Monday, April 26, 2010

Headlines Monday 26th April 2010

=== Todays Toon ===
Print of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlile
Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool PC (7 June 1770 – 4 December 1828) was a British politician and the longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since the Union with Ireland in 1801. During his time as Prime Minister from 1812 to 1827, Liverpool became known for repressive measures introduced to maintain order, but also for steering the country through the period of radicalism and unrest that followed the Napoleonic Wars. Important events during his time as Prime Minister included the War of 1812, the Congress of Vienna, the Corn Laws, the Peterloo Massacre, the Trinitarian Act 1812 and the emerging issue of Catholic Emancipation.
=== Bible Quote ===
“To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.”- Colossians 1:27-28
=== Headlines ===
Police arrest an armed man spotted in a North Carolina airport parking lot where Air Force One was departing after he told an officer he wanted to see the president.

Search teams spread out to find anyone who might be left behind in the rural Mississippi countryside as residents return to their demolished homes in the wake of a nearly mile-wide tornado that killed 10 — including three children.

Will Ariz. Immigration Law Trigger Federal Overhaul?
Dems using Arizona's controversial new immigration law to push for a national answer to immigration policy

Goldman: Senate Made Us Look Bad
Firm says Senate cherry-picked a handful of e-mails that don't tell the whole story about reaction to financial crisis

Obama to Eulogize Coal Miners
President will also meet privately with families of the 29 victims who died in accident at the Upper Big Branch mine

Al-Qaida in Iraq confirms deaths of top 2 figures
An al-Qaida front group in Iraq on Sunday confirmed the killing of its two top leaders but vowed to keep up the fight despite claims by U.S. and Iraqi officials that the deaths could be a devastating blow to the terror network.

Don’t Talk to Aliens, Warns Stephen Hawking
Scientist suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet." - yet again we see how atheists live in fear. I am a little surprised that he didn't mention Aliens wanting our women and children. -ed.

Thirty years after her baby was taken by a dingo, Lindy Chamberlain reveals why she believes her false conviction helped to convince nation of her innocence

Greys stung for going green
PRIME Minister is docking the pay of pensioners who are trying to save the environment.

Promoter's legal threat to rugby chiefs
AS STORM regain their pride with smashing win, NRL attacked for "stupid" punishment.

Millionaire leaves daughters $4.50
SOCIALITE says women should get "30 pieces of silver" for "conspiring to kill her mother".

Pokie apps being targeted at children
SENATOR calls for ban on "irresponsible" games that are freely available to kids as young as 12.

'Big bang' farewell for Carl Williams
GANGSTER'S ex-wife reveals unusual song choice for funeral - and her son's scary premonition.

Carl's brain 'donated to science'
CARL Williams' brain could be examined by scientists to find the reasons behind violent behaviour.

Fire death family suffered years of abuse
MUM posted Facebook message to yobs just minutes before blaze killed two of her children.

Pauline Hanson detained by immigration
OUTSPOKEN Hanson told Kiwi immigration officials she was Australia's first political prisoner.

Affair puts Treasurer's career in doubt
MINISTER notorious for sniffing female staffer's chair remains silent after Greens MP admits "stupid" liaison with him. - if he were ALP his position would be safe .. he might even get given a special ambassadorial position. -ed.

Australia remembers the Anzacs
TENS of thousands of Australians have braved rain to attend Anzac Day dawn services around the country, marking the landing at Gallipoli 95 years ago.

Hamas sends Israel cruel cartoon
MILITANT Islamists demand release of Palestinian prisoners in three-minute animation on fate of captured Israeli soldier.

Police Let Terrorist Through
Port Authority was told to search Najibullah Zazi's car but waved him past without searching for hidden explosives

Mexican Cartels Go After Authorities
Rather than focusing their fire on rival gangs, drug cartels change tactics and turn more attacks on authorities
=== Comments ===
10 Questions About Christians, Discrimination and the Supreme Court
By Rev. Bill Shuler
Have we become so politically correct that we no longer feel comfortable being biblically correct?
The U.S. Supreme Court will need the wisdom of Solomon as it navigates the case of Hastings vs. Martinez. At stake are questions of free speech in America and whether faith groups are being unduly targeted for discrimination. In 2004 Hastings College in San Francisco withdrew the Legal Christian Society’s right to be recognized as an official club on their campus. The reason? The society asked would-be members to sign a statement of faith consistent with a biblical standard of sexual morality.

Hastings College maintains that such a criteria discriminates against homosexuals. The Christian Legal Society states that all people are welcome to participate but voting members and officers should be those who share the unique beliefs of the club to which they are seeking membership. With club status comes access to campus facilities, student e-mail lists and activity fee funds.
The following are 10 questions pertaining to Christians, discrimination and the Supreme Court:

1. Hastings recognizes clubs that center on beliefs as diverse as Judaism, feminism, gay and animal rights. Why the undue calling out of a Christian group?

2. Although Hastings bases its argument on discrimination against homosexuals, no avowed homosexual ever sought acceptance into the C.L.S. at Hastings. Why the contrived argument?

3. What happened to First Amendment Rights?

4. Are we ready for White Supremacists being given the right to be officers of the Black Law Student Association for fear that any other action would constitute discrimination?

5. Why are we not highlighting the outstanding contributions to community and society by faith-based clubs across America?

6. If people of faith are tolerant of clubs that adhere to beliefs that are contrary to their convictions, why is the adverse not true?

7. Is it possible that the true discrimination in this case is against those who practice their faith in an increasingly secular society?

8. Have we become so politically correct that we no longer feel comfortable being biblically correct?

9. Should people be given second-class citizenship based on their beliefs?

10. Are we on the verge of outlawing groups in America solely on the basis that we disagree with their views?

The Christian Legal Society would still be an official club on the Hastings College campus if they had agreed to be Christian in name only and not in practice. The C.L.S. asks for nothing more than is guaranteed in the First Amendment: The free exercise of their religious beliefs, the freedom to speak and the ability to peaceably assemble. The reverberations of this case will be felt for years to come with the rights of far more than Christian clubs at stake.

Rev. Bill Shuler is pastor of Capital Life Church in Arlington, Virginia. For more, visit CapitalLife.org.
===
How PM was saved by a perfect Storm
Piers Akerman
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd should be sending flowers to Carl Williams’ family and pledging his support to the beleaguered Melbourne Storm. - I would like to add that my own issue is related to Julia Gillard, and not directly with Rudd. However, Julia has failed at every single hurdle to adequately deal with what she appropriately should. Rudd is a failure, but he is not in charge of this mess. He is not smart enough to be in charge of this mess. He isn’t capable or knowledgeable enough to produce this. This mess of the current administration is the result of a weak press and a corrupt underbelly of the ALP. The same corrupt underbelly Hawke and Keating were challenged to fix and failed to address. It is the same disease that eats away at NSW ALP .. the pork barrels are more important than the administration. So long as the ALP guarantee a supply of pork to their mates, they will retain the support of the corrupt. In some ways, they don’t even need to do that, because the corrupt are very needy and will not want a clean administration. In this light, the actions of some journalists are suspect. - ed.
John Jay replied
To DD Ball -

“In this light, the actions of some journalists are suspect.”
One of the great mysteries of Australian politics -

Just where are our journalists coming from?

What really goes on in their minds?

Why are they as they are?
JJ, the tradition is an old one, predating the drugs of the 60’s, the corruption of the thirties, the polarizing of WW1, the depression of the 1890’s and the Gold Rush of the 1850’s. It even predates modern schooling from the 1790’s and the French Revolution. You can see comics and articles which oppose conservatives out of mere populism for light reasons from the earliest times of the creation of a Prime Ministerial position in Great Britain. You can see the effects of the corrosive nature of it in the pamphlet wars preceding the English civil war. In some ways it is the inheritance of what was described by philosophers as the Western Dialectic, but one side tends to be muted.
Thing is, the liberal media feel justified in what they do, having a philosophy that is intellectually lazy. The vituperous spray you read when they try to counter an argument is their view of acceptable dialog. When President GW Bush was sitting President the lies that were being told were being dismissed as rhetoric that was acceptable because of the sitting President, but similar rhetoric would not be tolerated now of the sitting President. There is a double standard. - ed
John Jay replied
To DD Ball -

Thanks for your response.

Are you saying it is simply a tradition, a groove?

If you have the time, what are your thoughts on -

Why this particular groove?

Why not another groove?

Why do they occupy the mental space they do - yes, feeling justified - when there is a whole universe of thought to explore?
- JJ, to use the climate debate as an example, the reason why many side with AGW worship, imho, is because people like to be ‘right’ and rightness is judged by popularity, rather than validity and fidelity to reality. The same thing can be seen in a family where a father agrees with a mother because it is easier .. but also proclaims it to be a good idea so as not to suggest opposition. Victoria attempted to get WA to join with them before folding to the Rudd health tax. It took great strength on the part of WA to withstand THAT attack.
So with AGW you have senior people in science inducting junior ones with the promise of research grants and credit. You have the disenfranchised scientists dismissed as quacks. People who aren’t literate in science would feel pressured to agree with the status quo .. and those who are a threat to status quo are silenced.
This is not to suggest that good scientists did not disagree early, but bad scientists were clearly promoted and the temperature was gradually raised so that reasonable people were sidelined before they could raise the alarm. This is not something that is accidental, but deliberate in an unplanned way. I’m not suggesting some vast conspiracy, but collective incompetence and a malevolent left wing movement which crosses borders.
The reason why this particular issue is expressing itself this way is because it is oppositional to good conservative sense. It is a political expression. Much like my mother who says she hated President Nixon, but couldn’t say what he had done wrong. Any discussion we had on the topic would have her saying any action Nixon took in the worst possible light and was a challenge for me to justify. It is entrenched oppositionalism, a fault of the dirty politics of the left and a legacy of lazy thinking from times past. - ed.

===
SPINELESS IN SEATTLE
Tim Blair
Draw Mohammed Day launched:
After Comedy Central cut a portion of a South Park episode following a death threat from a radical Muslim group, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris wanted to counter the fear. She has declared May 20th “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”

Norris told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross that cartoonists are meant to challenge the lines of political correctness. “That’s a cartoonist’s job, to be non-PC.”
Draw Mohammed Day cancelled:
After a Seattle artist’s cartoon went viral, she says she’s not going with it …

The momentum … was more than the artist had anticipated.
Norris explains: “I said that I wanted to counter fear and then I got afraid.”
===
REETARD
Tim Blair
Global warming zombie Bill McKibben wants a vowel:
Humans have changed the planet so drastically that it needs a new name, claims one of the first environmental campaigners to warn the public about climate change.

“Eaarth” is the name being suggested by author and activist Bill McKibben, and is the title of his latest book. The new name is changed just a little because the world looks like the familiar planet Earth, but is different in fundamental ways, McKibben told the Guardian …

McKibben describes how he played with the spelling of Earth, adding different letters, and chose his new name because he liked the look of it best: “There’s a slightly science fiction look to it; that’s appropriate in the sense it’s a little like a science fiction story: we wake up one day and the planet we have been used to for 10,000 years has 5% more moisture in the atmosphere, the sea is turning more acid. The only trouble is it’s not fiction.”
Another small problem: most people don’t call it Earth. Stupid language imperialist McKibben – who’s changed significantly himself over recent decades, but keeps his old name – also has a science fiction look:

Bill McKibben: Eye of the Lemur.

(Via Twitter ruler spot the dog)
===
MAYBE THE SIX CARS ARE ONLY SMALL
Tim Blair
A supermodel environmentalist is still a supermodel before she’s an environmentalist:
What kind of U.N. environmental ambassador builds a 20,000 square-foot home with a six-car garage, an elevator and a lagoon? Why, that would be the Hub’s favorite Pats fan, Gisele Bundchen!
Green folk are dismayed:
“How big a space do two people need?” asked Philip Dowds, a Massachusetts Sierra Club official and professional architect. “A 20,000 square-foot house - the resources that it takes to put it together and the land that it needs, this just can’t happen anymore.”
Apparently it can.
===
THREE DIMENSIONS OF EVIL
Tim Blair
Murderous Hamas psychopaths go all Avatar:
The armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement broadcast a grim cartoon warning Israel over the fate of the captured soldier for whom it has demanded hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

The three-minute three-dimensional cartoon depicts the father of captured soldier Gilad Shalit visibly aging as he walks through empty city streets past billboards of former and future Israeli leaders vowing to free his son.
Hamas. Bringing people together though technology.
===
GONNA GIT YOU SUCKER
Tim Blair
Lights, camera ... octopus! A lawless cephalopod grabs valuable electronic equipment and attempts a daring escape:

(Via David Thompson, finder of weird)
===
DIOXIDE DRAMA
Tim Blair
Burn Up, a BBC climate change thriller largely set in Calgary – yes, really – is currently being screened by the ABC. A. A. Gill’s review:
The finger-wagging about global warming was relentless and unabating, all couched in the comfy velour of the edge-of-history and watershed gibberish. The goodies were witty, brilliant, sensitive, imaginative, attractive, sexy and great dancers - rather, I suspect, like the scriptwriters. The baddies were, well, they were all American.

This was film-making from the Soviet school of political subtlety, a childishly black-and-white premise, delivered with a patronising blog of a script, which overwhelmed the plot, pace, anything resembling a character and, finally, the audience’s sympathy. Last week, George Monbiot, The Guardian’s geography teacher, wrote that Channel 4 had done more environmental damage than any other organisation by showing its devil’s-advocate documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle. This was obviously before he’d seen this bloated, wasteful, gaseously hypocritical beached whale of a miniseries. Because it is this sort of toadying and special pleading that will poison the good intentions of the green movement.
It’s even better than that. Part two airs on the ABC next week.

UPDATE. ”BBC lectures us incessantly on climate change. So why did their bosses make 68,000 domestic flights in two years?”
===
Say goodbye to Uhlmann
Andrew Bolt

The 7.30 Report’s political editor, Chris Uhlmann, has been praised as the token conservative in the ABC’s entire news and current affair department.

Which may explain why he’s now being moved to where there’s no audience:
HIS starting audience is zero, but the attraction of breaking news has lured The 7.30 Report’s Chris Uhlmann away from his prime-time spot to become the political editor of ABC News 24… “It will certainly be narrow-casting on day one,” Uhlmann says.
Who knows if rumours of a difficult working relationship between Uhlmann and 7.30 Report host “Red” Kerry O’Brien are true?

But how much are we to believe that Uhlmann is truly a conservative anyway, when he denies it himself:
Uhlmann says he doesn’t know why he is the poster boy for conservatives: “I.... take issue with that.”
And now there’s this:
Ms Brodtmann, 46, a businesswoman, former DFAT official and wife of The 7.30 Report’s political editor, Chris Uhlmann, secured [Labor] preselection for the seat of Canberra on Saturday by 123 votes to the Right’s preferred candidate Mary Wood’s 109.
Which leaves Insiders as almost the only place on ABC television where its core audience might reasonably expect, every two or three to four weeks now, one conservative commentator.
===
Yet another
Andrew Bolt
Yet another boat, undeterred by Kevin Rudd’s allegedly “tough” new policies:
A boat carrying 49 suspected asylum seekers has been intercepted near the Ashmore Islands.
That’s the tenth since the government announced on April 9 it was suspending claims from Sri Lankans and Afghanis.

UPDATE

Shadow immigration spokesman Scott Morrison:
(T)his boat, carrying 51 people, including two crew, brings the total number of people to arrive in 2009/10 to 4,210, the highest number of any year on record, eclipsing the 4,175 who arrived in 1999/2000 and the 4,137 who arrived in 2000/01.
(No link to email.)
===
Global warming is a threat, after all
Andrew Bolt
Tim Blair rounds up the latest news from the wild frontiers of global warming evangelism, where the only thing that’s frying is people’s brains:

Item:
Humans have changed the planet so drastically that it needs a new name, claims one of the first environmental campaigners to warn the public about climate change.

“Eaarth” is the name being suggested by author and activist Bill McKibben, and is the title of his latest book.
Item:
What kind of U.N. environmental ambassador builds a 20,000 square-foot home with a six-car garage, an elevator and a lagoon? Why, that would be the Hub’s favorite Pats fan, Gisele Bundchen!
Item:
Burn Up, a BBC climate change thriller largely set in Calgary – yes, really – is currently being screened by the ABC. A. A. Gill’s review:
The finger-wagging about global warming was relentless and unabating, all couched in the comfy velour of the edge-of-history and watershed gibberish. The goodies were witty, brilliant, sensitive, imaginative, attractive, sexy and great dancers - rather, I suspect, like the scriptwriters. The baddies were, well, they were all American.
This was film-making from the Soviet school of political subtlety, a childishly black-and-white premise, delivered with a patronising blog of a script, which overwhelmed the plot, pace, anything resembling a character and, finally, the audience’s sympathy.
Item:
When he was just 12-years-old, Alec Loorz founded Kids Versus Global Warming, because he was feeling the weight of the situation and sensed he could make a difference. “I just felt this sense of calling, that I was called to do something about this crisis. That I was being called to stop global warming within my lifetime.”
Maddies, hypocrites, propagandists and the literally childish. If you can judge a faith by its followers, global warming is the greatest threat to reason since the Spanish Inquisition.
===
IPL takes no time at all to get the police involved, too
Andrew Bolt
The richest and most exciting new cricket competition has sped up everything, including the time it takes to get buried in corruption allegations:

India’s cricket board has suspended IPL chief Lalit Modi over corruption allegations in the worst scandal to hit the Indian game this century.

The head of the Indian Premier League faces the sack when the board (the BBCI) begins a series of meetings on his fate on Monday.

Mr Modi, who is being investigated by tax officials, denies all allegations of wrongdoing made against him.

Some of the world’s top cricketers play for the lucrative IPL.

===
Screams and a neo-Nazi: Ray’s way to honour Anzac Day
Andrew Bolt
Ray Martin should be ashamed of himself, fronting a show that stoked division on a day for unity:
THE presence of the notorious neo-Nazi Ross ‘’The Skull’’ May during a 60 Minutes TV debate on the Australian flag has ignited charges that the program’s producers deliberately stoked conflict for the Anzac Day broadcast…

During the event, filmed at Leichhardt Town Hall, producers screened footage of the Cronulla riots, and a chant of ‘’Pauline, Pauline’’ broke out in a large section of the audience when Pauline Hanson rose to speak.

Another speaker, the author and Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons, said he was ‘’frankly shocked at the presence of people like Skull who brought something of a street-brawl atmosphere to what should have been a sensible debate.’’

Ralph Kelly, of the Flag Society of Australia, said much of the debate was embarrassing. ‘’If you want a fair debate about the flag it should be in a period away from Anzac Day and Australia Day.’…

The moderator, Ray Martin, said the program’s producers had received a torrent of hate mail but ‘’our right to have an opinion’’ was the reason Australian soldiers went to war.’
===
They are the hollow men
Andrew Bolt
Attacking Kevin Rudd’s hollowness is a strategy that seemed obvious from the very start, when he signed the meaningless Kyoto Treaty and then said a meaningless “sorry”:

(The) opposition leadership group has taken the irrevocable decision to make Kevin Rudd’s character an issue. There will now be two lines of attack: competence and cowardice...
As one senior Liberal told this column, “We have always believed that there is hollowness at the centre of Rudd.” The difference now is the Coalition believes this impression is crystallising in the public mind. Three indicators that reinforced the opposition’s confidence voters are finally waking up to the Prime Minister have tumbled out in the past week.

They involve what the opposition argues is Rudd’s “gutlessness” in sending out his juniors to cop the blame for failures that, when they previously looked like successes, he was more than happy to be associated with.

One senior frontbencher involved in the leadership group’s tactical discussions put the argument this way. “This is based on increasing fundamental incompetence: the pink batts roll-out, pink batts small business false promises on the steps of parliament, Green Loans fraud, the inquiries into the Building the Education Revolution rorts. It just rolls on . . . This is all about the difference between the grand moral gesture and the reality of governance...”

===
Dear Kevin, is it OK if I say this?
Andrew Bolt
I’ve heard the same rumour that the Sunday Telegraph has reported:
TANK Stream received a curious ``tip-off’’ about how a well-known television reporter had allegedly asked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s chief flack, Lachlan Harris, to read over his script before going to air.Given that most reporters have night sweats over the prospect of stories being leaked ahead of deadline, we decided to investigate.

Harris reckons he doesn’t remember being given a script, but says it’s not uncommon for reporters to ask him to sometimes read over their copy.
What a handy thing it is to have an opportunity to vet stories and to receive prior warning of any criticism that may require spin. Wonder if the same opportunity is offered to Tony Abbott?

Still, it’s not that Rudd actually gets much criticism at all from one Canberra TV reporter, actually - so we can rule out him:
Network Ten political editor Paul Bongiorno also gets a swipe. Savva says he “made clear his distaste for the (Howard) government and couldn’t wait for it to be booted out” but insisted the Coalition members appear as guests on Meet the Press or there would be grief. “Is that a threat?” she asked. “That’s a promise,” he replied.
(Thanks to reader Watty. No link to the Sunday Telegraph story.)

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