Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Tue Feb 9th Todays News

On this day last year, Turnbull tanked at a leadership spill. Modelling his super power of indecision, Turnbull was given the opportunity to show his agility and he dithered. A year later it looks like Costello stepped in after Qld lost an election to make sure NSW didn't as well. This farce was a circuit breaker which would culminate in Turnbull getting the crown of Liberal Leadership through duplicity and mendacity, all the time protected by Pyne and Bishop who apparently leaked in Turnbull's favour. Turnbull would never have achieved it on his own. But Costello, Pyne and Bishop can't lead for Turnbull. And Turnbull is not making rational decisions as leader. But this is entirely predictable, given the impotence of Turnbull's first administration. It is likely Costello acted to save the party from Turnbull. Similarly with Pyne and Bishop. Turnbull could not be forced out. But he could be pushed up. Meanwhile, no good decision of Malcolm's time is any different from something Abbott would have done. Imagine if Abbott had not been undermined by Turnbull. Bringing Turnbull into parliament was the worst mistake Howard ever made. But the truth is, Malcolm owns his incompetence. No one else. 

 For some at the moment, the sex party has more credibility. 
=== from 2015 ===
The leadership spill vote this morning for the Liberal party was predictable and sadly inconclusive. Because the conservative Liberal Party doesn't have group think, members have differing agenda, it makes what was probably Malcolm Turnbull's latest attempt so calculated and nasty. It is years in the making, and whispers are calculated for maximum damage sometimes go awry, and so successive state Liberal governments have foundered at election in QLD, Vic and SA, as well as in '07 and '10. A terrible allegation, and cheaply defended, but known for its' part in '07 and '10, where Turnbull had upset Costello's run in '07, and had fought to regain a challenging position since leading the leadership in '09. At the time, in '07, Costello had not seen it as his responsibility to dump on the ambitious Turnbull, as he viewed it as a modern party requiring planned succession and the game Howard put before him he scorned. Turnbull is talented, but it is easily overstated how talented he is. Turnbull can work inside colleagues and whisper and cajole because he has extraordinary resources he has earned. But he is only skilled at doing what he wants. Turnbull can undermine and promote difficulties, like PUP, who can be exploited for their prejudices exposing Liberal policy. But Turnbull has not got the gift of working with opposition to achieve the difficult, as Abbott has many times. Abbott was assaulted as Health Minister for his Catholic Views but he hadn't failed in his policy. When a possible son was discovered, Abbott welcomed the horrified Green Supporter. Abbott has worked in Aboriginal communities and with country fire fighters with equal aplomb. It is difficult imagining Turnbull having that grace. The leadership qualities of Mr Abbott were apparent when he lead world leaders over MH17 in Ukraine. And while one might not agree with him, one must recognise his character. 

Malcolm Turnbull has not got that character. When given the leadership and faced with an agenda which would lead forward, Turnbull embraced climate alarmism. He was faced with Hockey and might still have been leader today had Hockey's dithering over the morality of a carbon tax not been belled by Abbott. But what followed is unacceptable from a loyal member. The memes of Mr Abbott being a 'Dr No' or women hating have been spun for the Liberal Party with backbenchers encouraged to liken responsible decision making to the hurtful memes. So that even press secretary Credilin is undermined in ways that are pernicious and plausible to those who don't know. Hockey's budget is not the problem, the measures asked for are essential. But the opposition from PUP and ALP mean that measures can't pass. Nothing that has been blocked is unreasonable or unsupportable. $7 for a doctor's visit is considered nothing elsewhere in the world. Reform is needed for education to keep it affordable. Changes need to be made to welfare to keep it. But Turnbull's whispers have it that a change in treasurer would mean the measures could pass. A change in treasurer, press secretary and leader is the promise. But a change in policy is the reality .. as well as a change in government, for the ALP to seize the reigns of government again while still unreformed, as they have in Qld and Vic. Turnbull is a moderate. He is a meaningless promise. Empty. Give him the honour of PM, and he will treat it as others treat a knighthood. 

Turnbull cannot remain in government. He has nothing to offer except overweening pride. 
From 2014
Today is the anniversary of the late unlamented Joseph McCarthy starting the second red scare in 1950 by declaring that many in the state department were communists. Akerman parallels McCarthy with the ABC, and I must say that McCarthy is better than that. McCarthy was right that there had been communist influences in the state department and throughout the US. He was wrong in the way he prosecuted the case, bulldozing freedoms we take for granted. By way of contrast, the ABC is wrong on every level to be partisan. Wrong in reporting favourably for the left when responsible journalists would take a balanced middle road. Wrong to ignore corruption festering among those she supports, or to denounce as corrupt on no basis those she opposes. McCarthy, by way of contrast, did what he was elected to do. 

Miranda Devine has posted a few brilliant articles on drugs, Schapelle, our diggers and pedophiles .. no story connected. Our diggers deserve honour. Drugs are a scourge on society and druggies should go and die in Portugal where it is legal. Schapelle is over rated, apparently protecting drug dealers. There is a royal commission going on into pedophiles being protected through institutional abuse. I know this because I submitted to it on May 21st 2013 and have never heard back from it regarding my submission. I was so concerned, I approached a local member, and was emailed by a sergeant of the police who wrote that my testimony was of interest to the commission. Not having heard back from them is worrying for me, as I had written how desperate my circumstances were, being denied work in my profession and unable to find work elsewhere. I've never been unemployed since I was eighteen years old, often working three jobs and undertaking further study. But I've been unemployed for almost seven years now, The highly partisan press haven't investigated after senior ALP identities apparently asked them not to. If I don't hear favourably from the royal commission soon I will be forced to sell my home. I have no where to go. I live in the most deprived suburb in NSW. 

Four months ago, my place was flooded for two days with raw sewage. My home contents, Allianz, did a good job, although I'm rope-able that they valued 340 of my largest books at $5 each, well below any replacement value. However GIO, my strata insurer, have delayed and obstructed, so that only part of the unit was repainted. They still have not done kitchen tiling .. they might begin tomorrow. When they begin, they will move my refrigerator and oven for two days. When they finish, they will have not gone near the cockroach hotel that the sewage fed in the kitchen. My tip is not to insure anything with GIO. They might be cheap with premiums, but if they aren't competent, you are better off not paying premiums.
Historical perspective on this day
In 474, Zeno crowned as co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire. 1555, Bishop of GloucesterJohn Hooper was burned at the stake. 1621, Gregory XV became Pope, the last Pope electedby acclamation. 1654, the Capture of Fort Rocher took place during the Anglo-Spanish War. 1775, American Revolutionary War: The British Parliament declared Massachusetts in rebellion. 1788, the Habsburg Empire joined the Russo-Turkish War in the Russian camp.

In 1825, after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the US presidential election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elected John Quincy AdamsPresident of the United States. 1849, New Roman Republic established 1861, American Civil War: Jefferson Davis was elected the Provisional President of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Alabama. 1870, US president Ulysses S. Grant signed a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau. 1889, US president Grover Cleveland signed a bill elevating the United States Department of Agriculture to a Cabinet-level agency. 1895, William G. Morgan created a game called Mintonette, which soon comes to be referred to as volleyball.

In 1900, the Davis Cup competition was established. 1904, Russo-Japanese War: Battle of Port Arthur concluded. 1913, a group of meteors was visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, leading astronomers to conclude the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth. 1920, under the terms of the Svalbard Treaty, international diplomacy recognised Norwegian sovereignty over Arctic archipelago Svalbard, and designated it as demilitarised. 1922, Brazil becomes a member of the Berne Conventioncopyright treaty. 1934, the Balkan Entente was formed. 1942, World War II: Top United States military leaders held their first formal meeting to discuss American military strategy in the war. Also 1942, year-round Daylight saving time was re-instated in the United States as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources. 1943, World War II: Allied authorities declared Guadalcanal secure after Imperial Japan evacuated its remaining forces from the island, ending the Battle of Guadalcanal. 1945, World War II: The Battle of the Atlantic – HMS Venturer sank U-864 off the coast of Fedje, Norway, in a rare instance of submarine-to-submarine combat. Also 1945, World War II: A force of Allied aircraft unsuccessfully attackeda German destroyer in Førdefjorden, Norway.

In 1950, Second Red Scare: US Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the United States Department of State of being filled with Communists. 1951, Korean War: Geochang massacre 1959, the R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile, became operational at Plesetsk, USSR. 1964, The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing before a "record-busting" audience of 73 million viewers across the USA. 1965, Vietnam War: The first United States troops with a combat mission, a Marine Corps Hawk air defense missile battalion, were sent to South Vietnam. 1969, first test flight of the Boeing 747.

In 1971, the Sylmar earthquake hit the San Fernando Valley area of California. Also 1971, Satchel Paige became the first Negro League player to be voted into the USA's Baseball Hall of Fame. Also 1971, Apollo program: Apollo 14 returned to Earth after the third manned Moon landing. 1973, Biju Patnaik of the Pragati Legislature Party was elected leader of the opposition in the state assembly in Odisha, India. 1975, the Soyuz 17 Soviet spacecraftreturned to Earth. 1986, Halley's Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System. 1991, voters in Lithuania vote for independence. 1996, the Provisional Irish Republican Army declared the end to its 18-month ceasefire and exploded a large bomb in London's Canary Wharf. 2001, the American submarine USS Greeneville accidentally struck and sank the Ehime-Maru, a Japanese training vessel operated by the Uwajima Fishery High School.
=== Publishing News ===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
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I am moving from Sydney to Melbourne and am desperate for funding. If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofundme.com/abeueaec
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Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August, September, October, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4  The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows a free kindle version.

List of available items at Create Space
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For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

Or the US President at
https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-change-this-injustice#
or
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/change-injustice-faced-david-daniel-ball-after-he-reported-bungled-pedophile-investigation-and/b8mxPWtJ or http://wh.gov/ilXYR
Douglas Sutherland-Bruce via David Daniel Ball
Mr Ball, I will not sign your petition as it will do no good, but I will share your message and ask as many of friends who read it, to share it also. Let us see if we cannot use the power of the internet to spread the word of these infamous killings. As a father and a former soldier, I cannot, could not, justify ignoring this appalling action by the perpetrators, whoever they may; I thank you Douglas. You are wrong about the petition. Signing it is as worthless and meaningless an act as voting. A stand up guy would know that. - ed

Lorraine Allen Hider I signed the petition ages ago David, with pleasure, nobody knows what it's like until they've been there. Keep heart David take care.

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.

Happy birthday to those born on this day, across the years, including
Jefferson Davis
We voted in Davis, snigger. Wish upon the star. The treaty recognises our kin. We attacked. Now that Gough has left, we can have a defence force. 
Deaths
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Veterans slam Australian of the Year David Morrison for $1000 an hour job with defence contractor

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, February 09, 2016 (6:27am)

I don’t think this Australian of the Year caper is working out so well:
AUSTRALIAN of the Year David Morrison has landed a $200,000 a year job as a diversity adviser to a major defence contractor in return for just 25 days work a year.

The cushy job with Deloitte Australia came after it was awarded a string of army contracts, including a $2.6 million deal to revamp its website during Mr Morrison’s time as chief of army.
The $1000-an-hour position has outraged some veterans who say Mr Morrison only got the role because of his time as military boss. “It’s jobs for the boys,” said Bruce Relph, NSW president of the Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans Association.
“It is disgusting he can land a job like that when ex-servicemen and women are left on the scrapheap.”
And there’s this:
FORMER chief of army David Morrison attempted to block a combat unit of Vietnam veterans from getting formal recognition that would allow them to qualify for higher pensions.

The Australian of the Year, as deputy army chief in 2008, argued against a proposal to formalise the “ghost platoon” which fought a decisive ambush against far superior forces at Thua Tich in Vietnam in 1969.
Documents obtained under Freedom of Information show Mr Morrison wrote in bold type that the proposal should not be approved. “Setting such a precedent in amending archives is unprecedented and attracts high risk,” he wrote.
Platoon veteran Don Tate said: “He has never done anything for the current serving soldiers and has done nothing for veterans.”
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Lt Col “Ken” speaks out over “Jedi Council” witch hunt

Miranda Devine – Monday, February 08, 2016 (1:37pm)

Hello everyone, I am the “Ken” that has been referred to by Miranda et al. I was a Lieutenant Colonel in Command of a Unit at the time of this matter. I appreciate the mainly positive support for the plight of others and myself on this Jedi Council issue.

I can assure you that none of the Army personnel caught up in this matter were afforded justice both from a Military Justice and Military Administrative action.  My own ADFIS (military police) interview lasted all of 10 minutes with only one question “what do you know of the Jedi Council?” My answer was “I do not know anything about it.” At that point the investigators took a statement from me as a Witness.  One of the investigators at one point said “Sir, I don’t even know why we’re here.”

I then went back to commanding my military Unit knowing that I had not done anything contrary to Defence Orders.  The AOTY GEN Morrison then made his famous speech and while doing this asserted that a LTCOL was involved.  This immediately identified me as there was only one LTCOL who had his office raided in Townsville.  This news spread quickly through the Army and I quickly began to feel betrayed and hopeless.

Because GEN Morrison had no evidence to apply Military Law he switched to Military Administrative Law.  Once again in my opinion GEN Morrison failed to follow the CDF’s own directive on Defence Inquiries by not conducting a proper Senior Officer led inquiry.  GEN Morrison then issued Notices to Show Causes for why we should not be discharged from the Army to all people who received an email from Fredrickson.  This was done without having asked the accused their version of events, showing them the evidence against them or applying human factors.

The bias was demonstrated to me when I heard GEN Morrison speak in Townsville the day after his speech to Army.  He said in front of all the senior officers and soldiers at Lavarack Barracks when referring to the accused Jedi Council, “these alleged individuals, and I use the word alleged because I have to, I will remove them from the ADF.” This was said before he had issued Show Causes to the alleged Jedi Council members and heard each person’s story.

We never had a chance when the AOTY was biased, unfair and most importantly, did not seem to care about many soldiers who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan on multiple tours of duty.  There is no excuse for the email that caused this issue and my heart goes out to the poor lady. However, consideration could have been given to the effect of war, PTSD and mental illness before casting out soldiers.

Let me finish by saying once again: There was no Jedi Council. It was just a small group of men sending crass emails.  There was one email that was deemed inexcusable and the person who sent it has been rightly charged and convicted.  Also please note that many, many people did not open or even ignored the emails.

Thank you for listening to the real version of events. 
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MEN IN WHITE COATS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, February 09, 2016 (1:39pm)

Another innovation from Sydney’s Lord Mayor: 
Cashed-up Clover Moore has found a wacky new way to liquidate the City’s assets – by splashing a whopping $80,000 of ratepayers’ money on a bar that serves just water and will only be open nine days …
On Thursday night, Ms Moore will open an “H2O water bar” at Paddington Reservoir Gardens on Oxford St – with waiters in white coats serving 17 different types of natural spring water free in test tubes.

image

The artist behind the project, Janet Laurence, hopes it will create awareness about water supplies …
“Water itself is a treasure and we don’t realise that,” she said. “Around the world the shortage of water is getting really quite drastic.” 
Sydney’s dams are currently 92.9 per cent full. Today’s Daily Telegraph editorial asks a reasonable question: “Has any idea or proposal to have crossed Clover Moore’s desk ever been immediately rejected because it is just too ridiculous?”
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CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSES CATS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, February 09, 2016 (1:19pm)

Breaking news from the Sydney Morning Herald:

image

Add it to the list.
(Via Andrew R.)
UPDATE. The coolest cats, of course, are swingin’ cats.
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CLINTONS SPOOKED

Tim Blair – Tuesday, February 09, 2016 (12:19pm)

Good news for Bernie Sanders, bad news for Hillary ahead of the New Hampshire primaries: 
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has erased Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s wide lead for the Democratic presidential nomination since the start of year, putting the two in a dead heat nationally, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Clinton leads Sanders 48 percent to 45 percent among Democratic voters, according to the poll of 512 Americans, conducted Feb. 2-5 following the Iowa caucus. The poll has a credibility interval of 5 percentage points. 
That sample size is tiny, but this and similar polls have switched Bill Clinton to combat mode: 
Mr. Clinton’s most pointed remarks may have been when he took aim at Sanders supporters who, he said, use misogynistic language in attacking Mrs. Clinton. He told the story of a female “progressive” blogger who defended Mrs. Clinton online through a pseudonym because, he said, the vitriol from Mr. Sanders’s backers was so unrelenting.
“She and other people who have gone online to defend Hillary, to explain why they supported her, have been subject to vicious trolling and attacks that are literally too profane often, not to mention sexist, to repeat.” Mr. Clinton, growing more demonstrative, added that the liberal journalist Joan Walsh had faced what he called “unbelievable personal attacks” for writing positively about Mrs. Clinton. 
Bill’s remarks were delivered to a surprisingly small audience: 
The junior high school’s small gym was not full, and only a handful of reporters showed up, at a time when campaign events are being flooded with dozens of national and international journalists. 
Via Drudge. Incidentally, Sanders spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union – “complete with a celebration at the local oil refinery’s recreation camp.”
UPDATE. More bad news for Hillary.
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MAN NEEDS A HOLIDAY

Tim Blair – Tuesday, February 09, 2016 (11:20am)

The unusual intensity of our new Australian of the Year leaves reader Dominic slightly unsettled:

image

It’s not as though the fellow doesn’t have reasons to smile: 
Australian of the Year David Morrison has landed a $200,000 a year job as a diversity advisor to a major defence contractor in return for just 25 days work a year. 
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QUICK TO BELIEVE, SLOW TO CORRECT

Tim Blair – Tuesday, February 09, 2016 (2:52am)

“Why is the ABC so quick to believe atrocity stories about our treatment of boat people?” asks Andrew Bolt. “Will every ABC program which reported the false rape claim also report the correction?”
No correction was reported on last night’s Media Watch, because Paul Barry’s lazy show wasn’t given the required extended notice: 
V BAD error by ABC. Too late for Media Watch tonight. Sorry. 
They don’t do last minute at Media Watch.
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This should be the end for Stuart Robert. Turnbull to lose a third minister

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (7:37pm)

Turnbull Government Minister Stuart Robert should be out of a job by the end of the week. A new document obtained by the Herald Sun suggest he’s not told the truth.
No minister may use his office to do business favours for mates.
But in 2014 Robert went on a trip to China with Paul Marks, a friend, Liberal donor and boss of two companies in which Robert has invested.
Robert witnessed a business deal being signed between Marks’ Nimrod Resources and the Chinese Government-owned Minmetals.
Robert claims he was in Beijing in a “private capacity”, but that is not how Minmetals, not surprisingly, saw it, promoting Robert’s visit on its website.
And now a document on http://www.gov.cn, a Chinese government website, makes clear that the Chinese Government did not consider Robert to be there in a “private capacity”, either. Indeed, it cites Robert speaking seemingly on behalf of the then Abbott Government in a meeting the next day with a Chinese minister. It also has him touting his mate’s business interests to the minister, and including in his “delegation” Nimrod executives.
From the document:

On the morning of 19 August, Vice-minister Wang Min of the Ministry of National Land and Resources met with Stuart Robert, Assistant Minister for Defence of Australia and his delegation…

The two parties conducted talk and exchanges on building good external investment environment, enhancing co-operation between mining institutions and further strengthening Sino-Australia co-operation in the mining field.

Stuart Robert said the Australian government welcomes Chinese mining companies to conduct exploration and development in Australia. China Minerals Exploration Corporation and Nimrod of Australia recently established a joint exploration technical committee.
This is a new exploration in the co-operation in mining resources between Chinese and Australian mining companies. It is also a new development of mining industry co-operation of the two counties…
China and Australia should further strengthen communications and continue to expand co-operation field.
Heads of relevant departments and bureaus and China Geological Survey, China Minerals Corporation and Nimrod Resources Pty Ltd, Australia attended the meeting.
Mal Brough and Jamie Briggs have already been forced out of the Turnbull Ministry. Robert will be the third. 
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This is the most exciting time to be an Australian going broke

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (4:48pm)

After so much faffing around and diversion from both sides of politics, a brutal reminder of the real challenges they are avoiding:
The Australian sharemarket has endured a $41 billion wipe-out, posting its worst day since September’s China-led slump, as financial stocks bore the brunt of wide-spread selling amid global investor jitters…
The close puts the benchmark at its lowest point since July 2013...
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More ABC smearing of Pell

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (1:43pm)

The ABC’s vilification of Cardinal George Pell continues.
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:

Via Jill Jacks, a disgraceful intro from host John Barron on The Drum last night:

“Cardinal George Pell’s doctor’s certificate has done the trick: he won’t have to appear in person at the child abuse royal commission.”
And it isn’t hard to see why panellist Judith Whelan is News Director at SMH (from 17:57):

Barron: “Judith, in your view, George Pell: is he the next Christopher Skase, sort of avoiding flying back to face the music, or in fact is he being unfairly demonised here because he has appeared not once but twice before this selfsame [?] royal commission?”
Whelan: “Oh, look, I would suspect this is a Christopher Skase-style situation.”
Note this also in the episode summary at the second link:
George Pell dodges giving evidence in Australia
The ABC, meant by law to be impartial, is at war against the Catholic Church and particularly its most senior representative here. What makes this vilification and persecution worse is that it is now waged by Australia’s biggest media organisation by far, without mercy or even a pretence of balance.
For more examples, listen to ABC 774 presenter Jon Faine yesterday. Or go here.
The ABC is out of control. Witness also its crusading on boat people, leading it to peddle untruths and harangue the Immigration Minister (witness Faine again, today).
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Anti-racists look more like they racists they once denounced

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (12:59pm)

As I’ve said before, anti-racism has become the racism it once mocked. A new racism is being imposed.
Brendan O’Neill gives an example:
A University of California document titled “Recognizing Microaggressions” lists various potentially offensive phrases that students and faculty should avoid using. It includes: “When I look at you, I don’t see color;” “There is only one race: the human race;” and “I don’t believe in race.”

It goes on to say that “colorblindness,” a refusal to “acknowledge race,” is about “denying the individual as a racial/cultural being.” I thought that was precisely the aim of the liberal project: to deny that individuals are “racial beings,” and in fact to fight against such a foul idea. What happened to the truism that race is a construct? Having gone through my life refusing to treat people as “racial beings,” must I now change tack, and think racially, if I want to be seen as good?
Fight the new racism. Start by opposing moves to change the constitution to divide Australians by race. And remember these famous words, once quoted by the Left and now tragically ignored:
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Turnbull in trouble. Will Morrison forgive?

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (10:42am)

Tony Walker in the Financial Review is the latest Fairfax reporter to see through Malcolm Turnbull, who has few supporters in the conservative media and badly needs the Left:
If a textbook case of how not to sell a big picture tax reform to the Australian people was needed, this has been it…
Turnbull ... is edging closer to a point of no return when it simply becomes impossible to do anything meaningful on the tax front beyond nibbling at the edges.
A tax debate shemozzle, for that is what it has become, raises questions anew about Turnbull’s political judgement, and perhaps more concerning his willingness to take political risks for the greater good…
Turnbull’s indecisiveness on this issue is in danger of not simply demoralising his own troops, but the country as well…
People understand that our good fortune which has been driven by the commodities boom, is at an end and something will have to give. That’s reality: what’s required is political spine to impart those sorts of hard truths in an election year…
Months of drift on the tax issue – of not ruling anything in or out, of differences of emphasis between Prime Minister and Treasurer – has left the country confused, and perhaps worse, a conflicted cabinet and party room.
Now Turnbull is casting around for other tax hits to fix the mounting government debt, when he really should be cutting spending.
Judith Sloan says its another fool’s errand:
Now that the rise in the GST has gone down the gurgler, the government is flapping about looking at other means of raising more tax revenue in order to offer what will inevitably be modest reductions in income tax…
Some armchair commentators think we can raise an additional $6bn a year in superannuation taxes and there will be no loss of efficiency or behavioural changes. Pigs might fly… This year, the government expects to raise $7.7bn in superannuation taxes. The argument is that an increase of close to 80 per cent in superannuation taxes can be imposed and no one will notice and no one should object…

Limiting the benefit of negative gearing could cause serious disruption to the residential real estate market…
The bottom line is all the suggestions are really six of one and half a dozen of other: they are all forms of income tax, just with different details… With federal government spending approaching $430bn this financial year, the obvious answer is to trim spending to fund tax cuts.
But arguing for spending cuts is exactly what Turnbull would rather avoid. Worse, it’s the Abbott approach that he helped to trash.
UPDATE
More trouble for Turnbull. First he embarrasses Treasurer Scott Morrison by backing off the planned GST rise that he had Morrison champion. Now he’s considering demoting a Morrison ally:
Malcolm Turnbull confronts a new test of his authority as pressure builds for sweeping changes to his ministry amid questions over the role of Human Services Minister Stuart Robert in helping a friend and Liberal Party donor sign a deal in China.
The Prime Minister has asked the head of his department to check Mr Robert’s conduct in a move to distance himself from the affair and provide room to sanction the minister…
Any move against Mr Robert appears certain to trigger a defence from his close friend Scott Morrison, who rubbished the revelations yesterday as a “shocking beat-up” given the minister had paid his own way to China to ­attend events while on leave.
UPDATE
Dennis Shanahan:
As Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has to be careful he doesn’t become the other Malcolm. Malcolm Fraser, that is, with a reputation as a do-nothing leader who squandered reform opportunities when the Coalition had big majorities and control of the Senate.
The Financial Review:
In the meantime, the question increasingly will be asked: what is the point of Mr Turnbull’s government?

(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Merkel tries a boat people plan that failed for Gillard

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (10:30am)

Angela Merkel is a very slow learner. Her “solution” to the refugee onslaught drowning Germany is an illogical proposal of the kind tried by the Gillard Government with zero success:
Ms Merkel said the only way to end the flood of illegal migration across the Aegean Sea into Greece – the main conduit by which more than 1 million refugees entered the EU last year – was to replace it with a legal avenue to migrants. That would involve the EU resettling allotments of mostly Syrian refugees directly from Turkey in return for Turkey halting the flow of migrants, Ms Merkel said.
The failed Australian precedent:
An expert panel headed up by former Defence Force Chief Angus Houston ...  says Australia’s refugee intake should be increased to dissuade asylum seekers from making the dangerous voyage from Indonesia. Prime Minister Julia Gillard says the Government has given in-principle support for all recommendations...
Which led to this announcement two weeks later, in August 2012:
Australia will boost its refugee intake by more than 6,000 people per year under changes announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard today.
The result was record arrivals in the first 11 weeks of 2013:
1,000 more people have arrived by boat so far this year than over the same period last year...
So why will Merkel’s plan fail, as Gillard’s did?
Because flying over, say, 20,000 more legal refugees to Germany offers nothing to the other 1 million trying to come over. It especially offers nothing to the majority of those people who are not really refugees and know they’d never qualify for a legal entry. They will still keep coming.
So will Turkey be grateful enough for Germany’s gesture to stop the flood of illegal immigrants trying to get to Greece?
Only if the price is high enough. Germany could be bled dry, and Turkey will demand a lot more that just homes for refugees from Syria.
Meanwhile, of course, more legal “refugees” does not actually address the real problem facing Germany - the importation of a cultural clash.
UPDATE
Britain is again dealing with the kind of cultural clash that surfaced notoriously in Rotherham. This time, also in Yorkshire:
Twelve men who sexually exploited a vulnerable teenage girl in West Yorkshire have received jail sentences of up to 20 years. Eleven were jailed at Bradford Crown Court after being convicted of raping the girl in Keighley from the age of 13....
Yasser Kabir, Faisal Khan, Israr Ali, Sufyan Ziarab, Tauqeer Hussain, Khalid Raja Mahmood, Saqib Younis, Hussain Sardar, Bilal Ziarab, Nasir Khan, Mohammed Akram and Zain Ali were all jailed at Bradford Crown Court.

And:

A case of female genital mutilation is reported in England every 109 minutes, official health figures show. Some 2421 instances of mutilation were reported from April 2015 to September 2015 – the latest full six months of figures published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre.
UPDATE
Germany is doing a Gillard, but Austria recommends the Abbott solution:
The Chancellor of Austria has called for all migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe to be sent back to Turkey. Chancellor Werner Faymann said border police should save everyone trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach the EU, but then immediately deport them.
Faymann is of the Left and last year attacked Hungary for putting up a giant fence along its border.
More proof, then, that the difference between a Leftist and a conservative is often just time. 
===

Or are women excused?

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (8:40am)

Female celebrities asking a male journalist to strip is fine:
Male celebrity asking a female journalist for a date is shocking:

Can someone please explain the new politics of victimhood? Can someone reconcile the double standards?
UPDATE
Brendan O’Neill on the Chris Gayle “scandal”:
Gayle is not merely the victim of an over-reaction. His shaming speaks to the ascendancy of a sexless, joy-killing climate of anti-human suspicion.
===

A picture of warmist scientists alighting from gravy train

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (8:10am)

All these people are ”climate scientists from around the country” protesting against the CSIRO sacking global warming scientists surplus to requirements.
Get the impression that there are indeed more of them than any sane country could possibly need? That warmism is actually an industry?
UPDATE
A question from Jo Nova:
If climate change is solved and beyond debate, who needs climate scientists?
Don Aitkin, former vice chancellor of the University of Canberra, asks the same question:
If the science is settled, why do we need all these people working at it?
Aitkin gives a history of the warming scare and concludes:
This is probably a good place to say, firmly, that in my opinion the AGW scare is not a scam, a hoax or a conspiracy. It is much more complex than that. If you want an analogy, it would be the Dutch tulip mania of the 1630s, the sort of popular delusion that infects every society from time to time. This one has infected the Western world, though not Russia, China or India.
And Aitkin could be describing some of the climate scientists in the picture at the first link above:
But the Climate Botherers — a few climate scientists, a few politicians and a noisy league of single-issue lobby groups and NGOs — keep going with their scare, because there’s a congregation of believers out there for whom it is real and important. And the media love it. It spells danger, headlines and graphic photos of steam coming out of large structure, parched earth, floods, ice, polar bears, and fire. Everything can be linked to ‘climate change’ and hardly anyone in the media steps back to ask real questions. There aren’t many left in the media to do investigative reporting anyway.
In the ten years have passed nothing scary has happened to climate.The Botherers no longer tell us that doom is around the corner; it has moved, and is now around the 2050 corner. There is still a contingent of believers, who fasten on to ‘climate change’ and what we must do to forestall it, and most of them are uninterested in reading or hearing anything that is critical of their belief. But most people just get on with their lives, and the political parties are not talking as much abut it as they did several years ago. The climate models have proved to run far too hot, climate sensitivity looks like being around 1 or a little more. 
===

Clinton struggles even against a socialist

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (7:57am)

Terrible news for a terrible candidate:
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has erased Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s wide lead for the Democratic presidential nomination since the start of year, putting the two in a dead heat nationally, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Clinton leads Sanders 48 percent to 45 percent among Democratic voters, according to the poll of 512 Americans, conducted Feb. 2-5 following the Iowa caucus… Democrats had been supporting Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin at the beginning of the year.
For a socialist to draw level with Clinton shows two things: she’s a lousy candidate and the American education system has succeeded in whitewashing socialism to a generation of young voters.
(Warning: note the ludicrously small sample.) 
===

Government-funded racism

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (6:55am)

Former Labor Minister Gary Johns on a racist government program - one that hands out loans to people of just one “race”, regardless of need:
[T]he Indigenous Home Ownership program ...  has provided housing loans to Aborigines since 1975.... Indigenous Business Australia administers IHOP.
Compared with mainstream finance loans, the loans offered by IBA have a lower deposit requirement, a longer standard loan term and a standard introductory interest rate of 4.5 per cent, and 3 per cent and a lower deposit threshold for eligible low-income earners.
The [Australian National Audit Office] has made profound criticisms of IBA and IHOP:

- IBA lending “is not directed at low-income earners”. - IBA has increasingly “approved loans to medium and higher income earners and lower-risk customers”.
- IBA does not verify that its customers cannot access mainstream finance.
- In 2012-13, 59 per cent of loans were to customers earning over the income of the “target” group....
In plain English the auditor strongly suggests that government shut down this program.
A strong government would not only take the advice of the auditor on IHOP but would authorise a similar ANAO report on IBA’s business loans program…
IBA’s 2013-14 annual report shows that 31 per cent of businesses are still failing after three years and $14.7 million (or 20 per cent of the loan portfolio) has been written off as doubtful debts.
Just imagine if the loans were issued at market rate…
The only people benefiting from these schemes are public servants who hand out the money and people in the Aboriginal industry, also mostly public servants, who are the recipients of the benefits, or their non-Aboriginal partners.
UPDATE
More race-based government funding, regardless of need. This time it’s a government grant:
ARC Discovery Indigenous Scheme...
This scheme aims to provide funding to support research programs led by an Indigenous Australian researcher and build research capacity of higher degree research and early career researchers…
Funding between $30,000 and $500,000 per year is available. A project may be awarded funding for three consecutive years…
A proposal must nominate at least one Chief Investigator (CI) and the first-named CI must be an Indigenous Australian researcher as defined in E2 of the Funding Rules and will be the project leader. ..
Eligible activities include ...  Stipends to support Indigenous Australian Honours students…
Anyone who believes such race-based preference does not lead to abuses is completely blind to human nature.
Meanwhile, out bush the real problems remain, now more a consequence of the culture we are too quick to valorise:
The target of getting all Indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities into early childhood education was missed in 2013, with just 85% instead of the target of 95% enrolled.
The 2015 update, which Abbott described as “profoundly disappointing”, said the targets of closing the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation, halving the gap in literacy and numeracy by 2018, and halving the gap in employment outcomes by 2018 were not on track. Literacy and numeracy rates had not improved since 2008 and Indigenous employment had fallen.
UPDATE
On Sunday I noted a suspicious failure of reports to describe the two groups of people who clashed violently in Perth in the early hours after Australia Day, leaving one man dead:
Normally you’d expect to be given some descriptors of the two “groups” to help you understand the dynamics of this violence ...
Two weeks later we are finally told:
The boy is one of three Aboriginal youths charged with the murder of Paddy Slater, a 26-year-old indigenous man.

That is a very belated revelation. How often have we seen the media suppress relevant ethnic and religious descriptors when reporting crimes? How much have public opinions been shaped by this failure to report? 
===

A new star rises

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (6:40am)

image
The profile is by a hostile and condescending Leftist who does not interrogate her own biases and sometimes cartoonish assumptions. Yet Rita Panahi shines through. 
The Panahi style:
image
Much. much more here. 
===

Turning hurt feelings into a weapon against free speech

Andrew Bolt February 09 2016 (6:29am)

Steve Kates on the outrageous attack on free speech that is at the heart of the Racial Discrimination Act, which licences certain people to sue for their hurt feelings:
18C has to go. It is obvious to anyone with common sense that 18C is unfair, unjust and inequitable that the law should allow someone merely to say they were offended by what someone else had said to then be potentially in line to collect thousands of dollars in compensation, while the person who has supposedly done the offending must endure the stigma of having been pulled before some kind of judicial body for something they said, while having to spend both time and money to see their case dealt with, even if they are ultimately absolved.
The latest use of this law - against unemployed students and academics - is in my opinion absurd and oppressive, to say the least. I have since been told of another case now on foot, the details of which I cannot yet pass on but which prove all over again what a menace this law really is. 
===

Media Watch attacks correct story on Abbott meeting

Andrew Bolt February 08 2016 (9:54pm)

A particularly pathetic report from the ABC’s Media Watch tonight. It reveals that although the Daily Telegraph reported Tony Abbott having a meeting with Barack Obama at an “exclusive” dinner, the truth is that - er - Tony Abbott met Barack Obama at an exclusive lunch.
The desperation to trash the Telegraph and Abbott is clear. But only straw men are hurt, with the host Paul Barry sternly offering corrections to statements not made. The meeting might actually have lasted as little as minute, gloated Barry, before admitting it could well have been several minutes longer. This “exclusive” and “private” dinner was actually attended by 100 people, frowned Barry, not adding that the attendees were influential and well-connected guests of a powerful influence-broker in what was unquestionably an “exclusive” lunch, and so private that Barry could find only one blurry picture of the guests, as they emerged from the venue.
If Barry had wanted to pounce on real errors and bias in reporting he might well have looked closer to home - the ABC’s peddling of false claims that a five-year-old boy in detention in Nauru was raped. 
===

SPILLY SEASON

Tim Blair – Monday, February 09, 2015 (3:51am)

For the Prime Minister, a crushing Newspoll arrives at the worst possible moment: 
Tony Abbott will enter this morning’s crucial party room meeting to face a verdict on his leadership under the shadow of the Coalition’s worst polling figures since his potential rival Malcolm Turnbull led the Liberal party in 2009.
The latest Newspoll, taken exclusively at the weekend for The Australian, also reveals that Mr Abbott is asking his Liberal colleagues to re-endorse him with his personal approval at record lows and the most dismal ranking for any prime minister since Paul Keating in 1994. 
There is only one positive in this poll for Abbott, and even that points to further divisions within the Liberal partyshould a spill occur and Turnbull become Prime Minister: 
The poll also finds that Mr Turnbull is the least popular of the three among Liberal voters, with Mr Abbott the top choice among the party faithful, followed by Ms Bishop. 
Fun times ahead, people. Let’s hear from Wayne Swan, a veteran of governmental leadership battles: 
Imagine how quickly Libs would have fallen apart if they had to deal with a REAL economic crisis. 
Not a problem. They would simply have raided the massive surplus left to them by a previous treasurer. Right, Wayne?
===

LEADING IN REVERSE

Tim Blair – Monday, February 09, 2015 (2:47am)

One deadly declaration hangs above the chilling prospect of a Coalition government ruled by Malcolm Turnbull. In October 2009, then opposition leader Turnbull announced: “I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.”
That should give Australia its clearest indication of which way our nation may be headed if votes fall the wrong way this morning. Turnbull is a Prius-driving multi-millionaire warmy – the sort of person who, having made his own fortune, now wants to put economic barricades in front of anyone else attempting to do the same thing. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'LEADING IN REVERSE'
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CLEMENTINE HAS THE POWER

Tim Blair – Monday, February 09, 2015 (2:40am)

Fearless Fairfax frightbat Clementine Ford: 
I’m frequently accused of being bitter, twisted, damaged, angry, mentally deranged and hysterical. 
Strictly speaking, those aren’t accusations. Clem continues: 
The instantaneous reach of Twitter has made it possible for women to have these conversations in ways that can no longer be discounted or silenced. That’s power. 
It’s true! Before Twitter, women barely made it to their third or fourth hour of conversation before some man turned up and ruined everything by, I don’t know, asking them to pay the phone bill or something.
(Via MonsterDome)
===

TO PROTECT AND SWERVE

Tim Blair – Monday, February 09, 2015 (1:52am)

A record 19 police cars have been hit by civilian drivers during New Hampshire’s exceptionally snowy winter: 
Officials said it’s amazing that no one has been killed in the accidents on New Hampshire roads. They said the number of cruisers that have been struck since November is unprecedented, and while police are looking at ways to improve safety, they said they need the help of the public.
The 19 crashes represent a 300 percent increase over the rate of crashes seen in the past 10 years. 
Five of the struck police cars were write-offs. As a noted authority on the art and science of snow driving, I find these numbers appalling.
===

LYIN’ BRIAN CHOPPED

Tim Blair – Monday, February 09, 2015 (12:27am)

According to his own network, US NBC anchorman and managing editor Brian Williams is “one of the most trusted journalists of our time.” According to Williams himself, however, he’s a total fraud who has been repeating a massive lie for more than a decade.
Well, that’s not exactly how Williams puts it. Last week, after finally being caught out falsely claiming he’d been aboard a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire in Iraq in 2003, Williams blamed “the fog of memory over 12 years” for his chopper whopper.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'LYIN’ BRIAN CHOPPED'
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YEARS OF SUCKAGE

Tim Blair – Monday, February 09, 2015 (12:21am)

An honest admission from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo: 
Twitter’s chief executive has acknowledged that the company “sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve sucked at it for years”, in a leaked memo …
“It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day”, Costolo continues. “We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.” 
TrollDelay™ has always worked for me.
UPDATE. If Twitter cleans up its act, the ABC will lose crucial news sources.
===

Bill Shorten bet on Turnbull, and loses big

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (3:10pm)

Opposition leader Bill Shorten has just made a complete idiot of himself.
First, he moved a motion of no-confidence in Tony Abbott after only a few questions in Question Time, wasting a great chance to embarrass the Prime Minister. It was as if he hadn’t done his homework.
But worse was to come.
To back up his motion, he gave a speech attacking ... Malcolm Turnbull. He had clearly thought Turnbull would win this morning, and hadn’t had the wit to change tactics.
When this was pointed out to him by Christopher Pyne, Shorten tried to wing it. His speech degenerated in the ramble of complaints.
Complete joke.
The minute the Liberals can attack Shorten the way they’ve attacked each other, more voters will see how totally unprepared he is for high office.
UPDATE
Tanya Plibersek was little better. She started by whingeing about poll figures for Abbott. If Parliament passed no confidence motions in Prime Ministers every time they got bad poll figures, Gillard would not have lasted six months.
And the sheer hide of Shorten and Plibersek protesting about leadership disunity and treachery. Shorten! The man who knifed two Labor leaders in just three years!
UPDATE
A fired-up Abbott then goes Shorten like a man celebrating the new power in his limbs. Liberal hearts would have lifted. 
===

Abbott admits mistakes, shows he’s changing

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (1:39pm)

Tony Abbott is changing.
At his press conference this afternoon he says:
- his government bit off more than it could chew with the last Budget.
- it will pick fewer fights.
- it will drop some of those things that simply can’t get through the Senate
- “I’ve tried my colleague’s patience”.
- changed the way staff appointments are made.
- at least every two montns the chairs of backbench committees will meet him.
- every month at least the full cabinet will discuss matters.
- “All of us have had a good long hard look at ourselves.”
- “This has been a very chastening experience.”
===

How can Channel 9 punch a woman like this?

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (1:29pm)

How many other women in this country have been subjected to the savage cruelty that Channel 9 has heaped on Gina Rinehart.
Yes, I know she is very rich. Yes, I know she is a conservative - a crime in polite circles.
But she is also a human being. A woman.
I should declare that I consider her a friend. I also admire her energy and vision, and the fact that she has created jobs for thousands of Australians. And, for the record, I again disclose that she is also an important shareholder of Network 10, which runs the News Corp-produced The Bolt Report.
But she could be an ABC director and I’d say the same: this is just mean.

Tad Watroba, executive director of Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, notes:
Despite repeatedly bringing it to Nine CEO David Gyngell’s attention, many scenes broadcast last night were fictitious, unfounded or grossly distorted, and some simply never occurred.
I worked for Lang Hancock and have been with Mrs Rinehart’s company Hancock Prospecting since 1991 so I have a good grasp on what actually took place…
Since starting promotion of the show, Channel 9 has not bothered to fact-check anything despite repeated offers when people have pointed out mistakes.
Sadly Channel 9 has seemingly gone out of its way to cause undue damage and upset to those currently living and the memory of those no longer with us.
Among the glaring errors: 
- Despite the portrayal, Mr Hancock and Mrs Rinehart had a loving, father/daughter relationship, and were together throughout the funeral of Hope Hancock, and to portray otherwise is wrong.
- Mrs Rinehart was very close to her mother and did not continue to holiday or honeymoon in the United States when her mother was dying as the show has suggested. That is a disgusting implication. There was no phone call to Mrs Rinehart to come home during her short honeymoon.
- Mrs Rinehart did not participate in or condone doing deals with Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, nor did she or her father endorse a presentation to an investor group using a nuclear device for anti environmental intent. That never happened.
- Mr Hancock never told Mrs Rinehart that no one could ever love her, or that her husband never loved her. The scene was made up and untrue. Her relationship with Mr Frank Rinehart was very loving, and her mother loved her son in law also.
- Nor was there a scene where Mr Hancock said terrible things about his daughter’s appearance. 
I wasn’t there. I do not know.
Was Channel Nine there? Does it know the truth of the savage claims it portrays as true?
Whatever, this is her side of the story.
UPDATE
Gina Rinehart in the 1990s:
image
===

Abbott survives

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (10:51am)

Tony Abbott survives the spill motion: 61 to 39.
He won more votes than he feared but fewer than he’d like.
All that damage caused by Malcolm Turnbull and others - for this?
You would assume Abbott has been given a last chance of some months.
But Turnbull may do this maths:
Number of ministers, parliamentary secretaries and whips who were obliged to vote against the spill: 35. (Let’s assume none, even Turnbull, ratted in the semi-secret ballot.)
Number of ministers, parliamentary secretaries and whips who would, if allowed, vote for Turnbull: say, 13:
Add the 13 to the 39 who voted for the spill: 52.
That is a narrow majority of the 102 Liberal MPs.
But did all the 39 who voted for the spill want Turnbull? I know some preferred Julie Bishop. There there’s the one informal vote and the Queensland MP, Ross Vasta, who couldn’t make it to the meeting.
So what’s Turnbull’s next move? What’s Abbott’s?
UPDATE
Tony Abbott on TV:
The Liberal Party has dealt with the spill motion and now this matter is behind us. We want to end the disunity and the uncertainty which destroyed two Labor governments and give you the good government that you deserve. 
When you elect a government, when you elect a prime minister, you deserve to keep that government and that prime minister until you have a chance to change your mind. I love this country and I will do my best to help this country succeed.
He spoke after this tip from the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy:
image
Never mind. How about this prediction, then?:
image
If wishes were fishes…
One problem with all of us in political journalism now making predictions is that we become tempted to do all we can to make our predictions come true and so seem a seer.
Will the commentators who tipped Abbott was finished now feel the need to prove themselves right? Will they give Abbott a fair go?
UPDATE
My take, as put on Channel 10 this morning.
All this destabilising and backstabbing - and for what? A 61 to 39 defeat that simply weakens the government and the party?
Malcolm Turnbull could have stopped this nonsense dead, and chose not to. He could have waited, but put ambition first. 
===

How much of the warming was just fiddling the figures?

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (10:44am)

Christopher Booker raises serious questions about possible fiddling of temperature records:
When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified. 
Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming…
Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.
Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada (51 degrees W) and the heart of Siberia (87 degrees E). Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded.
This has surprised no one more than Traust Jonsson, who was long in charge of climate research for the Iceland met office… Jonsson was amazed to see how the new version completely “disappears” Iceland’s “sea ice years” around 1970, when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country’s economy.... Of much more serious significance, however, is the way this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record – for reasons GHCN and Giss have never plausibly explained – has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known. This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time. 
(Thanks to reader Colin and many others.) 
===

The ABC calls me a guru only when I criticise Abbott

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (10:33am)

I must reluctantly agree with Mark Day: 
(T)o his credit, [Paul Barry on Media Watch] did raise a… matter that I suggest is worthy of a full-scale internal ­review within the ABC’s news ­division — the decision to lead the morning news on the revelation that columnist Andrew Bolt had poured scorn on the Prime Minister. Since when did a columnist’s viewpoint become national news? It must have been very flattering for Bolt, but it was a demonstration of insane news judgment.
Well, I wouldn’t mind so much if the ABC actually treated all my opinions as national news, and not just the ones that suit its staff’s political agenda.
Here are two it could use to lead tomorrow’s news bulletins:
Andrew Bolt says Bill Shorten is not fit to lead the country.
Andrew Bolt reveals there’s been virtually no global warming for 16 years.  
Why choose only my criticism of Tony Abbott?
UPDATE
Dealing with Ita Buttrose’s claim that my criticism of Abbott’s knighthoods caused this confrontation:
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Liberals revolt against the Turnbull takeover of their party

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (7:33am)

As I warned in my column this morning:
Night after night on 2GB I’ve been rung by livid Liberals threatening to quit the party if Turnbull is made leader… 
To many, Turnbull is seen as too far to the Left – a fake who once toyed with joining the Labor Party and still touts many of Labor’s pet causes, from global warming alarmism to same sex marriage.
They haven’t donated to and fought for the Liberal Party just to have it hijacked by Labor-lite – by a man whose home page doesn’t even include the word “Liberal” or show the Liberal logo. They would rather lose an election than their principles. 
Newspoll confirms:
While the poll showed the Government at a crisis levels with a two party preferred vote of 57/43 in favour of Labor, the Coalition party faithful still ranked Mr Abbott as preferred leader over Malcolm Turnbull by a margin of 54/40. 
Members revolt against the looming challenge:
The Daily Telegraph can reveal MPs across the nation have received correspondence from long time Liberal party members vowing to tear up their memberships if Mr Abbott is rolled. 
Multiple Liberal MPs received close to 300 emails, per electorate, from the party faithful at the weekend with support for Prime Minister Tony Abbott running at “20-1"…

West Australian MP Ian Goodenough, who hails from Julie Bishop heartland, said his constituents had demanded Mr Abbott remains Prime Minister.
“My emails are running at a ratio of 20 to 1 support for the Prime Minister and Facebook is around 10 to 1,’’ he told The Daily Telegraph last night.
Mr Goodenough revealed he received about 250 emails on the issue at the weekend…
South Australian MP Tony Pasin said he had received more correspondence on the leadership issue than any other issue since he has been in parliament.
He confirmed most were from Liberal Party voters warning against a change in leadership…
Victorian MP Dan Tehan will support Mr Abbott on the advice of his constituents after he revealed last week that “the feedback I have received is that people want a government who is united.”
Senator Arthur Sinodinos was believed to have received widespread backlash after he confirmed he would support the leadership spill yesterday morning… Conservative commentators Alan Jones and Ray Hadley have received dozens of emails and phone calls during their 2GB radio programs from Liberal supporters voicing anger at the potential change in leadership.
Tim Blair on Turnbull:
He’s the Liberal who you can vote for when you don’t really want to vote Liberal.
Or he’s the Liberal you like when you really are going to vote Labor anyway.
UPDATE
Not happy with how your MP voted?
john.alexander.mp@aph.gov.au karen.andrews.mp@aph.gov.aumenzies@aph.gov.au (Kevin Andrews) Bob.Baldwin.MP@aph.gov.auB.Billson.MP@aph.gov.au Bronwyn.Bishop.MP@aph.gov.auJulie.Bishop.MP@aph.gov.au Jamie.Briggs.MP@aph.gov.auRussell.Broadbent.MP@aph.gov.au Mal.Brough.MP@aph.gov.auscott.buchholz.mp@aph.gov.au Steven.Ciobo.MP@aph.gov.auDavid.Coleman.MP@aph.gov.au Peter.Dutton.MP@aph.gov.auWarren.Entsch.MP@aph.gov.au Paul.Fletcher.MP@aph.gov.aujosh.frydenberg.mp@aph.gov.au Teresa.Gambaro.MP@aph.gov.auIan.Goodenough.MP@aph.gov.au natasha.griggs.mp@aph.gov.auAlex.Hawke.MP@aph.gov.au Sarah.Henderson.MP@aph.gov.auPeter.Hendy.MP@aph.gov.au J.Hockey.MP@aph.gov.auLuke.Howarth.MP@aph.gov.au Greg.Hunt.MP@aph.gov.auEric.Hutchinson.MP@aph.gov.au Steve.Irons.MP@aph.gov.auDennis.Jensen.MP@aph.gov.au ewen.jones.mp@aph.gov.auMichael.Keenan.MP@aph.gov.au craig.kelly.mp@aph.gov.auAndrew.Laming.MP@aph.gov.au Craig.Laundy.MP@aph.gov.au Farrer@aph.gov.au(Sussan Ley) Ian.Macfarlane.MP@aph.gov.au Nola.Marino.MP@aph.gov.auLouise.Markus.MP@aph.gov.au russell.matheson.mp@aph.gov.auKaren.McNamara.MP@aph.gov.au Scott.Morrison.MP@aph.gov.auAndrew.Nikolic.MP@aph.gov.au Higgins@aph.gov.au (Kelly O’Dwyer) Tony.Pasin.MP@aph.gov.au Christian.Porter.MP@aph.gov.aujane.prentice.mp@aph.gov.au Melissa.Price.MP@aph.gov.auC.Pyne.MP@aph.gov.au Rowan.Ramsey.MP@aph.gov.auDon.Randall.MP@aph.gov.au Andrew.Robb.MP@aph.gov.auStuart.Robert.MP@aph.gov.au wyatt.roy.mp@aph.gov.auphilip.ruddock.MP@aph.gov.au Fiona.Scott.MP@aph.gov.auLuke.Simpkins.MP@aph.gov.au Tony.Smith.MP@aph.gov.auAndrew.Southcott.MP@aph.gov.au S.Stone.MP@aph.gov.auAnn.Sudmalis.MP@aph.gov.au Michael.Sukkar.MP@aph.gov.auAngus.Taylor.MP@aph.gov.au dan.tehan.mp@aph.gov.aualan.tudge.mp@aph.gov.au Malcolm.Turnbull.MP@aph.gov.aubert.vanmanen.mp@aph.gov.au Nickolas.Varvaris.MP@aph.gov.auRoss.Vasta.MP@aph.gov.au Brett.Whiteley.MP@aph.gov.auLucy.Wicks.MP@aph.gov.au Matt.Williams.MP@aph.gov.auRick.Wilson.MP@aph.gov.au Jason.Wood.MP@aph.gov.auken.wyatt.mp@aph.gov.au
(Via Jo Nova.) 
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Howard backs Abbott as Newspoll shows crash

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (6:49am)

John Howard was way behind in his first term, too:
“I have been approached by quite a number of MPs to get my view and I have told them essentially that the commonsense reaction is to reject the spill motion and give the Prime Minister some time,” Mr Howard told The Australian. 
The Liberal Party’s most successful leader in recent years, who had Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull as ministers in his government, admitted that “clearly changes are needed” from Mr Abbott. “But given his achievement in leading the Liberals back to government in such a short time he should be given more time to make those changes,” he said.
Past comebacks:
Paul Keating in 1993 and John Howard in 2001 faced record low polling, adverse public reaction to budget and policy measures, internal dissent and the prospect of massive election losses. 
Both men went on to win their next election and, in Howard’s case, the next two elections to become Australia’s second-longest serving prime minister. This was a man who, as opposition leader in 1988, was written off as “Mr 18%” and asked on the cover of The ­Bulletin magazine why he bothered with politics…
In January 1992, Labor ­[under Keating] recorded its lowest Newspoll ­primary vote on record, 34 per cent, compared with the ­Coalition’s 52 per cent… In February 1993, just before the election, satisfaction with Keating as prime minister was 26 per cent and dissatisfaction was running at 63 per cent…
In early 2001, the Howard government was reeling from reaction to the GST, high petrol prices, a loss of faith with the public, state election losses in Western ­Australia and Queensland, and the St Patrick’s day massacre in the federal electorate of Ryan, which the Liberals lost with a 10 per cent swing against them… In February 2001, the Liberal primary vote was 31 per cent. It dropped to 27 per cent in March and to a low of 26 per cent before the budget in May.
But Abbott is in trouble - no wonder, after the past two weeks:
The latest Newspoll, taken ­exclusively at the weekend for The Australian, also reveals that Mr ­Abbott is asking his Liberal ­colleagues to re-endorse him with his personal approval at record lows and the most dismal ranking for any prime minister since Paul Keating in 1994. 
The Newspoll reveals that voters would overwhelmingly prefer Mr Turnbull or deputy leader Julie Bishop to be prime minister instead of Mr Abbott.
However, the poll also finds that Mr Turnbull is the least popular of the three among Liberal ­voters, with Mr Abbott the top choice among the party faithful, followed by Ms Bishop…
Mr Turnbull’s support is overwhelmingly among Labor voters, where he has a dazzling lead of 83 per cent to 9 per cent over Mr Abbott. But Liberal supporters back Mr Abbott over Mr Turnbull by a solid 54 per cent to 40 per cent… In two-party terms, based on preference flows from the last election, the government’s vote has crashed to 43 per cent with Labor on 57 per cent. It is the worst result for the Coalition since November 2009, in the final days of Mr Turnbull’s 14-month leadership.
Note: this is a poll of fewer than 1200 people.
UPDATE
Samantha Maiden tweets:
Arthur Sinodinos is the brains behind this entire spill operation. PMO treated him with utter disrespect, seemingly blind to the danger.
UPDATE
Should we blame Abbott? 
The Baird government has overcome the dysfunction of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s federal government and increased its support over the last three months, according to the latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll. The Baird Coalition’s two-party preferred vote increased by 2 per cent to 56 per cent using preference flows from the 2011 election.
Then there’s the coulds and mights and steam-venting:
Eight per cent of people who voted for the Liberals at the 2011 election said the performance of the Abbott government had changed their voting intention for the March 28 election. But 19 per cent said that if Mr Abbott was replaced as Prime Minister it would change their vote at the state poll.
Really?
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and John.) 
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Turnbull can save the Liberals … if he isn’t Turnbull

Andrew Bolt February 09 2015 (6:35am)

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MAYBE Malcolm Turnbull could indeed save the Liberals if he replaces Tony Abbott as Prime Minister at today’s meeting of Liberal MPs.

But that’s only if this arrogant and self-serving man stopped being the Malcolm Turnbull we actually know.
Is that possible? Really?
And the real danger is that the change still won’t work, leaving the Liberals torn to bits for nothing.
Yesterday’s Galaxy poll already suggested Turnbull would still lose an election to Labor, 49 per cent to 51, and that’s before he’s come under any pressure from Labor and the anti-Abbott ABC.
Night after night on radio I’ve been rung by livid Liberals threatening to quit the party if Turnbull is made leader.
Even the Liberal MP moving today’s motion to put Abbott’s leadership to a vote, Luke Simpkins, warned colleagues last week that Liberal members revolted against Turnbull the last time he led them.
(Read full article here.)  
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Labor ditches one green scare from fear of another

Andrew Bolt February 08 2015 (10:18pm)

One old green scare is finally killed off by a new green scare. But credit Jay Weatherill for at least having the honesty to see that we can’t really slash emissions without nuclear power:
LABOR South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has announced a Royal Commission into the state’s potential for the state to lift its involvement in the nuclear industry. 
The commission, the first of its kind in Australia, would explore opportunities and risks to the state’s involvement in mining, enrichment, energy and storage phases for peaceful use.
Findings may prompt changes to the Australian Labor Party’s nuclear policy which expressly forbids the establishment of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia. Mr Weatherill said his antinuclear view had changed recently to an open one in light of the impact of climate change.
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ABC quotes some pet troll to attack Abbott

Andrew Bolt February 08 2015 (7:14pm)

How low can the ABC go? In tonight’s main TV news bulletin it quoted anonymous twitter abuse of Tony Abbott by someone known only as “JS”.
No one knows who this anonymous person is, or why their opinion is worth more than that of any other Australian. The reporter just fished the comment out of the sewer to attack Abbott.
Would the ABC have ever quoted anonymous Twitter abuse of Julia Gillard?
This is not reporting but editorialising by proxy.
UPDATE
ABC Queensland state politics reporter Melinda Howells congratulates JS for having his anti-Abbott tweet broadcast by the ABC:
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The ABC at times seems just a bigger version of the Left’s Twittersphere. The easier interaction between the ABC, Greens, Labor, activists and Leftist trolls is unmistakable.
(Thanks to reader Peter H.) 
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Paying piper for slander begs answers

Piers Akerman – Saturday, February 08, 2014 (10:56pm)

“OUR” ABC and the late US senator Joseph McCarthy have a lot in common. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Paying piper for slander begs answers'
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It’s high time to end drug culture

Miranda Devine – Saturday, February 08, 2014 (10:57pm)

THREE days after Philip Seymour Hoffman died with a ­needle in his arm, Hollywood was putting up giant billboards spruiking its drug-glamourising Oscar prospect Wolf Of Wall Street.
The words “because it’s awesome!” appear over an image of Leo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill in one of the many scenes in which they are high as kites and having a whale of a time.
The “awesome” quote comes from DiCaprio’s real life character, Wall Street fraudster Jordan Belfort: “I use Xanax to stay focused, Ambien to sleep, pot to mellow out, ­cocaine to wake up and morphine … because it’s awesome.”
Young men in one Sydney movie theatre could be heard saying: “This is sick” (excellent), as Belfort and pals snorted ­cocaine, popped pills, smoked crack and screwed hookers.
This is a problem, in case you haven’t noticed.Illicit drug use is rife as Baby Boomers take their habits into old age and Gen Y launches a new era of excess.
And the problem, for some reason, is now worse in Australia than in any other developed country, according to a 2012 UN report.
In Sydney, cocaine busts have reportedly doubled in a year, with mothers in Double Bay restaurants snorting lines in the toilet before the school run.
A study in the Medical Journal of Australia last September found ambulance call-outs for crystal meth, aka ice, had tripled in two years.
When the Howard government launched its Tough on Drugs strategy in 1997, drug use plummeted for the first time in three decades. Best of all, teenage drug experimentation fell, according to the Australian Secondary School Students ­Alcohol and Drug Survey.
But then a new laissez faire government arrived, and the figures show drug use rose steadily from 2008.
We now demonise the legal drugs tobacco and alcohol. Yet we turn a blind eye to the illicit drugs which are increasingly glamourised by Hollywood and pop culture.
You can’t smoke a cigarette on the silver screen but the Wolf of Wall Street can snort coke out of a prostitute’s anus.  If it’s not DiCaprio giving new meaning to crack cocaine, it’s Miley Cyrus singing to her tween fans about Molly, aka MDMA.
There’s something seriously wrong when the medical ­establishment is biased ­towards legalising drugs while railing against alcohol.
Last week, after Hoffman died from heroin, Australia’s chief drug liberaliser, Dr Alex Wodak, was still using the good name of St Vincent’s Hospital, where he is “emeritus consultant” to downplay the dangers. Heroin, he told the ABC, could be used recreationally.
“It’s a risk, no doubt about it,” Dr Wodak said. “But there are also people who go on and use and have very functional, creative, significant lives where they contribute to the community and continue to use heroin from time to time.”
Right on cue, The Guardian published an article claiming it wasn’t heroin but the prohibition on drugs that caused Hoffman’s death.
You could hardly send a more dangerous message at a time when authorities in Australia fear a return of the heroin epidemic of the 1990s.
A more realistic response came from Hoffman’s friend, scriptwriter and recovering addict Aaron Sorkin, who wrote last week that Hoffman “did not die from an overdose of heroin - he died from heroin”.
“We should stop implying that if he’d just taken the proper amount then everything would have been fine,” Sorkin said.
Hoffman once told Sorkin: “If one of us dies of an overdose, probably 10 people who were about to won’t.”
In other words, “our deaths would make news and maybe scare someone clean”.
But even if Hoffman’s death did save 10 lives, it’s nothing to the legions of people switched onto the glamour of drugs this Oscar season by Martin Scorsese’s shameful movie.
I’ve interviewed heroin addicts trying to break free with naltrexone treatment.
The only emotion they expressed was anger that the government had been so slack on drug law enforcement in the 1990s when they became hooked as teenagers, catching the so-called “smack express” train to Cabramatta to openly score. It was so easy, and they were left with a lifelong affliction.
Now we’re doing it again; governments and police looking for the easy way out, happy to believe the lies of drug liberalisers and appease the drug-soaked chattering classes.
Meanwhile, the so-called ­alcohol-fuelled violence we are currently so worked up about ignores the fact that alcohol consumption is plummetting - we’re drinking less alcohol than we have in almost a decade, and 30 per cent less than the peak in 1974-75.
What has changed is the nature and ­extent of illicit drug use. Where alcohol is a depressant that makes you sleepy, stimulant drugs keep you alert to drink more and, sometimes, to become violent.
A decade ago John Howard showed you could change drug habits. But we gave up the war almost as soon as we started.
JUST FADE AWAY SCHAPELLE:
NOW that Schapelle Corby has been granted parole after nine years in a Bali jail, is it too much to ask that she fade into obscurity?
It’s unlikely someone planted the marijuana that was found by Indonesian police in her boogy board cover that fateful day, as she always claimed. But, either way, it’s not the biggest mystery on the planet. The whole sordid story, including her late father’s drug links, has been told enough.
Schapelle is free but she
DIGGERS DESERVE OUR GRATITUDE
AS General Peter Cosgrove prepares to become Governor-General, and as some try to smear the good name of our navy for political purposes, it’s worth remembering the often unsung contributions our troops have made to creating a safer world.
One such contribution was finally recognised, 22 years after the fact, in the recent Australia Day awards.
Corporal Gavin Lee and fellow Australian Diggers who served in Cambodia as part of the UN peacekeeping force from 1992 to 1993, were honoured with a Meritorious Unit Citation for courage and “sustained outstanding service in warlike operations”.
It was dangerous work in the dying days
of Pol Pot’s civil war, helping to run free and fair elections.
Winning official approval for the award has been a long struggle for the soldiers.
But they served their nation proud and deserve our thanks as much today as ever.
PAEDOPHILIA BY ANOTHER NAME
COMMUNITY Services minister Pru Goward told 2GB radio last week that forced marriages of underage girls may be “quite common” in southwest Sydney, western Sydney and the Blue Mountains.
She was speaking about the case of a 12-year-old girl allegedly married off to a 26-year-old man in a Muslim ceremony sanctioned by her own parents.
That is paedophilia in anyone’s language.
If it so common, the police should be doing something about it immediately.
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Coalition loses Griffith in a way that will kill Labor

Andrew Bolt February 09 2014 (8:22am)

Politics - federal

(POST BUMPED FROM LAST NIGHT, WITH UPDATE)
Yes, Bill Glasson was a very strong candidate for the Coalition. But the result in the Griffith byelection will shock Labor.
Consider:
- The Abbott Government has hit its stride only in the past few weeks, after a sluggish start..
- The Government has been under ferocious media assault.
- The Newman Government has been under attack for its cuts.
- The Abbott Government plans many more cuts soon, and has announced some already.
True, Labor’s past member was Kevin Rudd, and his personal vote would have been lost with his resignation, but the big swing against him at the last election suggests there was not many more personal votes to lose.
So everything suggests Labor should have done at least moderately well yesterday. But now consider the figures. It went backwards, and worse than Oppositions usually do in by-elections:
Average swing in a federal by-election after preferences: 5.1 per cent to the Opposition.
Average swing in a federal by-election in a Government’s first term: 1.7 per cent to the Opposition.
Swing in today’s Griffith by-election (with two thirds counted and before postal votes, which lean to the Coalition): 0.54 per cent to the Government.
Number of times a Government has won a seat from the Opposition in a by-election: one, in 1920.
Kevin Rudd’s share of primary vote in 2007: 53.09 per cent
Kevin Rudd’s share of primary vote in 2012: 43:06 per cent
Labor’s share of primary vote today (before postal votes): 39.57 per cent (down 1.77)
Bill Glasson’s share of vote today for LNP: 42.52 per cent (up 1.05)
Now for another frightening thing for Labor to ponder. The Abbott Government actually got into its stride over the past month by becoming assertive, even aggressive, and tough - specifically saying no to an SPC bailout, stridently defending the navy from claims of mistreating boat people, warning of the need to slash entitlements and taking on the ABC.
The Coalition may well decide safety lies in asserting itself and its agenda, and the signs suggest it will be rewarded for it.
Excellent.
UPDATE
Labor and the Greens confuse Abbott’s new confidence and success with their big chance:
Like sharks smelling blood, Labor and the Greens are stepping up their attacks, arguing that the government is finally revealing its true colours. We are now hearing the words ‘’ideology’’ and ‘’ideological’’ from their senior spokesmen almost daily.
And even the Age writer seems to sniff whose blood is really in that water now:
Treasurer Joe Hockey ... told the Lowy Institute on Thursday that: ‘’Too many taxpayers’ dollars have been spent on corporate and middle-class welfare and too often previous governments have been drawn into areas that are better left to the private sector.’’… 
There is no doubt the new government is wasting little time introducing its agenda, and many of its first priorities appear to have been lifted straight from the conservative script. It has moved on environmental issues (making good on its pre-election vow to try to reduce the amount of Tasmanian forests under World Heritage protection), union influence (with its planned restoration of the ABCC and the judicial inquiry into union rorts), climate change, the mining tax, cutting regulation and asylum seekers. 
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How the Left has trashed our old Parliament House

Andrew Bolt February 09 2014 (8:08am)

Australia’s old Parliament House - a symbol of our great democracy - was handed to the Museum of Australian Democracy under a deal, as the museum itself explains:
This Charter sets out the standards of service which visitors to the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD) at Old Parliament House can expect.... 
The Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House vision is: To celebrate, debate and experience the journey of Australian Democracy
Here is how the Museum today “celebrates” one of the world’s strongest democracies - by defacing the old Parliament’s exterior to declare “this foul deed shall smell above the earth”.
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And on another exterior we are given a new word to describe our authentic selves:
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Talk about the Left capturing the institutions - only to deride and destroy the very foundations of our freedom.
Shame on the Museum and on its council, which allowed this spitting on our monuments. 
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Labor deserts ABC and Fairfax over “torture” claims

Andrew Bolt February 09 2014 (7:38am)

Labor is running scared on what the ABC and Fairfax newspapers have been running hard
First this: 
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has accused Labor of undermining ‘’the honour’’ of Defence personnel by calling for an independent inquiry into claims asylum seekers were deliberately burnt by navy personnel… 
On Saturday, Labor backbencher Matt Thistlethwaite told Sky News that to settle the issue once and for all, the claims should be independently investigated. ‘’We should be bringing a healthy scepticism to these claims but now they’ve been aired again by Fairfax, the appropriate course is to have them independently investigated,’’ he said.
Now this: 
LABOR has backflipped on its call for an inquiry into the navy over allegations of asylum seeker abuse, saying it has every confidence in the servicemen and women on the high seas. Opposition leader Bill Shorten on Saturday issued a statement clarifying Labor was not seeking an inquiry into the navy’s alleged conduct, despite earlier comments to the contrary by an opposition MP.
(Thanks to reader Peter.) 
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Feminism defined

Andrew Bolt February 09 2014 (7:28am)

Kevin Williamson:
Feminism has nothing to do with the proposition that women should be considered whole and complete members of the body politic, though it has enjoyed great success marketing itself that way.  
A useful definition is this: “Feminism is the words ‘I Want!’ in the mouths of three or more women, provided they’re the right kind of women.” Feminism must therefore accommodate wildly incompatible propositions — e.g., (1) Women unquestionably belong alongside men in Marine units fighting pitched battles in Tora Bora but (2) really should not be expected to be able to perform three chin-ups.
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Royal commission into unions to be announced

Andrew Bolt February 09 2014 (6:55am)

This inquiry may need to get “political” - as in tease out how union corruption has been facilitated by connections to Labor - if we are to get full value for the reported $100 million cost:
BRIBES, secret commissions, corruption and slush funds will be the target of a powerful royal commission into unions to be announced by the federal government on Monday. 
Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s strike against union corruption will include expanded terms of reference and the inquiry will have the power to compel union leaders to appear. Former High Court judge John Dyson Heydon, 70, will be appointed to lead the royal commission.
UPDATE
Labor leader Bill Shorten may wish the rethink - fast - his opposition to restoring the watchdog on lawlessness construction unions:
The government will step up its attacks on Labor’s union links this week, with Employment Minister Eric Abetz moving on the first day of Parliament to inflame debate about Labor’s opposition to the building unions watchdog. 
The government’s legislation to revive the Australian Building and Construction Commission passed the lower house last year and is now before the Senate. But, with the government facing a hostile Senate until July 1, the Coalition’s legislation faces certain defeat.  Instead, Senator Abetz ... will introduce a motion on Tuesday to bring on debate about the ABCC.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Hide that red flag, comrade. Wear this blue tie

Andrew Bolt February 09 2014 (6:47am)

Socialists discuss the danger of looking like socialists at a protest:
EAST West Link protesters admitted they are losing the “propaganda war"…
Almost 30 protesters attended a three hour strategy meeting held at Fitzroy Pool on Alexander Parade yesterday afternoon, floating ideas to ramp up the anti-tunnel campaign. Tactics raised included parents bringing their children to boost numbers, questioning police at picket events, not allowing workers to leave drill sites and wearing business attire to prove some activists held jobs.
Hiding behind children. Hiding behind a tie. Strange how socialists these days do not dare to show themselves for what they are.
UPDATE
Socialists split, with some objecting to a socialist sounding too working class:
Socialist Party member Mel Gregson co-chaired the meeting with serial activist Anthony Main. 
Bizarrely Ms Gregson told the crowd divisions had grown among the protesters in respect to political ideologies as well as media tactics. She said some members of the group had raised an issue with Mr Main being the media spokesman because of his ‘bogan’ accent.

Tough markers:
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reported it to http://www.israellawcenter.org - ed
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“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” - Matthew 5:43-45
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

February 8: Morning

"Thou shalt call his name Jesus." - Matthew 1:21

When a person is dear, everything connected with him becomes dear for his sake. Thus, so precious is the person of the Lord Jesus in the estimation of all true believers, that everything about him they consider to be inestimable beyond all price. "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia," said David, as if the very vestments of the Saviour were so sweetened by his person that he could not but love them. Certain it is, that there is not a spot where that hallowed foot hath trodden--there is not a word which those blessed lips have uttered--nor a thought which his loving Word has revealed--which is not to us precious beyond all price. And this is true of the names of Christ--they are all sweet in the believer's ear. Whether he be called the Husband of the Church, her Bridegroom, her Friend; whether he be styled the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world--the King, the Prophet, or the Priest--every title of our Master--Shiloh, Emmanuel, Wonderful, the Mighty Counsellor--every name is like the honeycomb dropping with honey, and luscious are the drops that distil from it. But if there be one name sweeter than another in the believer's ear, it is the name of Jesus. Jesus! it is the name which moves the harps of heaven to melody. Jesus! the life of all our joys. If there be one name more charming, more precious than another, it is this name. It is woven into the very warp and woof of our psalmody. Many of our hymns begin with it, and scarcely any, that are good for anything, end without it. It is the sum total of all delights. It is the music with which the bells of heaven ring; a song in a word; an ocean for comprehension, although a drop for brevity; a matchless oratorio in two syllables; a gathering up of the hallelujahs of eternity in five letters.

 "Jesus, I love thy charming name,
'Tis music to mine ear."
Evening
"He shall save his people from their sins." - Matthew 1:21
Many persons, if they are asked what they understand by salvation, will reply, "Being saved from hell and taken to heaven." This is one result of salvation, but it is not one tithe of what is contained in that boon. It is true our Lord Jesus Christ does redeem all his people from the wrath to come; he saves them from the fearful condemnation which their sins had brought upon them; but his triumph is far more complete than this. He saves his people "from their sins." Oh! sweet deliverance from our worst foes. Where Christ works a saving work, he casts Satan from his throne, and will not let him be master any longer. No man is a true Christian if sin reigns in his mortal body. Sin will be in us--it will never be utterly expelled till the spirit enters glory; but it will never have dominion. There will be a striving for dominion--a lusting against the new law and the new spirit which God has implanted--but sin will never get the upper hand so as to be absolute monarch of our nature. Christ will be Master of the heart, and sin must be mortified. The Lion of the tribe of Judah shall prevail, and the dragon shall be cast out. Professor! is sin subdued in you? If your life is unholy your heart is unchanged, and if your heart is unchanged you are an unsaved person. If the Saviour has not sanctified you, renewed you, given you a hatred of sin and a love of holiness, he has done nothing in you of a saving character. The grace which does not make a man better than others is a worthless counterfeit. Christ saves his people, not in their sins, but from them. "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." If not saved from sin, how shall we hope to be counted among his people. Lord, save me now from all evil, and enable me to honour my Saviour.
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Togarmah 
[Tōgär'mah] - all bone or strong.
The third son of Gomer, son of Japheth, his brothers being Ashkenaz and Riphath (Gen. 10:3; 1 Chron. 1:6;Ezek. 27:14; 38:6).
Perhaps there is prophetic significance attached to Togarmah and "the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands" (Ezek. 38:6). Jewish writers of the past usually wrote of the "Turks" as Togarmah, and the Armenians as "The House of Targon." It is not difficult, therefore, to identify Togarmah as Armenia or Turkey, the people of which assert their descendancy from Targon, or the Togarmah of Scripture.
The ultimate alliance of Turkey, according to prophecy, is with the Northern Confederacy Ezekiel defines. Dr. Sale-Harrison observes: "It is interesting to note that in Scripture "The King of the North" is called "The Old Assyrian" and apparently arises out of the present "Turkish territory." In the final alignment of the nations then, Togarmah will be allied with the north.
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Today's reading: Leviticus 4-5, Matthew 24:29-51 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Leviticus 4-5

The Sin Offering
1 The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Say to the Israelites: 'When anyone sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD's commands--
3 "'If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the LORD a young bull without defect as a sin offering for the sin he has committed....'"

Today's New Testament reading: Matthew 24:29-51

29 "Immediately after the distress of those days
"'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'
30 "Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth...."

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