Left-run State's hospital beds fail to keep pace with population

That wonderful Leftist "compassion" again

QUEENSLAND health authorities have responded to booming population growth with just one extra hospital bed for every 13,553 new residents. The abysmal planning failure is exposed in state and federal health figures analysed by The Courier-Mail. Between 1995 and 2008, Queensland grew by 1.03 million people. During the same period, the number of overnight beds in the state public hospital system stagnated. There were 10,115 beds in 1995 and 10,191 in 2008 – a 13-year net increase of 76 beds.

Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Queensland chairman David Rosengren said funds had been siphoned from in-patient care to hospital bureaucracy as part of a "close a bed, open an office" syndrome. He said the number of hospital administrators rose sharply in the first half of this decade. "There are buildings and buildings . . . floors and floors and floors of administrators in Queensland Health," Dr Rosengren said.

Statistics from Queensland Health show the State Government began tearing at the heart of acute-care hospitals with the rise to power in 1998 of Premier Anna Bligh's predecessor Peter Beattie. Bed numbers tumbled each year under the false assumption that new medical techniques and efficiencies would reduce gross occupancy. New and redeveloped hospitals were built with less [fewer beds], culminating in a low-point of 9262 beds in 2002.

The Government has bolstered bed stock in the past three years, and embarked on a new $6 billion hospital infrastructure makeover. Health Minister Paul Lucas says the building and refurbishment agenda will deliver more than 1800 beds over the next seven years. The Gold and Sunshine coasts, Cairns, Townsville and Mackay are among the beneficiaries. "On any examination of the statistics of health care in Australia, we have (one of the) best if not the best systems in the world," Mr Lucas said.

But research by QUT public health academic Gerry Fitzgerald indicates otherwise. In a 2008 report, Professor Fitzgerald, a former Queensland chief health officer, calculated that the state was around 3000 beds in arrears. From 1997 to 2007, the effective bed reduction – taking in population growth – was double the national rate. Since then, Auditor-General Glenn Poole has issued a rebuke over the disarray of the hospitals' infrastructure program.

Following that report in June, Queensland Health director-general Mick Reid confessed that some future services may have been wrongly placed. He also said hospital buildings had been announced without recurrent funding to operate them.

Meantime, the pressure on hospital beds is destined to accelerate with the most recent 12-month population increase a record 112,666.

QUT School of Public Health head MaryLou Fleming said the focus needed to turn from more hospital beds to greater investment in health maintenance. "Currently, 2 per cent of the money that is spent in health federally goes to promotion and prevention strategies," Professor Fleming said. "Unless we turn that around, we are headed for a catastrophe." [Typical theory-driven academic ignorance. All the research shows that prevention strategies are not overall cost-effective. I quote from a comprehensive recent survey of the research evidence: "Although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not." MaryLou's gross ignorance of the research makes her a disgrace to her university. The journal I quoted is NEJM. I wonder has MaryLou ever had anything published in NEJM? -- JR]

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

You lie global warmists!

Times Online - SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

...Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Forecasting experts' simple model leaves Warmist climate models cold

A simple model was found to be produce forecasts that are over seven times more accurate than forecasts from the procedures used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This important finding, is reported in an article titled "Validity of climate change forecasting for public policy decision making" (PDF) in the latest issue of the International Journal of Forecasting. It is the result of a collaboration among forecasters J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School, Kesten C. Green of Monash University, and climate scientist Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.


In an earlier paper (PDF), Armstrong and Green found that the IPCC's approach to forecasting climate violated 72 principles of forecasting. To put this in context, would you put your children on a trans-Atlantic flight if you knew that the plane had failed engineering checks for 72 out of 127 relevant items on the checklist?

The IPCC violations of forecasting principles were partly due to their use of models that were too complex for the situation. Contrary to everyday thinking, complex models provide forecasts that are less accurate than forecasts from simple models when the situation is complex and uncertain.

Confident that a forecasting model that followed scientific forecasting principles would provide forecasts that were more accurate than those provided by the IPCC, Green, Armstrong and Soon used a model that was more consistent with forecasting principles and knowledge about climate. The forecasting model was the so-called "naive" model. It assumes that things will remain the same. It is such a simple model that people are generally not aware of its power. In contrast to the IPCC's central forecast that global mean temperatures will rise by 3 degrees C over a century, the naive model simply forecasts that temperatures next year and for each of 100 years into the future would remain the same as the last years'.

The naive model approach is confusing to non-forecasters who are aware that temperatures have always varied. Moreover, much has been made of the observation that the temperature series that the IPCC uses shows a broadly upward trend since 1850 and that this is coincident with increasing industrialization and associated increases in manmade carbon dioxide gas emissions.

In order to test the naive model, annual forecasts were made from one to 100 years in the future starting with 1850's global average temperature as the forecast for the years 1851 to 1950. This process was repeated by updating for each year up through 2007. This produced 10,750 annual average temperature forecasts for all horizons. It was the first time that the IPCC's forecasting procedures had been subject to a large-scale test of the accuracy of the forecasts that they produce.

Over all the forecasts, the IPCC error was 7.7 times larger than the error from the naive model. While the superiority of the naive model was modest for one- to ten-year-ahead forecasts (where the IPCC error was 1.5 times larger), its superiority was enormous for the 91- to 100-year-ahead forecasts, where the IPCC error was 12.6 times larger.

Is it proper to conduct validation tests? In many cases, such as the climate change situation, people claim that: "Things have changed! We cannot use the past to forecast." While they may think that their situation is unique, there is no logic to this argument. The only way to forecast the future is by learning from the past. In fact, the warmers claims are also based on their analyses of the past.

Could one improve upon the naive model? The naive model violates some principles. For example, it violates the principle that one should use as long a time series as possible, because it bases all forecasts on simply the global average temperature for the single year just prior to making the forecasts. It also fails to combine forecasts from different reasonable methods. The authors planned to start simple with this self-funded project and to then obtain funding to undertake a more ambitious forecasting effort to ensure that all principles were followed. This would no doubt improve accuracy. However, the forecasts from the naive model were very accuurate. For example, the mean absolute error for the 108 fifty-year ahead forecasts was only 0.24 degrees C. It is difficult to see any economic value to reducing such a small forecast error.

Above article received by email. Author: Scott Armstrong [armstrong@wharton.upenn.edu]

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Australia's kindly "Green" bureaucrats at work

A warning about giving them any more power. Anybody else would have just sent the document back for re-signing instead of applying the guillotine. And, far from apologizing, they are digging in their heels over their obnoxious behaviour. Just the usual Greenie people-hatred, I guess

A WOODSIDE pensioner has condemned "dead headed" government bureaucrats for refusing to pay a grant for an $8000 solar panel - because he signed the form in the wrong place. Don Purvis and his neighbours applied for funding under the federal Solar Homes plan, but his application was rejected because he signed his name in a box reserved for the installer's signature.

Eight other households at the Woodside Lodge Retirement Village are now looking forward to cheaper electricity, but not Mr Purvis, whose appeal was flatly turned down. "I signed where the installer should sign. The forms went off to Canberra and some less-than-nice public servant picked up that mine was signed in the wrong place," the 72-year-old said. Mr Purvis said he had to fill in the forms quickly after the Government announced it was closing the scheme 18 months early.



Despite writing to apologise and begging officials to reconsider, his appeal was rejected. "It could be they're trying to keep the numbers (of applicants) down after they brought forward the cut-off date. But I also think there is some dead-headed public servant not even bothering to read the letters," Mr Purvis said. "It's obvious my intent was there, the signature was on the paperwork."

Mr Purvis, a former Ansett employee who spent more than 50 years in the travel industry, is an AGL customer who spent $301 on his last quarterly electricity bill. He lives alone with Bernice, his golden retriever, for company. "I'm a pensioner. I can feed the dog and have a drink, that's all I need. It would make a difference,"' he said. "His neighbours have called for a change of heart.

A woman who lives nearby but asked not to be identified, said: "I was accepted along with several other people and assumed Don was too - there needs to be a little bit of leverage there."

Mr Purvis' local MP, Jamie Briggs, described his plight as "outrageous" and wrote to Environment Minister Peter Garrett urging him to overrule the decision, but has not yet received a reply. "Common sense would say this is a stupid thing for the Government to do," he said.

Mr Purvis also appealed for the Environment Minister to reconsider. "Hopefully, if Peter Garrett intervenes, they'll see the light, because it's just so bloody stupid," he said.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

The Lion Stirs

Lord Pearson - the one who invited Geert Wilders to speak to the House of Lords - is the new leader of the UKIP and "has said he will make the fight against radical Islam a major focus for the party".

The working class voters have been betrayed by their party and are flocking to the BNP. Will the conservative Tories - un-persuaded by the oleaginous Cameron - get behind the UKIP?

Oh joy, our multi-culti prisons

News.com.au - AUTHORITIES hushed up a prison riot at Long Bay jail last week in which wardens were forced to fire shots to quell the "worst incident in 25 years". Up to 80 prison guards were needed to stop the fighting last Tuesday when violence erupted between up to 40 Middle Eastern [most likely muslims] and Aboriginal prisoners. ...The prisoners, some maximum security, used gym weights to savagely beat each other and officers, during the melee which lasted up to half an hour. At least three prison officers, including a female guard, were injured in the attack and needed medical treatment.

Child torn from mother and given to a lesbian

Citizen Link - Superior Judge William Cohen ruled last week that Lisa Miller, a former lesbian who is now a Christian, must hand her daughter, Isabelle, over to her former partner, Janet Jenkins by Jan. 1. Miller conceived Isabella through artificial insemination while she was in a civil union with Jenkins. About a year later, Miller left homosexuality. Jenkins sued for custody, even though she has no biological tie to the child. Miller admits she made mistakes, like signing a custody agreement while still in the relationship with Jenkins... Hat tip My Daily Trek.
If this judge had the child’s interests at heart, he would have kicked this case out and told the lesbian to get a life. But then these so-called progressives view children as mere accessories to be tossed around to make people feel good and be fashionable or something. Can you imagine the even bigger mess that this can turn into if the biological father decides he also wants a bit of the child. I can see such activist judges saying ‘no’ to him if he were a straight fellow, but do you think he/she would say ‘no’ to a homo man?

This is yet another reason why homosexuals and lesbians should not be allowed to get married, it ultimately does affect the children. You see even if the judge did not want to hand the child over and was not an activist judge, he/she still has to follow the law as the former lesbian signed a custody agreement. The fact that the current lesbian lives in some sort of lesbian stronghold and wants to indoctrinate the poor child with her lifestyle is of no relevance and cannot be used to prevent access to the child.

This is because the minute you say that this behavior is fine, which you are saying by allowing homo-marriage and homo-adoption, you can’t then turn around later when children are involved and say, oh no we can’t let this happen, blah, blah. You can only make that call when you see the evidence, as in when the child is all screwed up in the head and you’re able to prove that it’s because of the lesbian depravity.

This is but one example of what is at the bottom of the slippery slope that the regressive lefties want to pull us down. No to homo marriage, no to homo adoption and you won’t have this problem, the child would be with her biological mother where she belongs and the lesbo would have to find some other accessory to use in her activism.

Central England Temperature series

The very long thermometer-reading series from central England (from 1659 on) is of huge interest because it does NOT rely on dubious proxies -- and it shows the 20th century as being unexceptional. I have therefore made a number of allusions to it on this blog.

The Warmists have noted it too and one of them -- Tamino -- has gone to work and made a hockey stick out of it -- using the expected dubious statistical techniques. Tamino is one of the guys mentioned in the hacked CRU emails.

That his results are incredible can I think most convincingly be seen from his plot of the raw data (below)



It is clearly a random walk and any trend up or down is a statistical creation rather than anything real.

As an old FORTRAN-using statistical analysis programmer myself, I am well aware of how you can lie with statistics. That is why it is important to do courses in statistics -- so you can spot it when you are being "had". And much of my academic writing was devoted to pointing out how statistical nullities were being paraded as if they told us something. So it is no surprise to see the statistical jiggery-pokery that has been going on in climate science. Mountains are regularly made out of pimples and if there are not even pimples to be had, one will be created.

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Nothing Israel can offer will ever suit the Palestinians

It was the moment the Palestinians might have had a state, with a capital in East Jerusalem. For a single moment, the dove of peace hovered hopefully over the Middle East. On September 16 last year, the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, offered the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the most far-reaching and comprehensive peace deal any Israeli prime minister has ever offered. Mr Olmert recalls his pleas to Mr Abbas to accept the deal: "I said to him, do you want to keep floating forever - like an astronaut in space - or do you want a state? I told him he'd never get anything like this again from an Israeli leader for 50 years."

Mr Olmert, who as a rule avoids the media these days, has undertaken hours of discussion and interviews with The Weekend Australian and provided unprecedented detail of his peace offer to Mr Abbas. The interviews took place amid growing tension over West Bank settlements. Palestinians appealed to the US yesterday to raise pressure on Israel, saying an Israeli plan to halt new construction in the West Bank was insincere. Presidential adviser Yasser Abed Rabbo urged US envoy George Mitchell to bring about "a real peace process" that would halt all settlement construction.

Mr Olmert says such disputes could have been resolved with his deal. He recalls meeting Mr Abbas more than 35 times for "intense, serious" negotiations, in the two years leading up to the September 16 offer last year. Mr Olmert says his offer to Mr Abbas included a Palestinian state occupying 94 per cent of the West Bank and all of Gaza. This would have allowed Israel to keep the major Jewish population areas in the settlements in the West Bank. But in return he would have given the Palestinians an equal parcel of land from Israel proper in compensation. He offered Palestinian sovereignty over all the Arab areas of East Jerusalem, so that it could function as a capital for the new Palestinian state.

Dividing Jerusalem is an explosive issue in Israeli politics. Mr Olmert recalls his own struggle to come to grips with his offer on Jerusalem: "This was a very sensitive, very painful, soul-searching process. While I firmly believed that historically and emotionally Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people, I was ready that the city should be shared."

Perhaps Mr Olmert's most radical and audacious proposal was for an international administration of the sites in Jerusalem holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Mr Olmert proposed forming an area of "no sovereignty" to be administered jointly by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the new Palestinian state, Israel and the US. He offered to build a tunnel, under Palestinian control, between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Mr Olmert says every European leader, and senior Americans, who knew of the plan acknowledged it as the most far-reaching and extensive peace offer Israel has made.

Mr Olmert still regards Mr Abbas as a peace partner for Israel. "I think he's genuine in his desire to achieve a Palestinian state and he recognises the right of Israel to exist," he says. Mr Olmert speculates that Mr Abbas didn't accept the deal because he felt he could not deliver the Palestinian commitment to it, or perhaps because he feared the outcome of approaching Israeli elections. But nor did Mr Abbas directly reject the deal. Instead he said he wanted to bring experts back with him the next day. But the next day, the Palestinians' chief negotiator postponed the meeting. "I never saw him again," Mr Olmert says.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is quite cheered by the rebellion against Warmist laws among Australia's Federal conservative politicians

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

The spirit of scumbaggery*

Daily Mail - The BBC has dropped plans to air a controversial ballet after discovering that it features a deformed Pope who sexually abuses alter boys and rapes pregnant women. The Spirit of Diaghilev prompted boos and a walkout from some of the audience last month when it premiered at Sadlers Wells in London. But the BBC had already announced it would televise the production, which is made of up of four different performances.

...At the time, BBC 4 controller Richard Klein said it was “the combination of one of the most inventive and musically exciting ballet scores being performed by one of Britain’s foremost dance groups”. The broadcaster is now insisting the programme was commissioned before the ‘finer details were established.’ ...A misshapen, hunchbacked Pope is show raping and assaulting members of his flock, and his alter servants.
The good ol' bbc eh, sucking off the taxpayer teat, but like all leftist organizations that are sucking off the teat of the taxpayers, they have nothing but contempt and hate for them. I have a feeling too that this ballet company or whoever made this crap is also sucking at the taxpayers teat. Has to be, something about living off others money breeds contempt and loathing for the hands that feed.

I always wonder though, can we expect any of these cretins to ever have the balls to make one of these 'ballets' about the religion of violence, death and cruelty. After all, it's simply common knowledge now that the followers of the religion of peace have been killing and slaughtering their way all across this planet. Unless off course you're some sort of dumb leftie.

And yet, these bwave, bwave 'artists' only have the balls to focus on Christianity, smear the Pope with just plain lies, urinate on the Bible and do depraved, disgusting crap like that. Sometimes I wonder if God is watching all this and as usual he's about a 100 steps ahead of us, so he knows that the more we insult and sin against him, the more we're really just shooting ourselves in the ass.

Think about it, if these so-called artists keep attacking Christianity, the Pope etc, the quicker Islam will take over, but do you see any ballets coming out of taliban central, not many musicals, books and such coming out of Somalia are there. It wasn't that long ago when muslims were tossing grenades into stores that sold music and it wasn't men in tights dancing on their toes who came to fight them off.

The way I see it, keep pushing you leftie assholes, your payback has already been arranged.

* There's no such word as scumbaggery, I made it up one day and I liked it, so I'm sticking with it. :)

Proof that Australians are more honest

The brain-dead "researchers" below appear to take self-reports at face value. That Americans might be much more prone to saying "the right thing" is not mentioned. Australia does have a tradition of bluntness -- of being "fair dinkum" and not "bunging on an act"

AUSTRALIAN boys are more violent than American boys, new research suggests. A study by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in collaboration with the University of Washington asked almost 4000 students aged 12 to 16 in Victoria and Washington state about violent behaviour. They were asked if in the previous year they had either attacked someone with the idea of seriously hurting them or beaten someone so badly that they required medical treatment.

In the first interview, 12.6 per cent of Victorian boys admitted to such behaviour, compared with 10 per cent of Washington boys. A year later the numbers were even higher: 17.5 per cent in Victorian and 12.6 per cent in Washington. The researchers also compared risk factors for violence between the two groups, and found that in Victoria almost 20 per cent of the students admitted to binge drinking at least once, compared with 8 per cent in Washington.

Other factors linked to violence included low-income households, sole-parent status, family conflict and low school grades. The longitudinal study, published this week by the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, found students who were suspended from school or arrested were 1.5 times more likely to engage in violence 12 months later. [Is that a surprise?]

A researcher, Dr Sheryl Hemphill, said that the higher rate of violence in Australia was unexpected. ''This study is important in determining whether we need to specifically address violent behaviour in Australian boys.'' [It sounds like Hemphill has been having a hill of the hemp herself]

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Warmist meltdown: It's not the emails ...

The computer files released by the CRU hacker are MUCH more damaging than the emails, damaging though those are. The computer code and coding notes reveal that the CRU data do NOT back up the CRU claims. One excerpt below with much more soon to come, I would think

In addition to e-mail messages, the roughly 3,600 leaked documents posted on sites including Wikileaks.org and EastAngliaEmails.com include computer code and a description of how an unfortunate programmer named "Harry" -- possibly the CRU's Ian "Harry" Harris -- was tasked with resuscitating and updating a key temperature database that proved to be problematic. Some excerpts from what appear to be his notes:
I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation - apparently linear as well. As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless. It also means that we cannot say exactly how the gridded data is arrived at from a statistical perspective - since we're using an off-the-shelf product that isn't documented sufficiently to say that. Why this wasn't coded up in Fortran I don't know - time pressures perhaps? Was too much effort expended on homogenisation, that there wasn't enough time to write a gridding procedure? Of course, it's too late for me to fix it too. Meh.

I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that's the case? Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight... So, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!

One thing that's unsettling is that many of the assigned WMo codes for Canadian stations do not return any hits with a web search. Usually the country's met office, or at least the Weather Underground, show up – but for these stations, nothing at all. Makes me wonder if these are long-discontinued, or were even invented somewhere other than Canada!

Knowing how long it takes to debug this suite - the experiment endeth here. The option (like all the anomdtb options) is totally undocumented so we'll never know what we lost. 22. Right, time to stop pussyfooting around the niceties of Tim's labyrinthine software suites - let's have a go at producing CRU TS 3.0! since failing to do that will be the definitive failure of the entire project.

Ulp! I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can't get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections - to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more. So what the hell can I do about all these duplicate stations?...

As the leaked messages, and especially the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file, found their way around technical circles, two things happened: first, programmers unaffiliated with East Anglia started taking a close look at the quality of the CRU's code, and second, they began to feel sympathetic for anyone who had to spend three years (including working weekends) trying to make sense of code that appeared to be undocumented and buggy, while representing the core of CRU's climate model.

One programmer highlighted the error of relying on computer code that, if it generates an error message, continues as if nothing untoward ever occurred. Another debugged the code by pointing out why the output of a calculation that should always generate a positive number was incorrectly generating a negative one. A third concluded: "I feel for this guy. He's obviously spent years trying to get data from undocumented and completely messy sources."

Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU's Fortran code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!" and "APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION." Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: "Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend - so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!"

More HERE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

The voters are crystal-clear

News.com.au - EMBATTLED Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has indicated he will not give up the fight to pass the Rudd Government's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) despite mass resignations from his frontbench. "I am the leader of the Liberal Party,'' Mr Turnbull said in Canberra. "I was confirmed as such .... just 24 hours ago.'' Mr Turnbull said he was committed to taking action on climate change and the direction in which he had taken the Liberal Party. ...A string of senior Liberals have been in and out of Mr Turnbull's office this evening amid what Mr Abbott described as a party "meltdown".
For my non-Australian readers, this might not seem like big news but I feel that it's a sign of things to come, not just here in Australia but in other parts of the western world. Australia is currently led by a party that is largely leftist in nature, their leader is kevin rudd and the fellow above is the leader of the supposedly conservative opposition.

Long story short, the leftist administration wants to pass a new tax to cut our carbon emissions, knowing fully well that it won't change the weather or save the world. None the less, the clown masquerading as the leader of the opposition party supports this new tax [with a few changes] for some reason.

Naturally there was a lot of fighting within his own party because a lot of them did not want this new tax, but that didn't stop it and turnbull managed to keep it together and beat them all into line in support of the government. That was on tuesday evening, but since yesterday and today, it's been wave after wave of angry voters calling, emailing and doing everything they can to let the opposition know that if they support the lefties, they'll be savaged at the next election.

I listen to talkback radio as often as possible and I can tell you, I haven't heard it run this thick, hot and strong in a long, long time. By this afternoon, many opposition members had lost their intestinal fortitude and turned on their leader and in favor of Australia. There is no way in hell that turnbull will survive as the leader of the opposition now, it's only a matter of days before this fellow leaves or is man-handled out by either his party or members of the electorate.

There is a warning in all this, not just for conservatives, but for lefties everywhere, especially ones that are in power now, the people have caught onto this global warming bullsh*t and they can turn from apathetic to white-hot in just a matter of days. The message that has been conveyed to anyone with the brains to figure it out is this, no matter how weak the opposition is, all it takes is for an ambitious conservative candidate to step forward and any majority that a leftie or closet-leftie might hold now will be razor-thin come election time.

Just woke up this morning to post this here and it's still running white-hot on the talkback lines folks. They even had to change the program schedule and the website has even gone down. So take heart and spread the word to those politicians who are masquerading as your leaders.

Obama and the Democrats do NOT have America's best interests at heart

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact.

In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then, the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck television show, Bill O'Reilly, and now Mark Levin.

The methodology is known as the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and we can all be grateful to David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks for originally exposing and explaining it to us. He describes it as: "The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse."

Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were two lifelong members of Democratic Socialists of America who taught sociology at Columbia University (Piven later went on to City University of New York). In a May 1966 Nation magazine article titled "The Weight of the Poor," they outlined their strategy, proposing to use grassroots radical organizations to push ever more strident demands for public services at all levels of government. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces ... for major economic reform at the national level."

They implemented the strategy by creating a succession of radical organizations, most notable among them the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), with the help of veteran organizer Wade Rathke. Their crowning achievement was the "Motor Voter" act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993 with Cloward and Piven standing behind him.

As we now know, ACORN was one of the chief drivers of high-risk mortgage lending that eventually led to the financial crisis. But the Motor Voter law was another component of the strategy. It created vast vulnerabilities in our electoral system, which ACORN then exploited. ACORN's vote registration scandals throughout the U.S. are predictable fallout.

The Motor Voter law has also been used to open another vulnerability in the system: the registration of vast numbers of illegal aliens, who then reliably vote Democrat. Herein lies the real reason Democrats are so anxious for open borders, security be damned.

It should be clear to anyone with a mind and two eyes that this president and this Congress do not have our interests at heart. They are implementing this strategy on an unprecedented scale by flooding America with a tidal wave of poisonous initiatives, orders, regulations, and laws. As Rahm Emmanuel said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

The real goal of "health care" legislation, the real goal of "cap-and-trade," and the real goal of the "stimulus" is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control. Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves except in their ability to deliver power. They and will make matters much worse, for that is their design...

More here

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Will they ever learn? Another NSW ambulance bungle over lack of street address

How many people do they have to kill before they get their act together? These phone helplines where some know-nothing just sits in front of a computer screen are a disaster. They usually fail completely when something non-routine comes up. I have experienced it many times with Telstra and have only got action by writing a letter to the Telstra boss. But writing letters is no help in an emergency. Emergency services should have somebody with local knowledge that they can call on if their computer data is inadequate. With Telstra, I have had arrogant and ignorant operators hang up on me too. That's just how computer-driven helplines deal with non-routine problems

Six months after an inquest found NSW triple-0 operators bungled a series of calls from a dying schoolboy lost in the Blue Mountains, the service has been accused of failing another person in need of help. Stuart Jamieson called the emergency line from a remote property near Boomi in far northern NSW on Monday to get help for a man who had become seriously unwell after working in the heat. An operator ended the call because Mr Jamieson could not provide a street number.

"I gave the road that went past [the location]," Mr Jamieson told Fairfax Radio network today. "They said they wanted a house number. I said there's no house number." Asked what road his property was on, Mr Jamieson said: "The Boomi-Goondiwindi Road. They couldn't find Goondiwindi on a map because ... it's in Queensland. "They said they could not find the Boomi-Goondiwindi Road."

AAP found the road in seconds, with two clicks on Google. Because the operator could not locate Mr Jamieson on a map, she terminated the call. "We were quite prepared to meet the ambulance at the road," Mr Jamieson said. An ambulance eventually arrived after he contacted a local stock and station agent who found help by knocking on the door of the Goondiwindi ambulance service, he said.

The emergency services operator who disconnected his call has since been stood down, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The incident followed an inquest earlier this year into the death of Sydney schoolboy David Iredale. The 17-year-old became separated from his two classmates on Mount Solitary during a three-day trek in 2006. The inquest found three triple-0 operators bungled a series of calls for help he made to them before he died - because they did not have a street address.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks that conservative leader Malcolm Turnbull is a useless pustule (I paraphrase) -- given Turnbull's determination to support climate change laws.

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

George Monbiot (the original moonbat) is shaken, not stirred:

It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence of attempts to prevent scientific data from being made public.

Worse, some suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by sceptics, or to keep it out of a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The head of the unit, Phil Jones, should resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

But do these revelations justify the sceptics' claims that this is "the final nail in the coffin" of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed.

More HERE (Sarcasm follows the excerpt above. Is that the best he can do? No alternative evidence offered for his beliefs??)

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Hungry Jack's criticized over monster burger

"Hungry Jack's" is the Australian branch of America's "Burger King". When something is attacked by "the chairman of the Sydney World Action on Salt and Health", you know you are dealing with an attention-seeking fraud -- and you can be pretty sure that the truth is the reverse of what he says -- since a low salt diet REDUCES your lifespan. The full range of scientific evidence shows NO basis for the salt phobia. Salt deficiency ("hyponatremia") is however a major cause of death in some settings. Google it



HEALTH experts are demanding warning labels be put on a new burger that contains almost twice as much saturated fat and 40 per cent more salt than the recommended daily intakes. Hungry Jack's double Angry Angus, packed with deep fried onion rings, two slices of cheese, two beef patties and several rashers of bacon, contains 26 grams of saturated fat and 5.6 grams of salt - 10 grams more saturated fat and 1.6 grams more salt than the daily intake recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council.



Eating the Angry Angus would cause a diner's blood pressure to rise immediately and eating it regularly would cause chronic high blood pressure, leading to heart attack, kidney failure and stroke, the chairman of the Sydney World Action on Salt and Health, Bruce Neal, said yesterday. Children who eat a high sodium diet risk developing obesity, asthma and high blood pressure. "Hungry Jack's appears to have little commitment to the health of their consumers. In the context of our national obesity crisis this type of product is reckless," Professor Neal said.

Australians should eat one to two grams of salt a day but most ate about nine grams, he said. If that was cut to six grams, the chances of heart attack or stroke would drop 15 to 20 per cent. "If manufacturers were forced to use front-of-pack warnings, they would reform their products pretty quickly to ensure they didn't have to carry that label," he said.

The chief executive of the Heart Foundation, Tony Thirlwell, said the company was behaving irresponsibly. "The burger has a great title because it makes me doubly angry. It is highly disappointing that a manufacturer in modern-day Australia would consider serving this to people. "To think that you could have only one of these burgers every two days and nothing else is a ridiculous idea." [It's the food "standards" that are ridiculous]

He called on food manufacturers to put pressure on Hungry Jack's to act responsibly before the Government was forced to step in, banning or taxing high-calorie meals. "This behaviour is not in the best interests of the food industry or the consumers because this burger can cause serious heart disease." [Proof?]

Hungry Jack's did not respond to the Herald's inquiries but late yesterday altered the nutritional figures on its website, lowering the saturated fat content for the double Angry Angus to 21.3 grams and salt to 4.5 grams.

An associate professor in nutrition and dietetics at the University of Newcastle, Clare Collins, said people needed protection against "monster foods". "It's shocking," she said. "We don't need a burger like this. It should carry a message saying 'increase your health premium now because you'll need it for your coronary care'."

A survey this year found three-quarters of sandwiches and burgers sold by McDonald's, Subway, Oporto, Red Rooster, KFC and Hungry Jack's contained over half the maximum daily allowance of salt in a single serve.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Kevin repays his working families

News.com.au - KEVIN Rudd's Emissions Trading Scheme will increase the average family's bills by about $1100 a year. Based on the Federal Government's own modelling, by 2012 the ETS will add more than 20 per cent to electricity tariffs - a surge of nearly $300 for typical households already reeling in New South Wales from a similar blow from the state pricing tribunal in July.
I understand that much of the media is focusing on the opposition and their various shenanigans, no doubt to help take the heat off their favorite sauce-boy, but make no mistake Australia, this is kevin rudds tax. Don't get me wrong, I am really pissed off with malcolm the useless pustule, but at the end of the day, that's all malcolm is, a useless pustule.

Sure, malcolm could have gone to the nearest sports store and bought himself a pair of balls to oppose sauce-boys' new tax, but if sauce-boy hadn't pushed for this tax, there wouldn't be shit to oppose by malcolm the useless pustule. So ultimately, this taxing of the Australian tax payer is on kevin rudd and the labor party.

The only thing malcolm has done is present himself as kevin's bitch and ensure that labor will most definitely win the next election and continue lying to, stealing from and impoverishing Australia. Some have suggested that malcolm the useless pustule should quit the coalition and just join the alp, where he belongs. To be quite blunt malcolm is already a member of the alp, how else do you explain his actions which contribute so much to their coming election win. Seriously, you can't get much more loyalty than this folks.

Back to kevin's tax, just remember as you are paying more and more for every bloody thing Australia, the climate won't stop changing, if it's warming or cooling, it'll just carry on warming or cooling as your bank account gets smaller and smaller. The world isn't going to follow your dumbass example no matter how much kevin carries on like a poofter on the world stage. And mark my words, no matter how much you sacrifice with zero results, it will never be enough, it'll never be quite warm/cool enough, the wind will always be a bit too strong, the rain a bit too little, the smoke always too much and your emissions will never be reduced enough.

The barrier reefs will still be on the brink of extinction and destruction 20 years from now, the polar bears will still be drifting out in the pacific, the seas will still be rising and on the verge of swallowing up all those beachside mansions which for some odd reason will still remain unaffordable. No matter how many jobs are lost or sent over seas, you won't get any reprieve. You can recycle, stop bathing, eat your own crap, walk, cycle, hold your breath, go vegan etc, but it won't matter, the end will always be nigh and you must pay, always.

Time to boot the homo

News.com.au - AMERICAN Idol runner-up Adam Lambert has refused to apologise for his daring performance at the American Music Awards where he simulated oral sex with a male dancer. In front of millions of primetime viewers, Lambert also made out with a male keyboardist Tommy Ratliff, grabbing his crotch before flipping his middle finger to the crowd. ...The openly gay Lambert has refused to apologise saying that the sexual gestures happened “in the moment”. ...He told Access Hollywood: “You know honestly, if I offended some people... it’s apples and oranges.” “I’m not an artist that does things for every single person, I believe in artistic freedom and expression...
Apparently the above scenes were cut from the west coast broadcast, which this fellow squealed was 'discrimination'. What is it with these queers and insisting that everyone celebrate their homosexuality, being free to do whatever it is that they do to each other in privacy is just not enough for them. No, we all have to celebrate(?) and cheer their depravity or else!

I too also believe in freedom, freedom not to be subject to crap like this on television from assholes like this who like to take it up the tailpipe. I too refuse to apologize for it, so screw you and the homos you rode in on chump. I sure hope that Americans who are offended by the actions of this asshole also choose to exercise their freedom not to listen to this angry asshole and leave his music there on the shelf, where it belongs. He can express his artistic side back in the alley if he feels like it.

Taking out the trash

News.com.au - CHINA today executed two people for their role in a tainted milk scandal that killed at least six children and further sullied the made-in-China brand. Nearly 300,000 children fell ill last year after drinking milk intentionally laced with melamine, a toxic industrial compound that can give a fake positive on protein tests, sold mainly by the now bankrupt Sanlu Group.
Now don't get me wrong, I ain't no fan of them commie bastards, but I gotta give to them, they sure know how to take care of the trash. Think about it, you know any western nation bar the USA who will execute even child-rapists and baby-killers? Speaking of taking out the trash, check this out.



Thank you officer, I sure hope that cop ain't employed by some dumbass liberal state.... no wait... California.... he's in a lot of trouble, I can just see all the bleeding heart lefties falling over themselves to sack that officer.

Rednecks! The new racist term for ordinary Australians who are critical of illegal immigration

As a moderator of comments for news.com.au I see a lot of intolerance expressed in the debate over asylum seeker boats, especially from a vocal minority prepared to get very nasty. The Oceanic Viking has stirred the asylum debate. The comments from this quarter typically employ broad-brush terms of abuse to stereotype on the basis of nationality.

The targets of these hateful attacks are Australians. The most popular terms of abuse are “redneck” and “racist”. Those commenting along these lines normally express a boundless compassion for asylum seekers. Strangely however, they seem completely devoid of any interest in sympathetically understanding the views of their fellow citizens, without name calling.

The overwhelming sentiment I’ve seen online mirrors what opinion polls say, most want a hard line on boat people. Undoubtedly sometimes this does reflect racism or xenophobia and a desire to keep Australia “white”. I occasionally see these type of comments.

What is more interesting, I think, are the other reasons repeatedly given by those advocating a hard line. The general sentiment is that the boat people are queue jumpers. Often the strongest outrage is from people who have recently migrated or know others trying to. Australia is not an easy country to move into, the process can be long and expensive. So for people to sail in and simply claim residency upsets many, whatever the boat people’s circumstances. For all our supposed larrikinism, Australians, I’d say, value law and order. They like those who “do the right thing” and “go through the proper channels”.

The legalistic argument that asylum seekers are not jumping the queue because “there is no queue to jump” generally doesn’t wash. There is a UN process for refugee settlement readily available offshore and it certainly puts you in a long bureaucratic queue, one that may take years. When some asylum seekers are seen to get a special deal, as appears to have happened for those who occupied the Oceanic Viking, it looks even more unfair.

Another sentiment often expressed by those opposing asylum boats is that those onboard will become welfare bludgers and we have lots of other things to spend money on. Australia resettles migrants with extensive welfare and social community support, teaches them English and provides training to those who can enter the workforce. That’s all well and good because jobs are the key to upward social mobility for migrant groups. Without plentiful jobs you are likely to perpetuate welfare slums, crime and often alienation extending into a second generation.

All the high wage and highly economically regulated countries in Europe that have relatively high and entrenched levels of unemployment have struggled with immigration. Many make it difficult for outsiders to become full citizens. Some, like Denmark, are even paying migrants to go back. Many have trouble with ethnic populations, who sometimes war in tribes against the police, as in France. Some nations have seen the rise of anti-immigration parties.

Britain with low minimum wages has had high migration but it isn’t escaping the other problems, especially during an economic downturn.

The world’s most successful immigrant society is America, at least by scale. America has resettled the “huddled masses”, including large refugee communities and millions of illegal migrants. This has been done by basically saying people should look after themselves, with minimum welfare offered and not even universal healthcare but usually free education. What America traditionally provided was plenty of low wage jobs that require no skills and limited or no English.

In Australia we do not believe in low wage jobs. So except in times of real economic boom unskilled migrants without English will have few employment prospects.

Sometimes it seems widely forgotten, even by Australian Workers Union boss Peter Howes when he talked about “Labor hero stuff” in leading the debate for a more welcoming approach, that Labor heroes of yore were leaders in keeping people out. The unions and Labor were strong advocates of the White Australia immigration policy. The traditional aim was to preserve Australian wages and conditions against the hordes of cheap Asian workers.

I would suggest that most people who call their fellow Australians rednecks or racists often also value award-set high wages, extensive economic regulation with universal and generous welfare. Probably many of these same people have environmental concerns and support policies that will result in higher costs of resources and lower economic growth. None of this is really compatible with increased humanitarian immmigration on a major scale, or perhaps greatly increased immigration of any sort.

Tightly controlled borders are the precondition of much of the Australia we know, the barrier behind which “the Lucky Country” (said with or without irony) was built. Having our borders opened in a major way would threaten to undermine this. We would likely see a less orderly Australia, a less equal one and perhaps a less safe one.

On the other hand it would be more interesting, more dynamic and more exciting. Personally I’d pick the more exciting version. I acknowledge though that I am pretty well economically protected from the real costs and pressures of increased immigration, whether that is competing for unskilled jobs or living in a potentially high crime suburb. I suspect many of those who want the boats welcomed are in a similarly fortunate situation. I’d also guess many are just as committed to preserving the insular “Australian way of life” as the people they call “rednecks”.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Obama's Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage

Comment from Germany

Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president. He also seemed irritable and even slightly forlorn. The CNN cameras had already been set up. But then Obama decided not to play along, and not to answer the question he had already been asked several times on his trip: what did he plan to take home with him? Instead, he simply said "thank you, guys," and disappeared. David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, fielded the journalists' questions in the hallway of the Blue House instead, telling them that the public's expectations had been "too high."

The mood in Obama's foreign policy team is tense following an extended Asia trip that produced no palpable results. The "first Pacific president," as Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger. The Asians smiled but made no concessions.


Upon taking office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world, promising respect instead of arrogance. But Obama's currency isn't as strong as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik. The Asia trip revealed the limits of Washington's new foreign policy: Although Obama did not lose face in China and Japan, he did appear to have lost some of his initial stature.

In Tokyo, the new center-left government even pulled out of its participation in a mission which saw the Japanese navy refueling US warships in the Indian Ocean as part of the Afghanistan campaign. In Beijing, Obama failed to achieve any important concessions whatsoever. There will be no binding commitments from China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A revaluation of the Chinese currency, which is kept artificially weak, has been postponed. Sanctions against Iran? Not a chance. Nuclear disarmament? Not an issue for the Chinese.

The White House did not even stand up for itself when it came to the question of human rights in China. The president, who had said only a few days earlier that freedom of expression is a universal right, was coerced into attending a joint press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, at which questions were forbidden. Former US President George W. Bush had always managed to avoid such press conferences.

A look back in time reveals the differences. When former President Bill Clinton went to China in June 1998, Beijing wanted to impress the Americans. A press conference in the Great Hall of the People, broadcast on television as a 70-minute live discussion, became a sensation the world over. Clinton mentioned the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when the government used tanks against protestors. But then President Jiang Zemin defended the tough approach taken by the Chinese Communists. At the end of the exchange, the Chinese president praised the debate and said: "I believe this is democracy!"

Obama's new foreign policy has also been relatively unsuccessful elsewhere, with even friends like Israel leaving him high and dry. For the government of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, peace is only conceivable under its terms. Netanyahu has rejected Obama's call for a complete moratorium on the construction of settlements. As a result, Obama has nothing to offer the Palestinians and the Syrians. "We thought we had some leverage," says Martin Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel under the Clinton administration and now an advisor to Obama. "But that proved to be an illusion."

Even the president seems to have lost his faith in a genial foreign policy. The approach that was being used in Afghanistan this spring, with its strong emphasis on civilian reconstruction, is already being changed. "We're searching for an exit strategy," said a staff member with the National Security Council on the sidelines of the Asia trip.

An end to diplomacy is also taking shape in Washington's policy toward Tehran. It is now up to Iran, Obama said, to convince the world that its nuclear power is peaceful. While in Asia, Obama mentioned "consequences" unless it followed his advice. This puts the president, in his tenth month in office, where Bush began -- with threats. "Time is running out," Obama said in Korea. It was the same phrase Bush used against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, shortly before he sent in the bombers.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Some good news folks

Remember those emails that the slimestream media were so unwilling to publish, the ones that put their global-warming buddies in a not-so-good light. Well they've ignored it for days but it's out now, they couldn't push it out of the news and their buddies have been blown sky-high out of the water.
News.com.au - The messages – more than 2000 emails and 3000 documents – lay bare bitter disagreements about the cause of climate change. In one email, the head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, Phil Jones, says he is "cheered" by news of the sudden death of a prominent Australian climate sceptic, John L. Daly, who died of a heart attack at his Launceston home in 2004. Others show scientists referring to sceptical colleagues as "prats", "charlatans" and "idiots". The emails also acknowledge the frustration of trying to find evidence to "prove" man-made climate change.

Daily Mail - Scientists at a British climate change research centre discussed ways of dodging Freedom of Information Act requests to release temperature data, it is claimed. Leaked emails and documents appear to show that scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit conspired to keep US climate change sceptics in the dark about the existence of the act. The private messages have been seized upon by climate-change sceptics, who claim one email includes an admittance that robust data to prove the world is warming up simply doesn't exist, and that data which did not support global warming was deliberately suppressed.
They've been exposed as dishonest, liars and downright mean. Cheering the death of someone who just won't agree with you, now that's just mean. Personally I think this is the beginning of the end for the loonies, it had to happen sooner or later, it is after all a type of religious cult based largely on faith and a dislike of humanity. No matter what happens now, too many will be wary of this bullsh*t, sure the angry left will carry on breaking and trashing everything to get their way but few politicians will be stupid enough to keep pushing this barrow full of stinking pig crap.

Speaking of pig crap, more good news folks.
Fox News - ...Nidal Hasan will be confined until his military trial, initially staying in a hospital where he is recovering from gunshot wounds, the attorney said. Hasan has no feeling from the chest down and has limited movement in his arms.
I heard he was paralyzed from the waist-down, but this is better, too bad it wasn't from the neck down. Guess you'll have to wait for the virgins ey scumbag, in a way it's better that he lived and will have to wait for his execution, won't be able to wipe his own ass or hold up the koran on his own for a while. I just hope the military don't get someone to do it for him, we all know them infidel whores lefties would gladly do it or force taxpayers to pay someone to do it.

Huge numbers of power stations and 4WDs in the prehistoric past

A new study of Antarctica's past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages (interglacials) may have been higher than previously thought. The latest analysis of ice core records suggests that Antarctic temperatures may have been up to 6°C warmer than the present day.

The findings, recently reported by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Open University and University of Bristol in the journal Nature could help us understand more about rapid Antarctic climate changes.

Previous analysis of ice cores has shown that the climate consists of ice ages and warmer interglacial periods roughly every 100,000 years. This new investigation shows temperature 'spikes' within some of the interglacial periods over the last 340,000 years. This suggests Antarctic temperature shows a high level of sensitivity to greenhouse gases at levels similar to those found today.

Lead author Louise Sime of British Antarctic Survey said, "We didn't expect to see such warm temperatures, and we don't yet know in detail what caused them. But they indicate that Antarctica's climate may have undergone rapid shifts during past periods of high CO2."

During the last warm period, about 125,000 years ago, sea level was around 5 metres higher than today.

Ice core scientist Eric Wolff of British Antarctic Survey is a world-leading expert on past climate. He said, "If we can pin down how much warmer temperatures were in Antarctica and Greenland at this time, then we can test predictions of how melting of the large ice sheets may contribute to sea level rise."

Notes:

Ice cores are unique climate records, allowing scientists to investigate climate changes over hundreds of thousands of years. The Earth's oldest ice is found in East Antarctica. The three oldest existing ice cores were drilled at Dome C, Dome F and Vostock. The longest ice core -- at 3,650 metres -- comes from Vostock, but the oldest ice core, drilled by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) team, contains a climate record stretching back 800,000 years. Analysis of the ice cores has revolutionized our understanding of how Antarctic climate has varied in the past. Information from ice cores is vital for testing and improving the computer models used to predict future climate.

Interglacials -- recur roughly every 100,000 years between ice ages. The present warm period began around 10,000 years ago and has been relatively stable.

Direct sea level measurements based upon coastal sedimentary deposits and tropical coral sequences have established that global sea level was higher than present during the last interglacial (~125,000 years ago) by approximately 4 to 6 m. This indicates that the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets were smaller than during the present day.

The authors analysed 340,000 years of oxygen and hydrogen isotope data from three ice core sites across East Antarctica, alongside isotope-enabled general circulation model results.

SOURCE


Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

More guesswork

Sounds like the differences they observed were not even statistically significant. Looking at their raw averages would be fun. I predict that any trend detectable will be non-linear (e.g. a recent change of direction) -- which makes any projection into the future a joke

THE East Antarctic icesheet, once seen as largely unaffected by global warming, has lost billions of tonnes of ice since 2006 and could boost sea levels in the future, according to a new study. Published yesterday in Nature Geoscience, the same study shows that the smaller but less stable West Antarctic icesheet is also shedding significant mass.

Scientists worry that rising global temperatures could trigger a rapid disintegration of West Antarctica, which holds enough frozen water to push up the global ocean watermark by about five metres. In 2007 the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) predicted sea levels would rise 18 to 59cm by 2100, but this estimate did not factor in the potential impact of crumbling icesheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

Today many of the same scientist say that even if heat-trapping CO2 emissions are curtailed, the ocean watermark is more likely to go up by nearly a metre, enough to render several small island nations unlivable and damage fertile deltas, home to hundreds of millions.

University of Texas professor Jianli Chen and colleagues analysed nearly seven years of data on ocean-icesheet interaction in Antarctica. Covering the period up January 2009, the data was collected by the twin GRACE satellites, which detect mass flows in the ocean and polar regions by measuring changes in Earth's gravity field. Consistent with earlier findings based on different methods, they found that West Antarctica dumped, on average, about 132 billion tonnes of ice into the sea each year, give or take 26 billion tonnes.

They also found for the first time that East Antarctica - on the Eastern Hemisphere side of the continent - was likewise losing mass, mostly in coastal regions, at a rate of about 57 billion tonnes annually. The margin for error, they cautioned, is almost as large as the estimate, meaning ice loss could be a little as a few billion tonnes or more than 100.

Up to now, scientists had thought that East Antarctica was in "balance", meaning that it accumulated as much mass and it gave off, perhaps a bit more. "Acceleration of ice loss in recent years over the entire continent is thus indicated," the authors conclude. "Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea level rise."

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model – by David Horowitz

Since taking office Barack Obama, who promised during his campaign to create a moderate, inclusive administration, has engaged in actions that have created division and fear because they are meant to radically change America, not improve on what has always worked. As a result, David Horowitz writes in Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model, “Many Americans have gone from hopefulness, through unease, to a state of alarm as the President shows a radical side only party visible during his campaign.”

Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model provides an understanding of the roots of the current administration’s effort to subject America to a wholesale transformation by looking at the work of one of the President’s heroes—radical Chicago “community organizer” Saul Alinsky. The guru of Sixties radicals, Alinsky urged his followers to be flexible and opportunistic and say anything to get power, which they can then use to destroy the existing society and its economic system. Alinsky died in 1972, but left behind an organization in Chicago dedicated to his malicious ideas. This team hired Barack Obama in 1986 when he was 23 and taught him how to organize for radical transformation.

In this insightful new booklet, Horowitz discusses Alinsky’s work in the 60s—and his advice to radicals to seize any weapon to advance their cause. This became the philosophy of Alinskyite organizations such as ACORN and to Alinsky disciples Van Jones, a self described “communist” who served as President Obama’s “Green Czar” until he was forced to resign when his extremist ideas became public.

After his analysis of Saul Alinsky, Horowitz points out what the grandfather of “social organizing” created “is not salvation but chaos.” Then he asks the crucial question: “And presidential disciples of Alinsky, what will they create?”

More HERE

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Conservative politicians are "coming out" over their disbelief in global warming

The Libs' Senate leader is encouraging climate sceptics to speak out. Nick Minchin, the Liberals' Senate leader, is playing a very edgy political game as he tries - in a direct challenge to Malcolm Turnbull - to get the Opposition to vote down the emissions trading scheme. It's high risk for Turnbull, Minchin and the Liberals. Minchin is openly rejecting the science on climate and encouraging other Liberal sceptics to speak out. This is audacious behaviour by the fourth most-senior person in the Opposition, who's in the leadership group.

But it seems likely Minchin, chief of the Liberals' conservative wing, is more in tune than Turnbull with the party's grassroots. Sources report the rank and file has become more critical of the ETS in the past three months, and Minchin's outspoken comments have been getting positive feedback.

The obvious downside for Turnbull is that his pro-ETS view has become increasingly out of sync with the membership (which, of course, should not be equated with the public). However unhelpful Minchin's comments, he's reprising views he expressed in the Howard years. By 2007, the then prime minister, previously himself a sceptic, had shifted, in the desperate hope of getting some ''cred'' on climate, and the government started to look to an ETS.

But Minchin, though government Senate leader, was having none of it. Saying ''scepticism is one of the all-time great Australian attributes'', he told The Age's Katharine Murphy the science of global warming wasn't settled, and ''to have some Mickey Mouse thing in Australia might make some people feel good but will do nothing for emissions and it will hurt the Australian economy''.

If a greater cause demands, he can, however, be flexible on the issue. When in July last year Turnbull and environment spokesman Greg Hunt were trying to stop then Opposition leader Brendan Nelson moving to the right on emissions trading, Minchin backed the Turnbull-Hunt line, presumably fearing that if they were thwarted, the leadership of Nelson, who he supported, would be undermined (it was anyway, even though Nelson gave in).

Minchin is one of the most experienced and savvy Liberal MPs. He is also among the toughest factional warriors, and yesterday was accused by moderate Liberal backbencher Mal Washer of using the climate change issue to pursue the factional war between conservatives and small-l liberals in the party.

In personal style, Minchin is friendly, relaxed and open (perhaps partly because he was always around journalists - his mother was in the federal parliamentary press gallery; his wife worked in The Age's Canberra bureau before their marriage). But in views he's an ideologue, with strong stands on issues ranging well beyond climate. When Howard in 2006 was trying to reassure people he wouldn't bring in even more severe industrial relations changes after WorkChoices, Minchin was caught on tape advocating another wave of reform. He has also championed unfashionable causes such as voluntary voting.

As the emissions trading issue inches towards its dangerous climax, Minchin seems emboldened.

He said last month that even if the Government met all the Opposition's demands, there was no guarantee the party room would approve the legislation (which begged the question of why you'd bother with negotiations).

Then last week came Four Corners, where Minchin said a majority of the Liberal Party wouldn't accept the position that humans were the main cause of global warming; it would be difficult for Coalition members to vote for the scheme, he said.

Addressing the Senate yesterday, Minchin began by congratulating Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce (who won't vote for the scheme in any circumstances) for his ''erudite contribution to this debate''.

In interviews this week, Minchin did not take a backward step. But he insisted it was not about Turnbull's leadership. At one level this might be correct, despite Minchin battling to keep Turnbull out of the leadership after the last election, and later attempting to prop up the failing Nelson. Joe Hockey, the most likely alternative, is a left-winger; his views on climate would be no more acceptable to Minchin than Turnbull's. Minchin would find Tony Abbott's opinions congenial, but knows Abbott lacks one vital attribute - numbers.

Minchin is not, however, going to do Turnbull any favours or worry excessively if his in-your-face campaign against the legislation undermines Turnbull, who has declared that having a credible climate policy is for him a leadership issue.

The tough line taken by Minchin is empowering other hardliners. Earlier, it was thought most critics would be inclined to roll over if they didn't have the numbers. Now their behaviour is unpredictable, which means that if Turnbull gets party support for a deal, the number of Liberals crossing the floor in the Senate could be quite large, putting up in lights how split the party has become.

The irony would be that Minchin, bound by shadow cabinet solidary, would be forced into formal lockstep with his leader.

SOURCE


Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Don't Cry for Me, Am-er-I-ca

Great post here by Doug Ross on the warning afforded by what was the wealthiest country (GDP per head) a century ago: Argentina, now a veritable basket case.

Government entitlement programs are (compulsory) Ponzi schemes - Bernie Madoff on steroids; early adopters get the benefits (hence Peron's populatiry) and later arrivals/generations get the bills.

It takes very little cultural/economic sophistication on the part of a population to enable the market to work; yet to guard against such things as government run Ponzi schemes it requires the majority of a population to be very sophisticated - a depth of character that can be easily lost in a generation, as Ronald Reagan warned.

A lesson of history we either learn or repeat.

ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG thinks that Malcolm Turnbull has more in common with the Labor party than with the conservative party that he ostensibly leads

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Come on slimestream, report the news

UPI - ...The alleged e-mails between Army Maj. Nidal Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki intensified in the months before the Nov. 5 attack that killed 13 people, two sources close to the investigation told The Washington Post in a story published Saturday. The two men discussed in "cryptic and coded exchanges" how to transfer money overseas in ways that would not attract law enforcement attention, an unidentified source told The Post, adding Hasan "clearly became more radicalized toward the end." The FBI monitored the e-mails but did not forward them to the military, government and congressional sources told The Post. Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric who once lived in the United States, is considered by U.S. officials to be an al-Qaida supporter.
Apart from the above and in the Washington Post, you can't find this news in any of the other outlets, it's not even mentioned in broadcast news anymore. They started by saying it could have been an amazonian pygmy, then weaseled on to stress from the war the bastards never fought it and it's too early to say anything, islam=peace, hasan was such a beautiful person and now it's just complete silence. The media have made the assumption that we all don't give a damn any more and would prefer the story of the dog that chased the moving car last week in Mombasa, Africa.

Here's another story that the slimestream media have been silent on for a few days at least. Sort of like an inconvenient truth. I saw this story first over at Crusader Rabbit.
FOX News - Hackers broke into the servers at a prominent British climate research center and leaked years worth of e-mail messages onto the Web, including one with a reference to a plan to "hide the decline" in temperatures. The Internet is abuzz about the leaked data from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (commonly called Hadley CRU), which has acknowledged the theft of 61MB of confidential data. Climate change skeptics describe the leaked data as a "smoking gun," evidence of collusion among climatologists and manipulation of data to support the widely held view that climate change is caused by the actions of mankind.
Again, it's not in any of our local media outlets, just on a few international ones and mainly on the blogosphere. While I'm on this subject, I wanted to point my fellow Aussies to a petition that one of our politicians in the Senate is running. Barnaby Joyce has been against the carbon tax that our prime minister and his gaggle of socialist turkeys want to foist upon the Australian taxpayers. Below is the text from his website.
To the Honourable President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled:

The petition of the undersigned shows that we object to Australia adopting an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the Copenhagen Treaty as foreshadowed by the Rudd Government.

Your petitioners ask that the Senate reject the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Sign the Petition. Get on there folks, they want to tax us even more, time to push back.

Spread the word on the above news stories folks and contact your media outlets, send them emails and such, tell them about the stories and dare them to report on it, if nothing else, they'll at least read them and know that we're not all dumb schmucks who blindly swallow whatever they decide to give us.

Must not express a preference for Anglo names

Even in the British Conservative party
"A former Tory Parliamentary candidate was suspended by the party last night after complaining that people bidding to become an MP did not have ‘normal’ English names. Councillor Peter Hobbins is accused of sending racist emails to colleagues attacking the list of prospective Parliamentary candidates for the Orpington seat in Kent.

Mr Hobbins, who stood unsuccessfully for the Tories at the 2001 election and was shortlisted for the London mayoral race, suggested he should change his name to ‘Petrado’ to succeed in the party. One email said: ‘I have been contacted by a Mr Dilon Gumraj and a Zerha Zaidi and others who are all on the approved Conservative Parliamentary Candidates list. ‘Not one of them has a ‘normal’ English name.

‘Why are the Candidates Department so keen on these foreign names?!!!! Maybe I should change my name to something foreign – how does Petrado Indiano Hobbinso sound to you?!’

Mr Hobbins also said he was fed up with reading about ‘Africa’ on the CVs of would-be candidates.

A Tory spokesman said: ‘Councillor Hobbins has been immediately suspended from the Conservative Party and from the Conservative Group on Bromley council and he will play no part in the selection of the Parliamentary candidate. There is no room for racism in the Conservative Party.’

Source

The man was actually making a serious point. It is arguably true that Anglo voters are more likely to vote for candidates with Anglo names. Any political party in England that puts up a candidate with an obviously foreign name may well be doing a bit of foot-shooting.

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Andrea Mitchell of NBC News Tries to Ambush Sarah Palin at Book Signing

The dark shirted Security guy on the left and the white shirted Security guy have no intentions of letting Andrea Mitchell cut in line and get closer to Gov. Palin. For her part, Gov. Palin rightfully just ignores Andrea.







A picture is worth a thousand words... One lady has a smile, one does not. One is happy in her skin, one is not. One is attractive, one is not. One is a conservative, one is not. One is a positive, one is a negative. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Comment above from a reader. Pictures from Weasel Zippers

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here