Headlines Sunday 17th May 2009

Man shot in Kings Cross
A man is recovering in hospital following a shooting in inner-Sydney this morning.

Big earners ripping off taxpayers?
High income earners have been ripping off taxpayers through a scheme that counts shares as income, Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner says.

Fraud syndicates hit Sydneysiders
Police believe a multi-million dollar identity theft syndicate operating in Sydney is now targeting superannuation accounts.

Grisly remains found in swampland
Police are investigating the discovery of a body believed to be that of a woman in Geelong.

Teachers are turning their backs
Figures showing a high resignation rate for young teachers entering the profession has sparked concern about a teacher shortage in New South Wales.
=== Observations ===
"The Civilest of Wars"

It's a special LIVE Audience Show!

How states are fighting the Fed and taking back their rights! And how YOU can help make it happen!
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What Do You Think?
Here is what the world knows:

The United States did waterboarding (and other enhanced interrogation techniques...also known as torture.) This is not a secret.

Whether you think it the right or wrong thing to do, or whether you think it produced valuable intelligence or not — the world knows we did it. It is just not a secret.

What we don't know for certain is who knew and when, who ok'd, when waterboarding (and other techniques) were used [...]
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How Do You Feel About This?
Apparently The Today Show (Matt Lauer), Larry King and Oprah all agreed when interviewing Elizabeth Edwards not to mention the name of the woman with whom former Senator John Edwards had an affair. They discussed her but did not use her name. Answer the poll below (and as an aside, and not that the people who interviewed her care what I think, I don't have a problem with the networks making the deal with Elizabeth Edwards about the name. [...]
=== Comments ===
Covering up Rudd’s indecency
Piers Akerman
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd rushed to assure NSW voters that he belonged to the NRL tribe even as he stiffed them in last week’s Budget. - What the ARL players did was inexcusable and I do not have to support their sport. However, the players did not do anything illegal (according to authorities). Rudd has claimed the Heiner issue baseless. Rudd has claimed the bad relationship with NSW baseless. Either Rudd does not know what the word baseless means, or he is lying. I do not have to support the ALP either.
The ALP will pay a very high price for not dealing with this issue .. eventually. Australia is paying a high price for the failure of Hawke/Keating to reform the party in the late ‘90s there was never the danger that the party would never be in government federally again. However, with the failure to address a clear case of corruption, there is a question mark over the long term survival of the party. - ed.
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If you are watching this, I am dead
Andrew Bolt

On Friday a week ago, Rodrigo Rosenberg, a Guatemalan lawyer, recorded this video. It starts:
Good Afternoon. My name is Rodrigo Rosenberg Manzano and If you are reading this message it is because I have been murdered by Gustavo Alejos, the President´s Private Secretariat and his partner Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of Alvaro Colom (The President) and Sandra de Colom (The First Lady).

The reason why Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez have ordered my death and the President of the Republic, Alvaro Colom approved it, is because until the day they killed me, I was the lawyer of two incredible Guatemalans, Mr. Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie Musa, and I knew exactly how Alvaro Colom, Sandra de Colom, Gustavo Alejos and Gregorio Valdez were responsible for that cowardly murder, and I told them so and told those who wanted and could hear.

Two days later Rosenberg was shot dead while riding his bicycle in Guatemala City.
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Adelaide is a pie-floater, but Melbourne…
Andrew Bolt
But Melbourne isn’t one of these…
If Melbourne were a dish, what would it look like? Amanda Dunn asks six of our best chefs to put the city on a plate.

Shannon Bennett, Vue de monde
Dish: Peche Melba…

Nicky Riemer, Melbourne Wine Room
Dish: Parmesan, oregano and lemon crumbed pork cotoletta with pepperonata…

Greg Malouf, MoMo
Dish: Veiled quail covered in leaves with rice, date and rose petal stuffing…

Ashlee Connell, Seamstress
Dish: Duck and jellyfish…

George Calombaris, The Press Club
Dish: Land and sea…

Andrew McConnell, Cutler & Co
Dish: Poached quince

Calombaris is the closest, including in his dish the meat that most reflects our history and culture. Any signature Melbourne meal must, of course, include lamb. And red wine, of course.

I know it sounds too pleb or restrictive for the most sophisticated of diners and chefs, but if you want a forkful of Melbourne, a quail, quince or duck won’t give you the thoughts-of-home that does lamb, preferably roasted:

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So what was Tanner’s way?
Andrew Bolt
Hmm. There may be nothing in this, but Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner was asked on Meet the Press if he’d considered resigning, as a fiscal hard man, over a Budget that showed Australia drowning in deficits for the next decade. Of course not, he replied, adding:

Finance Ministers never get their way...
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Can we trust a word Gore says?
Andrew Bolt

He doesn’t tell the truth about global warming, so why would he tell the truth about mere politics?

Al Gore said Friday that fellow former Vice President Dick Cheney has jumped back into the political fray too soon into the new administration’s term.

”I waited two years after I left office to make statements that were critical,” Gore said during an interview on CNN, pointing out that his critiques were focused on “policy.”

Fact check. Gore is exaggerating by at least 100 per cent.
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Obama is growing up, but fast enough?
Andrew Bolt
It was so easy for this neophyte to criticise when he’d run nothing but his mouth, but responsibility has sure sobered Barack Obama:

President Obama has decided to keep the military commission system that his predecessor created to try suspected terrorists but will ask Congress to expand the rights of defendants to contest the charges against them, officials briefed on the plan said Thursday.... During last year’s presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called the military commission system put in place by Mr. Bush “an enormous failure” and vowed to “reject the Military Commissions Act.”

Add this to last week’s backtrack on releasing pictures of abuses by US troops, the fudging of his promise to pull out US troops from Iraq within 16 months and the delay still to come on his promise to close Guantanamo Bay asap.

More confirmation, I’m afraid, that a key difference between the Left and conservatives is a sense of responsibility, as George Orwell famously put it in his essay on Rudyard Kipling. It’s why the Left is the natural home of the young, the irresponsible, the dissolute, the reckless and the sheer silly. And it’s why Obama as the young hero of the Left could attack policies that, once in power, he realised were there for a good, albet painful, reason that he’d never bothered to acknowledge before.
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Teasing greens is good for you
Andrew Bolt
James Delingpole says mocking greens is a public duty:

Obviously there’s a part of me that kind of enjoys this. As Americans love Coca-Cola and Islamists love death, so I love baiting greens and liberals and most especially liberal greens. But I don’t do it just for fun, you know. In fact I don’t even do it mainly for fun. The reason I rail so often against so many tenets of the green faith — from biofuels to carbon trading to the ludicrous attempts to get polar bears designated as an endangered species — is because I sincerely believe they are among the greatest current threats to the advancement of humankind. Yes, that’s right: greens aren’t the solution. They’re public enemy number one....

Here is what’s so terrifying about the modern green movement: its complete refusal to accept that anyone who disagrees with it can be anything other than wilfully perverse, certifiably insane or secretly in the pay of Big Oil. This is true within the mainstream media too…

My purpose here is not to convince any green waverers of the justice of my cause, merely to point up the quite nauseating arrogance and bullying self-righteousness with which the modern green movement cleaves to its ideological position. Indeed, it doesn’t even think of its ideological position as an ideological position any more, but as a scientific truth so comprehensively proven that there is no longer need for any debate.
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Scaring artists works
Andrew Bolt
Some might complain about the tactics:

A MAN has been convicted of involvement in firebombing a London publisher behind The Jewel of Medina, a controversial book about the child bride of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.

But the fact is that it works, particularly with the brave free-speech souls of the arts community:
Publishers Random House decided not to put out the book because of fears it could offend Muslims, while another major US publisher also pulled out. Gibson Square delayed publication of the book following the attack.

So much safer for our daring artists to do this, instead:

Christians have expressed outrage at an ad that depicts the Virgin Mary with male genitalia on her forehead.

And this:

The Chaser’s executive producer, and comedian Craig Reucassel decided to fly a helium-filled blimp at the front of St Peter’s Square, close to St Peter’s Basilica. … Apparently the blimp contained a rude message for Pope Benedict XVI ...
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Fake scare used to push fake scare
Andrew Bolt
Associate Professor Abigail Smith wants us to remember a fake scare based on dodgy evidence that caused great harm, because she thinks it should make us now freak over the latest fake scare based on dodgy evidence that will cause great harm:

Remember Silent Spring? It was in 1962 that Rachel Carson’s book alerted the world to the problems of the insecticide DDT in the food chain. Birds of prey were particularly vulnerable, with their eggshells becoming so thin they could no longer contain growing embryos. The threat of springtime with no birdsong catapulted the world into a new awareness of ecology and conservation.

Forty-seven years on, a new threat is looming, this time in the sea. Once again the busy rhythm of people is causing an ecological crisis… We know that human activities, particularly the burning of coal, oil, petrol and wood, have for the past 200 years increased the amount of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in the atmosphere. ...Think about that exhaust, puffing out the back of every car, each little bit of CO2 heading into the air, into the sea, a little drop of poison for our planet. Each of us can make small differences. Think about what you could do, today, to save just one plankton, just one coral. Because a sea without shells is like springtime without birds.

Extraordinary. Hear the birds outside? Some people just don’t learn from the past, and that it’s a global warming scientist makes perfect sense.
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Howard attacks
Andrew Bolt

John Howard unloads on Kevin Rudd’s disastrous handling of the economy.
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Spin detected
Andrew Bolt
Laurie Oakes’ column starts promisingly:

Rudd was concerned that the political process—the dominance of spin—would eventually deprive him of his integrity...

Then follows 745 words on how spin has indeed destroyed the integrity of .... Malcolm Turnbull.

So what does Oakes say of Rudd’s Budget, which promised a toughness it didn’t deliver, announced spending it couldn’t afford, promised infrastructure it hasn’t funded, predicted growth rates few believe, deferred mad promises Rudd could never have kept and predicted a return to surpluses without any plan to achieve them?

Nevertheless, the economic blueprint presented to parliament by Treasurer Wayne Swan still reflected, very clearly, traditional Labor values and Rudd’s Christian Socialist principles.

Wow. Oakes even slips in a sneering descriptor he doesn’t give the equally deserving Rudd, the richest man to be Prime Minister:

Turnbull, a multi-millionaire, ....

Spin, spin, spin. And from someone paid to expose it, not repeat it.