Friday, August 26, 2016

Fri Aug 26th Todays News

Saturday will see an election in the Northern Territory. There is almost no chance of the Country Liberal Party being returned. Divisions within the leadership are always a killer in politics, and the rebellion which saw the CLP leader axed while overseas during the term will be punished by voters. Only the ALP are divided too. The ALP leadership changed in April 2015, after the previous leader resigned having been embarrassed in a sleazy property deal. Meanwhile the ABC have acted to immunise the ALP over their previous administration which had Aboriginal children beaten in custody. It was ALP policy which the CLP fixed, but the ABC, in a biased report, have pointed the finger at the CLP. Malcolm Turnbull had a knee jerk reaction which will address none of the salient issues. Last year Justice Jane Needham politicised the office of the NSW Bar Association. She subsequently resigned. 

 For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.  
=== from 2015 ===
Partisan judge Needham fails to support impartial judge Heydon. Needham is failing in her basic duty of care as NSW Bar President. It is inconceivable Needham should retain her position with such a partisan position as she has taken when failing to appropriately protect the reputation of a royal commission and Heydon. For the sake of the independence of her position, Needham must go.

Old socialist Joe Biden, who has contributed nothing worthwhile to either of Obama's administrations is looking like being the idiot to campaign for Democrats. Hillary is failing fast, sinking on her own record. But the talent pool for US Democrats is very shallow.
Partisan Ray Martin expresses an opinion about Australia's involvement in Syria. Only it isn't realistic, but spiteful and catty. Martin says Australia is trying to distract from domestic policies. Just as when Jason Clare unleashed a drugs in sport meme which found no drugs in sport. Except Clare was distracting from issues, and Abbott is addressing international needs as a statesman, as well as addressing domestic issues appropriately. And Martin hates that. 
From 2014
One article is about remembering why soldiers died serving Australia, another is about Melbourne worrying about Sydney's iconic bridge. Thing is, Sydney people don't care about either. It doesn't matter that Sydney's iconic harbour ridge is or is not bigger than a less celebrated one in Sydney. But the deaths of soldiers anywhere should be moving. And the personal connection should not be ignored. It is foundational to what makes Australia today. But for their sacrifice then, much might be different. WW1 is sneeringly referred to as 'family feud' by many who point out that war is senseless and that war was big and senseless. There is no disputing that lives were wasted. But the casual uninformed dismissal of the war is wrong. There were many attempts to do things right. And the tragedy was how self interest and mistaken do gooders operated to harm those in harm's way. Had the UK been successful at Gallipolli in 1915, the war may well have been over within a year. Russia might not have collapsed to the communists. Tens of millions might never have died in that war. And that is only one such decisive plan. Germany under the Kaiser was belligerent and the world could not tolerate her success or criminal international activity. It is true that WW2 had seeds sewn from WW1, but that is more relevant to how the peace was managed. But as for the serving soldier who fell, honour them. It wasn't what they wanted in life. It isn't what was deserved. We need people willing to serve, willing to do what is right in extraordinary circumstances. Some say they didn't die for the right reasons: For the state, for God, for loved ones. Damned straight. The survivors get to say why they served. The dead have lost the voice they had. Yet, the voice they had, spoke loudly in the fact they served. 

The ABC is campaigning against Australia and cultural assets. The despicable Gosford Anglican got an enormous soap box on 7:30 report, which gushingly assured viewers that it was an ordinary Christian Church. It is a small church with an insular community that at any instance does not declare that it is dedicated to serving God. They worship fads that are strongly left wing political. For them , the issue is not border protection or saving lives from being drowned or dedicated to paying pirates, instead their issue is equity and they favour drowning poor people to achieve it. Or they favour taxation and wealth redistribution, if the ALP do it. Or they favour changing the Australian constitution to reflect privileges for race. The God I know and serve is not the same. I am not an authority, but the one I serve is different. The 7:30 report also gleefully declared a '$7 copayment for visiting a doctor,' dead. How about the copayments for public transport? University? School? Roads? Chanel 9 has entered the culture wars in defence of a dog, Hugo, slated for destruction after it's owner allowed it to walk the neighbourhood unleashed. It is a Pit Bull cross and quite ugly. If they really loved their dog, they would treat it better, not exploit it's life for media exposure.
Historical perspective on this day
Not done
=== 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 you 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 am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January. 

Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?

January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
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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
Happy birthday and many happy returns Dennis Noren Kum, Charles Anderson and Langelo Nguyen. Born on the same day, across the years, as Ferdinand II of Naples (1469), Robert Walpole (1676), Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (1940), Antoine Lavoisier (1743), Albert, Prince Consort of the United Kingdom (1819), Mary Ann Nichols (1845), Arthur James Arnot (1865), Peggy Guggenheim (1898), Mother Teresa (1910) and Yang Yilin (1992). On your day, National Heroes' Day in the Philippines (2013); Women's Equality Day in the United States
1789 – French Revolution: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, defining a set of individual and collective rights of the people, was approved by the National Constituent Assembly.
1883 – A massive eruption destroyed the volcanic island of Krakatoa, ejecting so much ash that average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) over the next year.
1928 – At a cafe in Paisley, Scotland, May Donoghue found the remains of a snail in her bottle of ginger beer, causing her to launch one of the landmark civil action cases in British common law, Donoghue v Stevenson.
1970 – Betty Friedan and the National Organization for Women organized the Women's Strike for Equality in New York City, in which 20,000 women protested the continuing lack of gender equality.
2008 – More than a week after a ceasefire was reached in the South Ossetia war, Russia unilaterally recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. You have your rights. In the turmoil, there is opportunity. A snail in the glass is too slow. We want equality now. Your independence, hard fought, is assured. Party on.
Deaths
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BABBLING BROOKS

Tim Blair – Friday, August 26, 2016 (6:42pm)

Academic and multiple grant recipient Rob Brooks takes issue with Monday’s column: 
In 18 years of applying for research support, I have never yet proposed a project with more pressing or important consequences. 
Really? Well, let’s take another look at Brooks’s incredibly significant proposal: 
This project intends to address how the evolutionary phenomena of intra-sexual competition and inter-sexual conflict interact with economic circumstances to shape gendered behaviour and attitudes. These phenomena are important in evolution, economics, psychology and sociology, with implications for the economy and for the welfare of women and men. The project predicts that gender-related culture arises, partially, out of mating market dynamics. The research crosses traditional boundaries between biology and economics to investigate the forces giving rise to gendered behaviour and resulting patterns of marriages, violence, political preferences and occupational choices. The project may provide new insights into the links between gender and violence, within-family conflicts, and gender roles in the home and workplace. 
Yep. Clearly worth every cent of $592,800. Please enjoy Rob’s argument in its entirety. Alert readers may detect one or two flaws.
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TWO VIEWS FROM THE ABC

Tim Blair – Friday, August 26, 2016 (5:03pm)

Banned … criminalised … screaming … terrified … spine-chilling … illegal … suffering animals … agony … disgraceful behaviour . 
Dogs killing foxes: 
Beloved English foxhounds … passion … tradition … a beautiful thing … the most fun in the world … It’s good for the soul. 
UPDATE. Tony Thomas reviews the ABC’s treatment of Pauline Hanson. Double standards abound.
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BEFORE 1975, AUSTRALIA HAD NO LAWS AT ALL

Tim Blair – Friday, August 26, 2016 (3:59pm)

Until Corinne Grant informed us on Monday night, nobody in Australia was aware that our whole judicial structure is held together by Section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act (1975): 
If you’re going to argue that people shouldn’t be able to sue other people for under 18C, then we’ve got to get rid of defamation laws as well. We’ve got to get rid of copyright. We’ve got to get rid of negligence. We’ve got get rid of basically the entire legal system. 
Remarkably, just a few minutes earlier recent law graduate Grant said this to fellow Q & A panellist Brendan O’Neill: “I don’t think you understand how the legal system works.”
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EVASION CENTRAL

Tim Blair – Friday, August 26, 2016 (3:03pm)

The Courier-Mail‘s Paul Syvret describes alleged murderer Smail Ayad as “a Frenchman” and a “European backpacker” who was merely “love-struck”.
Seriously. 
UPDATE. In other evasion developments: 
Copenhagen Police announced on Wednesday night that a 21-year-old man had been arrested in connection to a spate of car fires.
Police spokesman Jens Moller Jensen told TV2 News that the 21-year-old man is a resident of Amager and is of ‘a different ethnicity than Danish’. 
I’m going with Chinese.
UPDATE II. Syvret is moved to tears by the terrible behaviour of “scorched earth neocon bastards”.
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FUNLESS FREO

Tim Blair – Friday, August 26, 2016 (2:06pm)

It’ll be a wonderful day out for the whole family: 
City of Fremantle councillors have voted to scrap the port town’s popular Australia Day fireworks event from 2017 after deeming the celebration culturally insensitive …
The revised celebrations will likely include a citizenship ceremony on Thursday, January 26, followed by a lunch and speech about multiculturalism in Australia. 
Councillors were also concerned about the environmental impact of the fireworks.
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SEXIST GREENS DEMOTE SARAH

Tim Blair – Friday, August 26, 2016 (3:33am)

Maritime expert Sarah Hanson-Young loses her immigration gig: 
South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has been stripped of the immigration portfolio, in a major internal reshuffle.
“I fought hard to keep the immigration portfolio, but ultimately it was a decision of the leader of the party,” Senator Hanson-Young said in a statement after The Greens meeting in Melbourne.



Tasmanian Senator Nick McKim is the new immigration spokesman. He described it as a “massive honour” to take on the portfolio held by Senator Hanson-Young for nine years. 
Dumped by a man and replaced by another man. This is sexism at its most extreme.
UPDATE. Misogynist Richard Di Natale defends his decision to boot Hanson-Young: 
“I think the country owes her a great debt,” he told the ABC. “She’s led the charge on a more humane, compassionate and decent approach to the treatment of refugees …”
The Greens leader said Senator Hanson-Young would be a “formidable political advocate” in her new portfolios and that “after nine years it’s time to refresh and reinvigorate the team”.
He denied that her well-publicised struggle to explain superannuation policy during the campaign made her a bad choice for the finance portfolio, arguing “it’s hardly a hanging offence for people to make a mistake”. 
Remember that line.
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Blue no more. And back with a plan

Andrew Bolt August 26 2016 (3:14pm)

A dapper Tony Abbott gave a most interesting presentation today. There was something different about him.
More to come.
UPDATE
Abbott gave a fine speech today - and also put the Turnbull Government on notice. He is keeping it honest.
He did something Turnbull will think is hostile - he took him at his word, and also stated Liberal policy and principle. In doing so he drew lines which Turnbull will consider a challenge and a threat.
The main ones: the Liberals must not buy off Nick Xenophon by propping up a failing industry. The Liberals should actually fight for their beliefs, including free speech. The Liberals should cut spending, not raise taxes. In fact, don’t add a cent more on any recurrent spending except national security.
And the Liberals should not give in the media class. It should be a voice for the silent majority and insist on giving it a voice through free speech reforms and a vote on same sex marriage.
Abbott’s political thinking is developing a strong pro-freedom coherence.
From the speech:
Governments can no more tax their way back to surplus that businesses can raise their prices back to profitability.
If the bottom line is bad, the only lasting way forward is to cut expenses…
With Commonwealth government interest bills alone more than $1 billion a month, without a much more credible push to bring debt and deficit under control, we are vulnerable to any new global downturn…
And as Scott Morrison pointed out yesterday, with close to half of all households now paying no net income tax, more and more spending is dependent on fewer and fewer taxpayers.

When it comes to budget repair, the reality is that this government has been in office – not in power.
As in the previous parliament, where Labor supported the deficit reduction levy but opposed all the structural reforms to get the budget back under control; in this parliament, Labor is set to support all the higher taxes on super but not all the lower taxes on companies which are needed to drive economic growth…
My government tried to acknowledge today’s forgotten people by cracking down on foreign land sales, being more mindful of the national interest on foreign investment, stopping the boats, standing up to bullies abroad and terrorists everywhere, trying to amend the notorious section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and promising the people a say on same sex marriage....
What reformers can never do is give up, just because it’s hard.
Indeed, the harder it is, the more determined reformers must be: to make the case for reform and to implement as much of it as we can.
With a difficult parliament and a budget-in-peril, the first challenge for the next term will be to avoid new recurrent spending, outside of national security…
Now, new spending should only be considered when it will clearly boost economic growth: that could mean economic infrastructure, high quality research and cost-effective new drugs – but not extra spending that’s mostly political positioning…
And then this very pointed and specific advice - aimed exactly where Turnbull is more likely to wobble:
I’m confident that a pro-reform Turnbull government will avoid returning to the bad old days of bailing out businesses with political clout.
It just breeds resentment when the government is the ATM of last resort to big business when it never is to small business.
While the Qantas turn-around shows what self-reliant workers and managers can achieve, Arrium shows what happens once a subsidy is expected.
I’m sure the government will resist pressure to increase the renewable energy target which would drive up the power prices that abolishing the carbon tax cut.
I’m sure the government will strongly support the coal industry which will provide base load power here and abroad for decades to come – and continue to employ tens of thousands of Australians.
I’m sure it will work hard on the Queensland government to ensure that green sabotage and law-fare doesn’t stop the Adani mine: a $20 billion investment to create 10,000 jobs here and power the lives of tens of millions in India.
Sounds like a man with a plan and a vision.  
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How the Left has taken over SBS

Andrew Bolt August 26 2016 (10:50am)

The taxpayer-funded SBS was set up to be a multicultural broadcaster for migrants particularly, and - of course - was not meant to be biased.
It has instead been taken over by the Left and used as a taxpayer-funded political soap box, as this sample of yesterday’s offerings demonstrates:
Same blatant and preachy Leftist bias in what the SBS misleadingly calls its ”comedy” site:
What is Communications Minister Mitch Fifield doing to stop this abuse of taxpayer funding and this breach of the broadcaster’s duty to be impartial?
Hello? 
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Why the assumption that taxpayers should just play breadwinner?

Andrew Bolt August 26 2016 (10:30am)

But isn’t it fair to ask why someone chooses to have eight children she cannot raise, unless taxpayers - who weren’t consulted - hand over $1000 a week?
Melbourne mother of eight Helen Liumaihetau thinks Scott Morrison has his priorities wrong by ­attacking the culture of welfare ­dependency in Australia.
Like many, she has been doing it hard and could not survive without government help. Half her government payments go towards feeding her children.
Ms Liumaihetau, 31, who ­receives more than $1000 a week in benefits to raise her large family, says it is barely enough to make ends meet. Her children, aged three to 13, use the public school and health systems. She gets $1500 worth of child payments a fortnight, and a $600 pension.
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Turnbull sells out free speech with an argument that would work in North Korea

Andrew Bolt August 26 2016 (10:21am)

John Roskam on Malcolm Turnbull’s surprisingly limited “priorities”:
The spectacle of Malcolm Turnbull arguing passionately for higher taxes on self-funded retirees while saying the reform of laws restricting freedom of speech in Australia was not a priority sits uneasily with what he said on the night he became prime minister.
In the evening of September 15, 2015, he laid down the measure against which his time as PM should be judged. Turnbull said, “This will be a thoroughly Liberal Government. It will be a thoroughly Liberal Government committed to freedom, the individual and the market.”
Last week the prime minister ruled out attempting to change the law that makes it unlawful to offend or insult someone on the basis of their race or ethnic origin. The law has resulted in three students at the Queensland University of Technology being embroiled in more than three years of legal proceedings. The entire process started after one of the students wrote on a Facebook page the words – “Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation.”
Legislation aimed at stopping racist violence is now being used against a 20-year-old who remarked that a university should not be segregating students according to their skin colour.
Instead of the PM deploring a law that is thoroughly illiberal in its principle and application, he said that changing it was not a priority for his government. “With all due respect to the very worthy arguments surrounding it, it is not going to create an extra job ... It’s not going to build an extra road.”
However, if a country is to be judged simply by the quality of its roads then there’s nothing to separate Australia from North Korea.
Brilliantly put.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Why are the Chinese funding Julie Bishop’s division?

Andrew Bolt August 26 2016 (9:57am)

Is Julie Bishop our Hillary Clinton? And I mean in a bad way:
Chinese businessmen with links to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop have donated half a million dollars to the Western Australian division of the Liberal Party during the past two years, political disclosures reveal.

All the donors have links to the Chinese government, and the vast bulk of the money was given by companies with no apparent business interests in WA. Ms Bishop, the leading federal member of the party in that state, has singled out each of the three key donors for praise.
Several of the donations have been obscured by the channelling of funds via executives or related companies, or by the donors’ failure to disclose them to the Australian Electoral Commission, in apparent breach of Commonwealth law…

The revelations raise further questions about foreign donations linked to ministers with trade and diplomatic responsibilities. 
As for Clinton, this sounds highly suspicious:
More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money - either personally or through companies or groups - to the Clinton Foundation. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.
At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.
Among those granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton’s help with a visa problem; and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm’s corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa.
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Another fine mess - super for fat cats blow

Andrew Bolt August 26 2016 (9:19am)

Another massive blowout, thanks to Big Government:
Generous pay rises awarded to senior bureaucrats in the wake of the global financial crisis will boost their pensions by millions of dollars, as the government faces another massive blowout to the nation’s superannuation lia­bility, which soared by $80 billion to just under $250bn last year…

Although the major federal defined benefit schemes were closed to new members in 2005, they still have more than 350,000 members entitled to lifetime pensions based on a portion of their final salaries. 
As revealed in The Australian this week, the pay of many top public servants has soared by 70 per cent since the GFC… Salary hikes not only provide an annual benefit but also lift the public servants’ average earnings, which are used to determine the worth of their pension entitlements, meaning recent pay rises could deliver millions of dollars extra to the retirement nest eggs of the highest-paid bureaucrats…
The May budget estimated that by 2020 the liability for covering superannuation debts would reach $195bn, a $26bn increase from June this year…

In 2007-08, the final accounts showed the government would need to hold $100bn in bonds to cover the cost of superannuation payouts.
The jump to $248bn last year reflected bond rates falling from 6 per cent to 3 per cent since the crisis.
However, they have come down further over the past 12 months and were at 2 per cent on June 30, guaranteeing a further big blowout in the liability. 
Robert Gottliebsen on this massive transfer of money from private superannuants to top public servants:
Top public servants who have been awarded pay rises of up to $300,000 over the past decade have seen the value of their superannuation benefits balloon by as much as $3 million, blowing out the cost of the government’s public service pension scheme, which ­already has an official shortfall of at least $200 billion.
Actuaries say the real shortfall is between $400bn and $600bn and is increasing by about $6bn a year. And most of the shortfall problem is among public servants at the top levels — the people who received the big pay hike.
The public servants’ superannuation bonanza comes as Scott Morrison tries to win backbench support for his reforms of non-public servant Australians’ superannuation, designed to save the government about $6bn a year, about the same as the public service scheme increases are costing.

Gottliebsen has some questions:
- Why were huge salary rises given to top older public servants when they boosted the public service pension deficit so dramatically…
- Why have these huge salary rises not been factored into the ­actuarial deficit ...?
- How was the scheme amended so that after retirement a public servant whose spouse has died can partner with another person (male or female) and on the public servant’s death the new partner receives just over 67 per cent of the public servant’s pension (it’s 80 per cent for politicians)? Nothing like that is available in the private sector annuity market because it would cost a fortune.

Then there’s the Government’s other big problem - no plan to tackle the huge budget deficits.
Judith Sloan:
Last week, Scott Morrison couldn’t look his kids in the eye ­because superannuation savers were not paying enough tax, in his opinion. He is now worried his kids might have to endure a recession. What will it be next week?
Yesterday’s “headland” speech confirms what we have all known for some time: the jobs and growth agenda of the government is very thin. Some of it is based on faulty logic, some on falsehoods.
The fundamental problem is that there is no solid set of initiatives that might address what Morrison weirdly calls Australia’s “earnings problem"…
And what was all that stuff bemoaning the fact there are cohorts of the population who will never pay net tax and to highlight the shrinking proportion of taxpayers who have to pick up the tab?
Is the government intending to force these non-payers to ­contribute?
Indeed, the only real idea that Morrison has had to fix the budget is to slug superannuation savers for more tax, even though those ­affected will have paid high rates of income tax all their working lives and then offset this by a massive taxpayer-funded contribution to the superannuation balances of low-income earners. How does this improve the balance between payers and non-payers?
I am fast coming to the conclusion this government couldn’t ­operate a toaster.
David Crowe says the Government seems rudderless:
Just as the government drifted too comfortably during the six months before the July 2 election, with Niagara Falls ahead of it all along, so it has wasted time in the two months after the poll. The internal dispute over superannuation taxes is proof of this malaise. A draft bill was meant to be out by now but the backbench revolt has forced a delay. The indecision is chronic and the disunity is astonishing after the lesson from voters at the election.
With the government’s lack of resolve on display, critics suggest the entire reform should be abandoned. The anger in the conservative base over this will scar the Liberals for years and may well deny MPs the volunteers they need at the next election, just as it left them outnumbered at polling booths at the last one.
Critics are emboldened to suggest the super reforms should be dropped, but political reality makes it impossible for Turnbull and Scott Morrison to retreat. Walking away from the budget measures would cripple both of them and turn the government into a laughing-stock. There is no hope for the Coalition until it ends this saga.
(Thanks to readers Steve, George and Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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The Left’s new war on Australia Day - and Western civilisation

Andrew Bolt August 26 2016 (9:09am)

Most Aborigines now also have ancestors from Europe or Asia, which makes this rejection of Australia Day even more self-hating. The City of Fremantle announces:

Last night Fremantle Council made a decision that it will not go ahead with fireworks to celebrate Australia Day in 2017 and beyond.
The City will instead be presenting a family-friendly event to celebrate being Australian on an alternative date. This will be an occasion people can all celebrate together....
Below is a statement from Mayor Brad Pettitt on the reasons behind this council decision: 
“There has been a growing movement that January 26 is increasingly becoming a day that is ‘not for all Australians’. For many Aboriginal Australians it is indeed a day of sadness and dispossession.
This does not just refer to Indigenous involvement but the involvement of many other Australians who feel increasingly uncomfortable with the date and what it represents.
The City has received significant feedback supporting the idea of reimagining our Australia Day celebrations from both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.
I was proud last night to see Fremantle Council support this change in what I hope will see a wave of change across the nation that will see Australia Day fundamentally shift to a more inclusive and respectful approach.”
This is a surrender to the politics of race and identity. It is also a surrender to the politics of grievance from Aboriginal activists whose personal lives have unquestionably been enhanced by British settlement, which has given this country everything from secure food supplies to dentistry and pain relief; from democracy and the rule of law to literacy.
UPDATE
Called out:
Prominent indigenous West Australian, Ben Wyatt, Labor’s spokesman on indigenous affairs, is also skeptical. Amid speculation the council decision is about saving money, he said: “Cancelling popular events in the name of reconciliation does not advance the cause. If it’s because of cost, then call it cost.
“The relationship between Aboriginal people and Australia Day is profound. Cancelling fireworks is a facile response and likely to cause more division”.
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People scared of ideas should not go to university

Andrew Bolt August 26 2016 (9:03am)

Just when all seemed lost, the University of Chicago has sent the incoming class of 2020 a letter rejecting the now-fashionable demands for “safe spaces”:
You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement.  At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.
Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called “trigger warnings,” we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual “safe spaces” where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.
The letter:
(Thanks to reader Mike.) 
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Book goes Napoleonic

Andrew Bolt August 25 2016 (9:32pm)

My book is on an odyssey, visiting Alaska, Bath, the skulls of Montpellier, York Minster, Shanghai, Croatia, Ho Chi Minh City, Santorini, London, Scotland, Ithaca, the Bay of Naples, Lake Como, Dubrovnik, Fiji, Aileron, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, the Andes, the Northern Territory, the Whitsundays, Kalgoorlie and Condabri, Queensland, before invading Australia’s most Left-wing Parliament - an experience which convinced one reader at the Katharine River Mango Farm to try teaching even a donkey to understand what’s in it. Meanwhile, it attended a christening in Newcastle, checked in at a Penrith hospital and recuperated at the Moreton Bay Boat Club before sailing down the Murray and visiting the Mt Annan Australian Botanical Garden and Araluen Botanic Park.
Now reader Nurse Cabarita takes it for a tour of Porto Vecchio, Corsica:
To reward the traveller in your life, order the book here. On-line buyers also get the semi-regular Bolt Bulletin, as will people pre-ordering the reprint of my Still Not Sorry on line.    
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ABC anarchists are getting away with murder — accidentally on purpose

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, August 26, 2015 (12:31am)

How many times will ABC managing director Mark Scott apologise for the sloppy editorial control and undergraduate slyness of his Q&A program?

 Continue reading 'ABC anarchists are getting away with murder — accidentally on purpose'
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The era of fainting couch feminism

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, August 26, 2015 (12:29am)

What fragile wilting flowers we women have become, with our jazz hands and trigger warnings, our “fainting couch feminism”.

 Continue reading 'The era of fainting couch feminism'
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Martin’s mad anti-Abbott wag-the-dog conspiracy theory

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (7:03pm)

Ray Martin, on no evidence whatsoever, claimed on The Project tonight that the Abbott Government is contemplating sending our RAAF Hornets into Syria as a political distraction and vote-winner in the Canning by-election next month.

But to believe this hogwash, you have to ignore easy-to-check facts that establish beyond doubt that Martin is completely wrong, and just venting some of the usual anti-Abbott conspiracy theorising so popular in the deranged Left.
First, the by-election was caused by the death of local MP Don Randall on July 21.
Second, by then Australia would have already privately worked out an arrangement with the US on intervention in Syria to make sure that when Obama rang Abbott with a formal request for help he would not have been rebuffed.
Obama’s phone call came soon after the Chatanooga shootings on July 16 (which occurred five days before any thought of a Canning by-election), as Abbott today explained:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott repeated that US President Barack Obama had raised the issue of expanded RAAF strikes with him in a phone call in July, but declined to specifically deny Fairfax Media reports that Australia had been pushing for the US to make the request. 
“All I know is that I was on the other end of the phone line, the President was on Air Force One,” Mr Abbott said.
“The President had initiated this phone call to talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and after I’d initially expressed my condolences for the terrorist shootings in Chattanooga [Tennesee], the President then raised with me the Syrian situation and said that he would be very glad if Australia would do more, including air strikes, and I said that I was happy to consider that request and our officials would talk and now this request has come from the Pentagon.” 
The Abbott-hating Sydney Morning Herald even suggests the plans to expand Australian operations to Syria was on Abbott’s mind for many weeks before Randall’s death:
But it is widely known in government circles that Mr Abbott has long been keen to do more in the fight against the Islamic State, which has taken swaths of territory stretching across Syria and Iraq and established affiliates in Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
And anyone who has discussed this with Abbott knows he is motivated by security considerations, not political.
The thought that Abbott prepared the ground for this move and persuaded the President to ask for our help all just to help win Canning is the most ludicrous conspiracy-mongering. The thought that it could have been done just for Canning is impossible, given the timeline. And it’s even worse that Martin made this mad claim just seconds after guest Michael Ware, no conservative, dismissed it and pointed out the compelling reasons to expand our operations in Iraq into Syria, where the Islamic State’s main operations actually are.
Martin should apologise.
UPDATE
Normally the Left complains Australia just does the US bidding when it goes to war. Now the Left complains that the US is doing Australia’s bidding in getting us to war.
UPDATE
And to complete the joke, Ray Martin is the man the ABC has asked to check whether Q&A is biased.
Yes, they really do take you for fools. 
===

Hockey’s plan for a banana republic

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (6:23pm)

He’s got that much spare time? He’s so keen to distract from the government’s economic message?
Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey is set to lead a renewed push for Australia to become a republic, raising the ire of some of his Coalition colleagues. 
Mr Hockey and Labor senator Katy Gallagher are forming a Parliamentary Friendship Group to revive debate about the issue, which has been effectively dormant since the failed 1999 referendum.

The announcement was made by Mr Hockey’s friend, and the head of the Australian Republican Movement, Peter FitzSimons at the National Press Club. But the timing of the announcement has surprised some within Government, given the Coalition has struggled in recent months to maintain focus on its agenda of jobs and economic growth.
Seriously, it makes you despair. If the republican cause is so important to Hockey maybe he should be allowed to work on it full time. As of now. 
===

Inventing feminist victims

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (4:39pm)

The me-me-me generation of feminists are more interested in inventing their own victimhood than in helping real victims, says Christina Hoff Sommers:
This past year I visited and spoke at several US campuses, including Yale, UCLA, Oberlin, and Georgetown. I found activist feminist students passionately absorbed in the cause of liberating themselves from the grasp of the oppressive patriarchal order. Their trigger warnings, safe spaces and micro-aggression watches are all about saving themselves from the ravages of the male hegemony.
It’s not that they don’t feel bad for women in places like Iran or Yemen. They do. But they believe they share a similar fate… But too often, today’s gender activists are not fighting injustice, but fighting phantom epidemics and nursing petty grievances. Two leading feminist hashtags of 2015 are #FreeTheNipples and #LovetheLines. The former is a campaign to desexualise women’s breasts; the latter promotes stretch-mark acceptance. If the imprisoned women of Iran and Afghanistan were free to tweet, what would they say about these struggles?
Read on.
UPDATE
Miranda Devine in defence of Mark Latham:

We are under attack from the patriarchy, hostage to a rape culture, all at risk of domestic violence, held down by the glass ceiling, and not paid as much as men for equal work. 
Pity none of this is true, and in fact women in Australia have more freedoms and equality than at any time in our history.
So when a brute alpha male like Mark Latham, the maverick former Labor leader, stomps through the cosy media consensus to slay these lies, the entire apparatus of victim feminism rises up against him.
He gives back twice as good as he gets, and so the professional offenderati who gathered at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival on Saturday to hear him talk got the vapours when he peppered his home truths with foul-mouthed aggression…

Then there was Mamamia.com writer and social researcher Rebecca Huntley, who recounted her “terrifying” encounter with Latham the morning after his star turn in Melbourne…
By her own admission Huntley had once written that Latham, who takes care of his three children while his wife works, was a “stay at home psycho”. Why did she think that she could write something so malicious and unfounded and suffer no consequences?
“He confronted me about the comment ... He stood very close to me and said, “How would you like it if I called you a deranged slut?"…
“Afterwards I was shaken,” Huntley wrote. “How do I get my kids out of the hotel without encountering him again? I was genuinely concerned he might have more nasty things to say.” Maybe she should have thought of that before she called him a “stay at home psycho”.
===

Carbon credits: just buying hot air

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (11:44am)

A pretend fix to a pretend warming that’s a pretend catastrophe - and it’s a pretend fix of foreign carbon credits that Labor recommends:

The vast majority of carbon credits generated by Russia and Ukraine did not represent cuts in emissions, according to a new study. 
The authors say that offsets created under a UN scheme “significantly undermined” efforts to tackle climate change....
As a result of political horse trading at UN negotiations on climate change, countries like Russia and the Ukraine were allowed to create carbon credits from activities like curbing coal waste fires, or restricting gas emissions from petroleum production.
Under the UN scheme, called Joint Implementation, they then were able to sell those credits to the European Union’s carbon market. Companies bought the offsets rather than making their own more expensive, emissions cuts. But this study, from the Stockholm Environment Institute, says the vast majority of Russian and Ukrainian credits were in fact, “hot air” - no actual emissions were reduced. 
UPDATE
Why does Labor leader Bill Shorten think “investing” means the same as “subsidising”?
If we do not get serious about tackling climate change, if we don’t get serious about investing in renewables, then we cannot say we are serious about economic reform. 
(Thanks to reader Cheryl.) 
===

How serious do Scott and Turnbull seem about the ABC’s latest anti-Abbott slur?

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (11:36am)

Did ABC boss Mark Scott yesterday look at all ashamed after Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull told him to apologise for screening a foul anti-Abbott twitter handle? Does Turnbull seem at all furious?
UPDATE
Rita Panahi smells a rat:
Just how did a tweet sent by an account called AbbotLovesA---l - which had only five followers at the time of publication and had tweeted about nothing else but Q&A; - end up on screen?
The content of the tweet ... was unremarkable, so much so that one wonders why it was selected out of the thousands the program receives each Monday evening. The only thing notable was the sexually explicit twitter handle…
Does anyone seriously think a twitter account called GillardLovesA--l would ever appear on screen during the left wing program?
No, the heavily resourced program, much like the rest of the ABC, has a habit of making errors that denigrate only their ideological opponents…
In April they published a tweet from a fake account impersonating me.  It would’ve been clear to anyone with a skerrick of sense that the impostor was a lame troll but somehow ... Q&A;failed to notice and published a highly offensive tweet that not only defamed me but resulted in the program’s confused viewers showering me with abuse. 
Just why is Q&A publishing electronic graffiti anyway, much of it from anonymous trolls, right under the faces of people trying to have a serious discussion?  Talk about trashing the conversation - and the ABC brand.
UPDATE
Miranda Devine says the Liberals must realise it’s war:
Scott fired off a text to Prime Minister Abbott yesterday which reportedly said the ABC “regretted any offence this may have caused”. 
In other words, sorry, not sorry. What a joke. Scott’s apologies are increasingly hollow, as are the repeated assurances from Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull that all will be fine. 
UPDATE
Environment Minister Greg Hunt isn’t buying the ABC’s excuses, either:
Mr Hunt today said it was “clear” that the producer responsible for broadcasting the tweet thought “oh gosh, this will be fun”. 
“Do I think that this was an accident? It strains credibility. There’s a history. And it’s just tasteless and it’s indicative of a mindset,” Mr Hunt told Melbourne radio station 3AW.
“Now they can say it was a terrible accident, but why would you choose a tweet which says ‘I prefer one’s Twitter feed to their biographies’? It’s almost completely meaningless.”
Mr Hunt said there was a need to “call out” the double-standard applies to conservative politicians who are ridiculed with “crudity”.
“Some on the left are very, very quick to not just criticise the government but to use vile language against Tony Abbott. If, however, there’s criticism of somebody in the other direction, that will be elevated to a great crime of language. “And imagine if this had been said about Julia Gillard. What a furore there would have been.”
He’s right, of course. The Government is giving the ABC $1 billion a year to vilify conservatives and promote the Left. Oh, and to drive more conservative media competitors out of business.
That must change.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

The ABC: the sound of the Left using your taxes to push their agenda

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (8:22am)

Every single one of the ABC’s main current affairs show is hosted by someone of the Left, and, boy, it shows. Last night, for instance, this ringing endorsement from Lateline presenter Emma Alberici of a CFMEU and Labor deceit:
EMMA ALBERICI: Now, [the unions are] obviously quite agitated about the fact that the Free trade agreement means that Chinese companies can come here and, for mines of under $150 million, they can bring in workers and they don’t have to first offer those jobs to local workers. Do you sympathise with their frustration?… But you could understand that Australians would be upset about the idea that again China’s taking our jobs, as it were?
Alberici’s summary of the free trade deal is false. From the Foreign Affairs and Trade website:
ChAFTA [the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement] will not allow unrestricted access to the Australian labour market by Chinese workers… Australia’s existing visa arrangements, including the 457 visa program, will continue to be the basis for implementing Australia’s commitments on labour mobility under ChAFTA. The 457 visa program assists employers to address labour shortages by bringing in genuinely skilled workers where they cannot find an appropriately skilled Australian.... 
Through Investment Facilitation Arrangements (IFAs) made available under a separate MOU concluded alongside ChAFTA, Chinese companies making significant investments in Australia (more than $150 million in specific types of infrastructure development projects) will have increased access to skilled overseas workers when suitable local workers cannot be found....

Under IFAs, Australian workers will continue to be given first opportunity. Consistent with existing practice, employers will not be permitted to bring in overseas skilled workers unless there is clear evidence of a genuine labour market need, as determined by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
UPDATE
Another ABC presenter, Fran Kelly, is an open campaigner for same-sex marriage and global warming alarmism.
This morning she gives a kid-glove interview to Tim Flannery, the notorious warming alarmist, to help him spuik his latest book. Kelly claims “the science is pretty much in” without once noting how many of Flannery’s predictions in fact have turned out to be false.  Take this one from Flannery in 2007:
... even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems.
Kelly should have been prompted to ask Flannery about this given the events of just this week:
The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) issued the following warning a few moments ago: Jerrara Dam (near Jamberoo, west of Kiama), which is in the process of being decommissioned, has shown signs of the wall failing due to heavy rainfall in the area.
And:
NSW residents have been forced to flee their homes and are being warned to stay vigilant with rising waters expected to flood parts of the south coast at high tide later in the day.
But, no, while the Left rules the ABC’s microphones, only sceptics are grilled. 
===

Public backs Abbott’s same-sex call

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (8:09am)

Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have turned a Liberal weakness into a strength.
The latest Essential Poll shows 60 per cent of voters believe people of the same sex should be allowed to marry, but even more - 66 per cent say this should be decided by a public vote. Just 22 per cent say Parliament should decide.
Same story in another poll last week:
[Sexton] polling [has] revealed that more than three in four Australians — 76 per cent — would prefer to hold a plebiscite before MPs amend the traditional definition of marriage.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, Abbott’s call for a people’s vote was a ”triumph”.  If fewer journalists were blinded by Abbott-hate, and if fewer Turnbull supporters hadn’t whiteanted, this would have been hailed as such at the time.
A people’s vote is now a policy that should actually suit Turnbull to the ground, had he thought of it first or prosecuted it hard now.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Bob Carr says we should help bomb in Syria. But will the Left let Labor agree?

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (8:02am)

But does Labor’s new foreign affairs spokesman, the Left’s Tanya Plibersek, agree?
Former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr has argued Australia should join the United States’ air strikes over Syria because it has a “moral obligation” to stop Islamic State committing mass atrocities against civilians… 
The Federal Opposition is still considering its position on the US request for extra support…
But Mr Carr backed the action, saying there was a powerful case to be made about Australia carrying out air strikes across the border. “The West has really got a moral obligation to act where it can be argued there’s a chance of saving civilian populations from the mass atrocity crimes that seem to follow very quickly when IS takes control of territory,” Mr Carr told the ABC.
===

ReachTEL poll says Labor ahead in Canning

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (7:55am)

Any such result on election day will be disastrous for Tony Abbott’s leadership:
If the ReachTEL poll is reflected on polling day, it would certainly spell the end of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership. 
The poll of 768 Canning residents shows the coalition’s primary support down almost seven points since the 2013 election to 44.4 per cent, with Labor up 3.6 points to 30.2 per cent. The Greens are on 8.6 per cent....ReachTEL finds Labor slightly ahead on two-party preferred status — 50.1 per cent to the Liberals on 49.9.
I cannot believe Labor is actually ahead, but even if it’s close it’s bad for Abbott. 
===

The distinguished Dyson Heydon deserved a far better defence from the Leftist Jane Needham

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (7:15am)

Janet Albrechtsen on the curious case of the bar association which failed to defend distinguished former High Court judge Dyson Heydon, now slimed by Labor and unions as too biased to be the royal commissioner into union corruption:
The Heydon story broke on the morning of August 13. It took until August 19, six days later, for NSW Bar president Jane Needham SC to issue a statement defending Heydon. Sources close to Needham say she had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that end by other members of the NSW Bar. Even then, Needham issued a media release only after Andrew Bolt asked what every fair-minded person was wondering: “Why won’t the leftist NSW Bar Association defend an honest judge from Labor’s sliming?” 
Worse, the NSW Bar president’s short statement was ... lukewarm… It said the “personal abuse of the royal commissioner is not appropriate” and that Heydon “should not be the subject of personal attacks”.
It was so faint-hearted in defending Heydon from vicious political attacks that NSW barristers demanded more from their president, who, remember, purports to represent the Bar.
The next day, Needham issued a second media release offering just a tad more support. It said personal abuse of “a royal commissioner is never appropriate and is deplorable”.
Insiders say the fact Needham had to be forced to issue two statements on two consecutive days exposes the depth of unhappiness in barrister ranks over the growing politicisation of the Bar.
And no wonder. Compare and contrast the NSW Bar president’s swift and robust responses on other fronts…
Following the release of Human Rights Commission report The Forgotten Children in mid-February, the Abbott government queried why Triggs had delayed the HRC inquiry until after Labor left office…
Enter the NSW Bar president who, together with the head of the Law Council of Australia, announced their “unusual step of issuing a joint statement because of the unprecedented attack” on Triggs. The statement was replete with effusive support for Triggs, listing details of her “distinguished career in the law” and noting that she was “highly respected"…
It’s odd that Needham didn’t use her strapping defence of Triggs as the perfect template to defend Heydon. Instead, ...  there was a conspicuously disgraceful absence of any mention of Heydon’s distinguished career or his reputation for integrity… [P]olitics is best left out of the law, a sentiment expressed by senior members of the Bar who have questioned Needham over the hasty and political nature of NSW Bar media releases.
I’ve noticed with so many of the tribalist Left that what counts most is the side, not the principle. It would be deeply worrying if a peak body for barristers was suspected of that failing.
UPDATE
Ironic, given Heydon is the one being attacked for merely the alleged appearance of bias. From an interview with Needham:
[Needham:] I think the treatment meted out to Julia Gillard, our first female Prime Minister, was really shameful, and marked a low in political debate. I was one of the many women who cheered out loud at the misogyny speech… I am glad, though, that my daughter spent the last three years with women in the roles of Prime Minister, Governor-General, Governor of NSW and Lord Mayor of Sydney… 
TheLawMap: Judging by your tweets you seem to take an interest in issues relating to protecting the environment and climate change? In your opinion, are there enough legal safeguards in Australia towards protecting the environment? [Needham:] I don’t think that there are. Australia will be enormously adversely impacted by climate change, and yet, despite hard evidence of anthropogenic warming, very little is being done and in fact aspects of environmental protection and research are now being wound back. In particular, I am horrified by the prospect of losing the Great Barrier Reef.  
(Thanks to reader the evil right.) 
===

Clinton sinks, Biden stirs

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (6:54am)

John Hinderaker on the incredibly shrinking Hillary Clinton:
Rasmussen Reports ...  headlined finding is that by 46% to 44%, voters say Hillary should suspend her campaign “until all of the legal questions about her use of the private e-mail server are resolved."… 
The bad news continues, as 45% of voters consider the national security questions raised by Hillary’s email server issues to be a “serious scandal.” Another 28% consider the story an “embarrassing situation,” while 23% say the whole thing is no big deal. Gotta love those loyal Democrats! Note that Hillary’s strategy so far (and probably her only viable strategy) has been to pooh-pooh the email issues without engaging them in a meaningful way, hoping her supporters will chalk them up to political attacks from the right. Rasmussen’s numbers suggest that the public is too skeptical for that approach to work. 
The issues are incredibly serious:
Hillary Clinton’s classified emails contain discussions of conversations with foreign diplomats, issues with embassy security, and relations with countries from Russia to China.... 
A memo regarding “embassy security issues” is among the most sensitive information a Secretary of State handles — as Clinton was reminded by the Benghazi attack. By transmitting such information on a private, unsecured email server, Clinton increased the likelihood that those who wish us harm would learn about problems with embassy security.
This was the height of irresponsibility....
Team Clinton would like us to believe that Hillary was simply a passive recipient of emails containing information that subsequently was deemed “classified.” But Westwood reports that she also sent such emails: 
For example, in July 2009, she discussed relations with Russia and Afghanistan with then-Deputy Secretary William Burns in an email that has been partially classified. She also discussed her travel plans with Burns over the private network.
Clinton knew or should have known that the Secretary of State’s confidential views about relations with Russia and Afghanistan were classification-worthy… If officials of foreign governments knew that Clinton had her own private email system, the risk of her system being hacked — whether by an ally or an adversary who learned of the system by spying on an ally — was all the greater. 
As Hillary Clinton’s campaign sinks, Barack Obama hints that he might give the imperial Clintons his biggest smack-down yet:
“I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of (Obama making) an endorsement during the Democratic primary,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said during a press briefing, adding that the President held Biden in very high regard. 
Making Biden his running mate in 2008 “was the smartest decision (Obama) ever made in politics,” Earnest said, explaining that “there’s no one in American politics today who better understands” what it takes to run for the nation’s highest office. Earnest, however, stopped short of indicating whom Obama would actually endorse as his successor: Biden — if he chose to run — or his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
Biden prepares - and already alarms by seeking advice from a fake Indian on a subject on which she’s a fake expert:
Vice President Joe Biden met with left-wing darling Sen. Elizabeth Warren (aka Fauxcahontas) in his residence at the Naval Observatory. 
CNN reported that Warren and Biden “discussed economic policy during a meeting that lasted about two hours.”
Biden is looking good - albeit only in comparison to Clinton:
There was no serious talk of Biden 2016. Until now. 
Why the turnaround?…
The scandal over Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official government business is entering its seventh month with no end in sight, especially now with the FBI and Department of Justice investigating potential mishandling of classified information. This and what some consider the Clinton Foundation’s questionable donations have exposed major vulnerabilities in her candidacy.

Enter Joe Biden. Biden is everything Hillary Clinton isn’t. Biden’s affability comes across as more genuine than Clinton’s, and he is beloved by his constituents, lacking the same character baggage as Clinton. He’s “Uncle Joe.” ...

It had seemed initially that Clinton’s pathway to the Democratic nomination, and ultimately the presidency, was clear. Who could possibly compete? This is Hillary Clinton we’re talking about. Democratic royalty…
But all summer, her favorability ratings have continued to drop as her unfavorables rise. Clinton’s latest poor performance came last week during a news conference in Nevada where she was asked pointed questions about the investigations into her server. When asked if she wiped her server clean, she sarcastically responded, “What with a cloth?” Her posture read defensive and arrogant—two traits no presidential campaign wants associated with its candidate. She is becoming less relatable and likable—many don’t trust her. Recent polling in key swing states show that over 60% of voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida do not think Clinton is honest or trustworthy.
Would you vote for this shifty snark?  “With a cloth or something?”:
===

Jeb Bush makes Donald Trump look good

Andrew Bolt August 26 2015 (6:49am)

This is Jeb Bush “hitting back”? Seriously?
Mr. Trump has called Mr. Bush’s immigration plans “baby stuff” and his education policy “pathetic.” He has expressed mock sympathy for Mr. Bush’s audiences, who he says must be so bored that “they’re sleeping.” . . . 
After enduring those slings and arrows for weeks, to the mounting dismay of supporters, Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, and his aides have decided to venture outside their comfort zone and borrow a page from Mr. Trump’s playbook: Hit back, with force and creativity, over and over again in the coming weeks. It is a turning point in Mr. Bush’s campaign that was on display Monday in McAllen, Tex., along the border with Mexico. There, Mr. Bush called Mr. Trump’s immigration plan “unrealistic,” described his policies as un-Republican and acidly recommended that the businessman read Mr. Bush’s book “Immigration Wars” to acquaint himself with a practical solution.
Elizabeth Price Foley:
Oh no he di’in’t!! You go, girl–calling him all “unrealistic” and telling him to read a book! Dang, you are one bad b**ch!
===

BACON HORROR

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 26, 2014 (4:19pm)

A brutally offensive sign is removed in Vermont:


(Via Brendan R.) 
===

ALL SIDES CONSIDERED

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 26, 2014 (5:27am)

Enjoyed Q & A‘s balanced and thoughtful discussion about Islamic terrorism. Very much looking forward to next week’s balanced and thoughtful discussion about rape.
UPDATE. Perhaps any future rape discussion panellists on Q & A could borrow Waleed Aly’s words, slightly altered: 
We’re finally maturing in the way we handle rape. Gone is the triumphalist rhetoric of the “War on Rape”, with its ridiculous promises of a rape-free world and the ultimate victory of freedom over rape. In its place is a far more sober, pragmatic recognition that rape is a perpetual irritant, and that while it is tragic and emotionally lacerating, rape kills relatively few people and is not any kind of existential threat. 
===

POMMIE BASHING

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 26, 2014 (5:16am)

Pommie Mbangwa is in Mitchell Johnson’s firing line … even though the gifted Zimbabwean fast bowler hasn’t played international cricket for 12 years:

Mark Waugh once did the same in the West Indies, in 1995. No video of that, but here Waugh assaults Perth’s perimeter. 
===

MAN OF HIS WORD

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 26, 2014 (4:38am)

The perfect New York Times headline:


And he is, as Mark Steyn observes. Obama is staying resolutely on course at the Vineyard Golf Club. 
===

ROASTED ALIVE

Tim Blair – Monday, August 25, 2014 (8:59pm)

I was promised a thrashing by the ABC’s Junior Opinion Police. Do enjoy (from 2:40).
===

What’s the point of Palmer MP?

Andrew Bolt August 26 2014 (10:20am)

Does Clive Palmer take his job seriously?
CLIVE Palmer has one of the poorest attendance records in federal parliament and has not shown up for 17 of the 58 sitting days since he was elected. 
How lazy is this man?
THE chairwoman of one of federal parliament’s most powerful committees has criticised Clive Palmer’s failure to attend all eight of the public hearings the committee has held. 
And another member of the house economics committee said Mr Palmer “had added zero value”, despite insisting on being appointed to the committee, and his absence had become a running joke.
UPDATE
Having called the Chinese “bastards” and “mongrels” who “shoot their own people” and were trying to “take over” Australia, Palmer now grovels to the Chinese Ambassador, even quoting the mass-murdering Mao Zedong:
I can only assume Palmer has some business interests in jeopardy. 
===

Islam yet again taken out of context by its believers

Andrew Bolt August 26 2014 (9:41am)

 So why do so many Muslims believe Islam condones - even demands - such cruelty? Yes, the majority may disagree with them, but what in the faith leaves itself so open to such barbarity?
The leader of Nigeria’s Islamist group Boko Haram said his fighters were now ruling the captured northeastern town of Gwoza “by Islamic law”, in the first video to state a territorial claim in more than five years of violent insurrection. His message also contained taunts for Western governments and compared democracy to incest… 
Abubakar Shekau’s forces have killed thousands since launching an uprising in 2009…
In an attack on Sunday in the remote northeastern town of Gamboru, the insurgents killed 15 people, survivors said on Monday. The gunmen came in armed pick up trucks, throwing explosives and spraying the town with bullets… (The video) ends with scenes of executing captives in pre-dug mass graves, some of them beaten to death with spades… “Democracy is worse than homosexuality, worse than sleeping with your mother,” Shekau says. “You are all pagans and we will kill you, even if you do not attack us we will kill you ... Allah commands us to kill without pity.” 
===

Liberals keep recovering. Now if they could end the Budget dramas…

Andrew Bolt August 26 2014 (8:25am)

The Abbott Government continues to recover:
AS it approaches the first anniversary of its election win, the Abbott government has achieved its best two-party-preferred poll result since before its troubled budget, but it still trails Labor as parliament resumes today after the winter break. 
The latest Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian, shows Labor ahead by 51 to 49 per cent.
Here is something for the Government to consider. Almost all its woes involve the stalled Budget savings and its attempts to sell them - the fuel excise rise, the Medicare co-payment, the poor not driving cars, the impression of deadlock, the uncertainty about whether we face a crisis or not.
But almost all the Government’s strengths involve non-Budget issues - the handling of the MH17 tragedy, the anti-terrorism push, stopping the boats, no-disasters governing, axing the carbon tax, signing free-trade deals, ending the corporate welfare push and dealing with union corruption allegations. Add to that the torrent of Labor books attacking Labor figures, and Palmer imploding.  I also wouldn’t mind betting that some of the recovery comes from voters realising some of the Budget nasties won’t actually happen anyway.
No, it’s not quite that simple, because the Budget problems are real and hammering them does expose Labor’s lack of answers to the disaster it created.
But isn’t the take-out message from this that the government should end the Budget dramas soon and focus on what it’s clearly best at - quiet, competent government? And why not open up important new fronts in public policy debate in which it’s more likely to speak the frank and popular truth in a hot contest: like immigration levels? 
===

If NSW won’t look for its own gas, I’m not paying to import it

Andrew Bolt August 26 2014 (8:14am)

I hope Peter Reith is wrong about the Abbott Government’s intentions because he’s right about the folly of any such plan:
I now understand that the Abbott government is thinking seriously about proposing or part financing a whopping great big new gas pipe to bring gas from Western Australia to Sydney. Apparently the rationale is to supply gas to Sydney because it looks like there will be gas shortages that will affect business and maybe residential users. 
I find it hard to understand why the Commonwealth would even be considering the matter when the prospect of gas shortages has been obvious for at least 18 months while NSW has done virtually nothing. Under former premier Barry O’Farrell, NSW had been largely paralysed by green campaigners who totally opposed any fossil fuels and had been given a platform by radio commentator Alan Jones. Nearly all their claims have been largely debunked by independent scientific advice from the likes of GeoScience Australia and others. Even if at the very last moment NSW finally wanted to do something about gas shortages, there is nothing to stop the NSW government fast tracking private sector gas production within NSW and running a pipe from northern NSW to Sydney. It would be cheaper than transporting gas from WA, much quicker to build and would utilise the coal seam gas now available in NSW… I don’t understand why the Commonwealth should be even thinking to clean up the consequences caused by the failures of the NSW government to ensure gas supplies to Sydney.
Those who fall for green mysticism and unreason should pay the price themselves. Call it a tax on stupidity. 
===

Truth is, emissions keep rising. Yet temperatures don’t

Andrew Bolt August 26 2014 (8:03am)

Spin:
The international goal of halting global warming at 2 degrees is now within reach because China has slowed the growth of its coal use, despite continuing to economically develop, climate policy expert Ross Garnaut says. 
Fact:
The real story that Fairfax consistently dodges? Emissions keep soaring, but the temperature of the atmosphere has not risen for some 16 years and has even fallen over the past decade.
===

Will the ABC now censor the Gaza pictures, too?

Andrew Bolt August 26 2014 (7:44am)

ABC Jonathan Green says showing pictures of James Foley about to be beheaded encourages terrorists:
Publishing the image in a way that could not be avoided - above the fold on the front page of a national daily - leaves that paper aiding the original intent of the people who took it: to shock, to engender fear. In publishing, the newspaper became complicit in that campaign of terror. 
To use that same fear to push a domestic agenda for increased national security protections that compromise cherished individual liberties is one thing. To promote anxiety to lever the improved popularity that comes from soothing paternalism seems not that far removed from the original tactic of the likes of the Islamic State:  using fear to overwhelm your enemies and cement the loyalty of your friends. 
The Village Idiot (Reformed):
According to Jonathan Green, Paul Barry, Waleed Aly and other members of the intelligensia at #theirABC (aka Jihad Central), the display of pictures or video of the death of James Foley causes our home grown Muslims to be radicalised.Surely if our Muslim teenagers and young adults can be radicalised by this, imagine the damage #theirABC is causing by constantly showing the death and destruction caused by Hamas in Gaza and Israel. I look forward to #theirABC ceasing the practice of showing pictures and video of the military actions over there. Mark Scott owes a duty to the Muslim community not to radicalise them by showing offensive material.
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ABC pays children to hate conservatives

Andrew Bolt August 26 2014 (7:10am)


The ABC now pays children to attack conservatives by pointing out they are ... er, um…
The anger is clear. The arguments, though, are as absent as the laughs.  The only reason this is funded is to enforce the prevailing (ABC) orthodoxy.
The ABC really is out of control.
UPDATE
Meanwhile on the more adult - chronologically speaking - Media Watch, two more attacks on host Paul Barry’s favorite target - the Murdoch media. One of those attacks is no more than Barry saying he doesn’t agree with a decision to show readers the ghastly reality of Islamist terror.
Where is the ABC’s balance? Could its new diversity commissar address the lack of diversity in ABC opinion, instead of obsessing over the “race” of those who do opine? 
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Thank You Lord, for everything that has happened, is happening and will happen. Only You can make it happen. Amen.
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Fatah:

Fatah's Facebook page
promotes armed violence for kids

Female suicide bombers
are "stars who sparkled in the sky"

by Itamar Marcus

Fatah's official Facebook page continues to promote and glorify violence and terror for children. In one post, young Palestinian boys are shown holding rifles with the text:
"The children of Palestine - this is how they celebrated their holiday."


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Adam Levick..
CiF Watch..
20 August '13..

The Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49 produced around 711,000 Palestinian Arab refugees, according to official records. (To provide some context to this figure, there were roughly 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries between 1948 and the early 1970s.)

The relevant UN General Assembly document from Oct. 23, 1950 states the following about the Palestinian refugee problem:

The estimate of the statistical expert, which the Committee believes to be as accurate as circumstances permit, indicates that the refugees from Israel-controlled territory amount to approximately 711,000.

While it is estimated that somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 Palestinian Arabs, out of this original refugee population, are still alive today, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) allows thechildren, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (ad infinitum) of actual refugees to continue to inherit their ancestor’s status. So, based on this bizarre formula, there are officially 4.9 million Palestinians who are eligible for “refugee” benefits.

Robert Tait is the Telegraph’s Middle East correspondent, and you’d therefore expect him to have some familiarity with such statistical and historical details.
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BDS vandals target Israeli-owned shop in Britain


Anti-Israel extremists recently began threatening and disrupting the activities of an Israeli-owned shop in Brighton. The UK-based store, EcoStream, is known to sell SodaStream recyclable bottles which are made in Mishor Adumim, an industrial zone located in post-1967 Israeli territory. According to the group "Palestine Solidarity Campaign," these business activities take part inside "occupied Palestinian territory" and therefore the shop, as well as SodaStream, should be boycotted. Last week, EcoStream employees found the lock on the front door of their shop to be filled with superglue. SodaSteam employs over 160 Palestinians in its main factory. According to media reports, the store's general manager has said that "it's not acceptable that these people can continue to do this. Something more needs to be done." Local anti-Israel operatives have promised to continue picketing the store in order to discourage local people from patronizing it.
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Dr. Waldman: “This creature of yours should be kept under guard. Mark my words. He will prove dangerous.”
Dr. Henry Frankenstein: Dangerous! Poor old Waldman. Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous?….
Dr. Waldman: You’re young, my friend. Your success has intoxicated you. Wake up and look facts in the face! Here we have a fiend whose brain…
Dr. Henry Frankenstein: “The brain must be given time to develop. It’s a perfectly good brain, doctor. You ought to know. It came from your own laboratory.”
Dr. Waldman (shocked): “You used the brain in my laboratory! But you’ve mistakenly implanted a criminal brain in this creature.” –”Frankenstein” (1931)

A .440 life-time batting average would make one a hall-of-fame player if one was playing major league baseball. But Obamacare "aint' baseball and meeting only 44% of your own deadlines is pretty poor when one considers this is the Obama's signature legislation.
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<This is the triumph of illusion, required because reality doesn't comport with the liberal, democratic Western standard in which every difference can be split. The reality is that Israeli fights every day against people dedicated it its destruction as a sovereign entity. Reality is ugly, so the West pretends we're only a minute or two, an Israeli concession or two, a settlement or two from Israeli-Palestinian "peace.">
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As a major focus of its Ramadan activities, the Palestinian Authority chose to honor and glorify terrorist murderers.
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how Israel has an 'impenetrable' security fence
that is 'protecting' us from terror attacks. You know, the one the world refers to as the 'wall.' And I've been telling you for years that it's all a lie, and that what protects us from terror attacks is God, and God helping the IDF to root out terrorists on the ground in Judea and Samaria.

Want proof? Here's a video showing 'Palestinians' jogging through a hole in the fence just off the Sansana-Metar road. The road is located northeast of Beer Sheva and southwest of Hevron. Arabs from the 'Palestinian Authority' usually cross the fence in order to work in Israel illegally, but there is nothing preventing terrorists from entering Israel in the same way. Motorists have been reporting the breach in the fence for months to no avail.>===


Friday’s powerful opinion piece by Jonathan Pollard in The Jerusalem Post (“Restoring Israel to greatness”) caused quite a sensation.
At great personal cost, Pollard penned the piece out of love for Israel and a genuine concern for its future. His words, whether you agree with them or not, were intended to sound a clarion call for an end to moral ambiguity and a restoration of sound values.

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both sides in Egypt
are blaming Israel for what's happening there. How convenient.... It's the only thing on which they can agree.>===
4614936283_Obama_Corruption_answer_2_xlarge

Scandal after scandal, coupled with an ongoing contempt for the law and the Constitution, demonstrated by high-level officials and the president himself, point to one deeply troubling conclusion: the Obama administration may be the most corrupt administration ever inflicted on the American public. And while the mainstream media have done a remarkable job deflecting much of that reality, even they cannot keep up with the avalanche of disturbing revelations that arise, seemingly on a daily basis.
We begin with yet another report about the Fast and Furious gunrunning operation, courtesy of Sharyl Attkisson, one of the few remaining reporters who follows a story wherever it goes. Last Wednesday, three more F&F weapons turned up at crime scenes in Mexico. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and as many as 300 Mexican nationals, including teens at a birthday party, were slaughtered by those weapons. Yet the ensuing investigation was first thwarted by Eric Holder’s refusal to turn over critical documents to congressional investigators, earning him a contempt of Congress citation. It was followed by President Obama invoking executive privilege to prevent the same. Other documents reveal that Eric Holder lied to Congress about when he first heard about the operation. The House Oversight Committee is currently suing for release of the material, but both Holder and Obama remain unscathed by this deadly debacle, even as the Terry family’s effort to find out what really happened to their son has been ignored.

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The conclusion is that The Forward believes that Israel is inherently evil. Those are the only facts that can fit its editorial policy. Anything that contradicts that narrative makes reporters not just feel conflicted, but angry. Because they already knew the truth before the story that makes Israelis look like decent people comes out. That is an unacceptable distraction from their own one-dimensional analysis of the situation.

Beyond that, we can see how bad a reporter Goldman is. In the earlier part of the article she describes how she feels "manipulated" when she covers a story that the Israeli government tips her (and other journalists) off about. So what is stopping her from digging deeper? Moreover, what is stopping her from looking to find out if there are similar "feel-good" human interest stories that are not pushed by the government?

That's crazy talk! To Goldman and The Forward, Israeli cruelty is the only story, and everything else is a distraction, to be ignored or downplayed or belittled or cynically dismissed.
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Prime Minister BinyaminNetanyahu spoke Sunday about the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria as he addressed his ministers at the beginning of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
“This situation cannot continue. The most dangerous regimes on earth must not have the most dangerous weapons on earth, and we expect this to end,” he declared.
“What happened in Syria is a crime and a terrible tragedy,” he continued. “Our hearts are with the women, children and babies who were so cruelly hurt by weapons of mass destruction.”
Netanyahu also spoke of Israel’s current position. Terrorist groups have targeted Israel with rocket fire on the Golan and on the northern Galilee, in an apparent attempt to drag the Jewish state into the conflict.
“Our hand is on the pulse. It will act responsibly – but if it becomes necessary, we also have a finger on the trigger,” he warned.
“We know how to protect our citizens and our country from those who seek to hurt us,” he said.
Earlier Sunday, Minister of Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz predicted that the United States will have no choice but to intervene in Syria’s civil war following the chemical attack, which initial reports indicate was approved by sources high in the Assad regime.
Over the weekend the IDF reported that it is planning to station a new, more advanced warship on Israel’s naval border with Lebanon.

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When Michal Negrin opened a store in Manhattan's SoHo district recently, it showed just how spectacularly the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement has failed in the United States. 
The first Michal Negrin shop in New York City, on one of Soho’s most trafficked blocks, is the latest of a panoply of Israeli companies that have opened up retail outlets here: Next door is Israeli soap and body-products purveyor Sabon, which has 11 stores in New York City and opened its first U.S. store a decade ago. The Michal Negrin boutique is also just down the block from Israeli-owned Café Bari, and a couple of blocks away from Aroma Espresso Bar, which has four cafes in Manhattan and six more in other heavily Jewish parts of the country. But this part of Soho — call it Nachalat Binyamin West — may have the densest concentration of Israeli retail outlets anywhere in the U.S.
Israeli products are increasingly found in the most prosaic American retail establishments. Sodastream seltzer makers are sold in Wal-Mart, Costco and Bed, Bath & Beyond, big-box stores ubiquitous along the sides of American highways. Ahava body creams and beauty products are also sold by Bed, Bath & Beyond, as well as Macy’s and Lord & Taylor department stores, along with the Ulta and Ricky’s beauty supply stores and many dozens of independent pharmacies, even in Arkansas and North Dakota.
Despite the efforts of BDS groups to generate boycotts of products manufactured beyond the Green Line, even Israeli companies that do some of their manufacturing there are finding retail success.
And the Israeliness of many of the products, like Sodastream, is not an overt part of their identity here.
Sodastream, which began selling its seltzer makers in the U.S. in 2002, has more penetration in consumer markets here than any other Israeli product, according to Joseph Altobello, a consumer and household products analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., a U.S.-based investment bank with an office in Tel Aviv.
“Sodastream is the only Israeli name that I would know of” among Israeli products sold in the U.S., Altobello said in an interview. The “Israeli label is neutral. The vast majority of people would view it neither good nor bad. Products succeed on their merits. There are some groups that have issues, but overall, I’ve never had anyone say I’m not buying a Sodastream because it’s an Israeli company. Ever. Where a product is made matters far less than ‘does it make sense for me in my life at this price point?’“
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"We're fighting jihad around the world and paying to indoctrinate kids in it - why are we doing that?" -Tucker Carlson
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To understand the failure of public education in this country, one must first understand that the entire system is designed for the benefit of the adults who work in it. Union dues from people working in the system are funneled into lobbying and campaign contributions to the very legislators setting the rules of the system. As a result, the entire political system is biased against reform of public education. 

Sometimes, however, the need for reform is so manifest that even these local obstacles can be overcome. Under the Obama Administration, however, opponents of reform have the ultimate "trump card." The Feds. Late this week, the Department of Justice filed a federal suit against Louisiana's school choice law. Eric Holder's office argues that allowing kids in failing public schools to attend better-performing private schools would work against its "goal" of achieving the proper racial balance in schools. 
Your education may suck, in other words, but at least you are in a school with the "right" racial balance. 
Louisiana passed a modest school choice, or voucher, law, a couple years ago. If a child was low-income and attended a school that graded a C or less, the student could attend a private school, with a portion of the tuition covered by the taxpayer-funded education subsidy. The state's program isn't as expansive as those in place in Holland and Sweden, but it begins to establish that the public's commitment was to educating a child, not to a particular system. 
Last year, around 600 kids benefited from this program, although that number was likely to increase dramatically this year. 
Unions, of course, hate the idea of giving parents a choice in how they educate their children. While education is largely still a function of state and local government, Eric Holder managed to look into his bag of legal tricks and find a way to block Louisiana's reforms. 
A number of parishes (read counties) in Louisiana are under federal directive to make their public school systems more racially balanced. DOJ is concerned that giving low-income parents an opportunity to escape failing schools might alter the racial balance of the schools negatively. 
Maybe it will. But, the reform the DOJ is trying to block would also give some number of kids a better chance at opportunity. The left often argues for silly laws with the rhetorical trick that if we can save "one life" shouldn't we endorse it. Fine. Why not, however, save some few hundreds of kids from a failing education system? 
To fully appreciate the challenges we face, you must understand one thing. The left is only about power. Everything else they say is just rhetoric. 
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Your comments and photo may be used by Dr. Phil and Peteski Productions, including being published on the Web or on television
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A Republican Texas Congressman issued a blistering statement on Friday, accusing President Obama of intentionally working to encourage voter fraud.
Congressman Steve Stockman made the comments following Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that he will take legal action to block a Texas law that requires voters to show a valid form of identification.
“This is a clear attempt by a lawless White House to aid and abet voter fraud,” said Stockman, in a statement.

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Veteran crooner Andy Williams lambasts ‘Marxist’ Barack Obama

http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/veteran-crooner-andy-williams-lambasts-marxist-barack-obama/

“Don’t like him at all. I think he wants to create a socialist country. The people he associates with are very left-wing. One is registered as a Communist. Obama is following Marxist theory. He’s taken over the banks and the car industry. He wants the country to fail.” Andy Williams
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You want to know what happened to the reforms that Kevin Rudd promised for the New South Wales Labor Party to get over the finding by ICAC that the powerbroker he depended on had planned to do defraud the taxpayers by the modest amount of $100 million – at least? 

The answer is that apart from trying to make sure he couldn't be sacked again no matter what he did as leader, absolutely nothing has changed.

Just look at the way the party bosses decided who will represent the people of New South Wales. They hand our seats in parliament as if they own them.
Remember when Mark Latham decided to parachute retired anti Labor rock star Peter Garrett into Kingsford Smith - to the great annoyance of the loyalists who worked for years in the local branches.
Well, now that Peter Garrett is on the way out, the New South Wales powerbrokers have decided to play a game of chess. Apparently when they sacked the last secretary of the Labor Party, Matt Thistlethwaite, they moved him to the Senate. Now for some reason or other hee is to resign from the Senate to represent the people of Kingsford Smith in the House.

But the polls are suggesting that the Liberal candidate, the highly respected surgeon Michael Feneley is more likely to be returned.
At the same time the powerbrokers have decided that the Iranian born 29-year-old secretary of the Labour Party should represent the people of NSW in the Senate. After he left Macquarie University, he worked for Labor Party spin doctors and then for the Labor Party. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend on 24 August 2013, Anne Summers quotes a close friend saying: "He's never worked outside of the ALP; he's never lost and he's never had bad media."

She says that others in the ALP referred to his hyperactivity, his trademark lack of attention, his notorious failure to return phone calls – even from members of Parliament – and his seeming inability to concentrate on just one thing at a time.
And the" reformed'' New South Wales Labor Party thinks that this man, without any life experience and in most people's view, never having had a real job, is the ideal representative of the people of New South Wales.
Read what Miranda Divine wrote in the Sunday Telegraph on 31 July 2013:
"It's no wonder NSW Labor general-secretary Sam Dastyari wants to join the conga line of Labor apparatchiks into a cushy Senate seat. Youthful and diminutive, he is the type who insinuates himself confidently into the middle of a press pack on Budget night in Canberra's Kennedy Room, exuding an unctuous familiarity with gallery stars, to whom he leaks assiduously.

" He behaves as if he is watching himself in the mirror playing a role in House of Cards or The West Wing. His young man-on the-make persona would be endearing if he weren't so powerful, and wasn't about to be parachuted into the Senate at the ripe old age of 29. He is exactly the sort of person Labor does not need in parliament."

@profdavidflint
Read more: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/miranda-devine-eddie8217s-way-is-still-obeyed-in-federal-labor/story-fni0cwl5-1226690678033
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Kevin Rudd has been caught out running a campaign built on fabrications and future glory, writes Fairfax commentator Paul Sheehan. He says Mr. Rudd has been caught lying, without compunction, on multiple occasions, which he lists.
One of the Rudd and Gillard government's fabrications is to reduce unemployment which according to one think tank is running at 6.2%, something which the OECD questions.

But according to the respected Roy Morgan Research, real unemployment is up slightly to 9.7% and under-employment jumps to 9.2%. Roy Morgan survey on Australia’s unemployment and ‘under-employed’* is based on weekly face-to-face interviews of 336,232 Australians aged 14 and over between January 2007 – June 2013 and includes 4,665 face-to-face interviews in June 2013.

More Australians believe Roy Morgan unemployment estimate is ‘closer to reality’ than the ABS statistics which are relied on by both parties. Under this a person is employed if n employment for a minimum of one hour per week, which is an international standard. It is obviously unrealistic. The answer is surely to follow Roya Morgan but also to publish statistics according to the one hour measure.
@profdavidflint

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smile-youre-on-candidate-camera-20130825-2sjrn.html#ixzz2d11ZaKM9

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A pizza delivery-man fatally shot a knife-wielding robber after dropping off a pizza to a motel room.
Domino’s employee Bryon Park, 54, had just returned to his vehicle after delivering a pizza to a room in a Days Inn motel in West Melbourne, Fla., about midnight Friday when Fredrick Lorenza Kelly Jr., 32, approached him with a large knife, the Brevard Times reports.
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A judge today ordered eight documents seized by Victoria Police during the fraud investigation to be returned to law firm Slater & Gordon.
The documents were seized after a search warrant was executed at the law firm’s Melbourne offices in May and have remained in a sealed envelope and held by the Supreme Court.
They now must be returned to Slater & Gordon within seven days.
The police probe into the alleged fraud examines Ms Gillard’s relationship with former AWU secretary Bruce Wilson.
The pair were in a relationship from 1992 to 1995 and Ms Gillard was, at the same time, also providing legal advice to the AWU, as a partner with Slater & Gordon.

Ridiculous verdict - ed
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CANdo - Australia's Voice.
Voter faith in the federal government has plummeted to levels not seen since the Howard era but Labor can still win the election, top poll firm Roy Morgan says.
Launching the firm's annual State of the Nation report on Tuesday, Gary Morgan said gaffes by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott posed the biggest risk to his bid for the top job.

"It's really up to Abbott to lose the election," he said.

The report found confidence in government had risen only slightly in the past week.

Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine said 59.6 per cent of Australians surveyed said they did not trust the government, helping give the coalition a 51-49 two-party preferred lead over Labor.

"Trust, or distrust, in the government is back to the levels that we haven't seen since the Howard government at its most unpopular (before the 2004 election)," she said.

"But remember, the Howard LNP government was re-elected after that."

"This looks pretty dire but it can change."

Voters in the Labor-held bellwether seat of Eden-Monaro, in NSW, had among the lowest confidence in open and honest government, the report found.

Meanwhile four marginal ALP seats were in the bottom 20 per cent of seats ranked by consumer confidence: Rankin and Blair in Queensland and Kingsford-Smith and Page in NSW.

"The wisdom is that if consumer confidence is really low the seat is vulnerable to a change away from the government," Ms Levine said.

Across the country the economy was tipped as the most important issue to voters.

"It's about the cost of living, the cost of electricity, the cost of petrol, the cost of everything - and that includes things like interest rates," Ms Levine said.

The danger seats for the ALP on economic management are Reid in western Sydney, Robertson on the NSW central coast and Corangamite in Victoria.

But two "sleeper" issues, asylum seekers and the environment, could become more prominent election deciders, Ms Levine said.

This article originally appeared on news.com.au. Read more:http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/election-is-abbotts-to-lose-morgan/story-e6frfku9-1226700581324#ixzz2d3QzDB9y

That level of balance should scare any Australian who cares about Australia's future. - ed
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More taxpayers' money down the drain.
A good sign of a bad administrator is that he or she will immediately have their office redecorated, throwing out perfectly good furniture. When you see politicians changing the names of the departments, and especially changing the logo, you have to wonder what is going on.
Why on earth do we have to put up with a succession of changes to the names of transport authorities and their logos?
We've just seen this sort of waste in New South Wales. Just look at this logo.

The Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian has just spent over $1 million on this design of Sydney's new public transport ''brand'' - a hopping ball with a multi-coloured shadow which the Sydney morning Herald says might have been arrived at with a few strokes of a calligraphers's pen.'
The minister has just spent more than $1 million in consultancy and design fees, market research and testing. This was only revealed when the State opposition did a Freedom of information search to find this out.
Gladys. Berejiklian: you might as well flushed more grown $1 million down the lavatory. The appalling thing, Gladys, is that it is the taxpayer's money not yours. How many years with some taxpayers have to work to pay that amount in tax?

@profdavidflint

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/bouncing-ball-branding-cost-transport-1mplus-20130819-2s7bc.html#ixzz2cqVvgIVK

I support this use of money .. I point out that a responsible government which posts surpluses is not sinful with waste. I note Howard was criticised by Rudd for what Rudd called profligate spending. It is true Howard spent big on some things .. but within government means. This logo looks good and is necessary because the tired old transport .. jaded under ALP .. needs renewal. - ed
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August 26: Heroes' Day/Herero Day in Namibia; Women's Equality Dayin the United States
An illustration of the Battle of Crécy
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“Great peace have those who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble.” Psalm 119:165 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"His fruit was sweet to my taste."
Song of Solomon 2:3

Faith, in the Scripture, is spoken of under the emblem of all the senses. It is sight: "Look unto me and be ye saved." It is hearing: "Hear, and your soul shall live." Faith is smelling: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia"; "thy name is as ointment poured forth." Faith is spiritual touch. By this faith the woman came behind and touched the hem of Christ's garment, and by this we handle the things of the good word of life. Faith is equally the spirit's taste. "How sweet are thy words to my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my lips." "Except a man eat my flesh," saith Christ, "and drink my blood, there is no life in him."

This "taste" is faith in one of its highest operations. One of the first performances of faith is hearing. We hear the voice of God, not with the outward ear alone, but with the inward ear; we hear it as God's Word, and we believe it to be so; that is the "hearing" of faith. Then our mind looketh upon the truth as it is presented to us; that is to say, we understand it, we perceive its meaning; that is the "seeing" of faith. Next we discover its preciousness; we begin to admire it, and find how fragrant it is; that is faith in its "smell." Then we appropriate the mercies which are prepared for us in Christ; that is faith in its "touch." Hence follow the enjoyments, peace, delight, communion; which are faith in its "taste." Any one of these acts of faith is saving. To hear Christ's voice as the sure voice of God in the soul will save us; but that which gives true enjoyment is the aspect of faith wherein Christ, by holy taste, is received into us, and made, by inward and spiritual apprehension of his sweetness and preciousness, to be the food of our souls. It is then we sit "under his shadow with great delight," and find his fruit sweet to our taste.

Evening

"If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest."
Acts 8:37
These words may answer your scruples, devout reader, concerning the ordinances. Perhaps you say, "I should be afraid to be baptized; it is such a solemn thing to avow myself to be dead with Christ, and buried with him. I should not feel at liberty to come to the Master's table; I should be afraid of eating and drinking damnation unto myself, not discerning the Lord's body." Ah! poor trembler, Jesus has given you liberty, be not afraid. If a stranger came to your house, he would stand at the door, or wait in the hall; he would not dream of intruding unbidden into your parlour--he is not at home: but your child makes himself very free about the house; and so is it with the child of God. A stranger may not intrude where a child may venture. When the Holy Ghost has given you to feel the spirit of adoption, you may come to Christian ordinances without fear. The same rule holds good of the Christian's inward privileges. You think, poor seeker, that you are not allowed to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; if you are permitted to get inside Christ's door, or sit at the bottom of his table, you will be well content. Ah! but you shall not have less privileges than the very greatest. God makes no difference in his love to his children. A child is a child to him; he will not make him a hired servant; but he shall feast upon the fatted calf, and shall have the music and the dancing as much as if he had never gone astray. When Jesus comes into the heart, he issues a general licence to be glad in the Lord. No chains are worn in the court of King Jesus. Our admission into full privileges may be gradual, but it is sure. Perhaps our reader is saying, "I wish I could enjoy the promises, and walk at liberty in my Lord's commands." "If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest." Loose the chains of thy neck, O captive daughter, for Jesus makes thee free.
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Today's reading: Psalm 119:1-88, 1 Corinthians 7:20-40 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 119:1-88


1 Blessed are those whose ways are blameless,
who walk according to the law of the LORD.
2 Blessed are those who keep his statutes
and seek him with all their heart-
3 they do no wrong
but follow his ways.
4 You have laid down precepts
that are to be fully obeyed.
5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast
in obeying your decrees!
6 Then I would not be put to shame
when I consider all your commands.
7 I will praise you with an upright heart
as I learn your righteous laws.
8 I will obey your decrees;
do not utterly forsake me....

Today's New Testament reading: 1 Corinthians 7:20-40

20 Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.
21 Were you a slave when you were called? Don't let it trouble you-although if you can gain your freedom, do so. 22 For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord is the Lord's freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is Christ's slave. 23 You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings. 24 Brothers and sisters, each person, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation they were in when God called them.
Concerning the Unmarried
25 Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. 26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27 Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this....
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Alexander

[Ălĕx ăn'dûr] - defender, helper of men or one who turns away evil.
  1. The son of Simon the Cyrenian who was compelled to carry the cross of Christ (Mark 15:21).
  2. A leading man in Jerusalemwhen Peter and John were tried there (Acts 4:6).
  3. A convert of Paul's who was present at the Ephesian tumult. Perhaps the same as No. 1 ( Acts 19:33).
  4. A convert to Christianity who became an apostate (1 Tim. 1:20). Perhaps the same as No. 6.
  5. Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, who followed his father Philip and who also brought the Jews into contact with Greek literature and life. He is described though not named in Daniel 2:39 and 6:6.
  6. The coppersmith who opposed Paul ( 2 Tim. 4:14 ). This Ephesian Jew was likely the same as the one who corrupted the faith, not from ignorance but deliberately in opposition to his judgment. Dr. Alexander Whyte deals with No. 4 and No. 6 as the same person.
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