James Flynn has a rather curious article just up which is headed "shattering intelligence". That title would however seem to be more an aspiration than an achievement. The basic point of the article is that the environment can in some cases make a considerable difference to the development of a specific ability. But nobody has ever said otherwise. The estimates of how much of IQ is genetically determined usually range around two thirds. The other third is environmental.
So, other than the title, Flynn's article is perfectly conventional psychometrics. He explains well that there is a high degree of generality to intellectual ability (IQ or 'g') and that efforts to improve on the environmental contribution to IQ tend to have only temporary success. The genetic influence keeps re-asserting itself.
His recommendation for improving one's IQ -- that one should immerse oneself in intellectual pursuits -- is fair enough. That should be of some small help in some problem solving. But if you are not pretty smart to start with you are just not likely to immerse yourself in that sort of thing. And if you are very bright, you almost cannot help yourself from getting immersed in intellectual pursuits. You just find complex things interesting and simple things boring. I think Flynn has put the cart before the horse and is not going very far that way.
For all that, his latest article reveals Flynn as much closer to the facts than he once was. His Leftist biases have led him into some pretty strange claims in the past.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Unshattered intelligence
Ruddonomics
Take his parliamentary record, for a start. Since coming into the parliament in 1998, Rudd has toed the party line and opposed most efforts to further reform the economy ... In practice, a Labor government under Rudd would re-regulate economic life. Over the past year he has promised to set up no fewer than 68 new bureaucracies and establish 96 reviews if elected. He promises to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and commit Australia to a costly program of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050. His proposed industry policy -- constructed by Kim Carr, a declared socialist -- would create an uber-bureaucracy of 12 industry innovation councils.
The goal, it seems, is to promote manufacturing by picking winners: a policy with an appalling track record of failure in Australia and elsewhere. To round things off, Rudd's labour-market policy promises to abolish individual workplace agreements and to restore union power over policymaking to its former glory... If Ruddonomics wins the day, Australia could find itself back in a 1970s mindset, with bigger government and a less competitive economy. In a modern, rapidly globalising world, that's not a vision for the future, that's a vision for the past.
the U.N. is NOT your friend
"It's rather telling that the UN's American defenders fail to directly address an indisputable fact: U.N. Human Rights Council's subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights has endorsed a report denying the existence of a human right of self-defense, and the subcommission, pursuant to the report, has declared that all national governments are required by international human rights law to implement various gun control provisions - provisions which, by the UN's standards, make even the gun control laws of New York City and Washington, DC, into violations of international law because they are insufficiently stringent."
Samizdata
Another two deserving of the whip!!
Daily Mail - A woman told how two police community officers stood by while a man was attacked by three teenage girls. Ann Ward said she rushed to help the man while the officers did nothing. Mrs Ward, 59, a great-grandmother, said: "It was disgusting — any other men would have stepped in to help." She spotted the girls kicking and punching the 55-year-old man in Ravensbury Park near Morden. She said: "They asked him the time, then attacked him, hitting him across the back of the head with a stick."They took your guns and your freedom, they told you to call someone to help you when you're getting your teeth kicked in. Well guess what, that someone you called is a waste of space, they'll be taking notes of your beating, for later reference perhaps, maybe to help you locate your missing teeth afterwards.
She added: "I shouted at him to keep hold of his bag and told him I was coming." The girls ran off, and Mrs Ward said the PCSOs radioed for help but did not tackle them. Mrs Ward said: "They said they were there to report the crime to the police and take notes." But instead of taking action, the duo chose to hide behind a tree, according to a witness. The officers said "they had the incident under surveillance", the witness added. The embarrassing incident comes just weeks after it was revealed that two PCSOs looked on while a boy of 10 drowned in a lake.
Don't spend it all in one go..
But the question is, how much did the previous left-leaning government rip out of Canadians prior to these tax cuts handed down by the conservatives running the joint now. Good on them for easing the pressure on Canadians, spend it wisely folks, hay while the sun shines, rainy day and all that.
Monday, November 05, 2007
PESKY POLES: THE IPCC SPEAKS
If the arctic is warming and the antarctic is not, it's hardly GLOBAL warming is it? The IPCC report on the subject has now apparently passed political vetting and a summary of it is below. The article notes the difference between the two poles but does not really try to explain it. But the difference is no great mystery. It is arctic sea-ice that has receded a bit recently. The land-based ice on Greenland appears to be stable or growing, just like the antarctic ice, which is also mostly land-based. So how come THAT difference -- between different parts of the arctic? Easy. Right underneath the sea-ice is the Gakkel ridge, which is showing a high rate of vulcanism at the moment. If you had a volcano under you, you would melt too
:
The Antarctic will be spared the worst of global warming and its ice mass could even grow, but the Arctic will be devastated by rising temperatures, a major new scientific report will claim. In contrast to earlier fears that ice around the South Pole will suffer widespread melting, the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change says that Antarctica's ice sheets will remain too cold for widespread melting before the end of the century and are expected to get bigger as more snow falls.
The Arctic, by comparison, will suffer widespread loss of sea ice while the Greenland ice sheet will have almost completely disappeared by the end of the century. Up to half of the Arctic tundra will be replaced by forests as temperatures rise by 4degC.
In two weeks the UN panel will publish its final, most authoritative assessment of the impact global warming is having on the planet and how it can be tackled. Its conclusions contrast with fears that Antarctica was already beginning to suffer the effects of climate change, with large chunks of the continental ice shelf breaking off in recent years.....
Source
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Of Bigfoot and Bullshit
News was going around late last week of NEW PICTURES OF BIGFOOT!?!1!!1!1 OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO PISS MY PANTS WITH EXCITEMENT!?1!?!1!1!!
Look at the first one – that looks like some animal – a bear perhaps, getting up and mooning the camera
The second one looks like the same mangy bear
but then I saw the third one and nearly fell out of my chair:
It is a fucking bear! It does not look remotely like anything else other than a fucking bear. It looks more like a bear than the “classic” footage looks like a man in a suit – and that is clearly a man in a suit.
What is it about dickheads that make people believe this shit? And more to the point, what makes these dickheads go on to study shit like this, calling themselves cryptozoologists and waste their life (and our time having to hear about it) hunting shit like this?
Now I am not saying there are no undiscovered species left. It is entirely possible, if not probable, that there are new and undiscovered species of ants and butterflies and spiders and fish and lizards and small jungle rodents waiting to be found, but giant monsters still waiting to be discovered after a hundred years of every dipshit with too much time looking for them? Come on…
Yes at one point in my life I wanted to be a cryptozoologist. I had dreams of travelling around the world, capturing the Loch Ness Monster, trapping Bigfoot and a Yeti, finding that horsehead monster in some African lake and capturing a Nondescript – no not one of those scam creatures Charles Waterton made, this nondescript I read in a book titled Unexplained Mysteries or something (same book that gave me the heads up about the African horsehead monster – but then I turned 8 years old and realised that Bigfoot was a man in a suit, the Loch Ness Monster was a great marketing scam by the locals to get stupid tourists to visit a town nobody would otherwise visit, and the so called nondescript in the book had a description and an artist’s impression of a creature that looked like the body of a merman, skinny bony arms with sharp claws and a big round mouth full of pointy teeth, much like a grey nurse shark but with narrower and pointier teeth – and that description pretty much killed its claim to nondescriptiveness and thus was bullshit.
Oh and the fact the guy who found it was digging a hole or something and pulled this thing out all curled up in a ball, and thinking it was dead, put it in a big glass container, before it apparently woke up and broke its glass container and escaped.
Yes as a seven year old kid that was very exciting and scary and entirely plausible, but come on – time to grow up people.
It would come as little surprise that most of these fuckwits would turn out to be leftists...
(cross-posted at The Asylum)
Sanctions, apartheid, priorities and world records
JPost - If the economic sanctions that Israel has applied against the Gaza Strip in reducing fuel supplies are to be regarded as collective punishment, so should the economic sanctions that were imposed against South Africa during the apartheid years, or those against Iran today. This was one of the points raised in the state's reply released Friday to a petition calling on the High Court of Justice to nullify the cabinet's decision to declare the Gaza Strip "hostile territory" and apply sanctions that include cutting electricity and fuel supplies and further restricting entry to and exit from the area.I have heard the Israel haters say on many occasions that what Israel is doing is like what happened in South Africa, Apartheid wall anyone? Perhaps it's another instance of; collective punishment against the White man is OK. Also, if the supposed victims of these nasty sanctions were really that desperate, being punished and were starving and all that, you'd think they build tunnels to smuggle food, gas and fuel across or under the border to get by and avoid the looming humanitarian disaster.
JPost - The IDF has stepped up its efforts against the terror infrastructure in Gaza and, in a 36-hour operation that ended Thursday, discovered seven weapons-smuggling tunnels in the southern Strip along the Egyptian border. The kilometer-long tunnels were discovered near Dahiniye by an elite Engineering Corps unit and troops from the Golani infantry's Battalion 51. The tunnels were found within two kilometers of the border with Israel and, according to the IDF, had been used intensively in recent months to smuggle weapons and explosives from Egypt into Gaza. The troops destroyed the tunnels in controlled explosions. IDF sources said they had been large enough for people to pass through and were most probably used by terrorists to leave Gaza on their way to Iran or Syria for training.But no, none of that, no food, no stale bread and scraps being sent home to the starving masses. Many moons ago, I heard of some fellow eating bicycles and even a plane to get into the Guinness book of records, perhaps the Palestinians are also angling for a spot in the book for eating bombs and bullets.
Are your backs aching NSW?
LiveNews - The state government has been forced to defend the cost of keeping redundant health workers on the payroll on the same day the inquiry into Royal North Shore Hospital begins. Around $15 million is being spent on health bureaucrats who are without a permanent position but the government insists the workers are not sitting around doing nothing. Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell says the union-secured deal speaks volumes about the government. “The $45 million a year being paid to 600 people to sit around and do nothing would be better spent employing more teachers, nurses and police.”That's 45 million that you folks are coughing up for, aren't you lot just a swell bunch of suckers. And to think that the Federal Opposition, the same species of leftists that are comfortably attached to your back in the state, are going to be creating more commissions and bureaucrats to meddle, fiddle and weasel into your life. How's your neck NSW, since your back's all out of space, guess where the next lot of parasites are going to slide their hooks into.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Leftist logic again
Leftists repeatedly do everything they can to avoid looking at the facts of any issue they discuss. Instead they use moral outrage, ad hominem arguments, appeals to dubious authority, whatever.
Egregious Leftist columnist Dana Milbank is a good example. He appears to have been present at a launch at AEI of a new book "Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People" written by Jon Entine. You may remember that Entine got into a lot of trouble a few years ago for arguing that blacks have a genetic advantage in certain sporting events -- an advantage any Olympic games spectator could see with their own eyes. Entine appears not to have been deterred by his critics however. The new book argues that the average Jewish IQ is unusually high and that the advantage is genetically inherited. The IQ research certainly supports that (See here and here) but it is again pretty obvious if you look at who is teaching in the universities etc.
Milbank reports that the arguments of the new book were generally accepted by the audience and then goes on to say:
Left unchallenged was the question of whether Jews are indeed smarter than others -- even though it would have only required a walk down the hall to the office of new AEI visiting fellow Paul Wolfowitz, whose leadership on the Iraq war and conflicts of interest as head of the World Bank demonstrate that Jews are capable of questionable judgment.
Where do I begin to comment on that pathetic apology for an argument? He thinks that the "questionable" judgment of one Jewish man is a serious challenge to generalizations about Jews as a whole. It would be equally logical to deny that dogs bark because some dogs do not.
But that's the sort of thing that Leftists do when all the evidence is against them. Anything rather than abandon the simplistic illusions that they so obviously desperately need.
There is nothing wrong with using examples and anecdotes to make vivid a statistical generalization but to use one example to challenge a statistical generalization is brain-dead. To challenge a statistical generalization you have to look at the evidence for and against it, and where IQ is concerned, Leftists avoid doing that like the plague. No mystery why.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
The light is burning bright..
FOXNews - In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday. Saad al-Azawi, his wife and four children are among them. They fled to Syria six months ago, leaving behind what had become one of the capital's more dangerous districts — west Baghdad's largely Sunni Khadra region.
The family had been living inside a vicious and bloody turf battle between Al Qaeda in Iraq and Mahdi Army militiamen. But Azawi said things began changing, becoming more peaceful, in August when radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army fighters to stand down nationwide. About the same time, the Khadra neighborhood Awakening Council rose up against brutal Al Qaeda control — the imposition of its austere interpretation of Islam, along with the murder and torture of those who would not comply.
I hope Muslims around the world are taking note, it wasn't the Sword of whoever or the Aqsa brigades or the brotherhood of that or the revolutionary dogs who brought freedom and stood with Anbaris and ordinary Iraqis against evil. It was gum-chewing infidels from far-away places like Texas, Ohio, New York, Nevada and countless other places in the land of the Great Satan that stood side by side with them and shed blood, sweat and tears to give them hope that has eluded them for so long. God bless the United States Armed Forces and those allies who fight with them, they are the real heroes.
Is some discrimination is OK?
SMH - A TRANSGENDER psychotherapist has taken a gay association to an equal opportunities tribunal, alleging she was discriminated against by being refused entry to a lesbian event. Tracie O'Keefe, of Sydney, said she requested an invitation to a South Australian event organised by lesbian support group Sappho's Party. The group has a policy of excluding transgender people from its workshops, camps and social events because it only supports lesbians who were born female.Can you hear the crickets, so there are 'real' lesbians and 'fake' ones, is that what they are saying? Oh my goodness, did I just say 'fake' lesbians, oh my.. [You fool, you'll have to flee right away, change your address, witness protection, etc] Get the popcorn & chips out folks, for once it's not us heterosexuals under assault here, we're not the ones being shouted down and squealed at for all sorts of phobias, racism and human rights violations. It'll be really interesting to see who the Equal Opportunity Tribunal will side with, will they say some lesbians are more lesbian than others!!
Ms O'Keefe said she was refused an invitation and told the event, in the Adelaide Hills in January 2006, was exclusive to lesbians raised female from birth. "I sent an email to them saying that I would like to go and they sent me an email back saying it would not be appropriate for me to attend," Ms O'Keefe said. Ms O'Keefe has taken the issue to the South Australian Equal Opportunity Tribunal, which part-heard the matter last month. One of the event's organisers, Stacey McCaig, reportedly told the tribunal that Sappho's Party was strictly for lesbian women who were raised as females from birth.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
GREENIE GURU HANSEN KNEW THAT THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET COULD NOT MELT IN THE NEAR FUTURE
An email from Hartwig Volz [Hartwig.Volz@rwe.com] below referring to this article
Dear Mr. Ollier,
With reference to your recent contribution, THE GREENLAND-ANTARCTICA MELTING PROBLEM DOES NOT EXIST, you may be interested in my correponence with James Hansen some years ago.
best regards
Hartwig Volz
From: Volz, Dr. Hartwig
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 5:16 PM
To: 'James Hansen'
Subject: Slippery Slope
Dear Dr. Hansen,
Thank you for sending me your submitted climate change editorial. Your publications are always interesting reading, though I do not always agree.
One remark: many years ago I did a lot of "adventure travelling", also mountain and ice climbing in Greenland. From this time I vaguely remember the following: the sub-ice geomorphology of Greenland is kind of shaped like a saucer. This is the reason why most of the Greenland glacier can not escape by glacier surge, because of the natural sediment and lava barrier. The same is true for Vatnajokull in Iceland, the third largest glacier in the world. So this situation is different from e.g. the situation of the North American ice shield at the end of the last glacial. The top of the Greenland glacier is far too high and too cold to melt. More details you may find by googling e.g. "Greenland sub-ice geomorphology" or asking an expert directly.
best regards
Hartwig Volz
Celle, Germany
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
the Left--variations on a loathsome theme
There are distinct, identifiable types of leftist, equally contemptible and equally unprincipled. The age of the leftist with some principles and moral courage is long past.
How do I loathe thee? let me count the ways:
The Bureaucrat.
Usually an ineffectual human being, who is attracted to the security and lack of risk inherent in the job. A comfortable existence and the irresistible urge to make rules for others to follow characterises this particular kind of parasite. Lives very comfortably off the taxes ripped from the classes he regards as inferior to his own. Were known in the Soviet Union as "apparatchiks".
The Unionist Worker.
usually the laziest bastard in the office or on the shop floor. Is a great fan of unions because they give him a herd to belong to and will protect his lazy ass, all in the name of "worker's rights." Usually the first to volunteer for various committees because it beats working and gives the poor half-man a way to make rules for the workers to obey.
Teachers and academics.
Long for some imagined Golden Age of the proletariat and see it as their mission to brainwash other people's children into worship of the same. The mountains of dead, the bleached skulls and the bullet in the back of the neck in some Lubyanka cellar are mere historical inconveniences, to be airbrushed from their vision of the glorious totalitarian future.
The Middle-Class Idiot.
Happily votes Labour, because he has a couple of kids and Labour pay him extra money (stolen from his fellow workers, but that's a mere detail) in the guise of programs such as "Working For Families". Which means those workers without families are forced to subsidise those who choose to have them.
Gets very hot under the collar when you describe him as a welfare beneficiary and will continue to vote Labour because a dollar is far more important than a principle.
The True Believer.
Sees a golden future where all wars (except those necessary to advance the Cause) have been outlawed, where little grey men in little grey offices set the targets and make the rules, where there's no such thing as racial, cultural or ethnic differences and the jihadi shall lie down with the Cultural Safety Advisor.
Children shall be raised in perfect safety and perfect conformity and the profit motive shall vanish from the land. Nay, from the world!
And if the gulags and the ovens and the massacres in some dark forest are necessary again to usher in the bright Utopian dream, what of it? Freedom and liberty will at last be dead and life will be pure and simple and require nothing but unthinking obedience.
A flaming hot whip is needed!!
Daily Mail - A paramedic refused to run to help an 11-year-old boy who was dying on the beach - because of health and safety rules, his father claimed yesterday. The ambulance officer insisted on walking to the spot where James Poynton had collapsed, so she would not be out of breath. Although she reached him within ten minutes of the alarm being raised, it was too late to save the youngster. The couple claim they were told an ambulance would not be sent until they could clarify the spelling of the nearest road, Melloncroft Drive. Once they had done this and paramedics arrived, an officer allegedly refused to hurry to where James's father was giving him mouth-to-mouth. A spokesman for North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust confirmed that its staff generally would not run on uneven ground as they were carrying heavy equipment and might not be able to carry out resuscitation if they were out of breath.Thanks a lot Health & Safety, your volumes and volumes of bullet points, graphs and whatever else goes into your manuals provided neither in this case. Putting those morons to one side, couldn't she ask someone to help carry her with the equipment? Is it one piece of junk that weighs 5 tons and it just can't be split up? Is she carrying the ambulance on her head or something? I'm sure the father or a person standing by wouldn't have said, no way, it's not part of my job description to carry your crap, it's only my own son dying out there because we're following wretched rules!! I don't know people, but when things get this low, you gotta pull out the whip and whip some sense into them, we can't get to the stage where we have to teach people to be human beings.
And it's the same in Australia
Francis Porretto on the U.S. election campaign:
"The press, which, like it or not, is the main conduit by which private persons get information about anything, will never, ever collaborate in an attack on any Democrat, especially when that Democrat is the party's best hope of regaining the White House. Democrats believe in power more ardently than Christians believe in grace and salvation. More, they believe it's theirs by right -- and the press is 90% to 95% liberal Democrats."
Friday, November 02, 2007
That unmentionable African IQ again
Anything that is almost universally regarded as being unmentionable has a high probability of being true and I reproduce below just a few tiny excerpts from the introduction to a large article in Gene Expression that gives you the actual scientific evidence on African IQ. Evidence is of course exactly what is usually missing from discussions of African IQ. But the evidence is there in great volume, it has been there for decades and it includes consideration of all the usual objections to it. Don't read the article if reality threatens you.
The public intellectual forum is being manipulated with intimidation and coercion and you are being lied to. The media is not doing its job, and the scientific community is not playing its proper public role as a beacon of dispassionate truth-seeking, as a conduit of knowledge to the public, or in fostering an open and fair intellectual climate. Both are abusing their power and authority to do the opposite of their honor bound social and intellectual roles; facts are being distorted in service of values.
It's difficult to name many more important living figures in 20th century biology than James Watson. He ushered in the current age of molecular biology with his achievements in 1953, he built up one of the world's greatest biological research facilities from damn near scratch, and he is a former head of the Human Genome Project. Given such an august curriculum vitae, you would think that this man perhaps understands just a few things about genetics. But given only the condescending media coverage, you'd think this eminent geneticist was somehow "out of his depth" on this one.
There's no point in rehashing the rapid sequence of events in detail: several of Watson's sold-out speaking engagements were cancelled, many critical articles appeared in the British press, trailed by the American press a few days later, hundreds of blogs were fuming with negative commentary, including ones by the editors of Scientific American and Wired Magazine, a number of associations issued statements condemning his words, and soon he was suspended from his chancellorship at Cold Spring Harbor. Watson cancelled his already ruined book tour and flew home to tend to the destruction. It was too late; the eminent biologist retired in disgrace on Oct. 26th.
One thing, though, was conspicuously missing from this whole irritating denouement: any semblance of factual refutation. There is good reason for this: everything Watson got in trouble for saying was entirely correct!
James Watson is one of the most important living figures in American science. The claim in his new book Avoid Boring People, that basic evolutionary logic predicts we should expect intelligence differences between racial groups is, if anything, an uncomplicated truth. Watson's claim in his recent interview with Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe that intelligence testing shows lower scores in Africa than Europe is likewise, entirely supported by the scientific literature. As is Dr. Watson's statement that there are many talented people of African descent, which clarifies he is speaking of different average scores, not that said populations are homogenous.
(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
Confirmation of what everyone with half a functioning brain already knew...
(click to see more clearly - my bad)As quoted in the article:
PETER Garrett has reportedly told a journalist that Labor would change its policies once in power, in an enormous campaign gaffe.
"Once we get in we'll just change it all," Mr Garrett said to high-profile radio announcer Steve Price.
You mean a bunch of worthless, left wing fucks would lie to get in to power? Say it isn't so...
Of course you are going get bullshit spin from left wing fucks about it being taken out of context...
The radio announcer said he was so surprised by what he had heard that once Mr Garrett had left, he asked the television personality if he had heard correctly.
"And he said, 'sure did, he said it all right'," Price said.
Oops. But when you look at the left wing scum throughout society, well as stated in the title, it really does not come as a surprise, perhaps just that someone on the left was honest enough (however unintentionally) to admit it.
"But Peter Garrett, this morning, by admitting to me that Labor is already thinking of, in his words, 'changing it all when we get in', well, that's going to leave a fairly hefty level of suspicion I would have thought among voters on what they're really voting for."
Not really. Those of us who actually have some idea of how the world really works know what we would be getting if Rudd and his Communist bitch ooze their way into power. Maybe this will serve to wake others up.
Not fit for the headlines
Andrew Bolt - THERE is a reason Iraq has almost disappeared as an election issue. Here it is: The battle is actually over. Iraq has been won. I know this will seem to many of you an insane claim. Ridiculous! Here is just the latest underreported news, out this week. Just 27 American soldiers were killed in action in Iraq in October - the lowest monthly figure since March last year. (This is a provisional figure and may alter over the next week.) The number of Iraqi civilians killed last month - mostly by Islamist and fascist terrorists - was around 760, according to Iraqi Government sources. That is still tragically high, but the monthly toll has plummeted since January's grim total of 1990.He's right, suddenly we're not hearing much from there, perhaps everyone is dead then and it's just a wasteland now. Don't worry about Andrew Bolt, dismiss him if you like, he's just some Conservative nasty from Australia, if he's wrong, he's wrong, that's all. But hang on, here's more from the folks there in Iraq, who bore the brunt of Al-Qaeda, if they get it wrong, they pay with their lives.
Michael Yon, on the ground - “Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans.Read the whole thing at Michael Yon's blog, spare him a few dollars while you're there, he brings us news that the MSM won't. Now just remember who fought the hardest (apart from the terrorists), who squealed the loudest and tried their best, and still do, to screw over the troops and the people of Iraq. Some will say the price was too much, but do you want to pay the price for failure and defeat? Spare a thought for the fallen, ours and theirs, they know.
Going somewhere Habibi?
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Forgotten history: The disasters of Australia's previous Labor government
The Leftists seem likely to win the forthcoming election. Would they if people remembered?
IF 38 per cent of people polled this week by The Daily Telegraph thought the Kyoto Protocol was the treaty which ended WWII, who do they think Bob Hawke [former Labor Party Prime Minister] is when they see the Silver Bodgie sashaying through the local RSL in his white slip-ons? An Antipodean Colonel Sanders? Mick Dundee's older brother? Or a Gold Coast real estate baron?
The gravel-voiced Hawke and his vaudevillian successor, former treasurer and prime minister Paul Keating, have emerged as a sideshow act in Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd's travelling dog-and-pony show. But it's doubtful whether those in the adoring throng can remember or ever knew what actually took place during their reign.
While Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello have been careful to pay due attention to the reforms of the Hawke-Keating era, the ALP's ageing but resilient duo have been more reticent to pay tribute to the groundwork laid by Howard in his days as treasurer. They've also been less than flattering about the Howard-Costello team.
Last year, however, former Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane noted that the introduction of the tender system for the sale of Treasury notes and Treasury bonds "was second only in importance to the float of the Australian dollar in 1983". As columnist Gerard Henderson reminded readers recently, "these changes were introduced in 1979 and 1982 respectively, when Howard was treasurer". Readers young and old might also be unaware that Howard also called for the Campbell Commission report which recommended many of the reforms for which the ALP now claims credit, or that the Coalition supported the Hawke-Keating reforms when they were introduced into Parliament. The Howard Government proceeded with the reform process and Australia today has an economy which is the envy of the developed world. But its reforms were opposed every inch of the way by Labor's successors to Hawke-Keating.
Until recently, Rudd described himself as a Christian socialist. The socialist label has disappeared during Rudd's remake. His deputy Julia Gillard has told outright porkies [lies] about her socialist connections, claiming variously that she dabbled in left-wing politics as a student and that she later only helped with the typing.
Our old stagers however have left a paper trail which should be put before the Generation Y voters before they are permitted within 100m of a polling booth and distributed around the nursing homes targeted by the ALP's answers to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Flicking through the files, it is impossible not to be assaulted by the headlines which Hawke and Keating created, such as "Home rates may hit 18 per cent", above the byline of doughty Fairfax veteran Michelle Grattan, in The Age of May 29, 1989. What a cold winter that was.
Or "Apology on recession" from The Herald Sun, above a photograph featuring a smiling Hawke on March 6, 1998, when he admitted his government had misread the economic situation surrounding the 1987 which delivered Keating's recession "we had to have". The corrective action, said Hawke, was too late to avoid soaring interest rates, unemployment and inflation.
Speaking of unemployment, which under the Coalition is at record lows, what about this headline from The Financial Review of July 10, 1992: "Unemployment rate at highest level since 1930s". That was when youth unemployment reached 35.8 per cent. And how about this one, from The Sydney Morning Herald of November 11, 1992: "Worst job figures for 60 years". Unemployment had by then reached 11.3 per cent with a record 979,000 out of work. It got worse, of course, and a year later when the number of unemployed had climbed all the way to 1,017,600 the left-leaning Geoffrey Barker wrote in The Age: "Paul Keating will wear yesterday's unemployment figures like a crown of thorns."
Barker reminded his small audience that Keating had vowed seven years earlier that he would make Howard wear his Liberal leadership like a crown of thorns and do everything he could to obliterate him from leadership. Keating might need to be reminded of those numbers as he stumps around the backblocks now, occasionally emerging from relative obscurity to attend musicals about himself or rewrite history.
And if you thought shadow treasurer Wayne Swan's helpful hints to shoppers were a joke, how about Hawkie's advice to punters on November 9, 1985, in which he advised that the community would have to learn to live with higher interest rates. The overnight cash interest rate at the time was 16.5 per cent, with pressure on the banks to lift their prime rates to 19 or 19.5 per cent. Home mortgages were still capped at 13.5 per cent - but that was soon to change. By June 4, 1989, The Sun-Herald was able to run with "Home-loan rates highest in the world", a barbecue stopper if there ever was one.
The government responsible for this debacle blamed the problem on "the expectation that we who live in the Lucky Country should be able to own our homes". Silly people, silly people, wanting their own homes. But it got worse as The Daily Telegraph headline "18 per cent home loans soar again" announced on July 1, 1999. So, if you happen to see this Down Under version of the Glimmer Twins on one of their outings, remind them again how bad the good old days actually were and ask them how exactly their protege plans to do things differently.
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But will they be put to death?
All well and good for Zapa to be closing the book, putting his feet up and all that, but 191 people have been killed, it's been years and now what? Will these terrorist filth be put to death, or will they be living off the Spanish taxpayer, with rearranged toilets, warm blankets, halal meals and whatever else they desire?
Update - Didn't think so.
Daily Mail - Two terrorist ringleaders were each sentenced to 40,000 years in jail yesterday for the Madrid train bombings which claimed 191 lives. The record sentences are symbolic as Spanish law sets 40 years as the maximum which can actually be served, but reflect the nation's outrage at the Al Qaeda inspired atrocity.I was about to reach for the scotch and rocks when I read the first part, the Spaniards have some balls after all, but hang on, they don't, the jokes on us... they kill 191 in the west and the best we have is pathetic, outraged symbolism... what else should they do but laugh at us. I think I need that drink now, by the way how do you say 'weak' and 'dhimmi' in Spanish?