Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Wed 10th Apr Todays News


Happy birthday and many happy returns Sean K Fitzgerald,Jimmy Le and Defqon Tran. Born on the same day across the years. The same day as when in 1815 a volcano (Mt Tambora) erupted and drove the temperature down an estimated two degrees centigrade for two years .. just like global warming has done for ten years.
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Is that a boat or a Gillard policy failure?

Piers Akerman – Wednesday, April 10, 2013 (12:04am)

“Another boat on the way. Another policy failure.” Julia Gillard, April 23, 2003.
Pity that the Prime Minister isn’t here today to tell us whether a people smuggler boat, complete with Deutsche Bank logo and between 66 and 72 illegal arrivals constitutes?
A boat that steamed into Geraldton Harbour, 2000km south of Christmas Island?
Surely it’s a policy failure.
The question is why didn’t the crew sail on down to Fremantle and save the authorities a 430km trip north to meet them?
If we needed another demonstration of how absolutely stuffed the Gillard Labor-Green-Independent minority government’s border protection policy is – and all at the hands of Gillard and her willing team – this was a standout.
It is believed to be the first boat to reach the mainland so close to Perth and, according to the authorities, the passengers have already been shipped north to Christmas Island and into the detention facilities.
What’s the betting it will then be a speedy trip to the mainland and out into the community?
Under existing legislation, asylum seekers who reach the mainland will avoid being sent to processing centres on Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
Federal Labor is seeking to change this, with legislation currently before the Senate.
Asylum seekers on the vessel have held up a sign saying, “We want to go to New Zealand. Please help us.’’
The boat is believed to have been at sea for 44 days.
It is believed the Sri Lankans want to be sent to New Zealand because the government has voluntarily and involuntarily returned about 1000 Sri Lankans since August last year.
WA Premier Colin Barnett said he was “alarmed” that a boat carrying asylum seekers could sail undetected into Geraldton.
“This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia’s border security,” Barnett said.
“That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking.
“Geraldton Port is one of Australia’s busiest regional ports and Australia’s second-largest for grain export.
“The State Government is working co-operatively with the Commonwealth on this issue and will ensure people’s welfare is being looked after.”
Geraldton’s waterfront Dome Cafe manager Steve Branch said customers at the cafe were shocked when the boat sailed in and “dropped anchor’’ about 100 metres off-shore.
“At first I don’t think people knew what it was. There were a few people that thought it might have been a protest group,’’ Branch said.
“But after it had been there for half an hour, a customs boat went out to it and that’s when people realised ‘wow, that’s an asylum seeker boat’.’’
Or another policy failure. 

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Vale Margaret Thatcher - a giant among leaders

Piers Akerman – Tuesday, April 09, 2013 (11:50pm)

THE death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher serves to remind us what pygmies now strut the world political stage.
Baroness Thatcher, truly the “Iron Lady” died following a stroke last night at the age of 87.
Unlike Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Thatcher had no need to enter any gender war - she was an outstanding individual who made no excuses and did not seek special status because of her sex.

Under Thatcherism, millions of Britons were liberated from the dead-end future of creeping socialism.
She was as British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron said, “a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton”.
Calling her death “sad news”, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said Baroness Thatcher was a “great politician” who would go down in history.
“Margaret Thatcher was a great politician and a bright individual. She will do down in our memory and in history,” the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who held frequent meetings with Baroness Thatcher at the end of the Cold War, told Interfax news agency.
“Thatcher was a politician whose words carried great weight. Our first meeting, in 1984, gave the start to relations that were at times difficult, not always smooth, but which were serious and responsible for us both.”
Thatcher and the late US President Ronald Reagan were committed to ending Communism and largely succeeded – but for China which is now giving nations like Australia an overdue lesson in capitalism.
An emotional former Polish president and Solidarity founder Lech Walesa said the staunchly anti-communist Baroness Thatcher was key in hastening the fall of the Iron Curtain.
“She was a great person. She did a great deal for the world, along with Ronald Reagan, pope John Paul II and Solidarity, she contributed to the demise of communism in Poland and central Europe,” Walesa said.
“I’m praying for her.”
European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso paid tribute to Baroness Thatcher’s “contributions” to the growth of the EU, despite her reservations about European integration.
Expressing his “deepest regrets” to the UK government, Barroso said she had been “a circumspect yet engaged player in the European Union” who “will be remembered for both her contributions to and her reserves about our common project”
Thatcher came late to the debate about the European Union and I can say that she initially underestimated the enormous influence the EU would have on British sovereignty.
I met her on several occasions while I working in the UK in the 1980s and notably she initially complained that a series of articles The Times newspaper had run on the effect the EU would have on Britain after 1992.
I was responsible for the series and was able to convince her that the newspaper was correct.
She summoned Lord Cockfield, her representative in Brussels for talks, and later admitted The Times view was, unfortunately, accurate. (The series was later edited into a short book: The “Times” Guide to 1992: Britain in a Europe Without Frontiers: a Comprehensive Handbook.)
She will be remembered by the Left for smashing the coal miners union – a long overdue reform.
She will also be remembered for taking Britain into the Falklands War and winning – ending the corrupt colonels’ reign of Argentina.
But she will be remembered primarily for giving Britons reason to stand tall and proud and believe in themselves again.
As Senior Conservative MP David Davis said: “Margaret Thatcher was the greatest of modern British prime ministers, and was central to the huge transformation of the whole world that took place after the fall of the Soviet Union.
“Millions of people in Britain and around the world owe her a debt of gratitude for their freedom and their quality of life, which was made possible by her courageous commitment to the principles of individual freedom and responsibility.”
Vale Margaret Thatcher, a great leader, the greatest British Prime Minister since Winston Churchill led the UK in WW2.

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YOUR CHILDREN ARE OURS

Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 10, 2013 (12:47pm)

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry: “We have to break through this kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents.” Seriously:



Sarah Palin’s response: 
Dear MSNBC, if our kids belong to you, do your kids belong to us too? If so, can we take them hunting after church in our big pickup truck? 

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DIVERSITY ON THE MARCH

Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 10, 2013 (12:01pm)

Cash-burning Graham Wood picks up another Fairfax refugee for his local hobby journalism venture: 
In a move that will surprise no one but will surely concern management at Fairfax Media, the respected journalist David Marr has become the latest star hiring at the Guardian Australia.
His appointment, announced by the local editor-in-chief Kath Viner this morning, was flagged by Diary several months ago when Marr confirmed he was in discussions with the UK-based organisation. 
Also set to join the Guardian: climate screambaby Graham Readfearn.

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PARTY LIKE IT’S 1984

Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 10, 2013 (5:20am)

Lefty kids bust out the party moves: 
The Students’ Council of University of Melbourne Student Union passed a motion this afternoon to ‘celebrate unreservedly’ the death of Margaret Thatcher. 
That’s how the left operates. They actually require a vote on unreserved celebration. And the high point of festivities for these earnest little droids? They’ve … 
… asked for the a screening of Ken Loach’s documentary film Which side are you on? to ‘continue the celebration’. 
Nothing screams “FUN!” like a 29-year-old commie film about British coal miners. Hey, kids – if you want to keep the party going, here’s a 34-minute Nicola Roxon speech on constitutional reform. Knock yourselves out. Still on olden days, Ian McEwan – no great Thatcher fan – recalls dreary pre-Margaret Britain: 
If today’s Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow’s TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. There was only one state-approved answering machine available. Your local electricity “board” could be a very unfriendly place. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of “privatisation” and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted. 
Privatisation of state-owned communications monopolies, in Britain and elsewhere, created a massive market for new technologies. For an authentic anti-Thatcher celebration, those Melbourne University funsters might want to burn their iPhones.

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LABORING TOWARDS SEPTEMBER

Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 10, 2013 (5:15am)

All signs point to victory: 
Anthony Albanese says Labor will win the federal election ...
The latest Newspoll places the coalition on an election-winning 48-32 lead on primary votes.
But Mr Albanese said before the 1998 election, polls indicated the Labor opposition had a winning lead over the coalition government by 58-42 and 59-41.
“In the leadup to 2001 we even had one poll that was a bit better. It had a six in front of the Labor number,” he told reporters.
Despite those strong poll performances, the incumbent coalition government still won – and Labor would too at the September election, Mr Albanese said. 
It is also the case that in 2004 Labor held a 54/46 lead only months prior to the election, but lost by an officially hilarious margin. Here’s an alternative thought: if Labor lost all of those elections despite substantial poll advantages, how much worse might things be when they’re behind in the polls?

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CHEWLIA

Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 10, 2013 (5:02am)

A Julia chew toy is being sold by an Adelaide pet store, sparking the latest national misogyny crisis:

image

According to feminist and author Leslie Cannold, this toy shows we still can’t deal with female leaders: 
Dr Cannold said the world struggled with female leaders who were “trailblazers ... suffering on our behalf” and that male leaders were not subjected to the same “vicious ridicule” over their appearance.
“It’s hard to look at the dog toy and not think that the person on whom it’s based is not an object of ridicule,” she said. 
Dr Cannold’s deep research into the whole chew toy ridicule issue evidently hasn’t turned up anything on New Zealand’s Wootton brothers, whose pet accessory businesses have sold several political munchables: 
The brothers were behind the infamous Winston Peters and Paul Holmes dog toys in 1997, after Mr Peters was referred to in the NZ Parliament as “dog tucker”. Unveiled in Parliament, the toys received national media coverage and 25,000 Masterpet-branded toys sold out in two days. Their success spawned Pauline Hanson, Kim Beazley and John Howard equivalents, launched through Pets International on the eve of the 1998 Australian election. 
Imagine how Cannold might react if she hears about Julia Gillard piñatas on September 14. Llame a la policía! Last word to Stephen Hayward, whose terrier is shown above interacting with his new plaything: 
Asked whether his dog, Tex, liked the toy, he said she “didn’t take to her like she does with some of her toys”. 
(Via Correllio)
UPDATE. “I think that chew toy is a great idea, and I hope PetSmart or some other US chain will come up with one,” comments RebeccaH. “I even have an idea for a photo: a dog carrying an Obama chew toy with a dog in its mouth.”
UPDATE II. Further from Dr Cannold the scold: 
I simply didn’t know. My expertise is not in dog toys but women in leadership. 

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Iron Lady didn’t need to play the gender card

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, April 09, 2013 (8:31pm)

THE first reaction on ABC-TV to the death of Margaret Thatcher came from a former prostitute on the all-woman panel of Q & A on Monday night: “And me without champagne.”
That pretty much set the tone for the reaction of the Left and the feminist establishment to the death of Britain’s greatest post-war prime minister, with fellow Q & A panellist Germaine Greer deriding her as corrupt and a war criminal.
Thatcher should have been a feminist hero, but ideologues like Greer could never stomach the fact that a conservative woman had risen to the top on her own merits, making a mockery of their quota systems.
Feminists of her era treated Thatcher like a gender traitor, and ignored or derided her achievements, proving that their real ambition was not female equality but advancing the collectivist statist ideology she spent her life demolishing.
No matter how tough her job became, and even when she would have had had legitimate complaint about sexism, Thatcher never played the gender card.
And because of that, she advanced the cause of women more than anyone, and certainly more than any woman who makes a profession out of feminism or who uses feminism to get an unfair leg up on male competition.
And yet Thatcher never denied her femaleness. She was powerfully aware of the differences between her experiences and those of her colleagues, and regarded her outsider status in the Conservative Party’s clubby male preserve as an asset.
In her book The Downing Street Years Thatcher wrote: “I was less able to depend on automatic deference but I was also perhaps less intimidated by the risk of change.”
Julia Gillard, who co-founded Labor’s female quota system, Emily’s List, and benefited from its intrinsic unfairness, has tried to portray herself as Australia’s own “Iron Lady”, but the comparisons are empty.
Declaring you are tough and having your colleagues tell everyone you are tough because you have seen off some hamfisted attempts to unseat you, and have remained in power because of the patronage of shadowy union leaders, is not the same as being tough.
Even yesterday, in a short statement from China, the only achievement of Thatcher’s mentioned by Gillard was that she was “the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - a history-making achievement.”
In fact, that was the least achievement of Thatcher’s 11 years in office.
From 1979 to 1990 she transformed Britain from the “sick man of Europe” to an economic powerhouse. She drove down inflation and unemployment, cut taxes and bureaucracy, stood up to the unions, freed up the markets, and created a new generation of homeowners. She defeated the Left over and over - and helped end the Cold War.
In a way the misguided policies of her predecessors set the stage for her success.
Too much government spending, overregulation, high taxes, inflation, and trade union power, had brought Britain to the stage where people were hoarding food.
By the time Thatcher took office, a fed-up electorate understood the folly of the big government path and was ready to take its medicine.
She won three elections, with more votes in the last than the first, and retired undefeated, having won the economic argument for the right of individuals to run their own lives.
In a video of her last stirring performance in parliamentary Question Time an opponent criticised her for presiding over a growing gap between rich and poor, an oft-repeated refrain in Australia today.
She retorted: “People on all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979. (He) is saying that he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich.
“So long as the gap is smaller, they would rather have the poor poorer.
“One does not create wealth and opportunity that way. One does not create a property-owning democracy that way.”
Her belief in thrift, self-reliance and hard work was rooted in her Methodist upbringing.
Her belief in the Christian virtues underpinned her economic philosophy. She linked a free society to the morality of its people, because it allowed individuals to exercise their own moral judgments.
When that responsibility is taken away by the state, the individual’s “moral faculties, that is, his capacity for choice, atrophy, and he becomes a moral cripple,” she once said.
As her biographer Charles Moore told Sky News, Thatcher wanted to democratise the unions because she understood that union leaders had hijacked the union movement from its members in the 1970s, and eroded the nation’s work ethic.
“She thought it was wrong that union leaders were involved in running the country economically and involved in economic policy.”
If that sounds familiar, it is because, in the basketcase that Britain had become before Thatcher took office, there are ominous echoes of the direction our own country is taking under Gillard and her redistributivist Treasurer Wayne Swan, who takes 1970s Bruce Springsteen lyrics as his intellectual guide.
If the timing of Thatcher’s death five months before our election means anything, it should be to stiffen Coalition spines and ensure that if they win, they do not squander their mandate.
Thatcher’s success should be taken as a model for Tony Abbott, if he wins office in September as the polls suggest.
She laid out the blueprint in her 1979 budget.
“Cuts in public expenditure and borrowing ... to lift the burden of the wealth creating private sector,” Thatcher wrote in The Downing Street Years. “Lower income tax combined with a shift from taxation on earning to taxation on spending would increase incentives.”
In order to cut income tax, Thatcher had to raise the VAT (Britain’s GST) and was concerned about the impact on the cost of living.
But in the end she decided to go ahead, deciding “such a controversial increase in indirect taxes could only be made at the beginning of a parliament, when our mandate was fresh. We must establish the direction of our strategy from the start and do it straight away”.
It wasn’t easy for her, as the hatred unleashed after her death showed. But she used to say of the vitriol: “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”
Tony Abbott should pin that quote up on the wall of his office as Labor steps up its efforts to make the election campaign all about him. 

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Independent MP quits. Not one you might have hoped

Andrew Bolt April 10 2013 (5:13pm)

I don’t think the election will be a good one for Independents, anyway, with the exception of Bob Katter and probably Andrew Wilkie:
WEST Australian Nationals MP Tony Crook is to quit federal parliament after just one term.
Mr Crook won’t stand again for the rural seat of O’Connor, which he snatched from Liberal Party stalwart Wilson Tuckey at the 2010 election…
He voted more than 30 times for Labor before deciding to join his party’s colleagues on the opposition benches in May last year.

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Thatcher a racist? No, Carr a fraud

Andrew Bolt April 10 2013 (1:15pm)

Bob Carr defames a dead woman by framing an important warning as merely “racist”, adding the word “Asian” to take personal offence, and dodging altogether the real argument:
I recall one conversation I had with [Margaret Thatcher] in her retirement where she said something that was unabashedly racist, where she warned Australia, talking to me with Helena standing not far away against Asian immigration, saying that if we allowed too much of it we’d see the natives of the land, the European settlers, overtaken by migrants. I couldn’t believe it. It reminded me that despite, yes, her greatness on those big questions, the role of the state, the evil nature of the communist totalitarianism, there was an old fashioned quality to her that was entirely out of touch and probably explained why her party removed her in the early ‘90s.
EMMA ALBERICI: You must have been extremely taken aback by those comments, not to mention Helena as you say?
BOB CARR: I was astonished. Helena fortunately was out of ear shot. I remember one thing she said as part of that conversation, she said, “You will end up like Fiji.” She said, “I like Sydney but you can’t allow the migrants,” and in context she meant Asian migration “To take over otherwise you will end up like Fiji where the Indian migrants have taken over.” I was so astonished I don’t think I could think of an appropriate reply. I think we moved on to other subjects pretty quickly. But I don’t say that in any way to diminish the respect I felt for her because of the boldness of her political leadership. She deserves credit for that and that should be upper most in our thoughts today.
Can Carr please explain why he chose to insert the word “Asian”, when Thatcher clearly meant only “migrants” generally - and said no more than that?
UPDATE
Carr says Thatcher is a “racist” for telling us to bring fewer foreigners to Australia. So what’s Carr himself for wanting fewer foreigners everywhere?
[Carr:] Black Africa is not enjoying economic growth, most of the economies are going backwards, the social and economic indicators are getting worse. In India, where another 500 million will be added to the population by the middle of the century, all the social indicators remain stubbornly tragic.
[Q:] So what sort of things should they be doing? What should Australia be doing to help?
[Carr:] Well, all our foreign aid has got to be made dependent on population control policies in these countries…
Sterilise foreigners! So what does that make Carr?
(Thanks to reader Alan RM Jones.) 

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One is many if he says the right thing

Andrew Bolt April 10 2013 (10:23am)

The Age announces “experts” reject the Coalition’s NBN plans:

Coalition’s slower plan dismissed as a wrong number 
The Coalition’s cheaper and slower alternative to Labor’s national broadband network has been labelled a ‘’nonsense’’ by experts, who argue it will put Australia behind the rest of the world.
But the “experts” cited by The Age turn out to be just a single one:
‘’What [the Coalition] is trying to say is ‘what we do now on the internet is what we will do in the next 30 years’,’’ said Geoff Huston, chief scientist of regional internet registry Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) and a former Telstra employee.
‘’What stupid nonsense! I would side with the view that this [policy] is indeed a lemon.’’
UPDATE
The Sydney Morning Herald identifies a second critic:

Sharing Mr Huston’s concerns, senior lecturer at RMIT University’s school of electrical and computer engineering, Mark Gregory, said the Coalition’s policy would harm the economy and would not future-proof the country’s internet infrastructure.
A previous contribution from Gregory:

The National Broadband Network (NBN) is in dire trouble and has reached the point where Julia Gillard should declare a national disaster.
By doing so the government would be able to utilise constitutional powers to immediately effect changes to NBN Co and bring forward legislation necessary to prevent the situation worsening.
Identifying a leader capable of bringing Australia through this emergency should be the federal government’s highest priority.
General Cosgrove, the nation needs you one more time.
UPDATE
On the other hand, there’s Grahame Lynch, founder of telecoms newsletter CommsDay and the former group editorial director of Telecom Asia:
The opposition communications spokesman’s NBN policy strikes a strong middle path between those who want a fully fledged fibre-to-the home network and those who resist any legitimate government subsidy of broadband…
Four years ago, when Stephen Conroy proposed fibre to more than 90 per cent of Australian premises at a funding cost of $43bn , the Communications Minister did so safe in the then-correct technical assumption his was the only real way to deliver so-called “super-fast” broadband speeds of 100Mbps and beyond.
But ... technology companies have developed new platforms - such as vectored DSL, gigabit cable and LTE Advanced - that enable existing networks to deliver many times more bandwidth than was previously assumed possible.
These developments have blindsided an existing NBN deployment too wedded to a particular technology - FTTH - which has proven difficult to deliver due to labour shortages and apparent project deficiencies in the deployment process. One of the best aspects of Turnbull’s scheme is that it is far less reliant on civil works, which means it is quicker and cheaper to deploy.
And there’s Ian Martin, senior telecommunications analyst with CIMB Securities:
... in April 2009 [Labor prepared] a plan for a fibre-to-the-premises network that would deliver 100Mbps to 90 per cent of premises at a cost of up to $43bn… Despite several revisions it is running well behind schedule, well over budget and threatens to triple average prices for broadband in a decade. And once compulsory migration from copper to fibre kicks off next year, delays and cost overruns are likely to worsen....
FTTN avoids much of this as the copper is already in place to the premise.... The FTTN plan will save much in cost and time compared with NBN Co’s FTTP plan.
Perhaps the most important feature of Turnbull’s plan is the better matching of resources with likely benefit as people’s usage of broadband increases, keeping spending in line with people’s willingness to pay.
Reusing existing infrastructure where it is useful is a key reason for the Coalition costing its NBN at $20.4bn compared with the NBN Co’s projected $37.4bn in capital spending, and which the Coalition says will blow out to $72bn… Lower costs lead to lower prices…
The great irony is that the Coalition’s NBN policy, like Labor’s NBN policy in 2007, is based on FTTN. But in the six years since then, technologies have developed sufficiently to allow the Coalition to target a minimum speed on FTTN of 25Mbps, up from 12Mbps, a peak speed now at 80Mbps and in a few years, 100Mbps.
UPDATE
Malcolm Turnbull is on fire:

JON FAINE INTERVIEW WITH MALCOLM TURNBULL
ABC 774 MELBOURNE
WEDNESDAY 10 APRIL 2013

[excerpt]

JON FAINE:

Yesterday at Rupert Murdoch’s new trophy headquarters, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull announced NBN-lite. It’s been dismissed in the papers this morning by many columnists across the board as being a lemon, a dog or a policy failure. There’s also been announcements this week on industrial relations and the automotive industry. Malcolm Turnbull, Shadow Communications Minister joins us from Sydney. Good morning, Mr Turnbull.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Good morning, Jon. Hey, look, your introduction there is outrageously biased and inaccurate. I mean, let me just run through the people that have welcomed and praised the approach we’re taking….

JON FAINE:

Independent people, Mr Turnbull, or people who are part of your support team?

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Why don’t you just listen to me and just don’t interrupt me and I’ll actually give you the answer. Graham Lynch, the founder of CommsDay and the leading technology and telecom journalist in the country. Bill Morrow, the Chief Executive of Vodafone. Ian Martin, the leading telecoms analyst in the stockbroking world. Tony Brown, one of the leading telecoms experts working for Informer. Kevin Morgan, leading…

JON FAINE:

I’m sure there’s a cheer squad, Mr Turnbull, but the overall consensus of the independent commentators is that this is a policy opportunity missed.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Who? Who are they? Name them. Come on. Name them, Jon.

JON FAINE:

Well, the newspaper columnists all the way across the board.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

No. Name them, name them, Jon. Name them.

JON FAINE:

Laura Tingle…

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Oh, Laura Tingle! She’s a telecoms expert, is she?

JON FAINE:

No, she’s a policy analyst and a political commentator…

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Oh, Jon.

JON FAINE:

…and on and on across the board. I’ve read all the papers this morning, as have you.

MALCOLM TURNBULL:

Jon, you and I have had a lot of interviews and I’ve great respect for you, but that was a shockingly unbalanced and biased introduction.

JON FAINE:

Well, let’s go to the substance, Mr Turnbull…
UPDATE
The Age reports from its tiny hall of mirrors that the kind of people who read The Age are the kind of people who hate the Liberals as much as it does:
Images created with Photoshop insulting the Coalition’s broadband announcement were being circulated on Twitter on Wednesday.
They included a grainy photograph of a top-hatted man climbing a telegraph pole, accompanied by the line ‘’the future is upon us’’.
Other images include Mr Turnbull in parliament holding a tin can to his ear and a pixelated image of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott with the word ‘’loading . . .’’ next to his face.
Another image plays on a famous Abbott slogan: ‘’Stop the bytes’’.
We could also go to a thousand other places where Julia Gillard is mocked by equally thick and rude people. And? 

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Australian Labor Misogynists

Andrew Bolt April 10 2013 (10:07am)

From the party which runs the country, demonising opponents as misogynists:

A FORMAL complaint will be lodged with ALP officials against former attorney-general Nicola Roxon today over claims she accused a female candidate of spreading a misogynistic dirt file against a rival during a preselection.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s office has also been dragged into the internal feud with counter-accusations that one of Mr Conroy’s staff may have been responsible for the material.
Kimberley Kitching, who had been favoured to win preselection for Ms Roxon’s seat of Gellibrand in Melbourne, confirmed last night she would lay charges against Ms Roxon at the ALP tribunal.
The row erupted when a dirt file containing sexually explicit claims about Ms Roxon’s former staffer Katie Hall, whom Ms Roxon was backing to take over her seat, was circulated in the lead-up to last night’s final preselection vote.
Ms Kitching claims several witnesses confirmed that Ms Roxon had accused her of being behind it.
Ms Roxon last night denied she had accused Ms Kitching of being the source.
(Thanks to reader Peter.) 

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Sponsored travel to Australia

Andrew Bolt April 10 2013 (5:29am)

image
Foreign aid brings us boat people:
THE 66 asylum seekers who yesterday reached Geraldton, just 425km north of Perth, travelled to Australia in a fishing boat donated to Sri Lanka after the Boxing Day tsunami…
Their vessel was branded with Deutsche Bank’s logo and was in bank colours with a spokesman confirming similar vessels were donated after Sri Lankan fishing communities were devastated by the 2004 tsunami. “Deutsche Bank contributed substantially to the 2004 tsunami relief efforts, including donating fishing boats to communities in Sri Lanka (where people) had lost their livelihood, this appears to be one of those boats,” a bank spokesman said…
Asylum boats are taken back to sea and burnt for quarantine reasons.
Helping people to help themselves.  To Australia. 

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The secret to Thatcher

Andrew Bolt April 10 2013 (5:17am)

Matthew Parris, who worked for Thatcher, dispels some myths and explains this force of nature:

Widely admired, usually respected, sometimes loathed, frequently worshipped, Thatcher was surprisingly unloved. I rather think this had been so all her life. Her father, Alfred Roberts, her husband and perhaps her children were the exceptions. Maybe she was not easy to love…
My guess is that Thatcher had what EM Forster (describing the English) called “the undeveloped heart”. Forster did not mean heartlessness: not at all…
Once when I told her of my plan to visit a remote island in the Southern Ocean she cast her eyes heavenward and said that she knew me well enough to guess that my aim was to stand on a distant mountaintop and see the moon and the stars from there. “Don’t bother, dear,” she said, laying her small hand on my wrist. “You can see the moon and the stars from Spalding.”

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Thatcher always had more courage than her critics

Andrew Bolt April 10 2013 (4:52am)

The Melbourne University Students’ Union passed this barbaric resolution on the death of an 87-year-old lady:

That Students’ Council recognise the horrific legacy of Margaret Thatcher and her neoliberal policies that destroyed the lives of millions, her violent crushing of the miners’ strike, her oppression of the Irish and murder of Bobby Sands and other hunger strikes, her unconditioned support for right-wing dictators like Pinochet and Suharto and her support for apartheid in South Africa, among many other things and celebrates her death unreservedly. Students’ Council also commits to organising a screening of the Ken Loach film ‘Which side are you on?’ to further celebrate this event.

Farrago, the student magazine, published the names of the guilty, the weak and the three who stood against this barbarism:
For:
Annalivia Carli Hannan (Stand Up!/Labor Left)
Patrick Alves (Left Action/Socialist Alliance)
Belle O’Connor (Activate/’grassroots/independent’ left)
Maddee Clark (Activate/’grassroots/independent’ left)
Alice Dawes (Activate)


Abstain:
Adam Galvin (Stand Up!/Labor Left)
Hana Dalton (Stand Up!/Labor Left)
Sarina Murray (Independent Media)
Jess Evans (Activate/’grassroots/independent’ left)
Against:
Matthew Lesh (NOW!/Liberal)
Charles Cartney (NOW!/Liberal)
James Duncan (NOW!/Liberal)
Margaret Thatcher had the courage to stand by her decisions and to be held accountable for them. But do the students who damned her?

Farrago now reports that those who “celebrate” her death “unreservedly” have reservations indeed:
We have been requested to remove the names of the councillors and their votes on this issue. It was a named vote however and we will republish them when the minutes of today’s meeting have been confirmed and published. If you’d like to know how any particular student councillor voted before the minutes are confirmed, you can always ask them directly. The don’t have to answer you, but this information will be made available anyway upon the confirmation of minutes at the next Students’ Council meeting.

UPDATE
A roundup of the anti-Thatcher hatred. With enemies like these, Thatcher shines.
UPDATE
Note the names of the three students who opposed the motion. Rather than punish the barbarians (remember, they are children), please reward the virtuous. If the following students become politicians, consider giving them your vote:


Matthew Lesh (NOW!/Liberal)
Charles Cartney (NOW!/Liberal)
James Duncan (NOW!/Liberal)
(I originally listed Evans among those who voted for the motion, based on information from students. I believe Evans actually abstained. I apologise to her.) 

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What is it with Labor and abuse?

Andrew Bolt April 09 2013 (11:23pm)

Why are so many Labor MPs so personally abusive? What is it in the Labor culture?
Take Senator Glenn Sterle, a former union official:
image
(Thanks to reader Bruce.) 

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Have a burning film production question you've always wanted an answer to?

Submit it below for the opportunity to have it answered by Jerry Bruckheimer.
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Metaphor for NBN from DH
Just in from Labor: Airlines arent flying fast enough with enough people between enough cities. So they will create a new airline, and buy all the planes from the existing airlines. But dont worry, this airline wont sell to the public directly, Virgin, Qantas and others will sell seats on these flights- the head rest will have their logo on it for your flight. So competition will keep prices down with no overbuild and 747 services between Mudgee and Armidale.
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Claw marks on a 100-million-year-old riverbed in China reveal how some dinosaurs doggy-paddled over long distances, scientists say.http://oak.ctx.ly/r/3snb
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I was honoured to facilitate a meeting between the Minister for Citizenship and Communities, the Hon. Victor Dominello, MP, and the Assyrian Democratic Movement (Zowaa). — with Immanuel Sada, Zowaa Gabara, Charbel Saliba, Zowaa Dimokrataya Atoraya, Zaya Toma, Bront Zowaa Audey, Zowaa Al Rafidain, Zowaa Australia, Zowaa Sydney and Dai Le.
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This morning, the media were invited to the Sinai-Palestine and Western Front galleries at the Memorial to see the conservators remove Private Giles’s uniform from its display case. 
The uniform was removed to prepare for major changes to the galleries. While off display, Giles’s uniform will be undergoing some much needed conservation before its return to the newly renovated galleries in 2015.

Giles’s uniform was one of the first exhibits on display when the Memorial opened in 1941. Taken directly from the battle-field on 8 May 1918 at Morlancourt, the uniform is unique in that it is still covered with the mud from that day’s battle.

The $32 million redevelopment of the First World War galleries is supported by the Australian Government, which has provided $28.7 million towards the project. The first stage of the redevelopment began in November last year when conservators started work on conserving the dioramas.

The Memorial’s Sinai–Palestine and Western Front galleries are closed from 8 April, but the Gallipoli gallery will remain open until June. Later this year a temporary First World War exhibition “ANZAC Voices” will open, so visitors to the Memorial can continue to learn about the Great War until the new galleries open in 2015.
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Operation Javelin III will start next Monday 15 April and run until Thursday 23 May 2013. Contrary to the name, we will not be throwing spears. Operation Javelin III targets crime and antisocial behaviour across the NSW public transport network. Everyone has a right to feel safe when travelling on public transport. In this period during morning and afternoon peak hours, you can expect to see an extra number of officers from our Police Transport Command - NSW Police Force on public transport. Ultimately, it's about keeping you as a commuter safe and preventing crime.
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David Bowie as Tilda Swinton, with Tilda Swinton as David Bowie
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ZLM's Hebrew Word of the Week: Shoah | Holocaust
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Today New Zealand’s Deep South Ice Cream signed an agreement to supply New Zealand ice cream to a Beijing pizza chain.
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Glowing blue tide at night in Vaadhoo, Maldives.

It may look like an alien life-form has washed up on a beach, but this striking neon effect is completely natural - it's a result of a chemical reaction called bioluminescence, which occurs when a micro-organism in sea water is disturbed by oxygen.

Photo by Doug Perrine
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Water or Coke? We all know that water is important but I’ve never seen it written down like this before.

WATER
1. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.

2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger.

3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one’s metabolism as much as 30%.

4. One glass of water will shut down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of Washington study.

5. Lack of water, the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.

6. Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for up to 80% of sufferers.

7. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a printed page.

8. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79%, and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer.

And now for the properties of COKE

1. In many states (in the USA) the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in the truck to remove blood from the highway after a car accident.

2. You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of coke and it will be gone in two days.

3. To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl and let the “real thing” sit for one hour, then flush clean. The citric acid in Coke removes stains from vitreous china.

4. To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers: Rub the bumper with a rumpled-up piece of aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola.

5. To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour a can of Coca-Cola over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion.

6. To loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt for several minutes.

7. To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into the baking pan, wrap the ham in aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is finished, remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy.

8. To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent, and run through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen grease stains. It will also clean road haze from your windshield.

For Your Info
1. The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. Its pH is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in about 4 days. Phosphoric acid also leaches calcium from bones and is a major contributor to the rising increase in osteoporosis.

2. To carry Coca-Cola syrup (the concentrate) the commercial truck must use the Hazardous material place cards reserved for Highly corrosive materials.

3. The distributors of coke have been using it to clean the engines of their trucks for about 20 years!

Now the question is, would you like a glass of water or coke?

Join us for more interesting info -- fun stuff and inspirational friends from all over the world!

The New U
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FAIRFAX IN BED WITH LABOR... and without a condom Larry Pickering

When did Fairfax lose its virginity to Labor? Some time back I guess and I didn’t realise it until I walked into the newsroom after Whitlam’s sacking and found everyone in tears chucking typewriters.

You see, junior cadets were recruited from indoctrinated university students. The students gradually slid up the ranks and employed only those of like mind. That’s to be expected.

Now the SMH is a cesspit of Labor lackeys and it shows on their balance sheet and in their share price. But the rabid Left of Fairfax has no respect for solvency and is prepared to share the conjugal bed with the ABC.

If you want to work for Fairfax or The Age you will toe the Labor Party line or you will leave.

I have worked for both and suffered the SMH altering my work. I had to endure daily brawls to get my stuff published in the same form as I had created it.

I was summoned more than once to the hallowed halls of the 14th floor where the CEO at the time, Falkingham, would dress me down for dabbling in objectivity.

When Murdoch offered me a contract, Fairfax was as happy as I was and from that point on I can’t even recall who ‘The Australian’ editor was. It was like a breath of fresh air.

With the imminent demise of the worst government in Australia’s history, Fairfax has become desperately dirty in its attempts to shore up the redhead’s support.

They will fail because, contrary to what Fairfax believes, readers are not that stupid but they are creatures of habit and some continue to buy what they prefer to call their new “compact” rather than “tabloid” editions.

Their support for Labor and their hatred of Abbott is no better demonstrated than by today’s ‘lemonising’ of Turnbull’s alternative to Conroy’s disastrous NBN.

Now, anyone with an IQ above their boot size can see Conroy’s NBN is a disaster in progress but Fairfax is madly quoting “IT experts” denigrating Turnbull’s fix as “fraudband” and a “complete lemon” accompanied with nasty photo-shopped pics of Abbott.

Turnbull’s plan is to simply get us out of the NBN mess that Conroy got us into.

There is no easy way because the country is already billions in the red and drowning in backhoes.

Of these pale dull-eyed “IT experts”, I have never met one who doesn’t want a faster broadband... hardly objective opinions.

But Fairfax has seen an opening, it is going for a single shot Abbott kill and it has the journos to do it: Unabashed Lefties, Carlton, Waterford, Marr, Pasco, Grubb, FitzSimons and anyone else including the tea lady can have a free kick at Abbott.

I’m not IT literate but looking at the NBN disaster from afar it certainly needs reining in before it becomes an irreversible catastrophe... and that’s just the math.

Ok, I admit Turnbull’s alternative was unimpressive but this mess isn’t of his doing and the NBN isn’t something you can just cancel.

The Labor way is, “what we do, just try and undo”.

Turnbull is in patchup-mode and it doesn’t look good, but if the choice of experts to fix it is between Conroy and Turnbull then the choice couldn’t be more clear.

It seems unfair that Fairfax, partnered with Labor, can publish itself into insolvency while the ABC gets off scot free.
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Eastern Sierra Sunrise. — at Crowley Lake CA.
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4 her
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Last night's Kimchee evacuated in 3...2...1...

-admin sb
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The Breathtaking Melissani Cave in Greece
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Minister Victor Dominello visited our electorate office in Smithfield yesterday to discuss issues important to Fairfield LGA. With Andrew Rohan MP, Zaya Toma, Charbel Saliba, and Tiffany Choy from Fairfield Council.
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The Virtual University: Political Correctness – A God That Failed?

http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/the-virtual-university-political-correctness-a-god-that-failed/

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses problems he believes have risen from the advent of political correctness in the university.
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SPEED KILLS

by Paul Zanetti

Since yesterday, the Fairfax online news has been leading with various headline versions of, "Experts Agree: Liberal NBN plan a 'lemon'''.

The articles go on to then quote one (yep, only one) ex-Telstra employee who described the Turnbull plan as a 'lemon' and a 'nonsense'. Not more than one expert, but just one, quoted as saying that.

The article would be fairer, and more accurate, to simply admit we found a mate of a mate, who's a lefty, to slag the Liberal NBN plan.

The article failed to give some history, scrutiny and accountability behind the NBN. Just broad-brush political statements, straight out of the 'Conroy Handbook For Media Approved Information', with no detail.

The initial 2007 Conroy plan was to deliver just 12 megabytes per second (mbps), for around $5 billion, fibre to the node, with no detail.

Realising it couldn't be justified in terms of speed or return, Conroy updated in 2009 to fibre to the home, 100mbps and nearer to $40 billion, with no cost benefit analysis and no due diligence.

It's now behind schedule, budget overblown to almost double, screw-ups causing a doubling-up of work, appalling take-up rate, being unaffordable for most residents.

Who really needs super-fast broadband with the ability to deliver 'medical files in minutes' (proudly boasted by Conroy), if you aren't a hospital? If that's his justification, then hook the hospitals up to super fast broadband, and connect the rest of the country up to the speeds that suffice for their domestic needs.

That's what Turnbull offers.

Why supply everyone with a Ferrari if most people live in a 60 kmh residential speed zone, when most only need a Commodore, or a Toyota?

Conroy is looking for a legacy. That's why.

But we, and our kids, will be paying off the Conroy Custom Ferrari for decades. By the time Conroy's custom Ferrari is built, it will be superseded by a wireless flying spaceship.

Turnbull's plan uses existing networks, which has proven to be excellent, more-than-enough speed in the UK, the US and other OECD countries, with which we trade, compete and compare to.

There's far more detail in the Turnbull plan which delivers more flexibility, more options, more savings and more practical savings to the average user. The consumer chooses the plan they want or need, not the one forced upon them by the Government.

Conroy's plan is secretive, sparse in detail, lacking independent auditing, expensive, over budget, behind time and superfluous for most, and let's not forget, devised on the back of an air sick bag on a plane with Rudd.

Turnbull's plan is designed to benefit firstly those who do not have adequate internet. It's a plan that is designed for the market.

Conroy's is designed for Conroy's ego. And if his ego gets any bigger they'll have to customise a pair of red undies to sit on his head while he's driving his antiquated custom red Ferrari.
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A SUCCULENT SINO SUCCESS?

There is no doubt the PM’s emulation of Whitlam’s long march to China will be a poll reviving success. The Coalition’s historic approach to communist China has always been by a slow boat.

But China’s agendum is far different to that of Australia’s.

Australia’s export future is now wholly reliant on China. Forget wool, wheat and the live cattle trade; we have done our best to destroy all that in the rush to dig up red dirt.

With our manufacturing as a component of GDP at 18% and heading south our eggs are now in the one mining basket.

Red dirt is what Labor’s Public Service departmental heads see as a final defence against an Abbott takeover.

The Public Service (the people who arrange all these things) is determined to rescue their beloved Julia’s ass.

Ok, the MRRT was a giant stuffup but lessons were learnt in the process and if Emerson and Swan can be convinced to tone down the class war, a small light may still flicker on the hill, despite the strong winds of change.

We need China, China doesn’t need us and a week can be a long time in international politics.

The current Beijing/Oz love fest’s proposal of joint military exercises with the US in the South China Sea is a nonsense.

When Xi Jingping sobers up he will need to retract that load of bananas because North Korea looms ominously to the East.

If the silly Pyongyang kid wants to play real live X box games, the US won’t hesitate to insert a real live ICBM in his pudgy little bum.

Where will China stand then? Most certainly with the X box kid because China needs him and he knows it.

A unified Korean Peninsular could mean US troops and materiel encamped on its Eastern border. Now wouldn’t China just love that?

No, it is not the meaningful alliance that the Gillard crew claims. China holds all the cards and will continue to purchase its ore on a purely economic basis.

Rather than a Sino love fest, Gillard’s departmental heads would serve Oz better back here tempering an all out war with the mining industry.

Gillard doesn’t need China, Gillard needs our mining industry.

China doesn’t need either.
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4 her
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The Sequestered Angels
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Spends hundreds $$$ on barbies & toys, the kid goes & makes dolls out of paper napkins :/
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You can pronounce good things over yourself and see them come to pass, because you are a king-priest by the blood of Jesus! Find out more in today's devotional and be blessed! http://bit.ly/10TmuDr
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Not our sacrifices, but His sacrifice. Not our self-righteousness, but His righteousness. And not our accomplishments, but His superabounding grace! In this video excerpt, find out how God wants you to depend on His unmerited favor a hundred percent, leaving no room for self-effort. Rest in Christ as your only identity, provision and refuge, and put an end to condemnation, comparison, insecurity and ineffectiveness today!
http://josephprince.com/
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God loves you and hears your prayer because you are eternally righteous in Christ (Prov 15:29).
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Ah, Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.—Jer 32:17

Our minds tend to see problems as “big” or “small.” A headache is a “small” problem, while a terminal disease is a “big” one. 

But that is not the way God sees! With God, there is nothing too hard for Him. So however big your problem is today, take heart that your God who made the heavens and the earth is bigger. Nothing is ever too hard for Him to resolve for you!
http://josephprince.com/
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Check out today's devotional to find out how Jesus alone is the perfect atonement for your sins, and that He is the only sacrifice that can satisfy God! Be blessed!http://bit.ly/10TlLCk
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Photo credit: John W. Pope Civitas Institute
Hi everyone! Here's the MichelleMalkin.com newsletter for April 9th. Enjoy!

From the Blog

Trial for Bin Laden son-in-law may be delayed due to… sequester

“Make the pain of the cuts noticable” was the original marching order, and they sure are trying to run with it...

More celebrities SWAT-ted; meanwhile, anti-Brett Kimberlin bloggers still under fire

The troubling trend of celebrity “SWATting” incidents has not abated...

Man who escaped Castro’s Cuba speaks at Oregon gun control hearing: ‘You people don’t know what freedom is because you never lost it’

Forty years ago, Manuel Martinez escaped communist Cuba and became an American citizen...

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What does it mean to be a young conservative in America? Be sure to check out Young, Conservative, and Why It's Smart to be Like Us, a new e-book!

Michelle's Top Tweets

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And ... Our Hate Tweet of the Day

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Evidently Tanya wasn't finished hatin' after she shared this gem yesterday.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald

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