Wicked Brolli Moves and Wondercon

because everytime you hold a brolli, you feel like a) an aristocrat or b) fred astaire. Subscribe for a New Video in 2 days. Music by Mitchell. S (thank you very much). If you want to see the ke$ha make up: http://twitpic.com/1ddc63 twitter: http://www.twitter.com/natalietran facebook:http://www.facebook.com/pages/community-channel/6783117830 Hope you guys are well and enjoying your week!
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I heard this pick up line that you endorsed in a video and so I keep using it and yet I never seem to find you. My friend tells me that I should try it when you are around. So, Nat, when are you coming around? So I can try my pick up line ..

Headlines Tuesday 6th April 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

English Liberal satesman Spencer Compton Cavendish
Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington KG, KB, PC (18 March 1673[1] – 2 July 1743) was a British Whig statesman who served continuously in government from 1715 until his death. He served as the nominal head of government from 1742 until his death in 1743, but was merely a figurehead for the true leader of the government, Lord Carteret, the Secretary of State for the Northern Department. He is considered to have been Britain's second Prime Minister, after Sir Robert Walpole.

=== Bible Quote ===

“For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”- 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

=== Headlines ===

A gritty war video circulating on the internet showing soldiers opening fire on a group of men is real, says a military official. WARNING: Video contains graphic scenes

Reserve Bank hikes interest rates
HOME-OWNERS to pay more on their mortgages after the RBA hikes its rate to 4.25 per cent.

Good luck Abbott, but I'm gone
MALCOLM Turnbull says he will quit politics, Tony Abbott says he hopes they'll still be friends.

Toyota Faces $16M Fine
Transportation Dept. seeks record penalty against Toyota for failing to promptly notify gov't of defective gas pedals

'Troubling' Tirade for Obama
White House spokesman blasts Afghan president's rant in which he accused U.S. of meddling in his country's affairs

Not Over: Aftershocks Rattle California
Scientists warn that aftershocks could continue for days as Southern California recovers from Easter Sunday quake

Gay Activist Found Dead in Oklahoma Apartment
A prominent gay activist was found dead in his Okla. apartment just two days after he filed a brutality complaint against the Tulsa Police Department, MyFoxPhoenix.com reported. - police have been smeared, but there is nothing to suggest they were responsible - ed.

Distressed Apple fans have vented their anger at a group of teenagers who bought an iPad just so they could be the first to smash it with a baseball bat / Picture news.com.au

Banks refuse to cap rate rise
BANKS refuse to match NAB promise not to raise interest rates beyond any official increase today.

Jesus would understand if we turn refugees away - Abbott
TONY Abbott says Jesus would understand if he turned asylum-seekers away from our shores.

Paedophile granted access to daughters
COURT says paedophile dad can see daughters as long as gran "never takes her eyes off them".

Reef-wrecker 'may have tried shortcut'
FISHERMAN say bulk carriers taking illegal "rat run" through Great Barrier Reef to save money.

Online lies worth jail time, says senator
PROPOSED law could see you in jail for lying to Facebook friends about age, police warn.

It's no fun being a Royal, says princess
PRINCE Andrew's eldest daughter, Beatrice, claims her job isn't as much of a fairytale as it might look.

Sydney suburbs ready to go boom as population soars
SOME Sydney suburbs will have their populations double or even quadruple in just 25 years, official Government documents reveal, as the city hurtles towards a population of six million people by 2036.

=== Journalists Corner ===

His health care bill passed, but could it cost him his seat?
The senator reveals his strategy as he faces down his toughest election year yet!
Springing for More Spending!
Will the government's rising debt cause the economy to crumble? We ask how much is too much!
===
Inside the Beltway!
Host Bret Baier and Fox New Channel's Team Washington investigate the politics that matter!
===
Popularity Free Fall!
We examine the president's plummeting poll numbers! Brit Hume has the analysis!

=== Comments ===

President Obama's Approval Rating Drops to All-Time Low
By Bill O'Reilly
According to a new CBS News poll, just 44 percent of Americans believe the president is doing a good job; 41 percent say he is not; the rest don't know.

That is Mr. Obama's lowest approval rating ever. So what's driving this?

The president responded on CBS:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it's...

HARRY SMITH, CBS NEWS: It's beyond that.

OBAMA: It's pretty apparent, and it's troublesome. But, you know, keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out. It happens often when you have got an economy that is making people more anxious and people are feeling as if there is a lot of change that needs to take place. But that's not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we are trying hard, that I want what's best for the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

That could be true, but there's no question many Americans are now skeptical of Mr. Obama.

One of the big reasons is health care. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal echoed "The Factor" and said that Obamacare may indeed be unconstitutional because the federal government cannot force Americans to buy a product: health insurance. We said that back in August.

One footnote: The car insurance mandate is driven by public safety. It is also a state issue.

Now, the president sincerely believes that conservatives are hurting his image, but his outrage is selective. The left attacks the president's critics with even more vitriol than the right uses. But Mr. Obama never mentions that. He must not watch NBC News.

"Talking Points" believes it is unemployment, the bitterness surrounding health care, the massive debt and the huge expansion of federal government that is driving Mr. Obama's poll numbers down. It's not about conservative commentators.

Also, the president has lost almost every right-leaning independent voter because he has governed almost exclusively from the left. There is little center in his presentation.

This week's announcement about drilling for oil is an attempt to stop that bleeding. So the president is definitely aware of where he is in the court of public opinion.

"Talking Points" expects that Mr. Obama will use his rhetorical skills to try to calm the waters. We also expect him to take a tougher posture against Iran.

No question there is a hearts and minds battle in America right now, with the election next November the endgame.
===
Diverting attention from the big issues
Piers Akerman
LAST year, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his bold vision for a “big Australia”. Over the Easter break he took a revisionist step backward and named Tony Burke as our first Population Minister. - I would add that it is possible for Australia to house many times its current population .. the cost being that infrastructure has to be developed including dams. Dams are flood mitigating. I like the idea of aquifers, but not at the cost of building more dams. It is technically feasible to flood inland Australia and make Australia a vastly larger breadbasket, but I think greenies just want to remove people from the planet instead. - ed.

Wazza replied
Migrants are the single biggest cause of our debt burden.
Since immigration started with earnest and I might add, without a popular vote,Australia’s debt has soared.
700 billion private debt and 132 billion public,it is now out of control.Infrastrucure spending,housing and credit card debt will increase it to over 2000 billion of debt if we reach the undemocratically set population target of 35 million.
This sort of debt levels is what sent countries like the US and UK bankrupt.
We are well on the way.

- Wazza, you are wrong. I’m so disappointed with ALP adherents who don’t like people. But I’m more disappointed when conservatives express similar views. Wazza, immigration has been happening in earnest for many thousands of years. It is by no means certain that Aborigines are from only one migration. Even the first settlers were of diverse ethnicities. The debt we are experiencing is directly related to bad ALP governance .. not migration. It is just as well we don’t live in an Athenian democracy. Their voters were all male, and over thirty. They didn’t accept anyone not born in Athens. And they lost, which is why Romans built roads to other places, not Athenians. I’ve not got much Italian blood, but I recognize their strengths. - ed.

Wazza replied
DD Ball.I am not wrong.
This topic is about Australian Immigration.
Not some philanthropic theory on the immigration patterns of Cro Mangnon Man in the last two million years.
Australia’s immigration exploded expotentially from the the 1970s along with our debt.That fact is irrefutible.
I am dissappointed that Conservatives here push their own one sided agendas and then attempt to justify it by seeking the moral high ground with unsubstantiated falsifications.
“Even the first settlers were of diverse ethnicities”
The first settlers were subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Their gene pool was that of Anglo Saxon,Anglo Celtic origins.
Asians came here later during the Gold Rush but their numbers were of no consequence to alter the Social impact of the wider community nor alter Australia’s debt burden.
This was not an all come society like today,so please,do not engage in Retro History from the Black Arm brigade or perhaps you would be better served by joining the Labor Party. - Wazza replied
Debt and Immigration.
“Will Rudd Government’s high immigration program turn Australia into Argentina?”
“According to the Former Minister for Finance, Senator Peter Walsh, Australia’s immigration program during the late 1980s was dramatically expanded - primarily because of pressure on the Federal Government by ethnic leaders. By the late 1980s, immigration had imposed massive economic costs on Australia. High levels of immigration increased annual population growth to over 1.5 per cent, the highest in the developed world. According to Mr. Stephen Joske, an economist with the Australian Parliamentary Library, immigration increased demand for basic infrastructure - such as housing, hospitals, roads, and schooling. Because of Australia’s low levels of domestic savings, investment capital for such infrastructure had to be imported from overseas, adding up to A$8.0 billion each year to Australia’s current account deficit.
By the early 1990s, Australia - with a population of only 17 million - had accumulated a foreign debt of over A$140 billion, equal to 40 percent of GDP and exceeding other major ‘debtor’ countries such as the former Soviet Union. A key cause of this debt ‘blowout’ was the high and unsustainable levels of immigration during the late 1980s.”
http://candobetter.org/node/666#comment-1019
The debt has exploded past 140 billion.It is now over 650 billion(private) plus the Rudd spendothon 132 billion and rising fast.
Next stop Argentina?

- Wazza, I am sure you have had the best education NSW ALP can provide, but you are wrong. My great great great great Grandfather came to Australia from Canton province in China where he was born in 1796, arriving in Sydney in 1818. He owned land and ran a pub which he built. He also provided specialised services like funerals for Chinese peoples .. well before the gold rush. Get this, he had a publican license when lots of white folk missed out .. maybe it was because there was a need to service that community too? When your history is wrong on so many small points, when does it become wrong on the larger ones?
The anti chinese feeling began to express itself during the gold rush. I would point out that my ancestor married an illiterate Irish girl who came to Oz in 1816 as a daughter of a convict (they had reunions then too). Also, in subsequent generations his offspring males married more illiterate irish girls too .. and possibly some mixed blood aborigines. His grand son fought for NSW in the Soudan.
My point being Australia has been ethnically diverse for longer than you give her credit. - ed.David replied
I agree with you DD Ball. Immigration is a good thing. All you have to do is get a coffee in a country town and you will see why. There was comments made by a blogger on an earlier Piers article commenting on the amount of Asians on the train between Eastwood and Epping. I had a look the other day and found that there was about 50% asians. I also realised that the rest of the train was filled with immigrants - there was a not an aborigine amongst any of us. Really this great nation was built on immigration.

What I believe is that we need is to be selective with our intake as we have been in the past. A lot of immigration is governed by the money in the bank not the talent nor the work ethic. As our friend Tim has said we should chase the brightest and the best. I couldnt agree more.
===
AGREED
Tim Blair
“Australia’s prime minister deserves more scorn.” (Via Instapundit). Meanwhile, one of Australia’s more unusual political careers may finally be over.
===
AUSTERITY FOR LIFE
Tim Blair
Understandably distraught over the death ten years ago of his sister, British author Martin Amis imagines a better outcome:

Amis said he wished his sister had converted to Islam. “To this day I have this wish – she was always religious and she converted to Catholicism. I wish she had converted to Islam. She might still be alive because of the continence of Islam, the austerity, the demands it makes on you. I just sort of helplessly think it every now and then. She would only be 56 now and she’d still be here,” said Amis …

Sally Amis, whom the author has described as “pathologically promiscuous”, died aged 46 after periods of depression and alcoholism. Her brother believes that the structure of Islam might have saved her life.

Inasmuch as Islam would have barricaded Amis’s sister from the temptations that killed her, he’s probably right. But she’d also have been saved by being hospitalised or imprisoned, or by joining an extremely austere Christian faith. She could have lived as Western women lived in the 18th century. There are options.

(Via Harry Hutton)
===
IRON TERRIER
Tim Blair
James Morrow takes issue with recent pet-naming criticism:

There’s nothing wrong with naming pets after admired figures in history or politics. Here in the Morrow household, the resident Jack Russell is named Maggie, in honour of the pioneering woman politician, Margaret Thatcher.

Criticism withdrawn.
===
THEY WALK
Tim Blair
Back in the old home town, citizens thrive on our own local version of Obamacare:

Hundreds of disgruntled patients fed up with waiting too long for treatment walked from Werribee Mercy Hospital’s emergency department last year, according to new figures.

Data obtained by the state opposition under Freedom of Information reveals that between July and September, 474 people left without being seen by a doctor.

They arrived sick then walked out without any medical intervention at all. It’s the miracle of state healthcare, people! Kentucky walked as well, after road-testing an Obamic system for ten years.
===
IF THEY HAD THEIR TIME AGAIN
Tim Blair
Bad decision #1:

A car-jacking suspect messed with the wrong vehicle Friday night in a Kirkland parking lot.

A pit bull rescued earlier from an illegal dog-fighting ring was sitting inside in the car – and that dog wasn’t taking any more passengers.

Bad decision #2:

The small gang of Somali pirates fired on an approaching ship, hoping their midnight attack would bring them millions in ransom. The ragtag bandits, though, had taken on far more than they could handle: a U.S. warship …

It was not the first attack against a Navy ship, but it underscored the fact that most pirates aren’t terribly sophisticated, said Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at the British think tank Chatham House.

Bad decision #3:
Dozens of women have walked topless through downtown Portland, in the US state of Maine, in order to bring attention to what they claim is a double standard when it comes to the public display of upper torsos …

Event organiser, Ty MacDowell … said she was surprised by the number of men who showed up with cameras.

“We should be able to walk down the street and not have this many men taking pictures of us,” a participant shouted.
===
Dear Mr Adams: here’s your inspiration
Andrew Bolt
Two years ago a collective of our snowfield socialists - including the ABC’s Phillip Adams, propagandist John Pilger, the Greens’ Kerry Nettle and Kevin Rudd’s nephew Van Thanh Rudd - begged Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez to come teach Australians a lesson:

Every country has its own traditions and culture and has to find its own solutions, but what Venezuela has been able to achieve in so little time will be a source of inspiration and ideas for many in Australia

Since then this “source of inspiration and ideas” been teaching our closet totalitarians lots of lessons, such as how to shoot students, close down critical TV stations and create shortages.

Here’s Chavez’s latest lesson:

When Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni issued a ruling in December that irked President Hugo Chavez, he did little to contain his outrage. The president, contending on national television that she would have been put before a firing squad in earlier times, sent his secret intelligence police to arrest her.

Then the agents took her to the overcrowded women’s prison in this city of slums near Caracas. They put her in a cell near more than 20 inmates whom Afiuni had sentenced. “I’m in this hell because I had the temerity to do my job as a judge in a way that didn’t please Chavez,” said Afiuni, 46.

Since Afiuni’s imprisonment, a dizzying sequence of other high-profile arrests has taken place, pointing to Chavez’s recent use of his security and intelligence apparatus to quash challenges to his grip on the country’s political institutions. The arrests have taken aim at some of Chavez’s most prominent critics ahead of legislative elections in September, and they illustrate Chavez’s attempts to tighten control over institutions like the judiciary.

Senior officials in Chavez’s government, including Attorney General Luisa Ortega, say the most recent arrests were necessary to suppress conspiracies or to prosecute people whose comments were deemed offensive. In Afiuni’s case, Ortega said the judge had illegally freed the businessman Eligio Cedeno, who had been jailed on charges of circumventing currency controls.

The imprisonment of Cedeno, who had previously financed opposition politicians, was explicitly criticized last year by a panel of United Nations legal experts after his pretrial detention exceeded the limits set by Venezuelan law.

(Thanks to reader Mark.)
===
Today’s boat
Andrew Bolt
The more we let in, the more we invite:

Another boat carrying 22 asylum seekers has been intercepted off Australia’s north-west coast.

Intercepted?
===
France debates the warming faith
Andrew Bolt
At last a debate - but sadly not in the country most likely to do something stupid about global warming:

France’s National Academy of Sciences will hold an official debate on climate change to try to defuse this newly explosive issue.

The Academy of Sciences debate, expected to be held by October of this year, follows two months of heated debate on radio and television, during which France’s two most prominent sceptics, Claude Allegre and Vincent Courtillot [a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council], have sown great doubt in the minds of a once unskeptical French public. Allegre’s new book, L’imposture climatique (The Climate Fraud), has especially caused the French public to reconsider the conventional wisdom about global warming. In this runaway best-seller (110,000 copies sold to date), Allegre, France’s most celebrated scientist and a former Science Minister in a socialist government, calls the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a “mafia-like system” that promotes a “baseless myth” about climate change.

In an attempt to stop the erosion of their public support, some 410 establishment scientists petitioned the current science minster, asking her to rebuke the skeptics and to express confidence in the climate research community. Her response was to turn to France’s National Academy with a request for a debate on the subject. The Academy’s president, Jean Salençon, readily agreed in the hopes that an airing of the issues would calm some of the fury on the subject.

(Thanks to reader Neville.)
===
It might be called a genocide if the farmers were black
Andrew Bolt

The murder of so many farmers would be huge news if it wasn’t for their colour…

Death has stalked South Africa’s white farmers for years. The number murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994 has passed 3,000…

The vulnerability felt by South Africa’s 40,000 remaining white farmers intensified earlier this month when Julius Malema, head of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) youth league, opened a public rally by singing Dubula Ibhunu, or Shoot the Boer [see video below], an apartheid-era anthem, that was banned by the high court last week.

Malema’s timing could hardly have been worse. Last weekend in the remote farming community of Colenso, in KwaZulu-Natal, Nigel Ralfe, 71, a dairy farmer, and his wife Lynette, 64, were gunned down as they milked their cows.

(Thanks to readers Spencer and Terry. WARNING: FIRST VIDEO CONTAINS DISTURBING IMAGES.)

UPDATE
A list and pictures of some of the dead here.
===
Save the planet! Kill a vulture
Andrew Bolt

(Thanks to reader Grant.)
===
Going feral
Andrew Bolt

Scenes from my feral city. On the buses (above - WARNING, bad language), and on the street:

There were three blokes in an old Toyota LandCruiser… All three seemed to be sucking on stubbies or bourbon and cokes.

As a young female cyclist came up alongside, the braveheart in the back did something that only a lunatic or someone on drugs or drunk could do. He deliberately opened the door and she hit it, smashed into the road and fell screaming as her head hit the gutter… Do you know what the three inside the car did? They laughed, slammed the door shut and tried to drive away. I was on the footpath not two metres away and felt useless and just a little frightened to act.

But how else can a feral make their mark in this world, when we’ve left them inarticulate and unlettered - doomed to the underclass:

AN astonishing four million Australian workers have poor language, literacy and numeracy skills and cannot understand the meaning of some everyday words…

Among the terms that are too difficult for some workers are “hearing protection” and “personal protective equipment is required”, according to a report by Skills Australia for the Rudd Government. The words that many do not understand include: immediately, authorised, procedure, deliberate, isolation, mandatory, recommended, experience, required and optional.

The feral culture is a black joke to the harassed authorities who must struggle with the consequences:

A POLICEMAN who mistakenly sent an email labelling Frankston North people “fat, smelly F wits” to a member of the public is being investigated by the Ethical Standards Department…

“Stop parking at McDonald’s!” the email reads. “Your (sic) taking up the parking space of some fat, smelly lower class F wit from Frankston North who needs to survive on 20,000 calories a day to maintain their disability support payments from Centrelink ... so STOP IT.”

No surprise, then, that this is not just necessary but popular:

VICTORIA would get an extra 1600 frontline police officers under a Liberal state election promise to make our streets safe.
===
Catastrophic slick of hype detected on Barrier Reef
Andrew Bolt
It’s the great slick of hype that’s the real threat:

Andrew Jeremijenko on ABC2 News Breakfast yesterday on the threat from grounded coal carrier Shen Neng 1

WE’VE seen in the Exxon Valdez that there have been long-ranging effects and we shouldn’t be allowing these things to happen.

Andrew Wight on Fairfax’s Brisbane Times on March 25 2009 plays the Exxon Valdez card:

QUEENSLAND authorities had failed to heed the lessons of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and have responded inadequately to the massive catastrophe unfolding on Moreton Bay, experts said yesterday. Occupational and environmental medical specialist, Andrew Jeremijenko said history was repeating itself off the southeast Queensland coast. “Moreton Bay is just as vulnerable as Prince William Sound. As more of the oil gets to shore, we are going to see the same effects occur [as in Alaska],” he said.

Oil leak from Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in March 1989:

38,500 tonnes

Oil on board the Shen Neng 1 on Saturday:

975 tonnes.

Oil leak from the Pacific Adventurer in Moreton Bay in March 2009:

270 tonnes

Anna Bligh on ABC, March 13, 2009:

MY priority is to have teams of people out there cleaning this mess up to protect wildlife in what may well be the worst environmental disaster that Queensland has faced.

Reporter James Kelly on ABC’s Lateline on March 12, 2009:

KELLY: This green turtle is one of the innocent victims.

Zeb Felmingham, resort worker: We had a couple of pelicans that sort of got covered in oil a fair bit.

Official report into Pacific Adventurer disaster by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, February 2010:

OVERALL, 16 oiled wildlife were treated..The total oil related mortalities were three dead animals, comprising one sea snake, one little tern and one petrel species.

And just how great an environmental disaster was the huge oil spill of the Exxon Valdez really? No spill has been more demonised and exploited, but here’s the findings of a study into the true damage:

We review studies of four taxa—pink salmon, sea otters, harbor seals, and several species of seabirds—widely believed to have suffered severe impacts from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. These studies were conducted over a 10-year postspill period and included prespill information where possible. They demonstrated that earlier suggestions of negative impacts may have been unfounded (harbor seals) or that the species either exhibited no obvious detrimental effects of the spill (pink salmon population runs, population density and habitat occupancy of half of the 23 seabird species examined) or indicated impacts followed by clear evidence of subsequent recovery (sea otters, the remaining seabird species).

That study includes a warning to activists - and to the journalists now, alas, among them:

The results of such studies must also be interpreted objectively, free of preconceptions about spill effects and divorced from advocacy positions.
===
Labor dines at the trough with its rich mates
Andrew Bolt
How sweet, seeing so many businessmen hand over $5000 a head with not the slightest thought of getting anything in return:

THE well-manicured streets of Toorak are the new battlefront in the row over political donations and election-year fund-raising, with the family of trucking tycoon Lindsay Fox set to host an exclusive $5000-a head soiree for Premier John Brumby and senior ministers.

Business sources have confirmed that Melbourne’s corporate elite - including members of the wealthy cardboard, retail and property empires run by the Pratt, Gandel and Lieberman families - are to dine with Mr Brumby at a Labor Party fund-raiser at the Toorak mansion of Andrew Fox next Tuesday.

Mr Fox is the head of the property and development arm of his father Lindsay’s transport and logistics empire, Linfox....

Yesterday, Andrew Fox would only say: ‘’I have never asked a politician for anything in my life.’’

Of course he hasn’t:

Trucking company Linfox has considered constructing a new $200 million track at Avalon near the airport, where night racing would be catered for. Andrew Fox, director of Linfox, told the Herald Sun that the new venture will help to save a large amount of money in the long term. Fox’s plan involves a partnership with the state government ...

UPDATE

And this sort of thing is pure coincidence:

QUEENSLAND Premier Anna Bligh has defended the handing of lucrative school building contracts to a top Labor Party donor.

Education Queensland, which awarded construction contracts worth $490 million without calling tenders in the first round of the federally funded Building the Education Revolution program, has handed just over a third of the $847m in second-round contracts to companies owned by the Leighton group.

The same companies donated $316,000 to the ALP in 2008-09.

But Ms Bligh yesterday declared it a “cheap shot” to criticise the contractors.

Not criticising, Ms Bligh, just noticing:

Leighton and its subsidiaries Thiess and John Holland are managing BER contracts worth $310m in Queensland. With management fees of 6 per cent, the companies will get $18.6m for the work.

Another political donor, Baulderstone, has been awarded construction contracts worth $107m, earning $6.5m in fees.

Australian Electoral Commission documents show Leighton, Thiess and John Holland collectively donated $316,000 to the ALP and $186,000 to the Coalition in 2008-09.

Baulderstone donated $25,000 to the Labor Party and $2775 to the Coalition parties.

The other construction managers—Abigroup, Hansen Yuncken, Laing O’Rourke and Watpac—which each got just over $100m in contracts to manage—do not have any record of donating to political parties in 2008-09.

UPDATE 2

Speaking of mates rates corruption rorting an extraordinary coincidence:

THE federal government’s $3.2 billion in nation-building health and hospital investments overwhelmingly favour Labor electorates and marginal Coalition-held seats that could tumble at the coming election. ..According to figures from the federal Department of Health and Ageing, Labor electorates have been allocated $1.83bn, or 72.6 per cent, of the $2.52bn in health fund investments designated for a specific location.
===
One of these men is informed
Andrew Bolt
Guess which one is informed, and which trades in images?

Former NSW Premier and amateur historian Bob Carr:

Alabama is gun-toting, Palin-embracing and church-going, but it contains a surprise. It now celebrates the turbulent struggle for civil rights in a trail of extraordinary museums. Moreover it has done this without any white backlash, as if the heirs of Governor George Wallace — ‘segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever’ — have embraced black struggle as part of the state’s official history.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd:

Robin Williams should go and spend a bit of time in Alabama before he frames comments about anyone being particularly redneck.

The judges aren’t kind of Rudd.

(Thanks to reader D.)
===
Obama pitches as he governs
Andrew Bolt

Obama to the Left and overinflated. Bush, however....

UPDATE

Makes Kevin Rudd seem succinct:

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” package.

“We are over-taxed as it is,” Doris said bluntly.

Obama ,,, then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer - more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map").

(Thanks to reader Watty.)
===
March warm
Andrew Bolt
Continuing warm, thanks to an el Nino.

THE BRADFIELD SCHEME

The Greatest Scheme of All

As the driest inhabited continent on Earth, it has been a continual dream of many Australians to be able to bring water to the arid inland, opening up the millions of hectares therein to agriculture, population and economic growth.

To date the only large-scale water diversion scheme implemented in Australia is the Snowy Mountains Scheme. But there have been many other schemes that were imaginatively conceived to increase water availability in Australia, but for various reasons have not been implemented.

Perhaps the most famous, and most controversial, of these has been...

The Bradfield Scheme

Dr. J. J. C. Bradfield CMG D.Sc. M.E. (1867-1943), born at Sandgate, Queensland and educated at Ipswich and the University of Sydney, designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge; was the consulting engineer on the Story bridge across the Brisbane River; helped design and plan the University of Queensland; engineered the building of Sydney’s electric railway system; and was deputy Chancellor of the University of Sydney from 1942 until his death.

He was associated with a great range of engineering work including the Cataract Dam near Sydney and the Burrinjuck Dam, which formed part of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.

But Dr. Bradfield is possibly better known for something that he did not build, his magnificent plan for the watering of the inland Australia which he presented to the Queensland government in 1938, following a lifelong interest in irrigation and water conservation.

The arid interior of the Australian continent and intermittent flow of the vast river system that drains towards Lake Eyre have acted as a challenge to many men with dreams who sought to make the dry lands blossom.

These dreams have two recurring features… the filling of the dry bed of Lake Eyre in the centre of Australia in the hope that evaporation from the water surface would increase rainfall in the vicinity, and the diversion of Queensland coastal rivers to feed the watercourses of the inland system.

Dr. Bradfield’s plan involved diverting the waters of the upper reaches of the Johnson, Tully, Herbert, Burdekin and Flinders Rivers one into the other, then into the Thompson, thence into Lake Eyre, refilling it and, with evaporation, creating a climate change and rainfall throughout inland Australia.

The Lake Eyre Basin has a total catchment of approximately one fifth of Australia’s landmass (1.17 million square kilometres), with an average annual rainfall of no more that 230 millimetres… less than 10 inches.

On the other hand, the tropical north-eastern section of Queensland is a land of many rivers draining an area of 970,000 square kilometres with an average rainfall of 790 millimetres. It contains the highest rainfall areas in Australia.

It was such an obvious waste of Australia’s most valuable asset, WATER, that drove Dr. Bradfield to spend some of his later years riding through Queensland’s "super wet" belt, surveying his dream.

On horseback, and armed with only the most basic of surveying equipment, Dr. Bradfield fought his way through the dense rainforests of the mountains behind Innisfail and Ingham, to come up with the design for his grand plan. Such was his skill that later engineers and surveyors could find very little fault with the overall concept of his plan, and the sites he picked for his dams.

But, as mostly the case with men well ahead of their time, Dr. Bradfield’s dream of turning Central Australia into what he called his "Ghirraween" (A Place of Flowers), also had its detractors.

Following his first concrete proposal of the scheme in 1938 in a report to the Queensland government, and having great excitement and a large and loyal basis of support, it wasn’t long before the criticisms started to come.

In evidence on the Bradfield Scheme to the Commonwealth Rural Reconstruction Commission, an engineer - H. P. Moss, A.M.I.E. (Aust.) - told the commission that some parts of the scheme were feasible, that many of Bradfield’s claims could not be justified, and that no firm opinion could be expressed on other points without further technical investigation.

A more detailed assessment was made in 1974 by W. H. R. Nimmo, chief engineer of the Stanley River Works Board - later head of the Queensland Water Resources Commission - in a report to the Queensland government on Bradfield's 1938 proposals.

His general conclusions were that some portions of the Scheme were physically impossible - for instance, the building of a suitable dam with sufficient storage capacity at Hells Gates; that, at best, less than a third of the diverted flow of 170,000 litres of water per second envisaged by Bradfield would be attainable by any feasible modification of his original plans; and that, finally, much of the water suggested for diversion from the Tully, Herbert and Burdekin rivers would soon be required for use on the coast in power generation and irrigation.

Following a resurgence of interest in the Bradfield Scheme, sparked by criticism of the Burdekin Falls Dam project, in 1981 Dr Eric Heicecker, Senior Lecturer in Geology at Queens-land University; Roy Stainkey, a fourth generation Mid-West sheepman; and Bob Katter MP, then Queensland Minister for Northern Development, produced the Queensland NPA Water Resources Sub-Committee Report.

This report proposed using the waters from the upper reaches of the four coastal streams and diverting them onto the Mid-West and Central Western Plains for irrigation of crops, cattle fattening, timber farms and drought mitigation for sheep.

Consequently, the Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen announced that the Queensland government was going to move for ward with this revised scheme, and secured a commitment of $5 million from the then Federal government.

The Queensland government once again commissioned another study into its feasibility... this became known as the Cameron McNamara Report. Although only a limited report, Cameron McNamara said: "Our study shows that Bradfield's original concept of inter basin transfer across the Great Dividing Range is physically possible. However, many of Bradfield's details have to be modified in the light of the greater information now available."

Basing their criticisms primarily on what they saw as the high costs of getting water to the farm gate, Cameron McNamara went on to say: "To justify the high cost of such a scheme, the water would have to be used for intensive cropping."

But, getting close to the truth that is now emerging about the Bradfield Scheme - its ability to provide a massive employment boost to Australia, Cameron McNamara said: "Such a scheme would, however, generate substantial direct employment and even more through multiplier effects."

This Report, strongly support by Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the then Queensland government raised sufficient interest for the Federal government to include Bradfield in the $640 million 5-Year Bicentennial Water Resources supplementary programme.

Although $5 million was allocated for feasibility on the Revised Bradfield Scheme even this supplementary section of the Bicentennial programme was axed by the incoming Hawke government. However, this was enough to prompt the Queensland government to come up with the most in-depth report yet.

Following Fraser’s 1983 defeat, when the Bicentennial programme was axed by the incoming Hawke Labor government, the Bjelke-Petersen government commissioned its own study by a consortium of Australia’s leading water engineers.

Bringing together four of Australia’s best-known hydraulic engineering firms - Gutteridge Haskins & Davey, Monro & Johnson, McIntyre & Associates, and Cameron McNamara - the State government formed the Bradfield Study consortium in 1984.

This report was never released!

Cabinet directed the Office of Northern Development to produce a Cost Benefit Assessment of the Consortium Report, indicating also Ways and Means. The Northern Development assessment was completed late in 1989.

With the fall of the National Party government, neither report was ever made public. The Consortium Report & Assessment and the Feasibility Study were both public documents but neither was published by the new Goss government.

In July 1993, a major breakthrough occurred when all of the relevant Shire Councils of North & Central Queensland banded together to form the Northern Australia Water Development Council.

This body is intent on seeing that the Bradfield Scheme is now given a fair hearing, and intends to liaise with both the Federal and State governments to bring about this second great national project - a project that will take Australia to its next level of development.

The Snowy Mountains Scheme gave Australia the post-war boost it needed to become a nation of strength in the 1950’s … the N.A.W.D.C. believes that The Bradfield Scheme will take the nation into the 21st Century as a regional leader.

In times such as we are experiencing now of high unemployment, and low economic growth, Australia should be looking to massive public works programmes, such as The Bradfield Scheme, to boost employment.

Compare our current situation with what happened in the United States under Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt with his New Deal during the 1930’s Depression.

Instead of paying people unemployment benefits - paying them not to work, Roosevelt instituted a programme that saw the building of the massive Tennessee Valley Authority project, and other such monuments to clear economic thinking in hard times such as the Hoover Dam - then the largest dam in the world - and the strategic planting of 2,000 square miles of trees to revitalise the degraded and droughted mid-west - the US heartland.

"While Roosevelt was paying people to work and building the USA into the great nation it is today, Australia was doing just the opposite."

"Australia experienced the highest level of unemployment of any nation in the world during the Great Depression - more than 30 percent - we have apparently learnt nothing. With real unemployment levels hovering to-wards 20%, we are repeating the mistakes of the thirties."

By creating a large public works project such as The Bradfield Scheme, the N.A.W.D.C. hopes to give Australia the economic boost it needs to not only once again make it The Lucky Country, but The Lucky WATERED Country.

Another major breakthrough in convincing the politicians in Canberra of the need for a long-term, national look at Australia’s rural infrastructure occurred in early 1995, when a bipartisan group of Federal politicians from across the full Party political spectrum came together to support the concept of a National Water Distribution Scheme (NWDS).

Comprising WA. Labor Shadow Minister for the North, Ernie Bridge OAM, Bob Katter MP, former Leader of the National Party Rt. Ian Sinclair, former Labor Minister for Transport Bob Brown, WA Liberal Senator Winston Crane, SA Liberal Member for Grey Barry Wakelin, and NPA Member for Parkes (NSW) Michael Cobb.

===

FYI

REVISED

BRADFIELD SCHEME

AUSTRALIA'S NEXT GREAT NATIONAL PROJECT

NATIONAL WATER GRID

Headlines Monday 5th April 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. Although the position of "Prime Minister" had no recognition in law or official use at the time, Walpole is nevertheless acknowledged as having held the office de facto because of his influence within the Cabinet.

=== Bible Quote ===

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace”- Ephesians 1:7

=== Headlines ===

Scott Brown, who won election to the Senate vowing to defeat health care reform and became a national sensation, is taking on a new role on the campaign trail.

Obama Bending to China?
Prominent Democratic senator suggests Obama administration is letting China slide on possible currency manipulation in exchange for help on Iran sanctions

Riders 'Vulnerable' to Attack
In light of Moscow subway terror attack, Sen. Lieberman warns more needs to be done to protect U.S. buses, trains

Faces of the Tea Party
The Tea Party coalition is a mixed group of diverse activists who share a common battle cry

Dozens Killed as 3 Explosions Rock Baghdad
Suicide attackers detonated three car bombs near embassies in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 38 people and wounding more than 200 in back-to-back bombings. Authorities said they foiled two other attacks aimed at diplomatic targets.

Fossil Find May Be 'Missing Link' in Human Evolution
Scientists hope discovery of child skeleton will help them to work out what our ancestors looked like and to determine key dates in their evolution from ape-man to man-ape.

The iPad is as magical as Steve Jobs promised, and it's still the leader of the pack writes Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson / AFP

Rudd faces struggle in key states
KEVIN Rudd and Tony Abbott will have to fight hard for votes in their home states, polls show.

War veteran calls triple-0 from hospital
WAR veteran calls triple-0 from his hospital bed because he couldn't get help from nursing staff.

Coal ship runs aground on Barrier Reef
A CHINESE coal carrier is leaking oil and in danger of breaking apart on the Great Barrier Reef.

Child experts want ban on porn mags
DISTURBED by "teen sex" trend experts call for a ban on soft porn magazines in newsagents.

Claims Michael Jackson killed himself
MICHAEL Jackson's doctor will tell a court the singer gave himself a fatal anaesthetic dose.

A daily ritual goes up in smoke
LEICHHARDT's famed cafe culture is under threat when the proudly Italian area's council bans restaurant patrons from smoking at outdoor tables next year.

Too costly to install a light that saves lives
JESSICA, 3, was killed at traffic lights with her mum and despite an inquest revealing more time is needed to cross safely, the RTA says it's too expensive to change.

=== Comments ===

Diverting attention from the big issues
Piers Akerman
LAST year, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his bold vision for a “big Australia”. Over the Easter break he took a revisionist step backward and named Tony Burke as our first Population Minister. - I would add that it is possible for Australia to house many times its current population .. the cost being that infrastructure has to be developed including dams. Dams are flood mitigating. I like the idea of aquifers, but not at the cost of building more dams. It is technically feasible to flood inland Australia and make Australia a vastly larger breadbasket, but I think greenies just want to remove people from the planet instead. - ed.
===
IT’S WHAT DOES EVERY DICTATOR DO
Tim Blair
Possibly starved of attention since warming replaced globalisation as the left’s Great Fear, anti-globo No Logo bozo Naomi Klein* lashes out:

Obama has done things like Hitler did. Let me be very careful here. The National Socialists rounded people up and held them without trial, signed legislation that gave torture impunity, and spied on their citizens, just as Obama has. It isn’t a question of what has been done that Hitler did. It’s what does every dictator do, on the left or the right, that is being done here and now.

(Via Michael C. Moynihan)

*CORRECTION. Wrong Naomi; it’s Al Gore’s ex-advisor Wolf, not Ms Klein. Apologies.
===
BREAKING NEWS
Tim Blair
It’s on again:

The Nenana Ice Classic is an Alaskan lottery which has been run each year since 1917. In January the townspeople mount a tripod out on the frozen Tanana River which runs through the town. The tripod is secured firmly to the ice and a rope run from the tripod to a clock mechanism on the shore. When the ice breaks up, usually in late April or early May, the tripod gives way, and trips the clock.

The earliest ever ice break up was recorded at 3.27 PM, 20 April, 1940. The latest ever break-up was recorded at 11.41 AM, 20 May, 1964 … Historically, the ice has broken most often between about 29 April and 8 May. Last year, the ice broke when many alarmists were distracted by their annual May Day celebrations.

Click to place your ice bet.
===
BLOCKHEADS
Tim Blair
It’s kindergarten time for Australia’s sheltered media collective:

The ABC is encouraging staff in Sydney to exercise their creative talents by using Lego in the staff cafeteria …

The ABC’s NSW director, Mike McClusky, has sent a memo to all staff, asking them to see the future of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the form of Lego’s colourful plastic building blocks.

ABC inmates are outraged:

“What’s next? Finger-painting and plasticine?” asked one senior broadcaster.

Relax, oldtimer. Your job is safe. It isn’t a test.

(Via Oro)
===
STEAMS OF OBAMA
Tim Blair
Obama makes him cry with admiration. Obama causes a thrill to travel up his leg. And now MSNBC’s leading Obama obsessive detects superheated gases in the president’s pants:

“Look at the steam in the man’s stride!” exclaimed Chris Matthews.

He has a steam. He has a vision.
===
STATE MOCKED
Tim Blair
Former F1 driver Alan Jones once fled Victoria because they’d “made it illegal to smile”. More than twenty years later, current driver Mark Webber finds that things haven’t changed all that much. At least his fans have a sense of humour:

Mark Webber’s entourage has taken another swipe at Victoria – this time on the international Grand Prix circuit.

A fortnight after the Australian Formula One ace branded his home country a “nanny state”, his fans have appeared in custom-made T-shirts at the Malaysian GP.
Webber’s father, Alan, and partner, Ann Neal, happily posed with at least six fans wearing “Victoria The Nanny State!” shirts.

Good on them.
===
Tiger cheated with his (race) card
Andrew Bolt
Big surprise:

TIGER Woods lied about falling victim to a violent race-hate attack as a child, one of his teachers claims.

Woods, who returns to golf at the US Masters this week, has told various interviewers over the past two decades that bullies once tied him to a tree and used spray paint to scrawl the word “nigger” over his body.

But retired teacher Maureen Decker, 69, insists the disgraced golf star concocted the tale.

Making NSW Number One Again Campaign

The Liberal Party has launched a campaign to Make NSW Number One Again. The campaign coincided with the one year countdown to the important state election and a major dinner for our supporters. Join our campaign to start the change in NSW.

Headlines Sunday 4th April 2010

=== Todays Toon ===

Rubens painted this moral and political allegory for the Guild of St George, the Antwerp archers' company, in the period of the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648).
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (28 August 1592 – 23 August 1628) was the favourite, claimed by some to be the lover, of King James I of England. Despite a very patchy political and military record he remained at the height of royal favour for the first two years of the reign of Charles I, until he was assassinated. He was one of the most rewarded royal courtiers in all history.

=== Bible Quote ===

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”- Hebrews 12:2

=== Headlines ===

Easter is a time for hope and forgiveness, Christian leaders say
PRACTISE forgiveness, live with hope and give thanks for life are the key Easter messages from Sydney's Christian leaders today. Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell said this Easter was an opportunity to remember the contribution Christianity made to the way of life Australians enjoyed. He said the early Christians showed goodness was contagious and spread their religion by the example of the way they lived. "Community life was revolutionised. Marriage was for life, abortion and infanticide were forbidden, husbands had to love their wives as they loved themselves," he writes in today's Sunday Telegraph. "The suffering were to be helped, not ignored or exterminated. Indeed, Christians taught that good could come from suffering." Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Dr Peter Jensen said people should strengthen their relationships with family and friends this Easter.

Rep. Alan Grayson, who riled Republicans by saying they wanted sick Americans to 'die quickly,' to file complaint against doctor who posted anti-Obamacare sign.

Super Tuesday Polls Preview
May races may forecast pivotal midterm elections in November in which Dems hope to fend off GOP surge

Lawmaker Defends Constitution Flap
Illinois congressman says his comments that Constitution didn't matter in health overhaul were taken out of context

Gadget fans line up overnight to get their hands on Apple's highly-anticipated new touchscreen device / AFP

Murder accused shot trying to flee officers
THE man accused of murdering Michelle Morrissey, 19, was shot trying to flee while being moved.

Less women in banks 'aided global crisis'
A LACK of women on bank boards aided the GFC because men weren't "challenged, scrutinised".

Cyclists need to follow the road rules
BUSINESS group wants cyclists to be licenced, to pay registration and to learn the road rules.

Underbelly star befriends his alter ego
NOTORIOUS nightclub boss John Ibrahim has taken the actor who plays him in the new Underbelly under his wing, introducing him to the Kings Cross nightlife.

Archbishop 'regrets' Catholic comments
ANGLICAN leader expresses regret after declaring the Catholic Church had lost "all credibility" over the child abuse scandal.

Still room on Christmas Island, says Rudd
AUSTRALIA'S immigration facility on Christmas Island still has room for more asylum seekers, says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Mr Rudd said he had been advised by the Department of Immigration that there was still room on the island, despite reports it had exceeded its official capacity of 2040 people. "The advice I have received this morning is that capacity remains," he said.

Gunmen in army uniforms massacre 25 people in Iraqi village
GUNMEN in army uniforms swooped on a village south of Baghdad, stormed three houses and massacred 25 people from families linked to an anti al-Qaeda militia before dawn on Saturday, Iraqi officials say. Among the dead were 20 men and five women, an interior ministry official said, while a security spokesman blamed al-Qaeda and said that 17 people had been arrested in connection with the murders. The victims were found with either broken arms or legs, indicating they were tortured, according to a medical official at Al-Yarmuk hospital in west Baghdad with knowledge of police reports of the killings.

This is the future of sport in schools - Wii instead of PE
VIDEO games are replacing sport in NSW schools under new government policy allowing children to play virtual tennis, baseball and boxing on Wii consoles during physical education. Despite growing levels of child obesity, the NSW Department of Education and the Australian Sports Commission have put Nintendo's Wii Fit on the PE curriculum. - ridiculous criticism. This is a good move for many kids who are largely sedentary in the clasrooms today. -ed.

Union members turn on Labor
BLUE-COLLAR Labor voters have deserted the Keneally Government with a shock new poll showing more union members plan to vote for the Coalition than the ALP at next year's State election. Secret internal polling, commissioned by Unions NSW, shows Ms Keneally has failed to repair the rift between union members and the Government that opened up over energy privatisation two years ago.

=== Comments ===

Rudd ups the ante in self-promotion
Piers Akerman
WITH Canberra all but closed for Easter, the Rudd administration stealthily changed the rules on government campaign advertising, making it easier for public funds to be diverted to political ends. - I don’t think that the previous legislation would prevent the Rudd government from doing something corrupt, so the reason for this new legislation isn’t related to that. The reason for this new legislation is that it means the allegation of corruption can’t be made on legitimate grounds. It is an attempt to bind potential whistleblowers.
The underhanded tactic is not new to the ALP. As with the Rancid Turd, it has numerous similar examples of previous application. Recently, councillor Zaya Toma of Fairfield has been slimed for .. no reason. The South Australian Government has been re elected despite abysmal performance and a good opposition candidate and clear issues of apparent corruption.
My own issue regarding school boy Hamidur Rahman is related to such machinations.
The press club won’t welcome looking stupid, so this is a good excuse for them to say that it happened when they were looking the other way. - ed.
===
EUGENE NOT SUPREME
Tim Blair
South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche – a frequent presence on Australian television during the 80s via foreign current affairs coverage – has been hacked to death by black employees, apparently following a pay dispute. Meanwhile, another supremacist (bearing a perfectly apposite name) is shut down more peacefully:

US-born Muslim preacher Abdullah Hakim Quick, who has described Jews as “filthy” and advocates the execution of homosexuals, will not be participating in a Swedish young Muslim conference he was scheduled to speak at over Easter weekend.

The decision to remove the controversial cleric from the conference schedule was based on a number of factors and made in consultation with Quick, according to the organisation.

“We have made what we believe to be the best decision – for us, for him and for society in general,” said Mohammed Amin Kharraki, chairman of Sveriges Unga Muslimer (’Sweden’s Young Muslims’).

Terreblanche’s assailants were possibly thinking along similar lines.
===
NEXT: KEVIN’S DARING SLEEVELESS LOOK
Tim Blair
Want to be like Michelle Obama? Kevin Rudd sure does. Here’s an item from the White House blog, back in March last year:

“This is a big day. We’ve been talking it since the day we moved in,” said the First Lady as she and two dozen local students broke ground on the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn of the White House.

Now let’s see what our Prime Minister is up to:

Spent arvo with T & Jess at garden centre buying seedlings & planting in new Kitchen Garden at the Lodge. I just followed instructions …

Yes, he did. Australia’s Prime Minister First Lady even used uppercase K and G, just like they do at the White House. You go, girlfriend!

(Via KP)

UPDATE. The First Lady appoints a new minister:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has appointed Tony Burke as the nation’s first population minister, amid growing concerns the number of Australians will rise to unsustainable levels.

Mr Burke will be responsible for drawing up a national population strategy and will retain his other portfolio of agriculture, fisheries and forestry.

So now Burke is the Minister for Cows, Fish, Trees and People. Who’ll get Insects? Maybe that responsibility will fall to the underemployed bureaucrats previously involved in emissions trading.
===
NO NANNY NEEDED
Tim Blair
Australian F1 driver and enemy of the nanny state Mark Webber stands on it in sodden, slippery Malaysia:

David Croft on BBC Radio 5 live Sports Extra: “How can Webber swim through these conditions? Is that the Australian in the cockpit or is it Ian Thorpe? That is a truly sensational effort from Webber, who is on pole by an absolutely massive margin.”

That margin: 1.346 seconds. It’ll be interesting to learn which Grand Prix last featured such a gap between first and second qualifiers. Webber got there by gambling on tyre selection, as his team boss explains:

“It was something Mark wanted to have a crack at (to use the intermediate tyres). There was a lot of risk involved …”

But … but … risk is baaaad! Nanny statists Peter FitzSimons, Chalpat Sonti, Neil Mitchell and Greg Baum will be appalled. Webber could have hurt himself.

UPDATE. Giancarlo Fisichella qualified on pole in Melbourne five years ago by a margin of 2.969 seconds, but that was under an unusual and quickly-abandoned aggregate timing system. The last time anyone held a qualifying margin as big as Webber’s in comparable circumstances was ten years ago, when David Coulthard qualified 1.366 seconds clear of Michael Schumacher in rainy Germany.

UPDATE II. Webber hits the wall – a full day before the race begins.
===
INBOX OF LOVE
Tim Blair
A friendly note from reader Wayne:

You really are a spineless, gormless, glass-jawed bully of the highest order. Hope you don’t have a high-speed car accident.

Well, if I do, at least I’ll avoid any spinal injuries. And from Roger of Scoresby:

Weren’t you meant to kill yourself in a high speed crash in an over-powered car in South America Timbo?

No, I was meant to kill myself in a high-speed crash in North America – Mexico, to be precise. But thanks for asking.

Similar death-wishy emails have been rolling in over the past few days. Something seems to have upset these people.
===
Michelle plants a PR seed in Rudd’s brain
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd knows good spin when he sees one growing in Michelle Obama’s garden.
===
I’d trust these boys more than I’d trust Gillard
Andrew Bolt
Two teenagers with more sense than the Government which has nannied them out a job - and more integrity, too:

TWO teenagers who lost their after-school jobs at a Victorian hardware store have appealed to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard for their jobs back, after their employer was required to pay $3000 in back pay.

Matthew Spencer and Leticia Harrison said the part-time work had given them independence and confidence, and they would not accept back pay “for work we have not done”, The Weekend Australian reported.

The duo were among six youths who lost after-school work at the Terang and District Co-operative because their new award stipulated they had to be employed for a minimum of three hours a day, compared with the previous state award that had a two-hour minimum.

However, the youths were engaged after school for 90 minutes, with their employer arguing that was the only amount of work available before the store, located 210km southwest of Melbourne, closed at 5.30pm.

(Thanks to reader Chris.)
===
Rudd’s dud team redeploys
Andrew Bolt
From one dud to the next:

THE Rudd Government has transferred its entire emissions trading team into the strife-prone household insulation program, putting plans for carbon trading this year on the backburner.

The team of 154, which has been costing taxpayers an average of $370,000 each planning for the non-existent emissions trading scheme, will be put to work on sorting out the problems with the $2.45 billion home insulation program that left four people dead and has been implicated in 120 house fires up to March 24.

(Thanks to reader John.)
===
Thick head flaunts thin body to help fat girls
Andrew Bolt
I know Kate Ellis didn’t get her job thanks to her brains, but surely even she couldn’t believe that strapping on eight-inch stillettos and squeezing into a leather sheath is a great way to promote a better body image among the chubby:

IN KILLER heels and a tight leather dress, federal minister Kate Ellis is taking a bold new approach to her campaign to improve young women’s body image.

The last federal politician to model eight-inch stilettos was Alexander Downer, but Ms Ellis, 32, wears her strappy shoes with two skin-tight outfits in this week’s edition of Grazia magazine.

(Thanks to reader Jeff.)
===
Sack the voters
Andrew Bolt
Age business writer Paddy Manning is wavering in his support for the democracy of the market place:

Can capitalism deal with climate change? It’s an article of faith for this column that a relatively free market operating in a democratic system will respond more quickly and effectively to climate change than a centralised dictatorship.

Faith is needed, because climate change is proof of colossal market failure.

Behold the Trojan Horse.

Actually, Paddy, what you are railing against is the realisation by politicians that the voters will punish them for climate alarmism that comes with a big bill. It’s not capitalism that’s “failed” you, but democracy, with voters refusing to endorse the policies you prefer. Those who see in this an argument against capitalism simply confirm that, as ever, the anti-capitalist movement is at heart anti-democratic. Climate alarmism is just the latest refugee of the Western totalitarian.
===
Clowns to the left of me
Andrew Bolt
Geldof seems the least deserving of a deserved criticism:

THE singer and activist Bob Geldof has launched an impassioned defence of his charitable work, claiming he has used his fame to persuade world leaders to take poverty seriously and mocking anti-poverty demonstrators as ‘’wankers dressed as clowns‘’.

His comments were included in a 6000-word letter to the director of a documentary that makes stinging and, Geldof believes, unjustified criticisms of his rock concert campaigns.
===
More feral females than ever
Andrew Bolt
The report goes on to discuss how the state is failing the prisoners, rather than the other way around:

VICTORIA’S high-security women’s prison is overflowing with a record number of offenders, forcing the state government to bring in portable accommodation to house them.

UPDATE

Meanwhile, another of those race-based attacks that has made Melbourne infamous in Asia:

Police are investigating a brawl involving two groups of Asian men which began outside a nightclub in Riverside Quay, Southbank overnight.

The two groups began fighting outside a club at approximately 3.00am and were allegedly armed with weapons including knuckledusters, bottles and iron bars.
===
iPad released
Andrew Bolt
A roundup of iPad reviews. But I really want to know about the comparative choice of books, which is what I thought this was all about.

Make NSW Number One Again

Barry O'Farrell and his Liberal and Nationals Team have an action plan to Make NSW Number One again. Find out more and have your say at http://startthechange.com.au.