Sunday, April 03, 2016

Sun Apr 3rd Todays News

Malcolm Turnbull attempted a failed manoeuvre this week so as to not have to explain his government policy. Miranda Devine applauds, calling him a sly fox. As a result, the government will not address over spending, but won't be badly criticised for its' failure, as it would be had Tony Abbott tried to cut spending. Turnbull suggested the state governments raise taxes without Canberra. It breaks the federal divide of Federal raising taxes and states spending on services. States have good experience on spending programs that the federal government has not. Federal governments spend on schools and deliver plaques with ALP names on them. Federals spend on hospitals and produces wings that have no staff. Federal governments spend money on Pink Batts and three workers die and hundreds of houses burn down. Meanwhile States spend on such programs all the time and don't have those failures. But Turnbull didn't want the tax policy to go through. He just didn't want to be criticised for failing to cut spending. 

 For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility. 
=== from 2015 ===
It is Good Friday for 2015, and so people around the world celebrate in different ways for different reasons. Because it is a big day, terrorists keen to make names for themselves have killed students in Kenya. The press are keen to call this Islamists killing Christians, but the fact is it is terrorists killing students. Jihadist terrorists. They entered a student hostel and asked if the victims were Islamic or Christian. They shot the Christians. But the question is not a simple dichotomy. They shot anyone who was not jihadist. Papers are quick to claim they 'freed' the Muslims. But Muslims weren't incarcerated at the university. 147 killed by jihadists who blew themselves up rather than be brought to book for their crimes against humanity. The plan was apparently made by a former headmaster of an Islamic school who gave up in 2007 and runs Al Shabbab from Somalia. Papers will make out that the jihadists are linked by religion to people in most neighbourhoods of the world who are Islamic. Some teachers who are practicing contrarians will claim there is legitimacy to such terrorism. But the jihadists are not arguing a point and they aren't soldiers of their faith or fighting for a cause or state. Jihadists are criminals who must be protected for crimes against humanity. As should the Islamic leaders who side with them. 

Faith is still an issue, and Good Friday is very important on the Christian Calendar. It is the anniversary of the time Christ sacrificed himself, submitting himself to death to secular authority to prove a point which was demonstrated the following Sunday. People blame Jews for it, but Jews didn't do it, Christ did. The Romans were the instrument, and they crucified. Had Jews done it, they'd have stoned Jesus. Even so, Jews broke a number of their own regulations to get the job done. But it was for a good cause. Some people blame Jews for what happened, but they are wrong. It was what Jesus wanted. At Gethsemane, Jesus sweated blood praying for God to lift his burden. God didn't, and Jesus submitted. It happened in accordance with scripture, which might freak out people today when they considered the scripture was hundreds of years old which predicted it from several sources. Yet even so, the disciples were not expecting what happened. Judas tried to force Jesus to take up arms and fight for Israel. But that plan did not pan out as he saw it. Peter tried to get close, but denied he was a disciple three times before the cock crowed for dawn. It is one of the best recorded events in history and there is a number of pointers to it having happened. The Shroud of Turin is possibly a record of the event, although there are claims it had been faked in antiquity. The ossuary for the high priest of the day contained iron nails of the type used for crucifixion. We know how the city was laid out on the day, and various elements of the neighbourhood exist today. On this day, in 1968, Martin King delivered his speech "I've been to the Mountaintop." And he is now with the Lord. Like many of those poor students gunned down by jihadists. Jesus is Lord, and did not deserve what happened to him. But it pays a price in blood. And nothing those jihadists do will wash out the spots. 
From 2014
Neither attributed much to God, one was a genius, the other an Atheist known for creating rules for boxing which stand today. The Marquess of Queensberry had approached Wilde in 1894 and engaged in a yelling match over the Marquess' son, Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas. Queensberry confronted Wilde over his affair with his son, as described by Wilde "I do not say that you are it, but you look it, and pose at it, which is just as bad. And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you" to which Wilde responded: "I don't know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight." Queensberry said Wilde had "shown him the white feather", meaning he had acted in a cowardly way. Even so, nothing much would have come of it, but Wilde was not satisfied. When Queensberry left his calling card marked "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite" [sic] Wilde had Queensberry arrested and charged with libel. That court case ruined Wilde, for to substantiate the claim, Wilde's private life was made public. His life was ruined. He was not persecuted for being gay, but for involving himself in a family dispute. The 1895 court case began on this day. Wilde was not religious, but no one could say he did not know God after he wrote The Happy Prince in 1888. He just wasn't well known.

"They were beaten, and they were starved as they marched. Those who fell were bayoneted. Some of those who fell were beheaded by Japanese officers who were practicing with their samurai swords from horseback. The Japanese culture at that time reflected the view that any warrior who surrendered had no honor; thus was not to be treated like a human being. Thus they were not committing crimes against human beings.[...] The Japanese soldiers at that time [...] felt they were dealing with subhumans and animals." These words from US Congressional rep Dana Rohrabacher shows the brutality of the Bataan death march. An insult to Douglas MacArthur who had fled to prosecute the war from Australia. MacArthur chose a path of grace in not killing the Emperor at the end of the war. But on this day in 1946, the General (Masaharu Homma) responsible for this war crime was executed. 
Historical perspective on this day
In 503 BC, according to the Fasti Triumphales, Roman consul Publius Postumius Tubertuscelebrated an ovation for a military victory over the Sabines. 686, Maya king Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' assumed the crown of Calakmul. 1043, Edward the Confessor was crowned King of England. 1077, the first Parliament of Friuli was created. 1559, the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis treaty was signed, ending the Italian Wars.

In 1834, the generals in the Greek War of Independence stood trial for treason. 1860, the first successful United States Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, began. 1865, American Civil War: Union forces captured Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America. 1882, American Old West: Jesse James was killed by Robert Ford. 1885, Gottlieb Daimler was granted a German patent for his enginedesign. 1888, the first of eleven unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurred. 1895, the trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde began, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

In 1922, Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1929, RMS Queen Mary was ordered from John Brown & Company Shipbuilding and Engineering by Cunard Line. 1933, first flight over Mount Everest, a British expedition, led by the Marquis of Clydesdale, and funded by Lucy, Lady Houston. 1936, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the baby son of pilot Charles Lindbergh.

In 1942, World War II: Japanese forces began an assault on the United States and Filipinotroops on the Bataan Peninsula. 1946, Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma was executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March. 1948, President Harry S. Trumansigned the Marshall Plan, authorising $5 billion in aid for 16 countries. Also 1948, in Jeju, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses began, known as the Jeju massacre. 1955, the American Civil Liberties Union announced it would defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges. 1956, Hudsonville-Standale Tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan was struck by a deadly F5 tornado.

In 1961, the Leadbeater's Possum was rediscovered in Australia after 72 years. 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. 1969, Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced that the United States would start to "Vietnamize" the war effort. 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, though it took ten years for the DynaTAC 8000X to become the first such phone to be commercially released. 1974, The Super Outbreak occurred, the second biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history (after the April 25–28, 2011 tornado outbreak). The death toll was 315, with nearly 5,500 injured. 1975, Bobby Fischer refused to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default. 1981, the Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, was unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. 1996, suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski was captured at his cabin in Montana, United States. Also 1996, a United States Air Force airplane carrying United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown crashed in Croatia, killing all 35 on board. 1997, the Thalit massacre began in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit were killed by guerrillas.

In 2000, United States v. Microsoft: Microsoft was ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors. 2004, Islamic terroristsinvolved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks were trapped by the police in their apartment and killed themselves. 2007, Conventional-Train World Speed Record: a French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line set an official new world speed record. 2008, ATA Airlines, once one of the ten largest U.S. passenger airlines and largest charter airline, filed for bankruptcy for the second time in five years and ceased all operations. Also 2008, Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS's YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children would be removed and taken into state custody. 2009, Jiverly Antares Wong opened fire at an American Civic Association immigration centre in Binghamton, NY, killing thirteen and wounding four before committing suicide. 2013, more than 50 people died in floods resulting from record-breaking rainfall in La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
=== 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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Thanks to Warren for this advice on watching Bolt
Warren Catton Get this for your PC or MAC https://www.foxtel.com.au/foxtelplay/how-it-works/pc-mac.html Once tou have installed it start it up and press Live TV you don't need a login to watch Sky News!
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I have moved 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
===
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 and many happy returns Mark Deskin. You birthday is the anniversary of the first of eleven unsolved murders from Whitechapel in the East End of London in 1888. I saw Star Trek and I think Kirk did it. Or Bones. Meanwhile, in my cockney mode, have you a song to give to a poor struggling artist?
Deaths
April 3: Good Friday (Western Christianity, 2015); Fast of the Firstborn begins at dawn and Passover begins at sunset (Judaism, 2015)
George Marshall
You got the pony to do it. You can't be solved. You have a plan. Kamen rides. BA has more water than it needs. Let's party.  
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PM Turnbull is a sly fox

Miranda Devine – Saturday, April 02, 2016 (11:59pm)

BACK in the day when I used to have a cordial relationship with Malcolm Turnbull, he mentioned one of his favourite children’s books was Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr Fox.
I got the impression he saw himself as Mr Fox, always outsmarting flat-footed opponents with “cunning plans”.
The Prime Minister’s latest cunning plan was to make mendicant state premiers accountable for their profligate spending by offering them the opportunity to raise some of their own revenue through a share of income tax. 
The sketchy nature of the proposal last week suggested Turnbull never expected it to succeed; its ­primary purpose was tactical, ­intended to blindside bolshie state premiers and assert prime ministerial authority on the eve of Friday’s Council of Australian Gov-ernments (COAG) meeting (just as he blindsided bolshie cross-benchers and reset the Senate’s power equation with the threat of a ­double dissolution). 
After all, the premiers were coming to Canberra to ambush the PM, to demand money with men-aces, $80 billion, to be precise. This was the landmine Julia Gillard left behind for her Liberal successors when she knew Labor would lose the next election, money promised for health and education which was never funded, never existed and will never ­materialise. 
The state leaders know it but it suits them to play the little game of pretending the federal government has “cut” $80 billion from health and education. This is, of course, a lethal attack line in any election campaign. 
Turnbull has now effectively neutralised it. There was no talk of $80 billion “cuts” after COAG this time. Instead he ­offered the premiers $3 billion in extra health funding and they were happy. The most bolshie premier, Victoria’s Daniel Andrews, even told reporters afterwards he was grateful for the money. 
A new realism about ­unsustainable public spending has dawned. The $80 billion fantasy is dead.
That’s a triumph for Mr Fox. He’s reset the agenda. He’s planted the seed for reform. Not only that, but he has extracted a general commitment from all but the most fiscally irresponsible states, Queensland and Victoria, that they are willing to consider this first step in ­reforming the federation, with the goal of taking responsibility for their own finances instead of being disempowered by reliance on a meddling federal government for 40 per cent of their revenue. 
Turnbull’s gamble that the premiers would reject the proposal paid off, luckily for him, because it would have been potent ammunition for Labor. 
Crucially, the states’ rejection of this new source of revenue exposed the fraudulence of their position. They cry poor and blame the federal government for their fiscal woes, and yet when offered a ­reliable, growing income stream they reject it, because it would ­require accountability for their overspending and inefficiencies. 
Audit Commissioner Tony Shepherd, who supports the ­income tax flip, says that when he was preparing his report “the premiers all complained to us about the tied (federal government) grants because they felt they weren’t trusted and were being micro-managed… Their objection (to Turnbull’s proposal) shows they do they not have the confidence or capacity” to manage their own ­affairs. Most credible economists say that forcing the states to ­account for their own revenue is a necessary policy and good for Australia, but a difficult sell. 
What does that tell you? That Australia is paralysed because no one is willing to make a difficult sales pitch and because a dysfunctional media class will exaggerate every downside. 
What does the Fantastic Mr Fox do when faced with such an equation? He rewrites it. He turns “difficult sell” into an opportunity to reset the debate. 
This is the first step to achieving any worthwhile reform, ­albeit the most bruising step, and any leader worth his or her salt has to take it, instead of shying away from messy confrontation. 
But most of the media are still stuck in the old way of doing business, commentating on politics as if it is a game in which there is a score for every stage of play. Privately, some even fancy themselves as players, too. 
Feeding into the media narrative about Turnbull, as well, is a ­peculiar alliance of disappointed lefties and angry Abbott defenders, engaged in a pincer attack of ­increasing derangement. 
Thus the chattering classes have arrived at the specious consensus this weekend that Turnbull was beaten into a “humiliating” backdown at COAG. 
They are like the dim-witted farmers in Fantastic Mr Fox, ­Boggis, Bunce and Bean, who have laid siege to the fox’s hole, and are waiting with loaded shotguns for him to emerge so they can blow his head off. 
But the fox has no intention of being ambushed. While the farmers are focused on their plan for his comeuppance, he is busy digging tunnels under Boggis’s Chicken House Number One, raiding Bunce’s bountiful storehouse of the “finest, fattest ducks and geese”, cleaning out Bean’s cider cellar, and throwing a huge underground feast for his friends. 
“It was lovely to realise that while the fat farmer was sitting up there on the hill waiting for them to starve he was also giving them their dinner without knowing it.” 
At the end of the story, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean are left waiting by the hole, still waiting for the fox to emerge. “And so far as I know,” Dahl concludes, “they are still waiting.” 
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PM finds delivering reforms too taxing

Piers Akerman – Sunday, April 03, 2016 (12:01am)

AT his first press conference after accepting the job of Treasurer from Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison summed up the task ahead of him saying: “We have a spending problem — we don’t have a revenue problem.” 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'PM finds delivering reforms too taxing'
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DUMB-ON-DUMB VIOLENCE

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 03, 2016 (7:38pm)

Outside an Islamic food expo, a brawl erupts between two groups of non-Islamic idiots: 
Anti-Islamic group Party for Freedom had been picketing the Halal expo, when according to witnesses anti-fascist protesters, from Antifa, arrived in black with their faces covered.
A barrage of punches were thrown, as some protesters used flag poles to ram others and police struggled to separate the groups …
(Witness Erik) Anderson said up there were up to 15 Antifa members and 20 Party for Freedom protesters involved in the brawl. 
Meanwhile, the expo itself carried on entirely peacefully: 
Halal expo director Syed Atiq ul Hassan told the Herald Sun that the brawl “had nothing to do with us”.
“I can see people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds here – it is a family event – and it is very harmonious.” 
Mr ul Hassan seems right on the money, judging by reports. It takes a special calibre of morons to get into a fight over falafels. 
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CANDIDATES AGREE

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 03, 2016 (6:20pm)

We now enter the crucial Kang and Kodos phrase of the 2016 US election:
Hillary Clinton: “I don’t want to just stop bad things from happening, I want to start good things from happening.” 
Donald Trump: “If I win, all of the bad things happening in the U.S. will be rapidly reversed!”
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RACE OR FAITH? A SIMPLE TWO-STEP GUIDE

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 03, 2016 (2:15pm)

An anti-mosque banner is condemned for racism. But against what race? Islam, after all, is a faith. Here’s an easy way to work out the difference: 
First, convert to Islam. All you need to do is recite the Testimony of Faith, which runs something like this: “La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad rasoolu Allah.” There you go. Job done.
Now try converting to Asian, or white, or Aboriginal, or some other race that you are not. It’s slightly more difficult. 
For further clarity on this issue, please consider: here is an Aborginal Muslim. Here are a couple of white Muslims. And here’s a whole bunch of Asian Muslims. Note that race is not a common factor. You’re welcome.
UPDATE. Collingwood supporter Paul Daley is overwrought: 
I don’t know if it will be possible to yell “Go Pies” with quite the same sentiment as it was before that awful banner was unfurled.
Every time I go to say it or write it, as I do often, I will see the terrible words emblazoned below it: “Stop The Mosques.” Whatever the hell that means, with all its sinister resonance in an echo chamber of idiocy, of stop the boats, etcetera …
That match is now terribly marred for me and, I’d wager, the overwhelming majority of people who love the game and abhor racism and xenophbobia of any sort. 
“Xenophbobia”? Whatever the hell that means. Perhaps Paul would be less outraged if the banner had read: Stop The Aged Care Centre For The Disadvantaged And Homeless. His fellow lefties seem quite happy to run with that.
UPDATE II. A recent Fairfax headline: 
Islam needs to invest in people and universities, not mosques 
And from the associated column, by University of Sydney doctoral candidate Hussain Nadim: 
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to attend a fundraiser hosted by an Islamic organisation in Australia. To my surprise, in a matter of four hours, the organisation raised more than $2 million to build yet another mosque. The organisation’s head said at the event he was committed to building a mosque every two miles in Australia. This is just one of the hundreds of Muslim organisations in Australia.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with building mosques, but to what expense? And is this what the Muslim community really needs at this moment? 
Sounds like “stop the mosques” to me. Nadim should be banned by the AFL for life.
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HE LIKES TO WATCH

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 03, 2016 (2:49am)

“I don’t shoot animals,” declares fox-hunting ABC radio presenter Jonathan Green. “I watch hounds kill them from horseback.”
In other words, when it comes to vermin eradication, Green prefers the less efficient and more torturey girly dress-up option.

image
Violence voyeur Green and his mighty steed Tofu Puff ready for action.

Interestingly, Jonathan recently became a vegetarian due to his “concern about animal commodification in the food chain.”
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UNKINDNESS BUSTED

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 03, 2016 (2:29am)

Having solved all other crimes in their city, Glasgow police announce a crackdown on unkindness:

image

This wasn’t an April Fool’s Day prank; Canadian cops were on unkindness patrol back in February. Iowahawk offers a fine reply to our Glaswegian internet inspectors.
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SHE’LL BE LEAVING ANY DAY NOW

Tim Blair – Sunday, April 03, 2016 (2:04am)

Sydney academic Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick weighs up her options ahead of the coming climate change conflagration: 
Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick, of UNSW’s Climate Change Research Centre, said she was considering buying property in Tasmania and stressed that she was not kidding when she said she knew people who had already bought real estate there.
“Why wouldn’t you? Tasmania is a beautiful place,” she said. “It will definitely be the most comfortable place to live.” 
Follow Sarah on Twitter to keep track of her Tasmanian relocation. We’ll know the warmening is truly about to hit when Dr Perkins-Kirkpatrick moves to Derwent Park. University of Melbourne climate researcher Dr Andrew King is another potential climate refugee: 
Dr King said the idea of moving to the Apple Isle was a running joke in climate research circles – but pleasantries aside, he acknowledged it would become a more attractive place to live.
“A lot of Australians currently find the winters in Tasmania quite tough, but in future they will be appealing,” he said. 
Well, sure. Until Tasmania is consumed by Gaia’s rising seas of vengeance. Nobody escapes climate change.
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SEND IN THE NATIONAL GUARD

Tim Blair – Saturday, April 02, 2016 (10:35pm)

Won’t someone please think of the children? 
As students panic about Trump 2016 messages on their campuses, more continue to appear. In addition to incidents at Emory University and Scripps College, students at the University of Kansas and the University of Michigan have seen similar messages.
At the University of Kansas, “Vote Trump 2016” was written in chalk. 
The university is investigating this latest horrific chalk attack. We’re obviously headed towards another Kent State.
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DREGS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

Tim Blair – Saturday, April 02, 2016 (8:55pm)

Ex-Labor leader Mark Latham backs Bill Shorten over his potential party rivals: 
There’s no point putting in Tanya Plibersek or Anthony Albanese. The things they believe in are frightening … They’re unreconstructed inner-city lefties. I couldn’t imagine anything worse for the Labor Party. 
Speaking of inner-city lefties, Malcolm Turnbull has endured a dreadful week – and it was all his own stupid fault.
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Just too much Trump to swallow

Andrew Bolt April 03 2016 (7:26pm)

Peggy Noonan is right, even if a couple of the instances she cites are exaggerations or misrepresentations. For her the accumulation of Trump outrages got past the tipping point with his abortion comments. For me, that point was reached earlier, when he insulted Ted Cruz’s wife and made the battle for the presidency a mud wrestle. Surely Americans want their presidents to have a little class::
Mr. Trump is hurting himself, in real time and for the first time. We will likely see it, and soon, in the polls. Already his numbers in next week’s Wisconsin primary have fallen, and as for women — well, with women nationally Mr. Trump is currently more popular than cholera, but not by much.
We’re missing what’s happening because we’re blocked by clichés. The first great Trump cliché, which began seven or eight months ago, was that he’d quickly do himself in with some outrageous comment. So everyone waited. His insults to John McCain, Megyn Kelly — that would do it. But it didn’t. The more outrageous he was the stronger he got.
So a new cliché was born, the still-reigning one: Whatever Mr. Trump says it won’t hurt him, people will just love him more.
But that’s not right. It was always a mistake to think one explosive statement would blow his candidacy up. What could damage him, and is damaging him, is the aggregate — a growing pile of statements and attitudes that becomes a mood, a warning sign, a barrier.
It’s been going on for four or five weeks, and you can take your pick as to the tipping point. Maybe it was when he threatened to “spill the beans” on another candidate’s wife, or when he retweeted the jeering pictures of her and his own wife. Maybe it was his inability to clearly, promptly denounce the KKK; maybe it was when he hinted at riots if he’s cheated out of the nomination. Maybe it was Corey Lewandowski’s alleged battery of reporter Michelle Fields. Maybe it was when Mr. Trump referred in debate to his genitalia, a true national first.
It has all added up into a large blob of sheer dumb grossness. He is now seriously misjudging the room. The room is still America.
Still, I’ve been wrong about trump before. I thought he’d be finished months ago. 
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The Refugee Action Collective will praise the Liberals now, right?

Andrew Bolt April 03 2016 (10:47am)

I assume all those protesters will now praise the Liberals and vilify Labor:
For the first time in a decade, every child locked up in Australian detention centres has been freed.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton told the Daily Telegraph the last group of children left a facility in Darwin on Friday night, some of whom had been in detention for years…
“It’s almost been a decade since there were no children in detention — 8000 children went through detention when Labor lost control of our borders...”
Seems that stopping the boats has done almost everything the protesters wanted. There now no drownings and no children in detention. Our refugee intake is now helping only people who we deem to be genuine refugees. And we’re saving billions.
Can’t wait for the “we-were-wrongs” and the apologies, not least from the journalists who praised Labor’s disastrous dismantling of the border laws that had worked.
(Thanks to reader Mick.) 
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What happened to our spending problem?

Andrew Bolt April 03 2016 (10:32am)

Piers Akerman on the dangerous shift of the Turnbull Government from talking about spending less to talking about taxing more:
AT his first press conference after accepting the job of Treasurer from Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison summed up the task ahead of him saying: “We have a spending problem — we don’t have a revenue problem.”
But now, six months later, it’s all about revenues, not spending, and the shift is coming from the Prime Minister’s office where Turnbull has ­installed former Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson as his Head of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and given him charge of the tax reform agenda.
Parkinson had been dumped by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott a week after the September, 2013 election. He had been key to the creation of Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s disastrous emissions trading scheme as head of the ultra-green Department of Climate Change....
Parkinson is a member of Turnbull’s inner circle. Morrison is not, hence his ­initial view that spending is the problem, not revenue, has been erased from the new Turnbull economic narrative.
On Sky News this morning, Turnbull tried the rabbit-in-the-hat alternative when asked if he thought he had a revenue problem or spending problem. He said he would increase growth and that way he’d get the extra revenue he’d need.
Paul Kelly was right to warn that this dreaming would not work. Indeed, isn’t half the reason the debt and deficit is so bad is precisely because growth has consistently been lower than what Treasury kept assuming?
If growth boosts revenue, treat it as a windfall. Don’t spend it beforehand on the hopeful assumption that your policies will work.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Turnbull finds excuse among the tax humiliation

Andrew Bolt April 03 2016 (10:26am)

Yes, a good point - but thought of only after the embarrassing disaster and not one that will cut much ice with voters:
The Prime Minister has hit back at the rejection of his income tax plan, painting its defeat as a “moment of clarity” that revealed the states lacked the stomach for reform and must live within their means.
Malcolm Turnbull on Saturday brushed off suggestions that the failure of what he hailed as only days ago as “the most fundamental reform to the federation in generations” marked a major humiliation for his government…
“The important thing is that what we have seen is the states making it very clear that they are not prepared to contemplate being responsible for levying a share of income tax,” Mr Turnbull said.
“What that means is they cannot any longer credibly ask the federal government to raise taxes for them to spend if they were not prepared to raise those taxes themselves when they were given the opportunity.”
The trouble is that no one was exactly sure that the states were indeed getting their big chance to raise billions more:
Victoria’s Daniel Andrews complained that the first he knew of [Turnbull’s proposal to let states raise their own income tax] was what he read in a newspaper just two days before. Other leaders said they had received a phone call from the PM around that time but that Turnbull had declined to explain his proposal beyond the most broad schematic outline
And what were the states turning down when they had no details?:
The Weekend Australian can reveal that premiers and chief ministers were not shown any formal paperwork during yesterday’s meeting to outline Mr Turnbull’s proposal
Sam Maiden performs a reality check on the hubris:
Putting aside his ham-fisted approach — including announcing big policy ideas without a single piece of paper explaining it, at a football field, and sad photo calls with his frenemy Scott Morrison — the idea of giving the states a share of income tax is hardly new…
The real problem here is political insiders’ giddy excitement that voters will applaud them for changing how the sausage is made. Get real. Voters don’t care about the process or the blame game. They can tune out. They simply want governments to fix it…
It’s strange that the PM seems to think voters will be excited if state and commonwealth responsibilities are streamlined. My money is on their care factor being zero.
Or, that they will be seriously thrilled if the federal government stops funding public schools. They will certainly care about that.
This is political insanity… If nobody in the Turnbull government can sniff that it is a seriously bad look for a multi-millionaire who lives in Point Piper to be proposing that the commonwealth stops funding public schools they deserve to lose the election and quite possibly will.
UPDATE
The great Rowan Dean:
The world of aviation was shocked to its core this week when a lone hijacker with a fake suicide vest managed to seize the economic reform agenda and force it to fly to a COAG meeting in Canberra. The mystery man, who surrendered to the inevitable, was later identified as Mustafa Tax-Plan, an oddball eccentric ...
The man, who was on a forlorn mission to save his prime ministership by delivering an economic narrative to the electorate, assembled his suicide agenda out of odd bits of leftover tax and federation policies that easily evaded detection by the economy’s co-pilot, Mr Morrison, a former rug merchant from The Shire. “I didn’t suspect a thing until, yet again, Mustafa pulled the rug from right out underneath me,” said a distraught Mr Morrison, speaking from his home on the “Outer Circle” of the Turnbull government.
During his flight from reality, a grinning Mustafa posed for selfies not only with himself but, amazingly, also with his hostages, a group of 54 red-faced Liberal MPs who lost their minds completely back in September and eagerly clambered on board and have been regretting it ever since. Said one, speaking on condition of complete anonymity, (which is pretty much guaranteed after the next election): “He ... had a really nice smile. I trusted him completely. He didn’t force us to do anything against our will. We all went along for the ride but we’ve been going round and round in circles ever since on a headwind of nothing but hot air...”
No one was injured in the incident, with authorities claiming Mustafa Tax-Plan appeared to be harmless and was simply “in love with himself”. “He’s been in an unstable psychological state since his polling figures crashed to earth. He’s not an economic terrorist, he’s just a waffler who’s winging it.”
Just brilliant.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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If they’re so keen that he go, it tells me Abbott should stay

Andrew Bolt April 02 2016 (9:58pm)

The Sydney Morning Herald buys this poll commissioned by a Left-wing “think tank” of a little-known polling group which asks questions whose wording we don’t know to produce an answer hyped by a former Greens advisor:
A new poll commissioned by The Australia Institute has found 63.4 per cent of Australians want the former prime minister to retire. Just 26.3 per cent believe he should stay on, while the rest are undecided.
More than half of Coalition voters want him to go… Ben Oquist, the executive director of the left-leaning think tank, says the message is clear.

But here’s what’s most interesting about the poll: that the Australia Institute thought it worth its money to commission this poll to try to blast Abbott out of Parliament.
For me it’s just more proof that Abbott must stay if the Australia Institute is so eager to have him gone.

UPDATE
Funny how obsessed the pollsters of the Left are to have Abbott gone. The union-linked Essential Report asked similar questions, but their poll found that 52 per cent of Coalition voters wanted Abbott to stay and only 32 per cent wanted him gone. (Overall figure: stay 33 per cent to go 47 per cent, much closer than the Australia Institute’s suspect figures.)   
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THAT ALL WORKED OUT RATHER WELL

Tim Blair – Friday, April 03, 2015 (2:28pm)

In tiny Walkerton, Indiana – population 2144 – a local pizza shop recently became a target of national hatred: 
When asked by local press the hypothetical question of whether or not they’d prefer to have their family owned business, Memories Pizza, cater a gay wedding, the owner said no citing their own religious beliefs as the reason.
Rather than allowing this family to simply have their opinion, which they were asked to give, outraged people grabbed the torches and began a campaign to destroy this small business in small town Indiana.
All for having an opinion that is rooted in faith.
No one was turned away. No one was discriminated against. It was a hypothetical question asked by a news reporter who had questionable motives to begin with. 
The hatred and threats were so intense that the pizza shop shut down and the proprietors went into hiding. Then something magnificent happened. Texan journalist Lawrence Jones launched a funding drive for the shop, with the modest initial aim of raising $25,000. Let’s see how that campaign is going:

image

For his trouble, Jones is now also under threat. That’s what happens when you do something good. Iowahawk summarises: 
In one day, an Indiana pizza place became the worst Yelp-rated restaurant in the world, and the highest revenue restaurant in the world. Until yesterday the highest revenue restaurant in US was Bob Chinn’s Crab House, at $75k/day. Now it’s a pizza joint in Walkerton, IN. 
And it wasn’t even open. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
UPDATE:

image

Sneering leftists really did hope that their rage and hate would force a little pizza store out of business:

image

Following the free market’s near-$US500,000 in donations – equal to beyond $A640,000 – leftists hate the shop even more. Here’s further background from Scott Ott and Robby Soave. Meanwhile, a demented school employeefaces potential charges: 
An Indiana high school girls’ golf coach has been suspended without pay after she posted a tweet threatening to burn down a Walkerton pizza shop for refusing to cater gay weddings.
Jess Dooley, who coaches at Concord High School, made the threat to Memories Pizza, which created a social media firestorm this week after the owner said they would have no problem serving gay couples but would not cater a gay wedding because of their religious beliefs against nontraditional marriage. 
Someone could soon be looking for work. Perhaps a certain pizza joint is hiring.
===

SHARED CONVICTION, INDIVIDUAL BENEFIT

Tim Blair – Friday, April 03, 2015 (3:55am)

The ABC’s tax-funded Jonathan Green writes in praise of higher taxes: 
Maybe if we talked first about defining our sense of self, it might ennoble our conversation on the administrative tools to take us there. Tax after all is simply a means to an end. And it’s that end – the Australia we might aspire to – that might make a logical starting point for a conversation that might end in tax.
We might surprise ourselves. We might find a way to nudge our national dialogue away from the stultifying limiter of individual interest to a more elevated sense of shared conviction and belief.
We might even agree that this shared vision is worth an extra contribution, from each according to their means. From each according to their capacity to pay. To each according to their need …
We might yet discover that there is no I in country. 
Oh, but there is an I in taxation. And Fitzroy millionaire. And individual interest. And non-disclosure. And, for that matter, leftist parasite.
In 2013 Green bought a house in Melbourne for more than $1.4 million. His salary comes entirely – another word containing I – from your taxes. 
===

DERIVATIVE LIZ

Tim Blair – Friday, April 03, 2015 (1:32am)

Elizabeth Farrelly’s SMH columns are usually demented, so it’s no great surprise some failed to realise her latest piece – published on April 1, and claiming Jesus may have been female – was an April Fool’s Day prank. The big giveaway, besides the date, was that Farrelly’s laboured gag borrowed from an April Fool’s attempt published seven years earlier. Here’s an extract from Elizabeth’s column: 
Jesus’ role and resonance are so intensely female it makes me wonder. Was Jesus actually a woman? …
There’s half-plausible archaeological evidence, like the Christ figure (said, at AD30, to be the earliest known) adorned with lipstick, garlands and a pearl necklace. 
And here’s the plonkingly heavy-handed satirical piece published by a US site on April 1, 2008, that provided Farrelly’s “half-plausible archaeological evidence”: 
A team of archaeologists discovered artifacts near the wall in Jerusalem’s ancient City of David that not only shows evidence that Jesus actually existed, but that “he” was a female …
Carbon dating puts the artifacts at around 30 A.D. which makes this the earliest known evidence for an historical Jesus …
In describing the painting, Ephraim Balzar, a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, depicted the mural as, “Jesus with flowers in her hair, wearing a pearl necklace and a beaded anklet (ankle bracelet). And note Christ wearing the red lipstick.” 
Nice try, Liz. Next time, make up your own lame jokes.
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What kind of thugs go to NRL games?

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (10:09pm)

 Some fans are making the NRL seem an even uglier game:
THE New South Wales police say they have identified two people for “allegedly throwing bottles” at NRL referees and officials following Canterbury’s controversial loss to South Sydney on Friday. 
An ambulance had to be called after Bulldogs fans pelted the match officials with projectiles which resulted in an official being taken to hospital.
“Reports a referee was hit by a bottle while leaving the field at Stadium Australia are incorrect,” a police statement said.
“The match official was avoiding a bottle which had been thrown from the crowd when he slipped.... [I]nterchange official Darren Alchin was taken to hospital… Alchin has reportedly suffered a broken collarbone.
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Gay bigots have pizza on their face

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (10:01pm)

Gay bigots and other extremists of the Left tried to kill an Indiana pizza shop business because the owners were Christians with a religious objection to gay marriage.
This latest attempt to bully people into silence has  backfired big-time. 
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Iran left with a nuclear facility the West cannot reach

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (12:22pm)

Barack Obama strikes a nuclear deal with Iran that seems to please Iran - which should be scary enough:
Omri Ceren at Power Line explains Iran’s happiness:
...the U.S. has completely caved on the Fordow concession that the AP blew open on Thursday. Recall that Fordow is the underground bunker, built into the side of a mountain, which the Iranians emptied and made into an illicit enrichment facility. The assumption had always been that the Iranians would have to close it under any reasonable deal. 
President Obama was saying as late as 2012: ”We know they don’t need to have an underground, fortified facility like Fordo in order to have a peaceful program”.
The Iranians simply said no. So the Americans caved and said that they could keep it open as a research facility, but they had to remove all the centrifuges for storage. The compromise was the brainchild of Robert Einhorn from Brookings – a top State nonproliferation official stretching back to the Clinton era – and there was a lot of talk of Iranian flexibility when they accepted it. Then this week, it emerged that in fact the Iranians would be allowed to keep centrifuges spinning inside the mountain.
But instead of spinning uranium, the centrifuges would be spinning germanium or similar non-nuclear elements. That’s the administration’s talking point: that there will not be any “enrichment” going on at Fordow. The claim is – bluntly – false. Centrifuges spin isotopes into lighter and heavier elements, thereby “enriching” the material. That’s what they do. In fact that’s all they do…
This isn’t a minor point. The concession has the potential to gut the whole deal:
(1) Allows N-generation centrifuge R&D beyond the reach of the West – since the process is the exact same process, Iran will have a hardened facility where it will be able to research and develop N-generation centrifuges. Zarif bragged from the stage in Lausanne that Iranian R&D on centrifuges will continue on IR-4s, IR-5s, IR-6s, and IR-8s, and that the pace of research will be tied to Iranian scientific progress. The development of advanced centrifuges would give the Iranians a leg up if they decide to break out, and will put them instantly within a screw’s turn of a nuke when the deal expires. (2) Leaves Iranian nuclear infrastructure running beyond the reach of the West – if the Iranians kick out inspectors and dare the world to respond, the West will have zero way to intervene. The Iranians will have a head start on enrichment, and a place to do it beyond the reach of Western weapons. The administration’s early pushback has been that the breakout time will still be a year, so they could in theory reimpose sanctions, but it takes more than a year for sanctions to take an economic toll. So: zero options to stop a breakout.
Israel protests:
In a phone conversation with the president, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a final deal based on this agreement “would threaten the survival of Israel.” 
He said the deal would legitimize Iran’s nuclear program and increase Iranian “aggression and terror.” Netanyahu urged the world to increase pressure on Iran until a better deal is achieved.
Iran accuses the Obama Administration of spinning the deal, making it seem tougher than it is. 
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Rare mistake made. I took Farrelly seriously

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (11:03am)

Not entirely my fault, but I couldn’t tell the difference between Elizabeth Farrelly being serious and telling a joke.
It would have helped if I’d read the whole column, but, again, can I be blamed?  
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On The Bolt Report, April 5

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (10:21am)

On the  The Bolt Report on Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm.
Editorial: Crucified for opening his mouth. What’s changed?
Guest: Dr Mark Durie, Anglican minister and Islamic expert. Should we judge faiths by what they urge people to do? If so, why is Christianity so despised by the media class?
The panel: the great Michael Kroger and Professor Sinclair Davidson, economist and vindicated Essendon supporter. Has the Government lost the plot on cutting spending? Why all this talk of taxes instead? Essendon cleared.
Newswatch: Rowan Dean. Why did so much of the media fall for the great Labor spin on the “blackest day in Australian sport”?
And plenty more.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

Donate to Jonathan Green’s noblest cause

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (10:10am)

ABC presenter Jonathan Green pens a typically wafty, lofty and polysyllablic ommm to explain why we should all be much less selfless and donate lots of our money to the government to pay for things like, well, the most splendidly superior Jonathan Green.
UPDATE
And from which noted economist did we first hear this boilerplate of Green’s, albeit more crisply said?:
We might even agree that this shared vision is worth an extra contribution, from each according to their means. From each according to their capacity to pay. To each according to their need …
===

Will Van Badham also boycott her anti-worker Guardian?

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (10:00am)

Guardian columnist Van Badham joins in the union-backed intimidation - described two posts below - of a restaurant worried about trying to stay open on weekends when it must pay penalty rates of 250 per cent:
image
Well, at least she kept the language clean this time.
But what hypocrisy from the keyboard komrade. The Guardian on this Good Friday - and throughout the weekend - is publishing on the Internet, thanks to journalists rostered to work.
And what does the Journalists Published Media Award, as published by the journalists’ union, the MEAA, specify as the appropriate penalty for these poor slaves of capitalists? Do they get 250 per cent penalty rate? No:
image
Looking forward to Badham demanding a boycott of the anti-worker Guardian. 
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If a shop is closed, this may be the reason

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (9:17am)

You might this weekend come across shops and restaurants with these posters:
image
Imagine trying to run a business where your wages bill on a Sunday suddenly goes through the roof, The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry explains:
Under most retail and hospitality awards, public holidays are paid at 2.5 times regular pay. Bringing them closer to the current Sunday penalty rate, of 1.5-2 times regular pay, would allow more small businesses to open and give more hours to their staff. After all, 2.5 times zero is zero.
But the unions and other Leftists react to this debate with the now-usual threats and intimidation. Shop owners supporting the poster campaign have been singled out for naming, shaming and even threats of harassment by websites run by the ACTU and people linked to certain unions. From one site run by anonymous people but fed by some people the ACCI says it knows:
image
How did the Left get this ugly? 
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A Senate out of control. Our control

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (8:46am)

Professor James Allan in the latest Spectator:
Here’s the sort of line we’ve been hearing of late: ‘Tony Abbott is to blame for not getting the government’s budget and other matters through the Senate. He should be compromising more. He should be negotiating more. He should be reaching out to all the Independent Senators....’…

But here’s what you need to realise about our Constitution. Firstly, in the Westminster world that includes Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, Australia is unique in having an Upper House that has any sort of power at all. New Zealand has no upper house whatsoever. And both Canada’s and the UK’s are today, in 2015, not elected legislative bodies… 
This means two things. First off, unelected Upper Houses have next to no legitimacy in today’s world… More pertinently, when prime ministers in Canada and the UK win an election ... they get any budgetary measures they want passed into law. Always…
On that model Mr Abbott’s government’s university reforms would have sailed through. So would all the budget savings. The Prime Minister would have three years to do what he and the government thought best and then the ultimate arbiters in any democracy – the voters – would have their say…
It gets worse. The drafters of our Constitution here in Australia explicitly opted to copy the US Constitution… That means they chose to have an elected Upper House. It was meant to be a House for the States, to check and balance.
So notice how inconsistent it is for some ABC hack to criticize the Republican Congress for blocking an Obama legislative initiative and at the same time see our Senate as rightfully being the arbiters of what legislation ought to pass into law.
Secondly, notice too that in democratic terms ... our Senate is massively less legitimate than our House of Representatives. For the Lower House we basically count everyone in Australia as equal ... Your vote counts the same as mine. That is democratic legitimacy.
For the Senate we give each State the same representation whatever its population, a direct copy from the US. That means voters in Tasmania have votes that are worth about 18 times as much as NSW voters…
But it was, as I said, a federalism trade-off to protect the States that is now defunct. And the idea was never that the Senate would be more important in making public policy decisions. It was to be a House of second thought, not the predominant decider of public policy…
In addition, the Americans keep their Senate a two party affair… [T]he voters will always know who to reward or punish for a recalcitrant Senate.
That is far better than the rubbish situation here in Australia where a handful of people who at the last election won some miniscule fraction of the voter support as compared to the Coalition are elevated by journalists into being legitimately on the same plane as the Abbott government. And when they do block Bill after Bill after Bill we voters are not able to punish them. They are not accountable, especially when some fraction of a fraction of the vote can get you back into Parliament… Whoever is in government, our Senate has gotten too big for its comparatively undemocratic boots.
(Thanks to reader Spill Shorten.) 
===

Melba’s echo

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (8:07am)

 Dame Nellie Melba’s astonishing fame lives on, as 300 bidders at Sotheby’s auction a Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt prove, paying more than double what was expected:
Melba died in 1931, and the auction of jewellery, furniture, artworks and household items was the first opportunity for the public to acquire items held for decades in a bank vault and at her home outside Melbourne.
Everything sold, resulting in a total of $1.99 million, including the 22 per cent buyers’ premium, from an estimate of $550,000 to $750,000.
Sotheby’s Australia chairman Geoffrey Smith says the pieces were conservatively priced by specialists who assessed their market value but not the fame factor. “How can you determine values of things when they’ve been owned by someone of that stature,” he says. 
image
A 1915 Cartier fine rock crystal, enamel and diamond-set clock sold for $244,000, including the premium, off an estimate of more than $20,000. 
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Arthur Streeton’s oil on canvas The Windsor Damsel, Fishing sold for $189,100 off a low estimate of $40,000.
A Cartier diamond, gem-set and silk brocaded evening clutch sold for $39,000 off an estimate of $2000. 
===

Even Mark Kenny’s hatred of Abbott eases after drinks

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (7:46am)

Few Canberra press journalists have been as eager to see signs of Tony Abbott’s evil and downfall as the Sydney Morning Herald’s political correspondent Mark Kenny.
So today’s column marks an interesting change:
Just weeks ago, Abbott’s fate appeared sealed - destined to end sooner rather than later and ignominiously at that. Now, after a period of political “Lent”, marked by contrition, observance of the liturgical virtues of consultation, and the eschewing of mortal sins such as hubris, Abbott’s flat-lining leadership is showing a faint pulse… 
To that end, he is doing what he can – especially on the consultation front. So much so that even some of the spill backers now accept that the party room had been right to hesitate, choosing grace over crucifixion…
Opinion polls in recent weeks have been unusually volatile, but the trend line suggests voters are thawing slowly too…
Among the changes Abbott promised was a commitment to listen and to consult with the backbench. Most seem happy that this is occurring, although satisfaction is not universal… Finally, Abbott’s face-to-face relationship with the fourth estate had been accorded a low priority in his first 18 months… That too might be changing although it is early days. On Wednesday night, Abbott hosted Easter drinks in his parliamentary courtyard for the Canberra press gallery. It was a small gesture but the Prime Minister’s relaxed and self-deprecating humour went some way to fostering personal relationships with the people who do much of the first-level reporting and interpretation of government activity.
For Abbott, worth the price of a drink. But should the reportage of the nation’s most solemn affairs really be so dependent on a shared drink and a joke? 
===

Islamists slaughter Christian students in Kenya

Andrew Bolt April 03 2015 (7:28am)

 Such astonishing evil, to murder so many unarmed students:
The number of people killed in an attack by al-Shabab Islamist militants on a university in north-eastern Kenya has risen to 147, Kenyan government officials say. 
The operation to secure the Garissa University College campus was now over, with all four attackers killed, they added.
Officials said 587 students had been evacuated, 79 of whom were injured…
The Kenyan government has named Mohamed Kuno, a high-ranking al-Shabab official, as the mastermind of the attack.
A BBC Somali Service reporter says Mr Kuno was headmaster at an Islamic school in Garissa before he quit in 2007…
Student Collins Wetangula said when the gunmen entered his hostel he could hear them opening doors and asking if the people inside were Muslims or Christians, the AP news agency reports. “If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot. With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die,” he said.
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WANNA CUDDLE? One week from tomorrow, Richmond's first professional cuddling salon opens on Monument Ave, it's called...
Posted by NBC12 on Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Smirk. cuddle not sexual contact. Smirk.
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Maths teacher pranks his class!Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2SsIYEbCio
Posted by The LAD Bible on Thursday, 2 April 2015
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There's a big difference between revenge and vengeance. Which is your character seeking? http://bit.ly/1G5Zfw8
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Thursday, 2 April 2015
sacrifice involving mercy or grace .. 
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Indiana Governor Mike Pence claims he's a Christian but his actions are the polar opposite of Jesus' teachings. As...
Posted by US Uncut on Tuesday, 31 March 2015
An example of the assault on the Indiana Governor .. very unfair and not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pence
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Libra 
Posted by Jasmine Walker on Sunday, 29 March 2015
I'm a Capricorn
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Bring your characters to life by using these tips to create character sheets: http://bit.ly/1G54DzJ
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Wednesday, 1 April 2015
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Sunset on Diablo Diablo Magazine
Posted by Matt Granz on Wednesday, 1 April 2015
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A little new family tradition created by my daughter Casey.  April first was the due date ten years ago for the baby we...
Posted by Matt Granz on Tuesday, 31 March 2015
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THE GREAT UNWATCHED

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 03, 2014 (2:10pm)

The ABC’s Mark Scott finds virtue in his billion-dollar network’s abysmal ratings: 
He noted that not one of TV’s top-50 rating shows last year aired on the ABC. This was a “fact conveniently lost on those who persist in depicting the ABC as an all-conquering, audience-snatching competitor”. 
Tax-snatching, yes. Audience-snatching, not so much. Why are we paying all that money for something we don’t watch?
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WHERE THE LIVING IS EASY

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 03, 2014 (2:04pm)

An Anglican beardo warns of disaster: 
Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has attacked Western lifestyles for causing climate change that is “pushing the environment towards crisis”.
Writing in The Telegraph, Dr Williams says that the “appalling” floods and storms that devastated parts of Britain this winter were a demonstration of “what we can expect” in the future.
He also takes a sideswipe at climate change sceptics. 
Also in the UK: 
British winters are likely to become milder and wetter like the last one but cold spells still need to be planned for, says the UK Met Office.
Summers are likely to be hotter and drier, but washouts are still on the cards, it adds …
Assuming the Met Office study is correct, it means everything from gumboots to snowploughs and sunscreen to anoraks will still be needed. 
Scared Brits need a new home. And here’s just the place: 
Despite the fact Adelaide suffers through summer heatwaves, it seems we have the perfect weather mix compared to the hot and cold extremes of places in America, Northern Europe and parts of Asia.
Weatherzone meteorologist Rob Sharpe said Adelaide had an ideal climate. 
(Via Andy M)
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BEST OF THE WORST

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 03, 2014 (4:59am)

Labor veteran Graham Richardson reflects on his ALP colleague Craig Thomson: 
He was the best liar I had ever met – and, given the life I have led and the characters I have come across, that was a huge call. 
Richo joined the ALP sometime during the 19th century. He’s met a few.
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PASTA PATROL

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 03, 2014 (4:55am)

Italian police spotted in NSW:

image

Nobody knows why. In other automotive news: 
Sebastian Vettel has hit out at the sound of the 2014 Formula 1 cars.
Following criticism from some fans about the lack of volume of the new turbo engines compared to last year’s V8s, Vettel believes that F1 has lost some of its magic this season.
Having watched from trackside at the Australian Grand Prix following his early retirement, he reckons the current cars sound terrible.
“It is s**t,” declared Vettel … 
A friend at last month’s Australian Grand Prix agrees: “The Mazdas in the celebrity race were louder.”
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SOFA PIONEER

Tim Blair – Thursday, April 03, 2014 (3:15am)

Mindy Kaling is great:

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If we want this pay, how will we work smarter?

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (9:14am)

So how are we to survive the competition?
BHP Billiton has disclosed that the wages of some of its coalmining workers are 50 per cent higher than equivalent employees in the US, highlighting the mining giant’s “productivity and cost challenge’’ in Australia. 
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Tribunal may be discriminating against patients instead

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (8:10am)

Why does a tribunal know better than the experts? And can it ensure that this would-be doctor with an “extreme” fear of exams doesn’t also have a crippling fear when it comes to finally applying her skills on a patient?
A medical student who suffers an “extreme” fear of exams has won the right to continue her degree after a tribunal ruled the university discriminated against her because of her mental health disability. 
The woman, who has a borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, had failed to sit written exams and avoided some clinical assessments, particularly in paediatrics and surgery, because of ‘‘extreme anxiety in relation to sitting exams [and] performance assessments’’.
The University of Newcastle declined to grant the woman an extension of time to complete her Bachelor of Medicine after she had only completed three-and-a-half years of course work in an eight-year period, the maximum time allowed. The Dean of Medicine, Professor Ian Symonds, felt there was a significant risk that she would not be able to safely work as a doctor, even if she ultimately managed to graduate, because of her psychiatric illnesses.
But the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal upheld the woman’s claim that the university discriminated against her on the grounds of disability and directed the university to grant her an 18-month extension… The Tribunal heard she ... had a panic attack while driving to an exam and couldn’t bring herself to attend. Her psychiatrist, Dr Elizabeth O’Brien, said the woman suffered “an intense fear of failure and the shame of this at times paralyses her ability to apply herself consistently to her studies’’.
Staggering.
(Thanks to reader Mack.) 
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Help get out the Gosnell story

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (8:01am)


 An appeal for funds from the makers of FrackNation, Not Evil Just Wrong  and Mine Your Own Business:
Today we are launching the biggest ever crowd funding campaign to make a TV movie about the serial killer, abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell. 
Dr. Kermit Gosnell is the most prolific serial killer in American History, but almost no one knows who he is… Gosnell is serving several life sentences but the media basically ignored his crimes and his trial.  
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Scare us like you really mean it

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (7:52am)

Global warming - propaganda

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REALLY, if journalists must terrify us about the end of the world, they shouldn’t be this damn lazy.

Take the ABC, which on Monday waved a vague arm in the general direction of the planet: “Climate change will impact everything everywhere.”
Come on, guys. That’s not even trying.

Put some pep into it. If the world really is ending I want gory details. I want screaming. I want children held up to the pitiless sky by wailing mothers as fathers curse their fate.
But, no, even reporters of The Age, Australia’s most fervent global warming newspaper, sounded listless this week as they promoted the latest scare-report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Irreversible and severe damage is to be inflicted on the planet from climate change,” plodded writer Tom Arup before he sighed.
“I know, this does feel familiar doesn’t it? You are a little bored, I can sense your eyes glazing over.”
But that’s odd. If you were told your children would soon die in a ghastly fireball, you wouldn’t be yawning. Not if you believed it.
And death and doom is exactly what we’re told to expect. Take Professor Helen Berry, a University of Canberra health academic who helped write this IPCC report and told the Sydney Morning Herald:
(Read the full article here.) 
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We are in strife and big spending cuts cannot be avoided

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (7:27am)

Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson gave a cracker of a speech last night that should frighten every Australian. The easy times are over. The hard work starts now.
We are just not going to get as rich as we thought:
If labour productivity were to grow at its long-term average, per capita incomes would grow on average over the decade ahead by only 0.7 per cent per year, leading to real income per capita of around $69,000 by 2024. 
These rates would be much less than the 2.3 per cent growth Australians are used to, which would otherwise yield a real income per capita of around $82,000 by 2024. So there’s a gap of around $13,000 per person between what Australians might hope for and expect, and what might come to pass, on the basis of a reasonably benign scenario.
And we won’t have the budget surpluses we used to expect to pay for goodies and fund tax cuts:
Without policy change, the budget is projected to be in an underlying cash deficit for the next 10 years. 
How did we get into this mess?
First, look at that massive spending spree the Rudd Government gave us and the Gillard Government didn’t rein back:
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Even with the withdrawal of GFC-related stimulus measures by the end of 2012-13, real spending increased significantly more (40 per cent from 2002?03) than real GDP (34 per cent from 2002-03). 
Second, check how many more people we’ll get who won’t work but will demand support:
....by 2050, there will be only 2.7 people of working age to support each Australian aged 65 years or over, compared with 5 working age people per aged person in 2010, and 7.5 in 1970.
Third, say goodbye to top-dollar prices for what we dig out of the ground:
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Fourth, we’re been slack in working smarter and more flexibly:
Australia’s multifactor productivity growth – the best available measure of how efficiently we are using inputs – has seen a marked deterioration since around the turn of the century. Indeed, it is now negative. 
Fifth, see how we demand more from the government, especially as we get older:
What is less well understood is that total Commonwealth expenditure on health is anticipated to rise from $64.7 billion in nominal terms in 2013-14 to $74.6 billion in 2016-17, and to $116 billion in 2023-24.
Similarly, our three main pension payments – the aged pension, disability support pension and carers’ payment – grow at an annual rate of 6 per cent per annum in nominal terms over the forward estimates, adding around $13 billion to annual payments by 2016-17, and another $39 billion to annual payments by 2023-24. 
Parkinson says he’s still a glass-half-full guy. Asia is growing and its demand for food and services will soar. We are still rich. But let’s be frank: anyone peddling big-spending promises is living in la-la land. Anyone claiming we don’t need to make deep spending cuts is insulting your intelligence and endangering our future. 
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Richo: the best liar ever, but Thomson did once blink

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (7:24am)

Graham Richardson says Craig Thomson was the best liar he ever met, but recalls the fateful conversation where he finally made the liar blink on the brothel visits he charged to his union:
His demeanour changed when I informed him that the SMH had evidence of three calls from his phone being made to the brothel from his mobile on that terrible day and that they could be traced from the central coast, down the freeway and into the city of Sydney. 
At this point he blinked, but batted on. It must have been stolen as well, was the claim that followed, though not with the same confidence as before.
I then delivered the coup de grace — and I am certain I was the only person to ever see him run up the white flag. “At least the day got better that night,” I told him, “because the bastard who stole the phone gave it back to you.”
“How do you know that?” he asked. I told him that he had resumed normal calls himself that evening and it was all over.
“I can’t explain that,” were the words from this exchange that I can never forget.
The towel having been thrown in, he agreed to make sure his solicitor would ring the SMH’s solicitor and seek to have both sides walk away. This call was to happen on the following day. In fact, the call was made six to eight weeks later, but it was not the call I expected. The SMH’s solicitor was presented with a demand for $20,000 and a front-page apology.
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UN body: Fukushima fear-mongering worse than the radiation

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (7:11am)

Anti-nuclear hysterics

The United Nations’ nuclear safety body concludes a “most important health impact” of the Fukushima emergency was not the radiation but the fear-mongering: 
The major UN report on the health impacts of the Fukushima accident concluded that any radiation-induced effects would be too small to identify. People were well protected and received “low or very low” radiation doses. 
The latest report on the accident comes from the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) ...
Overall, people in Fukushima are expected on average to receive less than 10 mSv due to the accident over their whole lifetime, said UNSCEAR, comparing this to the 170 mSv lifetime dose from natural background radiation that people in Japan typically receive.
Health issues from radiation only become apparent in people known to have received 100 mSv or more in a short space of time. This criteria does apply to a group of 160 plant workers, who are to be monitored in the long term. Despite the evacuation’s success in minimizing radiation exposure to a level where, ”No discernible increased incidence of radiation-related health effects are expected among exposed members of the public or their descendants,” the mass movement of people had repercussions of its own, including the deaths of some vulnerable people and social effects of the relocation. UNSCEAR said, “The most important health effect is on mental and social well-being, related to the enormous impact of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident, and the fear and stigma related to the perceived risk of exposure to radiation.”
(Thanks to reader Jack.) 
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Is Mark Scott watching Q&A?

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (7:05am)

I WAS pleased to hear ABC boss Mark Scott say the taxpayer-funded broadcaster wasn’t as far to the Left as I’ve said.

Or as Scott put it in a lecture on Tuesday: “We are nowhere near as bad as our critics make out ...”
Yes, I was pleased — because I sure needed that laugh after Monday’s Q&A.

Has the ABC’s bias ever been so naked? Has the Left’s authoritarianism, vulgarity and hatred of the West ever been so open?
(Read the full article here.) 
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Howard on free speech: trust Australians

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (7:00am)


 As I wrote and said last week, the argument is not between those who want more free speech and those who want less racism.
It is between those who trust Australians and those who don’t. Those who think we are basically decent and can be trusted with free speech and those who think we’re too racist for such freedom.
John Howard puts much the same case:
FORMER prime minister John Howard will tell a gala dinner celebrating the Liberal Party’s 70th anniversary tonight that he strongly supports proposed changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act… 
Defending the principle of freedom of speech, Mr Howard will take aim at critics of the changes, arguing they start with the assumption that Australia is a racist country. Australia is not a racist ­nation but rather one that respects and cherishes an open and tolerant society, which should therefore uphold freedom of speech, he will say.
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Back to basics

Andrew Bolt April 03 2014 (6:18am)

Niki Savva gives Tony Abbott tough advice:
Above all, Abbott was elected because he was neither Kevin Rudd nor Julia Gillard. Yet here he is, six months later, one sixth of his way into his first term, with time slipping away like the sands in an hourglass, as one famous soapie warns, acting remarkably like them… 
Rudd’s dysfunction, his refusal to consult beyond his coterie, followed by Gillard’s failure to comprehend the impact of her decisions, exacerbated by her refusal to learn from her mistakes, cost Labor dearly. The mystery is why Abbott feels compelled to copy them. He was not elected Prime Minister to indulge his whims and fancies. If anyone’s whims or fancies warrant humouring, it’s the voters’ and there is not a scintilla of evidence to show they were clamouring for gongs. What makes Abbott’s revival of knighthoods and dameships worse, what makes it even more self-indulgent, is he knew if he had flagged it publicly, or had taken it to his party room or cabinet, he would have been talked or laughed out of it.
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Parkinson: the GST must go up

Andrew Bolt April 02 2014 (7:45pm)

Happy to raise the GST - provided less efficient taxes go. But let’s not tackle wild spending just with big tax takes:
Treasury boss Martin Parkinson says the goods and services tax will have to be boosted or broadened if the budget is to have any hope of returning to surplus. 
Addressing the Sydney Institute on Wednesday, Dr Parkinson detailed a bleak budget outlook in which there would be no return to surplus in a decade, even if “bracket creep” through wage inflation was allowed to push up the average tax rate on full-time workers from 23 to 28 per cent.
Sustaining such an increase was “unlikely to be politically feasible”, he said.
It was also “hardly likely to be economically desirable” as it would turn Australians away from work…
Dr Parkinson said after years in which Australia’s real income per head had grown by 2.3 per cent a year, it was now set to scarcely grow at all for a decade.
That meant that by 2024, real income per head would be $69,000, much less than the $82,000 per head Australians would have come to expect…
“What is less well understood is that total Commonwealth expenditure on health is anticipated to rise from $64.7 billion in nominal terms to $116 billion in 2023-24.”
“Similarly, our three main pension payments – the aged pension, disability support pension and carers’ payment – grow at an annual rate of 6 per cent per annum in nominal terms over the forward estimates, adding around $13 billion to annual payments by 2016-17, and another $39 billion by 2023-24.” 
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False. I’d defend Israel even if every one of its leaders were like Michael Gawenda

Andrew Bolt April 02 2014 (5:19pm)

An open response to Michael Gawenda, and any Jewish paper is free to reproduce it.
Michael,
Your column today is a grotesque misrepresentation of me and of my argument with Jewish leaders supporting the Racial Discrimination Act.

To claim I simply presented an IOU to the Jewish community in return for services rendered – services I could now withdraw in a pique – is not only untrue but vicious.

May I suggest your cartoonish antipathy towards me has made you write something unfair?

You overlooked – or deliberately omitted – the central point of my argument and one I’ve made several times, finally prompting Mark Leibler to address the matter this year in an open letter for which I am deeply grateful.

I was accused in court by a Jewish barrister before a Jewish judge of sharing the thinking of the Nazis in drawing up the Nuremberg race laws, which, the barrister didn’t need to add yet did, led to the Holocaust.

This was not simply manifestly untrue and, in the circumstances, highly inflammatory. It was an insult so vile that I am enraged again simply to repeat it to you.

What so deeply disappointed me is that half a dozen Jewish leaders I knew - and who knew what I’d done for the community and therefore knew the slur to be false - privately assured me variously that Merkel’s comments were a disgrace, the law had been misapplied or the law was too broad in scope, if this case was the consequence.

Yet not one of those leaders, until Mark this year, publicly defended me against one of the most vile smears you could possibly dream up in this kind of debate. Not one, until Mark, publicly acknowledged that mine was not the kind of case this law should have applied to.

So why this long silence, only briefly broken? For the reason, I believe, that it was felt more important by those leaders to maintain the myth that the law was perfect than to acknowledge an injustice was done and my reputation unfairly and vilely trashed as a consequence.

This is the source of my disappointment. I also pointed out the danger in this for the Jewish community, that in allowing this trashing of me they were also allowing the marginalising of one of their most dependable media supporters, in a country with distressingly few of them.

All this is on the public record, and I cannot believe that in writing about this issue you could have overlooked the argument I actually put. Here is just one iteration of it, from just last December:
- Several prominent Jewish spokesmen had privately told me they disagreed with the verdict and even the breadth of the Racial Discrimination Act, if used to silence even me, yet not one of those spokesmen had ever said so publicly. It was as if though by conceding an injustice, they risked losing a law they thought useful. I was, in my phrase, “collateral damage”. 
- Not a single Jewish spokesman had publicly condemned Ron Merkel QC for telling the Jewish judge in my case that my thinking in the article was of the kind that the Nazis had in drawing up the Nuremberg race laws, (Danny Lamm, however, did offer to speak on my behalf.) I thought this vile slur, explosive in the context of my case, was not just a gross misuse of the victims of the Holocaust, but was false and known to be false by the many members of the Jewish community, who knew me to be one of the most prominent media defenders of Israel and the Jewish community generally. It seemed to me, again, that my reputation was collateral damage in a fight to preserve (unjust) laws.
- I was alarmed that my personal reputation was further being attacked by people who should know better. One very prominent Jewish leader (certainly not Leibler) had even suggested I believed in the “Jewish conspiracy”. I warned that phrasing the debate over the RDA as between racists and non-racists was not just false and offensive, but would damage the standing of someone many Jews felt was useful in defending them publicly.
- These laws would eventually be turned against Jews and those who criticised Islam. 
You could have quoted my real position. Instead, you substituted your own version: falsely claiming that because I’d scratched Jewish backs, I felt Jews should scratch mine, particularly if they wanted more favours:
For a start, this suggests that Bolt indeed sees himself as powerful, able to ‘do things’ for the Jews and, it must be assumed, for others who would benefit mightily from his support. In return, he expects support when he gets into a spot of bother. This is the way players in politics sometimes operate but not, I would hope, someone who calls himself a journalist
Needless to say, your version is not just false and completely at odds with what I’ve written and said privately to several leaders, including Danny Lamm, Yuval Rotem and Colin Rubenstein. It is also extremely offensive, crude and untrue – a play to a racist stereotype of the unreliable goy, a secret anti-Semite, after all, despite all that smiling and backclapping:

If there were a shred of truth to such a spiteful reading you might then be able to go on to note how I’d switched positions on issues involving Israel and attacked what I’d once supported. I warrant you could not find a single such case, or a single case of my failing to speak up as I used to. I would draw your attention to, for instance, my blog comments on the discussion on Q&A only last Monday of Pamela Geller’s signs, or my criticism on The Bolt Report last Sunday of the BDS protests.

I do not need favours from anyone to speak up for Israel as I have done, and for you to now imply I am such a man is shameful. Shameful and very, very wrong.

A real journalist would acknowledge this mistake – this gross injustice - and apologise. 
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THE GOOD OL’ BOYS AREN’T GONE... they are regrouping for an assault on Gillard  By Larry Pickering

Except for the destruction of the Labor Party, with the help of her Marxist comrades, it is difficult to find anything Gillard has done well.

It is indeed bizarre that those who keep her in office now were the very same people she helped to steal over a million dollars from in the 90s.

Ralph Blewitt, Bob Kernohan and myself have been told to shut our traps by the Victorian Fraud Squad for fear of compromising their investigations.

We have, but the ten part series on Gillard’s criminal behaviour is still available on the pickeringpost.com

By suppressing information, refusing to prefer charges and obstructing Fraud Squad investigations, the AWU (with the help of the corrupt NSW Right) has kept their girl performing dutifully in the top spot.

But a macro oversight of Labor indicates an imminent split. Martin Ferguson, Rob McClelland and Simon Crean are among true blue Labor men with clout.

They won’t lie down admonished, licking their wounds, rueing what should have been.

There is a widening fissure running through the heart of Labor... Gillard and her vile intentions are being openly attacked from within.

Crean knew of the avaricious intention to raid Super Funds and spoke up. Ferguson knew of the class war and mining tax debacle and spoke up. McClelland knew of Gillard’s criminal past and spoke up. Kim Carr knew of an impending Royal Commission into unions and spoke up.

The Labor Party is crippled and can no longer fill its honorable role. It has experimented with Gillard’s Communist agenda and it has failed spectacularly.

Those responsible, the incompetent dregs who now sit with Gillard on the front bench, will soon be sent to the sin bin to learn how to play by the rules.

The true Labor Party now sits behind Gillard and they will fight with tenacity to regain their beloved Party and they will inter her in the process.

The AWU’s Paul Howes, a vacuous illiterate Trotskyite, will be entombed with Bill Ludwig as distant memories of utter failures.

Their corrupt NSW friends who colluded with them to enthrone Gillard will be in cells adjacent to O’bied.

If anyone doubts how Gillard cares for our once great country, consider this:
• $11mil gifted to a Hugh Jackman film.
• $23 mil gifted to a version of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
• $400 mil to promote women’s interests in the Pacific.
• $500 mil gifted to Indonesian school projects.
• $1.3 billion in bribes to three Independents.
• $10 billion gifted to the Greens, etc etc.

There is much, much more but compare that profligacy to her consideration for the distraught victims of the Queensland floods... a gift of one million dollars.

And the flood previous? A further tax (a levy). How philanthropic of her.

The dark Communist underworld of a prettified Gillard will soon slink back to its university base to plan its next infiltration of the Labor Party.

Only then will true blue Labor men of honor re-emerge as a legitimate Opposition.

And God knows we will need one.
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Ever wondered what that patch means on your Anzac's arm or the medal pinned to their chest? Do you want to identify a souvenir sent home or the uniform they wear in your family photos? Ask your questions of the Australian War Memorial in our Expert Q&A on Thursday, 4th April at 8:30pm AEDT.

Are you busy Thursday and can't make the Q&A session? Ask your questions now in a comment below. Or join us on this page with your questions on Thursday for our 4 experts from the AWM Military Heraldry and Technology team.

Share your photos on our wall, with your questions or email them to contribute@insidehistory.com.au

When is the Q&A? :: NSW-ACT-VIC-TAS: 8:30-9:30pm AEDT | QLD: 7:30-8:30pm | WA: 5:30-6:30pm | NT: 7:00-8:00pm | SA: 8:00-9:00pm | Weekly on Thursdays nights!

Read more about the AWM experts ::http://ow.ly/jEOpV
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CAPTAIN FABULOUS

Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 03, 2013 (10:31am)

As a member of cabinet, Craig Emerson is paid more than $320,000. He’ll retire on a mighty pension. Yet he seems to have something against the fabulously wealthy: 
What I said in fact is that it is worthwhile having a debate about the fact that fabulously wealthy people are able to get an advantage of paying a 15 per cent tax whereas everyday Australians on ordinary wages, pay 30 per cent or more.
I didn’t set a dividing line. I’m simply referring to the fact that there are fabulously wealthy people in Australia.
Now if we want to have a debate with the Liberal Party as to whether there are or are notfabulously wealthy people, I’m happy to have that.
This is what I say about fabulously wealthy people, god bless their little cotton socks. 
The man seems unhinged. Former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin detects desperation: “This is a government that has lost the plot. They are just floundering around trying to come up with a policy that will give them a bounce in the opinion polls.”
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Oscar Wilde
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“Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”” -Matthew 20: 17-19
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"He answered him to never a word."
Matthew 27:14

He had never been slow of speech when he could bless the sons of men, but he would not say a single word for himself. "Never man spake like this man," and never man was silent like him. Was this singular silence the index of his perfect self-sacrifice? Did it show that he would not utter a word to stay the slaughter of his sacred person, which he had dedicated as an offering for us? Had he so entirely surrendered himself that he would not interfere in his own behalf, even in the minutest degree, but be bound and slain an unstruggling, uncomplaining victim? Was this silence a type of the defencelessness of sin? Nothing can be said in palliation or excuse of human guilt; and, therefore, he who bore its whole weight stood speechless before his judge. Is not patient silence the best reply to a gainsaying world? Calm endurance answers some questions infinitely more conclusively than the loftiest eloquence. The best apologists for Christianity in the early days were its martyrs. The anvil breaks a host of hammers by quietly bearing their blows. Did not the silent Lamb of God furnish us with a grand example of wisdom? Where every word was occasion for new blasphemy, it was the line of duty to afford no fuel for the flame of sin. The ambiguous and the false, the unworthy and mean, will ere long overthrow and confute themselves, and therefore the true can afford to be quiet, and finds silence to be its wisdom. Evidently our Lord, by his silence, furnished a remarkable fulfilment of prophecy. A long defence of himself would have been contrary to Isaiah's prediction: "He is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth." By his quiet he conclusively proved himself to be the true Lamb of God. As such we salute him this morning. Be with us, Jesus, and in the silence of our heart, let us hear the voice of thy love.

Evening


"He shall see his seed; he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand."
Isaiah 53:10

Plead for the speedy fulfilment of this promise, all ye who love the Lord. It is easy work to pray when we are grounded and bottomed, as to our desires, upon God's own promise. How can he that gave the word refuse to keep it? Immutable veracity cannot demean itself by a lie, and eternal faithfulness cannot degrade itself by neglect. God must bless his Son, his covenant binds him to it. That which the Spirit prompts us to ask for Jesus, is that which God decrees to give him. Whenever you are praying for the kingdom of Christ, let your eyes behold the dawning of the blessed day which draweth near, when the Crucified shall receive his coronation in the place where men rejected him. Courage, you that prayerfully work and toil for Christ with success of the very smallest kind, it shall not be so always; better times are before you. Your eyes cannot see the blissful future: borrow the telescope of faith; wipe the misty breath of your doubts from the glass; look through it and behold the coming glory. Reader, let us ask, do you make this your constant prayer? Remember that the same Christ who tells us to say, "Give us this day our daily bread," had first given us this petition, "Hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." Let not your prayers be all concerning your own sins, your own wants, your own imperfections, your own trials, but let them climb the starry ladder, and get up to Christ himself, and then, as you draw nigh to the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat, offer this prayer continually, "Lord, extend the kingdom of thy dear Son." Such a petition, fervently presented, will elevate the spirit of all your devotions. Mind that you prove the sincerity of your prayer by labouring to promote the Lord's glory.
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Today's reading: Judges 16-18, Luke 7:1-30 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Judges 16-18


Samson and Delilah

1 One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her. 2 The people of Gaza were told, "Samson is here!" So they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They made no move during the night, saying, "At dawn we'll kill him."

3 But Samson lay there only until the middle of the night. Then he got up and took hold of the doors of the city gate, together with the two posts, and tore them loose, bar and all. He lifted them to his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron....

Today's New Testament reading: Luke 7:1-30

The Faith of the Centurion
1 When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 There a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3 The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, "This man deserves to have you do this, 5 because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue." 6 So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: "Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."
9 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel." 10 Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well....
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Today's Lent reading: Luke 10-12 (NIV)

View today's Lent reading on Bible Gateway
Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two

1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

5 "When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' 6If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. 7 Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
8 "When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. 9 Heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you....'



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