter FitzSimons, “The Fitz Files”, The Sun-Herald, 20 June 2010.]
Josh Gordon On Why Kevin Rudd Will Decisively Win the 2010 ElectionNo doubt about it, making predictions about the inherently unpredictable and chaotic world of politics is a fraught business. So here goes. The fashionable view in Canberra seems to be that Rudd’s leadership is moribund. The pack has caught a whiff of blood and is closing in. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph last week even went so far as to run a story quoting some bozo who thinks (but can’t be sure) that Rudd still owes him a beer after a late night drinking bout that took place in 2005. The horror.At 4.30 pm on Wednesday, as the plotters were moving against Kevin Rudd, Josh Gordon appeared on the Sky News PM Agenda program and declared:
With so much chest thumping, it would be easy to declare - as Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt did recently - that Kevin Rudd is “finished”. But I’m not so sure. My bet is that Rudd will decisively win the next election, even if Labor does lose some skin.
[Josh Gordon, “Ringmaster’s Return”, The Sunday Age, 20 June 2010...]I actually took the plunge last week and sort rang every backbencher with my colleague in the Sun-Herald. And we found that there was actually very little support for a leadership spill now. I think the prevailing view was that it’d be madness to switch to Julia Gillard at the late stage in the electoral cycle…Michelle Grattan On Why Mare Gillard Is Not Even On the Racing TrackI don’t think there is any chance of a move against Kevin Rudd. And you do not have a willing replacement and clearly there is not another horse in the field. Julia Gillard has made it clear time after time that she doesn’t want to be in some very difficult coup. And I think that if the Labor Party did go down that path it would simply intensify its problems rather than help them. There’s no quick way out of this situation.
[Michelle Grattan, The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra’s political editor, in her daily Radio National Breakfast commentary spot on Tuesday 22 June.]
Despite some over-the-top speculation in recent weeks, Kevin Rudd will fight his second election, his white-knuckled followers hanging on and hoping.
[Michelle Grattan in The Age, 23 June 2010.]
UPDATE
Speaking of commentators who struggle in their alleged area of expertise, here’s Kathy Lette, wife of human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, interpreting Australian politics to the British:Australia has its first ever woman Prime Minister — and the average Aussie male is quaking in his Ugg boots.The 1870s, I’d say, considering the staleness of her stereotypes.
Why? Because Julia Gillard is not just a woman, she’s an unmarried, childless, proudly undomesticated feminist agnostic — who also happens to be shacked up with a hairdresser.
In the land of cold beer and untrammelled misogyny, this is about the worst kind of human being possible… Even worse, in the eyes of Australian manhood the new premier — who replaced Kevin Rudd after she challenged his leadership this week — is not even a proper Aussie.
Lette’s fantasy betrays not just the disdain felt by a member of the celebrity Left for what was once called the “lower classes”. It also betrays the fact that she hasn’t lived in Australia since the ‘70s.
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BP NEVER COMMITTED SUCH A CRIME
Tim Blair
New York Times eco-writer Andrew Revkin has written a folk song called Liberated Carbon.
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If this is how they protest, imagine how they’d rule
Andrew Bolt
How come activists wanting a kinder world are so prone to violence? Once again, it’s a G20 meeting that’s struck by the hypocrisy:
While the majority of the protesters - thought to number up to 10,000 - were peaceful, members of an anarchist group known as Black Bloc became violent, setting police cars alight and smashing store windows in a downtown shopping precinct.
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Gillard flirts with the Right
Andrew Bolt
Julia Gillard signals a move to the right - but can she actually do it without falling over her feet?
Gillard has three critical policy challenges: how to fix the mining tax brawl without blowing the Budget; how to stop the boats; and how to fix the emissions trading embarrassment without blowing the Budget or infuriating the Greens. And there’s her presentational issue: how to dodge the blame for the unprecedented rorting of her Building the Education Revolution.
The boat people issue just reannounced itself:
A BOAT carrying 96 asylum seekers and three crew has been intercepted near Christmas Island, and been immediately seized on as a key test for Prime Minister Julia Gillard.So let’s read the signals on where Gillard will go.
On boat people, there’s been no change of policy announced yet, but Gillard has just said this:
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has declared she does not believe in a ‘’big Australia’’, signalling a major shift in policy on the nation’s burgeoning population growth.As for emissions trading, on Channel 9 this morning Gillard said she will argue for “a price on carbon” but needs “to bring the community” with her, and will announce other things. She simply laughs off a tame question about her claim last year that “delay is denial”. She lied last year, but somehow seems excused as Tony Abbott would never be. Bottom line: the ETS is being pushed as far back on the burner as she dares without seeming a “denier”.
In her first significant policy break from the Rudd-era, Ms Gillakrd said the nation should not ‘’hurtle down the track towards a big population’’.
”I don’t support the idea of a big Australia with arbitrary targets of, say, a 40 million-strong Australia or a 36 million-strong Australia. We need to stop, take a breath and develop policies for a sustainable Australia...”
On the mining tax, she’s asked about the effect on the Budget of any real concession to the miners, but refuses to even discuss it. Oakes does not pursue her on this. Indeed, it seems he’s showing his gratitude to Gillard for this interview by treating her with kid gloves.
Wayne Swan at the G20 meeting has just claimed the mining tax revenue is not critical for the Budget, which suggests either that any Government offer does not include much change to the billions it wants to rake in, or that any cut in revenue will come with cuts to what was promised to voters as a consequence.
(Thanks to reader CA.)
AN ASIDE
Reader ETS is right to nail this weasel word:
Gillard has reassure disenchanted voters that she does not believe in a “big Australia”. She has consequently renamed Tony Burke’s portfolio the Ministry of “Sustainable” Population.
The key word of UN Agenda 21 is “sustainable”: “sustainable development”, “sustainable agriculture”, “sustainable communities”.
Dr Esther Charlesworth, from RMIT’s architecture and design department, says the term “sustainability” has been co-opted and subverted by Melbourne’s urban elite. “It’s been used and abused by various players in the corporate, public and government sectors to justify WHATEVER it is they happen to be doing.” (The New Times Survey, June, 2008).
British author and architect Austin Williams argues that “sustainability is a dirty word, anathema to architecture and vibrant cities.”
“To me sustainability is the first thing we have to get rid of before we can clearly have a vision of what the future could possibly be,” he tells The Age.
“In the guise of looking to the future with ambition it kills ambition … it’s giving us a low-inspirational, miserable-ist, anti-human kind of response,” he says.
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Manne emerges to bayonet the corpse
Andrew Bolt
The Left’s Professor Robert Manne, voted the Most Influential Public Intellectual in Australia, offers a scathing critique of Kevin Rudd:
... hyperactive, controlling, hectoring and interfering… what he lacks is native political instinct ... drove those around him to near-exhaustion ... bad at delegation ... cabinet has been reduced to a rubber stamp… unpopular with his ministers and his backbenchers ... domineering… surrounded himself with advisers too obsequious or too cynical ... an unresolved tension between word and action ... distance between his words and his deeds ....systemic mismanagement ... without high-level political skills they can resemble Walter Mitty dreams…A devastating portrayal of a catastrophically inept and mendacious Prime Minister.
Manne waited until Rudd was sacked before writing it.
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Penguins die from wrong cause; CSIRO head promoted for right one
Andrew Bolt
2008:
Experts yesterday said 400 Adelie penguin chicks have washed up dead on Brazil’s beaches after migrating 2,500 miles to avoid the rain… Dozens of migrant penguins are being treated at Rio de Janeiro’s Niterio Zoo. Biologist Erli Costa said: ”This is all due to global warming.”2010:
The cold snap that has swept across South Africa in the first week of the World Cup has killed nearly 500 African penguin chicks, South Africa’s national parks authority said.UPDATE
Simon McKeon has just the right credentials for the Gillard Government to appoint him our new CSIRO chairman. Sure, he’s got no scientific background at all, but he has the right attitude. For instance, he’s the kind of guy to snatch at any local quirk of the weather as evidence of global warming:
Mr McKeon recalls a rainy wind that blew regularly from the south-west across Waratah Bay, next to Wilsons Promontory… ”In the last few years, that wind has … evaporated,” Mr McKeon says.And he’s dedicated himself to the politics of the utterly useless gesture:
This observation helped convince him to begin minimising carbon emissions.
.... his conviction has led him to become a business community ambassador for Earth Hour, advocating to businesses the value of switching off their lights for one hour at 8pm on March 29.UPDATE 2
Claims that the IPCC quoted dodgy research to assert that 40 per cent of the Amazon was threatened by global warming have been withdrawn. Christopher Booker wonders why.
(Thanks to reader The Loaded Dog.)
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Headlines Saturday 26th June 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Victor Albert George Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey GCB, GCMG, PC, DL, JP (20 March 1845 – 31 May 1915), was a British banker, Conservative politician and colonial administrator. He served as Governor of New South Wales between 1891 and 1893.=== Bible Quote ===
“Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?" declares the LORD. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" declares the LORD.”- Jeremiah 23:24=== Headlines ===
Shocking photograph of 11-month-old boy apparently smoking cannabis triggers investigation by child protection officers after young mother posted it on the internetLalich out, predicts poll
LABOR Party polling has predicted Cabramatta State Labor MP Nick Lalich will lose his seat at next year’s state election. The poll, published in a weekend newspaper, revealed Mr Lalich as one of 31 Labor MPs who would be ousted when NSW goes to the ballot in March. The poll predicted the Liberals would win Cabramatta, a seat that has always been held by the Labor Party. The Liberals have already put forward former ABC journalist Dai Le as a candidate, although she is yet to be officially preselected.Gulf Dealing With New Oil Spill Fear — Hurricane
Workers struggling to cap the leaking oil well are watching and worrying as the first Atlantic hurricane of what experts fear will be a very severe season may be brewing in the Gulf of Mexico.Pedophiles Find a Home on Wikipedia
Popular online encyclopedia has become home base for a loose worldwide network of pedophiles engaging in campaign to spin it in their favor
Petraeus Ready to Loosen War 'Rules'?
Source close to Gen. Petraeus says he wants to make it easier for U.S. troops to engage in combat with the enemy — but the general's spokesman says nothing's decided
'Sanctuary' Supporter Gets Key ICE Role
White House taps outspoken critic of immigration enforcement on the local level as new director for ICE's state and local coordination
Venus Is Hellish, But May Once Have Been Habitable
Venus, currently one of the most inhospitable places in the solar system, may once have had an ample supply of water – possibly even oceans – and been a potentially habitable place when it was young, a new study suggests. The finding comes from the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Venus Express satellite currently orbiting our neighboring planet. The probe is providing new evidence that Venus and Earth aren't as dissimilar as they seem. Earth and Venus are wildly different today. Earth is teeming with life at clement temperatures, while Venus is hellish, its surface hotter than the inside of a kitchen oven. But the two planets share some striking similarities. They are nearly identical in size and makeup, for example. "The basic composition of Venus and Earth is very similar," said Håkan Svedhem, ESA project scientist for Venus Express.Get ready for August election
OPINION poll suggests Julia Gillard will take Labor to an election.
Leadership challenge was poll-driven: Julia Irwin
Fowler MP Julia Irwin has expressed her "disappointment" with yesterday's leadership challenge, despite "respect and admiration" for new PM Julia Gillard. Ms Irwin said she didn't agree with the leadership challenge and the resignation of former prime minister Kevin Rudd because "the time was not right". "I felt we were putting a knife into the back of a Labor PM in his first term. "They [Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard] were elected as a team by the people. "My concern is that this challenge was poll-driven so does that mean that the same thing will happen to her when she slumps in the polls?"The children's book that undid Rudd
KEVIN Rudd was supposed to call double-dissolution election in January. Instead he wrote a book.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith willing to give way to Kevin Rudd
FOREIGN Minister Stephen Smith says he would be willing to accept a prime ministerial decision to let dumped leader Kevin Rudd take the foreign affairs portfolio. - neither could be worse than the other - ed.Hair care tycoon jailed for child abuse
ANTON Starling must serve ten years in prison for sexually assaulting his step-daughter.
Bungle sees fairy penguins burn to death
THIRTEEN birds trapped in pest plant burn-off after National Parks officers failed to call RSPCA.
Gibson files restraining order against ex
ACTOR reportedly unhappy about the access he has to their seven-month-old daughter Lucia.
Congo jungle gives up plane crash dead
BY the time the first body was retrieved from the jungle in Congo, the effort had become an international extravaganza.
Opinion poll upset for Labor in Victoria
THE Liberal-National Coalition has squeezed ahead of Victoria's Labor Government in a new poll. The latest Morgan telephone poll - done before Julia Gillard took over as Prime Minister - shows unhappy regional voters have pushed primary support for the State Government to its lowest level in eight years. But in an increasingly presidential-style campaign, Premier John Brumby's approval rating is starting to rebound after a rocky few months earlier in the year. Female voters in particular prefer Mr Brumby to Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu. However, voters are increasingly unhappy with service delivery under Labor, especially in transport and health, after its almost 11 years in government. And the important country voters who so famously swept the last Liberal premier, Jeff Kennett, from power in 1999 are turning away from Labor.
=== Journalists Corner ===
'The O'Reilly Factor'Will our latest war plan lead to victory in Afghanistan? Dana Perino scores our strategy! Plus, a White House curse? Glenn Beck on a mystery at the Oval Office!
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The Cost of Freedom: A Middle Class Tax Hike?
A middle class tax hike - could it become a reality? We expose what's really on the Dems' to-do list and what they aren't telling you. Plus, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie reveals his plan for tackling unions, and how it could mean cash for you.
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The Kagan Hearings
Fox News Channel will have special coverage of Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings. Watch our coverage!
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On Fox News Insider
Vote Now: Do You Think Al Gore Cheated?Source: Petraeus to Change Rules of Engagement
Stossel: More Guns, Less Crime?
=== Comments ===
President Obama on the DescentBY BILL O'REILLY
As we reported Wednesday night, this week is the low point for the Obama administration. And on Thursday a new Wall Street Journal poll confirms what we said.
For the first time in that poll, more Americans think President Obama is doing a bad job than a good job: 48 percent disapprove, 45 percent say he's doing OK. But the really bad news for the president is that 62 percent of Americans feel the country is heading in the wrong direction, and that is the highest number since before the presidential election of 2008.
"Talking Points" believes it is the chaos factor that is damaging the Obama administration. Once again, the economy, shaky; the oil spill, chaos; the Afghan war, not going well; and the border situation is so bad, the state of Arizona is now defying the federal government.
Add it all up and you are in the chaos zone.
No president can survive there. Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were all done in by the perception they could not control the country. That is where President Obama is right now, but he has a very powerful ally: the American media.
After the president fired Gen. McChrystal, NewsBusters.org put together this montage of press reaction:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sounds like a pretty brilliant decision, really.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is nothing less than a stunning development, Brian, and quite frankly, at a quick glance, almost brilliant.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Politically, in this town, it's going to be seen as a brilliant choice by the president.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: A very brilliant move to tap Gen. Petraeus.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he took swift and decisive action. I think that's how it's going to be read.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
So I guess firing McChrystal was a brilliant move. And by the way, we could have played that montage for another 30 seconds with different reporters echoing the same theme.
Like life, politics is not fair. President Obama did not cause the oil spill. He did not encourage Gen. McChrystal to make indiscreet comments. He inherited a very bad economy, but has not been able to turn it around.
For a guy like the president, who is ultra-confident, this must be a very frustrating time. His policies simply are not working, and if the war in Afghanistan and the economy get worse, he will go the way of Jimmy Carter.
Fair-minded Americans bear no malice towards Mr. Obama. Just as President Bush was treated unfairly at times, so has President Obama.
But the truth is America is now in the chaos zone, and next November is coming up fast.
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Remembering Korea: The Forgotten War
By Rabbi Brad Hirschfield
Sixty years ago today, North Korean soldiers crossed the 38th Parallel and began the Korean War – what has come to be called America’s Forgotten War. Oddly, by naming it the Forgotten War, it began to be remembered, and that raises the larger questions of why we forget or remember events in our lives and in our history.
Do we forget because it’s too painful to recall? Perhaps it’s because the forgotten events simply have no meaningful place in our lives. After all, nothing is simply remembered for its own sake. With nothing to attach to in our ongoing lives, nothing can be remembered.
On the other hand, we are always free to create pegs in our current lives upon which to hang memories that we hope to preserve. But that just begs the question of why we feel compelled to create those pegs.
Ultimately memory is not simply a fact or reality; it is something to be created and pursued. And in many ways, so is forgetting, which brings me back to Korea. Why is it that a conflict that dragged on (why, by the way, do conflicts always “drag on”?) and ultimately cost 2 million lives, including the lives of 54,000 U.S. military personnel, went largely ignored and mostly forgotten for so many years? And why now are we returning to try and recall it with everything from national memorials to TV shows and books about “America’s Forgotten War”?
Could it be that with fewer and fewer World War II veterans around, we need new faces to fill out the picture of our nation’s past? Is it that the squeakiest wheel really does get the grease? Could it be that poised between the heroic victors of WWII and the angry voices about Vietnam ─ the quiet soldiers who fought an ambiguous conflict with an ambiguous ending, at a time when ambiguity was discouraged even more harshly than today ─ neither they nor we knew how to remember what happened?
Not only is memory an action, it is something we construct. We make choices not only about whether to remember, but the “what” and “how” of that which we recall. In fact, until we address the issues of what and how, it’s almost impossible to decide whether to recall something. So if we could not figure out in which conceptual box to place the war and its veterans, it was probably impossible to remember them.
Perhaps then there is a valuable lesson in remembering the Forgotten War. Perhaps the lesson is one that extends far beyond that historical event and into our own lives. Perhaps it’s about deciding to recall the little things, the quiet things, simply because they matter to us.
We should remember Korea neither because it was a marvelous victory over oppression, nor because in remembering we redress the challenges of a war that deeply divided our nation. We should remember Korea because of the human beings who fought and died there, whose lives were forever changed there.
In learning to remember the Korean War, we teach ourselves that people matter most and that the events of their lives should be recalled because we care about the people who lived them. It may have taken more than half a century to figure that out, but if that is the enduring lesson of learning to remember Korea, we will have much of which to be proud.
Brad Hirschfield is the author of You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, and is the President of Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership
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RED DAWN
Tim Blair
Massive early support for the new PM:
Julia Gillard will take Labor to victory in an early election with a stunning return to fortune for the Federal Government.Labor types are talking up an August election:
That’s the prediction of the first exclusive opinion poll taken in the aftermath of Kevin Rudd’s dismissal, with the Gillard effect pushing Labor back into poll position almost overnight.
“There will be some settling in, a deal on the mining tax, and then I think we will be going [to an election],” one senior NSW MP said.To make insulation, probably. According to the Galaxy poll, Labor’s primary vote is up from 37 per cent to 41 per cent. The Coalition is down one point to 42 per cent, leaving it four per cent down overall after preferences. Another poll records an even greater Labor boost:
“And we would expect to go in August. We have started pulping our Kevin campaign posters.”
A Herald/Nielsen poll conducted after the political execution of Kevin Rudd shows the voters who abandoned Labor in recent months have swarmed back and Ms Gillard has a thumping 21-percentage-point lead over Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister …A third poll has Labor now in front by 54 per cent to 46 per cent in two-party-preferred terms. Yet some on the left will be feeling left out:
Labor [has] a two-party-preferred lead of 55 per cent to 45, an 8-point swing to the government in three weeks. If the swing were repeated uniformly on election day, Labor would pick up another 11 seats.
Support for the Greens, which had benefited from the disenchantment with the government, plunged from 15 per cent to 8.Expect Bob Brown to withdraw his demand for equal debating time with the main parties. Interestingly, voters have abandoned the Greens for Labor despite Gillard being less green than Kevin Rudd. They’re a shallow bunch. Now watch as these numbers again grind back towards 50-50 over coming weeks …
UPDATE. A Labor win is currently paying between $1.40 and $1.45. The Liberals, $2.72 to $3.25. A slight tightening since polls had Labor behind.
UPDATE II. Pravda‘s view:
Australia’s New Ptime Minister To Face Severe Unfeminine Problems(Via Dan F.)
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RATSTOCKED
Tim Blair
Use a certain phrase involving rats, lose your job. It’s a trend. Meanwhile, Reason reports: “Paul Krugman Now Laughingstock On Two Continents.” Instapundit replies: “Only two?” Indeed – there’s at least one more.
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O’Brien furious: how dare Abbott succeed?
Andrew Bolt
Has Kerry O’Brien ever done an interview so marred by his political allegiances? As far as I can tell, the only reason he had on Tony Abbott was to try to make him pay for forcing Labor in desperation to change leaders. Indeed, we heard O’Brien speak for just as long as his guest - and angrilly.
But I thought this time Abbott was stronger than he often is with O’Brien, more assertive and standing more on his dignity. Even so, I’d have gone in even more strongly and called out O’Brien much sooner and more explicitly. Here was his best exchange:
KERRY O’BRIEN: But you did say that. So you’re confirming that you did say those words: “Victory is within our grasp. We are within reach of a famous victory.”The interview was immediately followed by a John Clarke and Brian Dawe skit attacking the obvious person after such a bloody week of turmoil in the Government. That’s right - attacking Abbott.
TONY ABBOTT: There is no doubt we must have been within reach of a famous victory, otherwise the Labor Party would not have dumped their leader in a fit of panic about its prospects.
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Brumby’s rule threatened
Andrew Bolt
It will be tight in the Victorian election:
The latest Morgan telephone poll - done before Julia Gillard took over as Prime Minister - shows unhappy regional voters have pushed primary support for the State Government to its lowest level in eight years.(Thanks to reader CA.)
But in an increasingly presidential-style campaign, Premier John Brumby’s approval rating is starting to rebound after a rocky few months earlier in the year…
On a two-party preferred basis, the Coalition’s support is at 50.5 per cent; Labor’s is at 49.5 per cent.
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Rudd follows daughter’s script, and, worse, Hatcher follows Rudd’s
Andrew Bolt
Rudd follows his daughter’s script:
HIS lip quivered. His wife’s grip spurred him on.Peter Hartcher follows Rudd’s script, to the detriment of both. (I mean, what idiot would actually publicise the fact that he felt so insecure that he checked his MPs for a signs of a plot?)
“I am proud,” he says, going on to list the things of which he’s proud, including “health, tax and education”.
He thanks his family, and makes a lame joke. Journalists laugh. Finally, he says: “God bless.”
Those words could have been written about Kevin Rudd on Thursday. In fact, they were written many months ago, by one Jessica Rudd, daughter of the ousted prime minister.
Ms Rudd’s new novel, Campaign Ruby, is not due out until August, but the degree to which she predicted the events of the past few days is spooky…
Ms Rudd writes about an incumbent prime minister rolled by his deputy - a woman - who becomes the nation’s first female prime minister. As happened with her dad, the execution is a “swift and seamless move"…
Of his successor, the book says: “This is an historic day. She will be Australia’s first female prime minister . . . few people expected this day would come quite so quickly, if at all. Everyone is stunned.”
Peter Hartcher in The Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday:
WHEN Kevin Rudd talked confidently on Monday about the strength of Labor support for his leadership it was not based solely on bravado, he has been discreetly checking that his party is still behind him. The Herald has learnt from a number of MPs that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Alister Jordan has been talking privately to almost half the caucus. While some caucus members are edgy about their electoral prospects, Mr Jordan’s exercise evidently discovered no defectors from the Rudd camp.Mark Latham in The Australian Financial Review yesterday:
A DEFINING feature of Rudd’s prime ministership was his constant briefing of Hartcher on the behind-the-scenes processes behind big decisions, invariably to glorify his own contribution. As one caucus wag told me earlier this year, “Kevin doesn’t change his underpants these days without telling Hartcher about it.” It would have been obvious to his colleagues (Gillard in particular) that the Herald’s story came from the PM’s office, a stunning valedictory to Rudd’s misreading of his colleagues and his ineptitude as a caucus tactician.Peter Hartcher sticks by his man yesterday:
RUDD’s polling support had taken a brutal hit but two polls this week put his government in a winning position. Rudd was entirely electable, and no clear case was made against him by anyone in Labor. So why the change? The truth is that some mid-level operatives in the Right faction wanted Rudd to take a harder line on asylum-seekers, to dump the emissions trading scheme and to back off on the mining tax. These were the people who decided to launch the challenge against Rudd. And when Gillard took their gift, her remarks to the media appeared to deliver what the Right wanted: a harder line on asylum-seekers, a more protracted approach to climate change and backing off the mining tax.===
Being gentle is just another sign of our racism
Andrew Bolt
The problem isn’t their violence but our intolerence:
RUGBY league referees should take compulsory culture lessons to learn how to deal with Polynesian and Lebanese footy players.(Thanks to reader Sandi.)
Pacific islanders have been blamed by some refs for an increase in junior footy violence. But Sydney Samoan Council representative Richard David, a former Western Suburbs district player, said caucasian referees did not know how to handle other cultural groups…
Mr David said it was difficult for some islanders to control their emotions: “The Polynesian instinct is very different to a European’s. Our nature is not to speak and talk through our feelings, it’s about the physical emotion and sometimes that can manifest in different ways.”
===
Great allies in the war against jihadists
Andrew Bolt
Our partners in fighting Islamist terrorists aren’t against all jihadists:
Patrialis Akbar, Indonesia’s justice minister, is responsible for administering the government’s policy of “deradicalising” members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a group that has long been engaged in an armed conflict with the government.(Thanks to reader Geoffrey.)
But in an interview with Al Jazeera to discuss the re-educating programme, Patrialis Akbar said he would encourage and even fund the same fighters to carry out “bomb attacks in Israel instead”.
However, later in the discussion he toned down his words and said that he does not encourage violence.
===
Rudd killed by the policies pushed on him by his assassins
Andrew Bolt
Patricia Karvelas has had the best account so far of the plotting that brought down Kevin Rudd. What she also reveals is that the new leadership duo of Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan are the very people who pushed on him the policies that finally destroyed him in the polls:
He gave a sombre speech (to Caucus in conceding), which was both “statesmanlike” but also dug the knife into Gillard and Swan - essentially blaming them for the RSPT and the abandonment of an ETS.So if you are angry about the dumping of the emissions trading system or the imposition of a “super profits” tax, it isn’t Rudd you should want punished, but the two people who have deposed him.
UPDATE
But Labor’s change of face is rewarded, according to an admittedly small poll of just 1000:
A Herald/Nielsen poll conducted after the political execution of Kevin Rudd shows the voters who abandoned Labor in recent months have swarmed back and Ms Gillard has a thumping 21-percentage-point lead over Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister.Galaxy also has Labor ahead, but by not quite as much:
In findings that would tempt Ms Gillard to call an election sooner rather than later, Labor’s primary vote rose 14 points to 47 per cent since the last poll three weeks ago. Support for the Coalition slipped by 1 point to 42 per cent.
This gave Labor a two-party-preferred lead of 55 per cent to 45, an 8-point swing to the government in three weeks.
The exclusive Galaxy opinion survey commissioned by The Daily Telegraph revealed Labor’s primary vote surged from 37 per cent to 41 per cent, lifting it back into a winnable position as voters sent a loud and clear message that Mr Rudd had been the problem…If these quick polls are mirrored in a couple of big ones, and the miners can be squared away, Gillard will hare off to Yarralumla.
More people said they would rather have a beer with Ms Gillard than Mr Abbott, and 52 per cent said he was not someone they liked much. Just 24 per cent thought the same about Ms Gillard.
However, voters recorded strong disapproval at the brutality of the coup, with only 45 per cent saying it had been a good decision…
The two-party preferred vote had Labor at 52 per cent and the Coalition at 48 per cent. In the 2007 election, Labor won with 52.7 per cent as the Coalition gained 47.3 per cent.
UPDATE 2
This is the picture of the moment Rudd sealed his doom, according to Dennis Shanahan. Not nine months ago, Rudd seemed impregnable:On the weekend of September 30-October 1 Mr Rudd was preferred prime minister over Malcolm Turnbull by 67 per cent to 18 per cent, Labor’s primary vote was 46 per cent to the Coalition’s 35 per cent, the two-party result was Labor 58 per cent to 42 per cent and satisfaction with Mr Rudd was 67 per cent to 24 per cent dissatisfaction.He was urged to run to an early election after taking a quick Christmas break:
The second part of the plan was to start campaigning in late January and then, before parliament was due to resume sitting on February 2, call a double-dissolution election for March based on the Senate’s rejection of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in the first week of December. All Mr Rudd needed to do was return from holidays and pull the trigger.Instead:
Labor MPs were stunned when, instead, Mr Rudd’s first public duty in mid-January was to launch a children’s book he’d co-authored with Play School actor Rhys Muldoon… Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle was to encourage literacy, raise funds for charity and encourage care for pets…True, Rudd could well have won an election then, although I think it would have been much closer than many suggest, given how scepticism was suddenly rising about a great green tax that had just been snubbed by the rest of the world. But then there were so many miscalulations that brough Rudd undone over the months to come. What the book really shows is how greedy Rudd was for attention, and how desperate to be doing a million trivial things instead the few critical ones well. And now:
The opportunity for the Rudd Government to go the polls - while unambiguously in front and with Mr Rudd as Prime Minister - was lost. Since then, Rudd’s support within the federal parliamentary Labor Party and with public plunged.
This episode, according to senior Labor figures, is the genesis of this week’s unprecedented and spectacular removal of Mr Rudd as Labor leader
UPDATE 3What’s this guarantee now worth in the Labor Party?
Queensland’s deputy premier says there’s no chance of his boss Anna Bligh being rolled, and that he’d sooner take a blow for her than stab her in the back.(Thanks to readers CA and Mum of 5.)
The premier has insisted she will not suffer the same fate as former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who stood aside for his deputy Julia Gillard on Thursday after losing the support of his party.
UPDATE 4
Reader Scott doesn’t trust that Nielsen poll claiming a 55-45 lead for Gillard’s Government:
The headline 2PP figures of ALP 55 - 45 Coalition are really misleading.Victoria was the state where Rudd was doing well, too. It will do Gillard little good to be popular in Victoria if she can’t win votes in NSW and Queensland in particular.
If you take a look at the Nielsen tables it’s almost all exclusively from Victoria where all of a sudden the ALP is getting 67% 2pp in this poll.The coalition is leading in WA, SA/NT, QLD and the result is close in NSW.
I would consider this to be a rogue poll due to the ‘The PM is a Victorian!’ novelty factor.
UPDATE 5
Different Prime Minister, but same policy - and the same person to blame for it:
THE federal government’s trouble-plagued schools stimulus program has been dealt another embarrassing blow, with the revelation that not one of the science and language centres promised for 70 Victorian state schools will be delivered on time…(Thanks to reader CA.)
And despite the primary purpose of the program being to stimulate the economy, construction has not started at almost a third of the Victorian secondary schools eligible for a science or language centre.
Hannity: Michelle Malkin On 6-Month Drilling Moratorium Ruling - 06/23/10
Obama lies to protect his ideology.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Headlines Friday 25th June 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Re imagined ancient Mars with water
=== Bible Quote ===
“But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.”- 2 Thessalonians 3:3=== Headlines ===
Gillard and Mr Abbott's days of friendly sparring on morning television are over'I am woman and I am proud'
Gillard has no regrets over choices she has made - that includes not having children. - not to be believed, no matter how stridently she claims it. She has been hurt and her pain is clear to any who care and some who don't. - ed.
Gillard's rise makes global headlines
Obama congratulates Gillard on her dramatic ascent to the top job in disposing of Rudd.
Kevin Rudd is a far cry from leaving
DUMPED Prime Minister to stay in Parliament, and there's talk Gillard will offer him a Cabinet job. - no change in policy either. Here is hoping the electorate aren't fooled - ed.
Julia Gillard should watch her back, says Mark Latham
FORMER Labor leader Mark Latham is predicting Prime Minister Julia Gillard will eventually be "the next one for the knife" because key ALP figures hate her. "(Deputy Prime Minister) Wayne Swan is no fan of hers," Mr Latham told Sky News today, a day after Ms Gillard toppled Kevin Rudd. "Gillard has, for reasons I never quite understood, enormous animosity from people like (Anthony) Albanese and (Lindsay) Tanner and (Jenny) Macklin." "I don't know what they did down there in the Victorian left in the 80s and 90s but they hate each other." Mr Latham, who lost the leadership in 2005 following Labor's defeat at the 2004 election, said when Ms Gillard's honeymoon in the polls ends "she'll be the next one for the knife ... she needs to watch her back". The dumping of Mr Rudd showed there was no party loyalty to leaders, and leadership was a marketing exercise instead.
Teen filmed speedo before fatal crash
AN unlicensed teen driving his father's car has been jailed for killing a 70-year-old grandmother.
Stop it boy, or you'll see my breasts again
WOMAN who flashed a young neighbour says she'll continue until he starts behaving himself.
Accused surgeon faces up to his vices
MAN accused of killing an escort tells court that he is "no longer in denial" about addictions.
Horror 24 hours on our roads
SIX people died on NSW roads in less than 24 hours. Four of them were in one car in a horror crash near the town of Glen Innes.
Prisoner gets 30 years for eating cellmate
A FRENCH prisoner dubbed Hannibal Lecter has been sentenced for killing his cellmate and devouring his lung.
Man Nabbed After Possible Terror Stash Found in Car Near G-20
Police make an arrest after searching a car and finding a chain saw, a baseball bat and containers of gasoline near the G-20 site in Toronto, but authorities say there's no evidence it's summit related.
Senate GOP Kills Jobless Aid Measure
Senate fails to reach agreement to extend weekly jobless benefits over Republican's fears the measure would add $30 billion to the deficit
Source: Amnesty Talks Behind the Scenes
White House holding behind-the-scenes talks to determine whether Homeland Security can unilaterally grant legal status on a mass basis to illegals, former Bush official says
Condoms for First-Graders?
School board in Massachusetts unanimously votes to offer free condoms to all students in the district without parental consent, sparking national outrage
=== Journalists Corner ===
Gov. Christie Exclusive - Part 2Chris Christie has a message for D.C. : Make our tax system more competitive and lower regulation. But, will his strategy work across the country?
===
'The O'Reilly Factor'
Hey BP -- get your dollars out! Should the gas giant compensate a strip club suffering from the oil spill? The Factor uncovers the story!
===
'Hannity'
Strategy for South Carolina! Candidate Tim Scott reveals his plan to dismantle Obamacare and take back D.C.!
===
On Fox News Insider
Is Petraeus Being Set Up for Failure?Bin Laden Hunter Speaks Out
Bloomberg & Murdoch on Immigration Reform
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi turned 65 last Saturday, June 19th. Thank you for being a part of our global Arrest Yourself campaign to celebrate the courage and determination of our Burmese hero. Thanks to your dedication and efforts for Burma, this year we had over 340 people from 29 countries and 44 American states who signed up for Arrest Yourself events, along with hundreds of rallies and birthday events all over the world. These events are vital to the awareness and fundraising aspects of what we do here at the U.S. Campaign for Burma. We rely on supporters like you to spread the message about Burma, educate and inspire many others, and fundraise to help us continue working for the people of Burma.
If you already hosted an Arrest Yourself event, please send us videos and pictures along with any signed petitions, sign-up sheets, and donations you collected at your event to our office by email or by mail. Our mailing address is 1444 N St NW, Suite A2, Washington, DC 20005.If you signed up to host an Arrest Yourself event, but have not had the chance to do so, no worries. You can still host your event even after June 19th. In fact, many people will be hosting post-birthday Arrest Yourself events.
If you are unable to host an Arrest Yourself event, please consider making a donation to the U.S. Campaign for Burma. Your contributions fuel our advocacy campaigns so that we can continue our fight for human rights and justice in Burma.
Be sure to check out the birthday events that took place around the world and statements from world leaders and NGOs honoring the detained Nobel Peace Prize Winner on her 65th birthday.
Thank you once again for your wonderful efforts for our hero, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma.
Nadi
=== Comments ===
Mutiny for the bounty of powerPiers Akerman
DON’T be dazzled by the fireworks erupting from Sussex St. - let me add that the fact the ALP dumped the leader but kept the suit of policies means that Rudd wasn't dumped for his policies, but his unpopularity. This sends the wrong message to school children everywhere. Except for one message their mothers warned them of, beware the godless backstabbing women of the world.
Gillard at nearly fifty is childless and single and that has to count for much as she looks back on the choices in her life and wonders. She has stood by her childhood fancy of communist sympathizer and socialist policy. She has eschewed virtue and espoused sacrifice to bureaucracy, proclaiming the dead hand over the living word. In terms of serving days, unless she wins the election (unlikely, but also disturbingly possible) she will be among the shortest terms PM's in history too.
Gillard never met the challenge given to her on the IR issue involving the whistleblower for Hamidur Rahman. She asked for the challenge on Sunrise and never answered it. She proclaimed a policy standard she never achieved. Her failure in office is not the same as Rudd's, who promised much and delivered an impressive list of failures. Gillard's failures have been hung on the doors of others. - ed.
===
McChrystal vs. Obama
BY BILL O'REILLY
It did not end well for Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a war hero and patriot. A foolish mistake, allowing a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine into his inner circle, got him fired by his Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama.
THE QUESTION: Was the president right to fire the man?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As difficult as it is to lose Gen. McChrystal, I believe that it is the right decision for our national security. The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
In other words, the president would look like a wimp if he kept the general on, and at this point in his presidency, Barack Obama cannot afford to look weak.
Also, he has Gen. David Petraeus in the bullpen as McChrystal's replacement, which might be an upgrade.
As you may know, things have not been going well on the battlefield, primarily because most Afghans won't fight and our guys can't fight all-out because of the civilian causality issue.
President Obama well understands he cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan. It is his war. He is fighting it his way. If the Taliban prevails, Mr. Obama will take a huge hit, and he has only one year by his own yardstick to declare victory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I have a responsibility to do what is -- whatever is necessary to succeed in Afghanistan and in our broader effort to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda. I believe that this mission demands unity of effort across our alliance and across my national security team.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
At the heart of the controversy is Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings portraying McChrystal and his staff as disdainful of the Obama administration. The president is not a man who embraces criticism, thus the general's fate was sealed.
And McChrystal knows most of the fault lies with him. Hastings is a far-left guy and doesn't hide it. He openly says his job is to f-word those in power. He has called Rudy Giuliani a maniac and John McCain "Captain Ahab." Why would the general allow a guy like that access to him and his staff? Amazing.
But as I said Tuesday night, I did the same thing a few years ago and I got hammered by Rolling Stone as well. The plan here was to reach an audience that knew little about Fox News. It was dumb; I was dumb. These things happen.
The whole McChrystal deal is, of course, bad for the country and bad for the military. But maybe Gen. Petraeus can save the day, as he did in Iraq.
However, the truth is there is chaos right now in America, and that is never a good thing.
===
MANBEARGIGGLES
Tim Blair
Jim Treacher and Iowahawk are having fun:
• Other acts Al Gore requested from the masseuse: an “around-the-earth”Among many, many other lines: “Do u take carbon tax credits as cash?”
• “Dirty Gaia”
• “Copenhagen Steamer”
• “Put this Parental Advisory sticker around it. There you go, wrap it around and around.”
• “Leave all the lights on. Every single one, baby. It’ll cost double? Fine.”
===
SMART AS A MAN
Tim Blair
The SMH’s Peter Hartcher assesses Australia’s new Prime Minister:
She’s a first-class political talent, as smart as any man …Nice of him. Mark Latham – a former supporter of Gillard – sees problems ahead:
“Gillard has, for reasons I never quite understood, enormous animosity from people like (Anthony) Albanese and (Lindsay) Tanner and (Jenny) Macklin.Well, at least she won’t have to worry about Tanner any more. Certain Queenslanders may be on the way out, too. Speaking of which, Shaun Carney retraces Kevin Rudd’s collapse:
“I don’t know what they did down there in the Victorian left in the 80s and 90s but they hate each other.”
The turning point came six months ago, when Tony Abbott was elected Liberal leader as part of a parliamentary and grassroots revolt over the party’s climate change policy, and the Copenhagen talks failed.Conventional wisdom prior to Abbott’s appointment held that opposition to an emissions trading scheme was a vote-loser. Instead, it’s taken down a warmie. I’m not certain that either party (nor the media) has correctly processed this yet. More from Carney:
Under Abbott, with his strategy of blanket opposition, the political contest grew more complex and much more intense. Rudd needed to show agility, to sharpen up his messages to the public and to deal with Abbott’s challenge on the fundamentals of climate change head-on.
The chaos in Rudd’s office, now utterly spooked by the Liberals’ unity under Abbott, meant that it could not generate initiatives and could not follow through in responding to the government’s political problems. Crucially, Rudd’s decision not to look to middle-aged and older, practiced political hands for advice meant that he had deliberately chosen not to surround himself with any equals in his office. The lack of life experience within his office eventually exacted a terrible price on him.He should have stuck with older, wiser heads. Like Joe Hildebrand.
UPDATE. Rebecca Roberts:
I hope the first thing Gillard does is appoint a new Education Minister, because the one we’ve got hasn’t done a very good job. Oh, wait ...UPDATE II. Good start:
Environment groups are angry at a deal by a coal company to export up to 20 million tonnes of brown coal a year from Victoria and say it’s not a good look for new prime minister Julia Gillard.Quite the contrary.
Federal Resources Minister Simon Crean is expected to throw the federal government’s support behind the deal in Melbourne on Friday.
“This is a disastrous first action for the new Gillard government,” Environment Victoria chief executive Kelly O’Shanassy said.
===
SCREEN TO STAGE
Tim Blair
YouTube star Natalie Tran displays impressive stand-up skills:
Millionaire by the time she’s thirty.
===
So how will Gillard go? Probably very quickly (polls say so.)
Andrew Bolt
Lenore Taylor:Tony Abbott put a brave face on Labor’s last-ditch leadership change but privately the Coalition was desperately disappointed that it would not face an election against Kevin Rudd.Jack the Insider:
And it was utterly dismayed the mining industry had – as one source put it – ‘’succumbed to [Gillard’s] guile” by agreeing to her offer of a negotiating truce in the mining super profits tax war and to take the industry advertisements attacking the government off the air.
The Coalition has gone out on a limb in support of the mining industry and the prospect of a deal between the miners and the government has left it edgy.
...imagine the headache Tony Abbott woke up with this morning. Liberal Party polling tells him that he is starting this contest against Gillard from a long way behind. Kevin Rudd may have had his nose in front but the polling tells Abbott that Gillard would win the next election by the length of the straight.Peter Brent:
This was a blunder. For the first time, the Coalition must be slightly favoured to form government later this year…The bookies:
Labor has now thrown away a large chunk of the benefit of incumbency, all but admitted the opposition was right all along about everything, and is pleading for a fresh start.
A wave of large wagers for Julia Gillard’s Labor immediately following today’s leadership spill now sees Labor back to being $1.50 favourites for the next Federal Election with leading online bookmaker sportsbet.com.au.A huge response to the Herald Sun on-line poll (caution - on-line polls are unreliable):
Who will you vote for in the federal election?John Durie warns that Gillard has set a trap for herself:
* Julia Gillard 47.06% (13674 votes)
* Tony Abbott 52.94% (15385 votes)
Total votes: 29059
In an otherwise superb opening performance yesterday, Gillard made the same mistake as Rudd by promising to bring the budget back to a surplus in 2013.A real compromise on the mining tax is very, very difficult while Gillard sticks to that promise, which I think she is bound to do to counter the warnings that she’s from the big-spending Left. But:
Later yesterday, mining industry tax advisers told The Australian it would be possible to conclude a deal that preserved the $3bn in RSPT revenue that the government was counting on to achieve its return to surplus.Dennis Shanahan:
JULIA Gillard can expect a honeymoon, a materialisation of the political goodwill coming through the polls. This should lift Labor’s primary vote and provide an even tougher fight for Tony Abbott.UPDATE
But the manner of Kevin Rudd’s passing and her own role in some of the momentous decisions of the Rudd government mean the new Prime Minister faces some tough political challenges of her own.
It’s all very well to say the government lost its way - or went off the track - but it’s difficult to sustain the argument that it was all Rudd’s fault if Gillard was one of the drivers in the engine room.
As well, Rudd’s announcement of the challenge to his leadership on Wednesday night contained a direct appeal to the Australian public as the “elected prime minister” and a swipe at the ALP’s factional warlords he had battled for so long.
Reader Eccles finds the media on-line polls - admittedly a very unreliable measure - are running strongly against Gillard:
SMH - Are you more likely to vote Labor with Julia Gillard as leader? 43% Yes - 57% NoAnd on Channel 7, more bad news for Gillard, says reader WKH:
News.com.au - More than 46,000 people had their say in the News Ltd online poll.The state-by-state results were:•NSW - Julia Gillard 33.46 per cent supportI notice that the two states with female premiers have least support, with next WA…
•Victoria - Gillard 43.88 per cent support
•Queensland - Gillard 32.73 per cent support
•South Australia - Gillard 48.02 per cent support
•Western Australia - Gillard 35.36 per cent support
Brisbane Times - Who gets your vote? Gillard 54% Abbott 46%
Canberra Times - Gillard 56.5, Abbott 43.5
National Times - Abbott 57%, Gillard 43%
The Australian - Abbort 64%, Gillard 36%
The Courier Mail - Will Julia Gillard make a good prime minister? No 72%, Yes 28%
It appears the Julia has a LOT of work to do...
Who will you vote for?Channel 9 has a huge turnout, with an even worse result:
Julia Gillard 44% 21147 votes
Tony Abbott 56% 26948 votes
Vote: Will you vote for Julia Gillard in this year’s election?UPDATE 3
Yes 75775
No 153893
And some of Labor’s most vulnerable MPs in Queensland are feeling sick as a Victorian replaces a Queenslander as PM:
A QUEENSLAND Labor MP is reconsidering his future and another has declared the party should have stuck with Kevin Rudd in the fallout from the dramatic leadership overthrow.UPDATE 4
Chris Trevor, the first-term member for the ultra-marginal seat of Flynn, would not comment on his future yesterday.
However Labor Party sources confirmed he was contemplating quitting federal Parliament.
Shellshocked Queensland ALP politicians, many of whom were first elected in 2007 off the back of the Kevin 07 juggernaut, yesterday met to take stock after most could only watch from the sidelines as the cold-blooded coup unfolded.
Jon Sullivan, who holds Longman, the most marginal Labor-held seat in Queensland, told The Courier-Mail he remained loyal to Mr Rudd.
Is the Canberra media once more out of tune with the voters they report to?
Paul Toohey (naively) today’s Daily Telegraph:
It was extraordinary to hear the Australian media applaud both Rudd and Gillard after their respective speeches. The Australian media does not do that. It’s seen as too partisan, too familiar.UPDATE 5
Tom Switzer is sceptical:
As Newspoll, AC Nielsen and reportedly both Liberal and Labor private polling indicate, the key voting constituencies that help turn federal elections are not the so-called doctors’ wives from metropolitan Melbourne and Sydney who care passionately about boat arrivals and man-made global warming. The key voters are sections of the Australian working and lower-middle classes, most notably from the outer suburbs of Sydney and Brisbane and especially the sun-belt seats of Queensland.UPDATE 6
It was these people who formed John Howard’s core support in his election wins, save the GST poll in 1998. It was these people to whom Kevin Rudd appealed in 2007…
Can Gillard win back this crowd? I doubt it, primarily because she and her party are wedged on several key issues that affect the battlers. Take climate change: Gillard insists that a re-elected Labor government would put a price on carbon, which is tantamount to raising prices all along the energy chain. If so, she should be forced to explain how the complicated cap-and-tax scheme affects living standards of lower-middle and working class groups. Not an easy task when nations such as China and India keep chugging along the smoky path to prosperity.
Take refugees. Polls indicate that a broad cross-section of the community supports tough border protection policies. Since the Howard policies were softened 18 months ago, the unlawful arrivals have been accelerating and public confidence in the immigration system has been faltering.
How Gillard reassures battlers that she is tough on boat arrivals while she woos her left-wing base on the side is a difficult challenge.
All the negative polls I’ve mentioned are unreliable phone-in or on-line ones. Channel 9 tonight says it’s commissioned a poll which shows support for Labor back up to 54 per cent, after preferences. No news yet how the preferences were distributed, but Labor’s primary vote is much healthier.
(Thanks to reader Watty.)
===
The challenge explained
Andrew Bolt
Double Take spotted Gillard’s challenge coming months ago.
(Thanks to reader Paul.)
===
Gore a “crazed sex poodle”
Andrew Bolt
It’s a very local warming somewhere around his equator that’s got Profit of Doom Al Gore truly steamed. And, once again, man’s emissions play a crucial role:In a bizarre statement to police, the Oregon woman who claims that Al Gore fondled and groped her during a massage session described the former Vice President as a giggling “crazed sex poodle” who gave a “come hither” look before pouncing on her in a Portland hotel suite.Note: Gore must be presumed innocent. Give the planet (saver) the benefit of the doubt.
In a taped January 2009 interview with cops, the 54-year-old woman, a licensed masseuse whose name has been redacted from police records, read from a lengthy prepared statement that detailed her alleged October 2006 encounter with Gore at the Hotel Lucia.
Excerpts from the Portland Police Bureau transcript of the 2009 interview can be found on the following pages.
In December 2006, a lawyer for the woman told police about the purported encounter, but after the masseuse cancelled three interview appointments, the case was closed due to her refusal to “cooperate with the investigation or even report a crime.” It is unclear why, two years later, she approached Portland police and sought to memorialize her allegations against Gore, who she portrayed as a tipsy, handsy predator who forced her to drink Grand Marnier, pinned her to a bed, and forcibly French kissed her.
The woman’s statement--which could be mistaken for R-rated Vice Presidential fan fiction--describes Gore as a man with a “violent temper as well as extremely dictatorial commanding attitude besides his Mr. Smiley Global Warming concern persona.” After fleeing Gore’s suite, the woman returned home to discover, a la Lewinsky, “stains on the front of my black slacks.” Suspecting that the stains were Gore bodily fluids, the woman made sure not to clean them.
===
Nest of vipers
Andrew Bolt
Latham on who-hates-who now:
FORMER Labor leader Mark Latham is predicting Prime Minister Julia Gillard will eventually be “the next one for the knife” because key ALP figures hate her.===
“(Deputy Prime Minister) Wayne Swan is no fan of hers,” Mr Latham told Sky News today, a day after Ms Gillard toppled Kevin Rudd.
“Gillard has, for reasons I never quite understood, enormous animosity from people like (Anthony) Albanese and (Lindsay) Tanner and (Jenny) Macklin.”
“I don’t know what they did down there in the Victorian left in the 80s and 90s but they hate each other..
Ms Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister, could struggle to win votes from women in key suburban marginal seats, Mr Latham said.
“Gillard ain’t no soccer mum, so there might be a failure to connect there.”
The Greens have ways to convince you to go solar
Andrew Bolt
When reason is not on your side, try threats:
Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.(Thanks to reader Charles.)
Says Calzada:Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside … they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.
===
No wonder Kevin cried
Andrew Bolt
NO wonder Kevin Rudd cried when he was told he was finished as prime minister.
Never has a leader been shown so little mercy by his own.
And, worse, he was brought undone by a great tearing flaw in his character that, once exposed, robbed him of all his power and most of his dignity.
Just seven months ago, Rudd was still one of the most popular prime ministers we’d had.
What’s more, the Opposition was tearing itself to pieces over global warming, and had Rudd then called a double-dissolution election he most likely would have won.
He blinked - and now he’s the first prime minister to be sacked before he could run for re-election.
How did this happen so fast? The key is Rudd’s character.
Blame the early loss of his father, or just his wiring, but Rudd has had a manic need to assert himself, as if to make up for a deep insecurity.
He’d do whatever was needed to win authority over others, or just praise. He’d be whatever you wanted him to be.
And so he’d tell me one pleasing thing in private, but another populist thing in public. He’d hold press conferences outside his church to impress conservatives, but visit a strip club to impress an editor. He’d talk primly to voters, but abuse a stewardess.
To win the election, he promised to be a Howard-lite, crying: “This sort of reckless spending must stop.” To win applause, he embarked on the greatest spending spree we’ve seen.
And he had to be The Man. As chief of staff to the Queensland premier, or as prime minister visiting an office, he’d show his place in the pecking order by putting his boots on the desk or table.
None of this need matter. But Rudd gave in to the same deep insecurities in trying to run a team of ministers.
He had to decide everything, so delays were endless. Most ministers other than Treasurer Wayne Swan, Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard were cut out of the loop.
Rudd chose as his most intimate advisers, mostly people barely 30, eminently bully-able, and he ordered his MPs to visit homeless shelters and report back, as if they were children doing homework.
But when he tried his hectoring on the premiers over his health “reforms”, he bought a brawl. And when he repeated the dose on our biggest mining chiefs, he bought a war he could not win.
Those insecurities killed him in the end.
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Help Doucet find the humanity of the hanged eight-year-old
Andrew Bolt
We were told by the BBC to focus more on the humanity of the Taliban:
A BBC presenter has attacked coverage of Afghanistan’s ongoing war, claiming TV reporters are not covering the ‘humanity of the Taliban’.So let’s try to spot the humanity here:
Lyse Doucet, a presenter and correspondent on BBC World News, was speaking at a discussion of TV reporting of the war in the country…
Asked what was missing in British coverage, she added: ‘It may sound odd but the humanity of the Taliban, because the Taliban are a wide, very diverse group of people.”
THE Taliban’s execution of an eight-year-old accused of ‘’collaborating’’ with foreign forces has proved too much even for Afghans hardened by three decades of fighting.
‘’Islam does not permit anyone to sentence a minor to execution,’’ said Mawlawi Mehr Del, deputy head of the Muslim clerical council in Helmand. ‘’It is against Islam, against sharia. God may be extremely upset with them. Those who do something like this are neither jihadis nor Taliban, they are enemies of human life.’’
Islamic law prohibits the execution of anyone under 18. The Taliban’s own code of conduct, drawn up by the movement two years ago, stipulates that no commander may order the execution of minors.
But a senior Taliban member, Mullah Abdul Bari, suggested that code of conduct did not apply in Helmand: ‘’The code has been changed for Helmand because the number of infidels there has increased, and the Taliban don’t have the time to hold trials.’’ ...
Witnesses said the execution of the child, named Delawar, took place in a garden near his home in the village of Heratian in the Sangin district of Helmand.
About a dozen men took part in the hanging death of the child, whom they accused of spying for British forces. Sangin resident Taza Gol, 60, said the boy screamed for his parents as the militants put a rope around his neck.
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How hard is Gillard?
Andrew Bolt
The test Julia Gillard set in Opposition:
Another boat on the way. Another policy failure.The problem:
Since the Rudd Government’s cynical election fix of suspending processing of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka was announced just eleven weeks ago, more than 1,500 people on 34 boats have arrived.Gillard now sets herself the high bar:
While identifying the issue as a problem for Labor, Ms Gillard did not state a new position as sources confirmed she would take time to consult closely with cabinet over the best way to maintain a tough-but-fair border security policy that also satisfied public concern and the nation’s international humanitarian responsibilities.Janet Albrechtsen notes:
“I am full of understanding of the perspective of the Australian people - they want strong management of our borders and I will provide it,” she said.
While she talks now about strong border control, as opposition immigration spokeswoman in 2004 Gillard road-tested a soft-touch immigration policy that was rejected by the hard heads in Labor.
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Tell us frankly, Julia: will you bring in an ETS after the election?
Andrew Bolt
There are two things that need to be cleared up about Julia Gillard’s sneaky explanation of her policy on the emissions trading scheme - a great tax on emissions that will hurt our economy without stopping global warming.
Here’s what Gillard said yesterday:
I believe climate change is real. I believe that it is caused by human activity. I believe that we have got to therefore change the way we do things and that this nation will in the future need a price on carbon.First question: why wait until after the election just to argue for an emissions trading scheme?
I also believe that if we are to have a price on carbon and do all the things necessary for our economy and our society to adjust we need a deep and lasting community consensus about that. We don’t have it now.
That’s why I said today if elected as Prime Minister at the forthcoming election then I will take the time to reprosecute the case with the Australian community to develop that deep and lasting consensus.
Gillard has said before that we cannot wait to introduce an ETS:Second question: Is Gillard actually saying she’ll introduce an ETS after the election, but without first arguing for it?Delay is denial. This country can’t afford it.Yet now she’s not just delaying the ETS, but will even delay having an argument to change people’s minds.
Why? Isn’t delay denial? And is this just a tricky way to stop talking about an ETS that’s on the nose?
Is Gillard actually treating the election as a referendum for an ETS? A referendum without Labor actually making clear it will introduce an ETS if it wins?
This seems profoundly sneaky, if true.
Shouldn’t Gillard then promise voters not to introduce an ETS before a second election, when it will be explicitly part of Labor’s election platform and p;art of the election debate?
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Gillard walks clear of the wreckage
Andrew Bolt
JULIA Gillard, our new Prime Minister, shouldn’t be able to get away with this, of course.
Who as deputy to Kevin Rudd - the leader she’s just knifed - said “yes” to his every dud policy?
Who said “yes” to spending billions too much to “save” us from the recession that never came?
Who ticked off on such debacles as the free insulation scheme?
Who then persuaded Rudd to drop his planned emissions trading scheme to “stop” global warming, leaving him looking like an unprincipled humbug?
Who personally supervised the botched distribution of “free” computers in schools, blowing budgets and deadlines?
And who personally led the Building the Education Revolution, the most rorted government program in our history, with perhaps $5 billion lost?
It was Gillard each time. Yes, Gillard, who yesterday conceded she bore her “fair share” of blame for the Government’s failures.
Yet there she was, claiming she’d knocked off Rudd to ensure the Government of which she’d been such a critical part got “back on track”.
Lady Macbeth washes her hands.
Still, her superbly executed assumption of power may just work.
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Can Gillard beat Rudd’s $250 million a day?
Andrew Bolt
Reader Arthur McArthur rates Rudd that fastest spender in the West:
Rudd took a $20 billion surplus and turned it into a $57 billion deficit: a $77 Billion turnaround.Reader Michael checks the record of women sent in mid-term to clean up the mess made by male Premiers and finds the omens not good for Gillard:
Rudd took the $60 billion ‘Futures Fund’ and turned it into a $100 billion debt: a $160 Billion turnaround.
That’s a net ‘spend’ of $237 Billion in just 944 days, at a rate of $250 million a day ($1.75 Billion a week).
Joan Kirner - 1990 moved from deputy to Victorian premier mid-term. 1992 lost election to KennettUPDATE
Carmen Lawrence – 1990 became WA premier mid-term. Early 1993 lost election to Richard Court (who had replaced Barry McKinnon a year prior)
Anna Bligh – 2007 became Queensland premier mid-term. Won the 2009 election only just. Opinion polls have her in trouble and the only reason she won 2009 was the LNP had so much disunity. The LNP could have won with just 4000 more votes if they were distributed well in the right marginal seats. A travesty.
Kristina Kenneally – 2009 became NSW premier. Yet to see what will happen there, but it doesn’t look good.
Reader Bill says Arthur’s figures are wrong:
Future Fund assets at 31 March 2010 - $67.62 billion. It hasn’t been spent. The other similar funds have total assets of $20.87 billion.UPDATE 2
Senator Barnaby Joyce settles the issue:
When this Government came to power Australia’s gross debt was $59 billion. It is now $147 billion. This Government has spent $88 billion in 935 days. This is a new record for Australian Prime Ministers.
“This Government has been an unmitigated disaster for our country, and even the Labor party now agrees. They have been racking up debt on the national credit card at $95 million a day.
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