Very Happy John

John Howard is considered Australia's best prime minister of the modern era.

...the Prime Minister received a resounding vote over Mr Hawke in the Newspoll survey when people were asked which of six prime ministers had done the best job for Australia.

Mr Howard got 32 per cent support, Mr Hawke 18 per cent, Menzies 13 per cent, Paul Keating 11 per cent, Mr Whitlam 8 per cent and Mr Fraser 4 per cent.

That sounds about right.

Howard has precided over almost a decade of economic prosperity, introduced tax reform and boosted national security.

The Hawke-Keating Government of the 1980s was the right government for the time. While high interest rates and high unemployment rates were certainly no fun, the industrial relations reforms set the stage for the business building of the past decade.

In last place, where he should be, is Malcolm Fraser who achievements were.... um, I actually can't think of any.

-- Nora

'Fixed' Speed Cameras

A 'bingo!' moment for your's truly this week when this happened:

Fixed speed cameras... will be introduced (in Queensland) in new measures to slash the road toll.

I hate to say I told you so but I did - and though I may have been out with my early 'within six months' prediction, I stand by my assertion that the Government's motives are more fiscal than caring.

After all, Queensland's M1 Motorway may have had a few crashes over the years but never any massive pile-ups. The relatively new road is actually surprisingly safe considering how badly everyone (I mean everyone - from every state of Australia) drives on it.

And anyone who bleats the 'it'll stop those hoon road racers with their rolling blockades' line has missed the fact that the midnight racers cover their number plates so they won't be afraid of fixed speed cameras. Any that are will be coming soon to a side road near you.

What we really need to do to address the road toll is teach people to drive properly and with care and respect for other road users, plus enforcement of all the road rules we already have, not just the ones that pass the cost-benefit analysis of earning enough money to make it worth a copper pulling one over.

Instead we get permanent flash for cash and a bunch of hooey about repeat offenders. The announcement came following the 'Road Safety Summit' announced by Beattie late last year.

One suspected that would be a cynical affair and one was not disappointed. The event began with a media call carefully stage managed by Beattie and his spin merchants to show tough talkin' Pete with some of the more stellar participants. Then it got down to business by splitting the participants up into groups to 'workshop' various ideas while a Queensland Transport representative took notes.

At the end of the session, the Queensland Transport rep had a whole 60 seconds to give a precis of their 'findings' - except that at least one group realised that what the bureaucrat was reading out bore little if any resemblance to what they had actually been discussing.

One hears that racing driver Dick Johnson walked out halfway through but that wasn't reported in the media.

Ah, the media, those schizophrenic idiots with short memories - here's how they've headlined one road safety story this morning:

How police are ambushing drivers who talk on their mobiles

The story, by a journalist old enough to remember old-fashioned 'pull over driver' style radar stops, goes on the describe the police technique of a spotter radioing ahead to a stop team as:

...(a) heavy-handed approach...

Dickhead. When they used to pull you over for speeding like that, it stopped you speeding there and then and usually, stung by the shame of being publicly booked, for a month or so afterwards.

That's a whole lot more than can be said for a photo and fine in the mail weeks after the event.

-- Nick

Wrong Swamp

Much was said at the start of the Iraq War that it would quickly degenerate into a Vietnam-style quagmire for the Americans.

Right now, it would appear to have more accurate parallels in an entirely different patch of soggy ground.

With sectarian violence threatening the rise of the democratic process, Iraq right now is more like Northern Ireland during the worst of the late 20th century 'Troubles'. The roles being played have startling general similarities.

In Northern Ireland, as in Iraq, violence between religious sects was actually the outer face of violent political disagreement over who should rule.

In Northern Ireland, Protestant paramilitaries sought to remain allied to the British and their government. In Iraq, the Shi'ites seek generally to follow a path forged by the Americans.

In Northern Ireland, the Catholic IRA wanted to break away from British influence and establish a 'united' Ireland. In Iraq, the Sunnis seek to destroy the American plan and return to ethnic 'unity'.

The American troops in Iraq may find themselves playing the role of British squaddies in Northern Ireland, trying to keep the two warring factions apart.

Ironically, the external influence in financing and enabling Sunni (Catholic) violence exerted by Al Qaida finds its Northern Ireland parallel in America where Irish-Americans openly supported the IRA with donations for years.

Fortunately, right now, a tense peace appears to be holding in Iraq.

-- Nick

Update: Spoke too soon:

Iraqi leaders held an emergency meeting overnight to control a surge in sectarian violence as tensions were further inflamed by a deadly car bomb in the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

Update II: Speak of the Devil:

Irish riot police clashed overnight with republican protestors who forced Protestant unionists from Northern Ireland to call off a march through central Dublin.

By Their Words...

Peter Costello speaks out:

Lambasting the spread of "mushy multiculturalism", the Treasurer has bluntly called for hard-line Muslims and others who don't observe Australian values to be stripped of their citizenship.

Keyser Trad bleats predictably:

TREASURER Peter Costello is promoting division and Islamophobia in remarks about Muslims and should be censured, a Muslim community leader said.
Keysar Trad, president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, said today he genuinely hoped Prime Minister John Howard would censure Mr Costello.

Then Trad gives the game away:

Mr Trad said nobody was protesting Australia's secular laws through any other means than the normal democratic process.

2030 then we take over, eh?

-- Nick

Did Global Warming Cause Katrina?

According to some the answer is yes:

Here are the relevant questions and the right answers.

Q1. Did global warming cause Katrina or significantly affect its intensity? (Yes.)
Q2. Can we detect any impact on U.S. hurricane damage? (No.)
Q3. Should we judge global warming's impact on hurricanes as negligible? (No.)

Answers to Q1 and Q2 seem to contradict, and that is why the experts answer Q1 incorrectly as "No". They are afraid that if they said "yes" (the correct answer) to Q1 we would think the answer to Q2 is "yes", which it is not.

The basic idea is this. Weather is chaotic, which means a small change at one point in time has a progressively larger effect on all the particulars of weather as time goes on. This is often called the "butterfly effect." A butterfly flaps its wings and causes a tornado at some later date. If global warming has had even 1/5 of its theoretical effect, that still amounts to the energy of 1 hurricane a year world wide. That's an unthinkably bigger disturbance to global weather than a butterfly, and there can be no doubt that over the last few decades such a large continuing disturbance to the global weather system has rearranged all the particulars.

Real scientists say no:

A current argument suggests that as climate change causes the seas to warm the oceans store more energy that can be harnessed by the wind to form tropical cyclones.

But this is too simplistic, says (Dr John McBride, a principal research scientist at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology).

"There are other conditions that are necessary to be able to tap that energy source, such as the structure of the wind systems," he says.

McBride says there's no proof that cyclones have become more common or will become more frequent in the future, or that they'll take place in more parts of the world.

"Worldwide, there's really no evidence for any change," he says.

Again objective proof that the effects of 'climate change' are yet to be fully understood and more importantly, placed in its historical context.

It seems to me to 'global warming-global cooling-climate change' chicken littles are simply children who grow afraid of the spiders who have always been in the garden because they've seen one through a magnifying glass which looks especially fierce.

So, board up the windows, make sure all loose objects are secured and enjoy a:

Hurricane
2 oz light rum
2 oz dark rum
2 oz passion fruit juice
1 oz orange juice
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1 tbsp simple syrup
1 tbsp grenadine
Garnish: orange slice and cherry

Shake all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and strain into a hurricane glass. Garnish with a cherry and an orange slice.

-- Nora

Cart : Horse

Can you say 'ass backwards'?

Speaking to the Senate inquiry into petrol sniffing, (the Central Australian Youth Link Up Service) says there is mounting evidence that young people turn to petrol sniffing because it suppresses the appetite.

Tristan Ray from CAYLUS says some chronic users of petrol have not eaten in days.

He says the appetite-suppressing effect of petrol can be easily seen when sniffers come off the substance.

"One of the really quick responses when you take someone off petrol is they get very hungry, very quickly, and they can eat really large amounts of protein," Mr Ray said.

Or maybe they're hungry because they're not eating on account of being petrol sniffing drug addicts.

-- Nick

Good News For Bon Vivants!

THE significant oversupply of wine in the Australian market could last for at least two years, McGuigan Simeon Wines Ltd said today.

"It is still too early in the season for accurate forecasts on the 2006 Australian vintage, but indications are that there will be another significant vintage, if not a record."

-- Nora

Politician Shoots Lawyer

And I'm not sure who to cheer for...

Dick Cheney's A Shot In The Dark
1/2 oz coffee liqueur
1/2 oz coconut rum
5 drops irish cream
Pour equal parts Kahlua and Malibu rum into a shot glass. Add a few drops of Bailey's irish cream, and serve.

-- Nora

Special Bellicose Service

As Nicky noted in his post below, al-Jazeera's southern hemisphere affiliate, aka SBS,
threatens the lives of our troops by publishing photographs of alleged troop abuses at Abu Graib.

Not allegations of new abuses, mind you, but salacious images of events taken more than two years ago after the US military raised the issue and dealt with the offenders. Yet they won't show the Mohammed cartoons...

SBS not only deliberately fans the flames of international hatred but also does it with your money.

Australian taxpayers support SBS to the tune of about $60 million a year. I'd like that to stop now.

With the advent of pay television and access to international satellite broacasts there is no need to supply Special Broadcasting Services to Australians.

From this point in time I'd like to start a campaign. The first to the board of SBS.

Tell them that you will start writing letters to other corporate boards on which they sit and say you will boycott their products until SBS News does what it's supposed to and that is report the news.

Second is send letters and e-mails to Senator Helen Coonan Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts to request the government slash funding for SBS.

Before free speech advocates castigate me for trying to stifle SBS, I shall go on record now to say that SBS should keep running but I don't think that I should have to pay for it.

-- Nora

Missing The Story

Thanks a lot, SBS:

Images of humiliated prisoners infuriated Iraqis and some predicted they would play into the hands of Saddam Hussein, whose chaotic trial has embarrassed the US-backed government.

The images were recorded at the same time as the Abu Ghraib 2004 images. The people responsible have already been punished. But SBS can't miss an opportunity to run down the West and try to get more Americans killed - and maybe some Australians as well.

Meanwhile, around the Arab world, the populace is reported as doing what they (and the MSM) do best - feigning outrage:

The images, which included an Iraqi prisoner banging his head against a metal door in desperation, came as a shock in the Arab world, even in staunchly pro-American Kuwait, where US-led troops crushed Saddam's troops in 1991.

Things were much better under Saddam, a luxury, in fact. You didn't even have to bang your own head against a door, your captors in Abu Graib would do it for you.

All this despite, this:

On one of the tapes, Hussein Kamel, a Saddam son-in-law who was in charge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, speaks candidly about deceiving the UN.

"We did not reveal all that we have," Kamel says in a meeting with Saddam and his top henchmen. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use: none of this was correct."

The tapes, broadcast yesterday on the ABC television network in the US, support claims that the 2003 "coalition of the willing" invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam was intent on developing WMD and could have provided them to terrorists.

The rest of the story's claim that Saddam 'warned' the US of upcoming terrorist strikes...

But Saddam is also heard telling aides that Iraq would not launch terror attacks on the West and that he had even warned the US and Britain that they were terrorist targets. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans and told the British as well," Saddam says on the tapes.

...is a total crock.

What he actually did was issue a veiled threat to terrorise the US or, more likely, supply materials to those who would:

"I think Hamed was there keeping the meeting minutes with one of them, that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction.

"What prevents this technology from developing and people from smuggling it? In the future, what would prevent that we see a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?

"This is coming, this story is coming, but not from Iraq."

Then on the tape, former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz tells Saddam:

"...a biological attack would be easy to arrange. "It's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000," he says. "This is not done by a state. An individual can do it."

Yet the New.com headline is 'Saddam warned US of terror' while at The Australian it's 'Saddam warned US of terror attacks, secret tapes reveal'

Talk about double-speak, not just by Saddam but also by our own media.

-- Nick

Rush Headlong Into Trouble

Who would have thought?

At the tender age of 20, Bali 9 drug mule Scott Rush has a long and disreputable relationship with the law.

But rather than blame her own inept parenting skills, mummy Rush takes the position that it's all the Australian Federal Police's fault because they knew about the deal but let the Indonesians nab the bad guys.

It was the same line she peddled back in November and we didn't believe it then either.

-- Nora

Pregnant Pause For Thought

Liberal MP Danna Vale reads the writing on the wall:

"... warned that Australia risks becoming a Muslim nation if women continued to abort children at the current rate.

"A certain imam from the Lakemba mosque actually says Australia is going to be a Muslim nation in 50 years time," Mrs Vale said.

"I didn't believe him at the time. But when you look at the birth rates ... we are aborting ourselves almost out of existence by 100,000 abortions every year. You multiply that by 50 years - that's 5 million potential Australians we won't have here."

Of course, Vale is 'just' a pro-lifer cheesed off that dangerous abortion pill RU-486 is about to be legalised in Australia.

Meanwhile, Islamic youths in Europe wear t-shirts with the phrase: "2030, then we take over" in reference to the negative Euro-birthrate.

Also meanwhile in Europe, Britain's parliament is to introduce national identity cards. A necessary instrument in times of war, to be sure, but have they the will to make them work?

-- Nick

Study Half Right

According to News.com.au - SCIENTISTS now have evidence to prove that marriage is only good for one year, with a sharp decline in happiness thereafter.

The study is right in:

But overall marriage does make people happier.

The study is wrong in:

...the way in which almost all marriages lose their magic as feelings of happiness slip back to the levels before the couple met.

Nicky and I will have been married 12 years in April and we are even happier today then when we were first married.

-- Nora

Happy Valentine's Day my darling. I love you very much.

This is for you:

Royal Romance
1 1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz orange liqueur (cointreau, grand marnier...)
1 oz passion-fruit juice
2 dashes grenadine syrup

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with flamed orange peel, and serve.

UPDATE: The Federal Government thinks marriage is a good idea too.

Three Rs: Ramshackle Reading Rapped

That vociferous leftie lobbying group known as 'educators' has lost an ally in The Queensland Government, reports The Sunday Mail:

THE State Government has launched an urgent overhaul of child literacy as a former education boss accuses Queensland schools of failing students.

Education Minister Rod Welford (pictured) told The Sunday Mail the reforms would target reading, writing and spelling skills amid widespread public concern about falling standards.

The announcement came as Colin Lamont, former state chairman of the Australian Council for Education Standards, warned our children had been "dumbed down" and today's students would be no match for their counterparts of 50 years ago.

Ah, it was only two weeks ago that Welford was its staunchest defender against that interfering Federal Government:

State Education Minister Rod Welford said Mr Howard was ill-informed about what was actually happening in the classroom.

"The active teaching of Australian history is central to the curriculum, at least here in Queensland," he said.

"The suggestion that Queensland students are in some way missing out in an understanding of history is utterly misconstrued."

Mr Welford said Mr Howard's comments were a continuation of ideological interference by the Federal Government.

Let's talk about ideology shall we?

While I'm more than happy to admit that there are plenty of terrific people doing a great job teaching our children, much of their work is hamstrung by the moral equivalence peddled by curriculum developers.

It is what is seriously wrong with the way history is taught and it has also afflicted other humanities subjects like English. Imagine how such equivalence would affect other subjects like maths:

6x7=45

Why?

Because I feel like it today. My feelings are valid.

It's wrong.

That's just your opinion and one person's opinion is no better than anyone else's.

Childish, isn't it?

But that's what you get from people who have never left school.

-- Nora

What A Great Dane

(Lazily taken from comments on Tim Blair's site)

Nicky and I have done our bit.

I went to look for Carlsberg beer while grocery shopping and I could only find the Elephant at my local bottle shop.

I was warned it had a kick and at 7.2% boy it does. Nicky and his friend, The Tall Threatening Man, drank two each and voted it good.

I could only drink the one.

We performed our civic duty and showed the cartoons to TTTM and his aunt who had not seen them before.

Her reaction was the same as everyone we’ve shown the cartoons to - ‘That’s it? That’s what they’re offended by?’

Earlier that day the cartoons were the subject of discussion at my niece’s birthday party. We made sure we got all the major talking points in there. The reaction was not surprise, more like confirmation of what they already suspected.

Our Great Dane weekend continues with serving of Rosenborg Danish blue vein cheese.

Who would have thought being subversive could be so much fun - or tasty?

Support the Danes and join us for this delicious cocktail:

The Great Dane
1 oz. Aquavit
1/2 oz. cherry Brandy
1 dash orange Bitters
1/2 oz. Cranberry Juice

Shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

-- Nora

Yeah, Right...

AUSTRALIAN Greens senator Kerry Nettle says she is sorry if her rosaries-ovaries T-shirt offended anyone.

But she has pledged to wear it again.

So she's not really sorry.

-- Nick

Pretty Pictures

-- Nick

This Is Not A Hate Crime

Equal Opportunity Commission Victoria (EOC) chief executive, Dr Helen Szoke says so...

-- Nora

Girls Can Do Anything!

GIRLS are taking knives into class, assaulting teachers and committing brutal robberies in a disturbing upsurge of hardcore violence by female students.

I blame Feminism myself.

-- Nora

Muslims Seen As Terrorists: Study

And do we wonder why?

-- Nora

NZ Politician Pleads For His Life

The Support Denmark website notes that:

The Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen defended the freedom of the press and free speech and stated that any measures, if appropriate, could not be taken by the government but only by a court of law.

But in New Zealand:

"It is hard to see why the publication of cartoons known to be deeply offensive to Muslim communities is such an important point of principle to the New Zealand media who have published them," Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter said yesterday.

"What good did it do publishing these cartoons and what damage could it do to communities in New Zealand and to New Zealand's international reputation?"

Carter has perhaps more reason than most to desperately kowtow to the Islamofascists. But he'd do better hiding behind the skirts of someone willing to fight.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Fehmi El-Imam, the general secretary of the Board of Imams of Victoria, has issued a veiling warning to the Australian media not to publish these cartoons.

(He) warned reprinting the cartoons here could "disturb people who can do things that we don't want them to do".

One is getting a little fed up with the disingenuous bullshit of the Muslim community's 'leaders'.

-- Nick

Time To Speak Up

Inspired by the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.

Michelle Malkin put together this little video.

Worth a look.

-- Nick

Drinking Opportunity Starts Here

Cheers!

Headless Horseman
2 oz. Vodka
dash of Angostura bitters
Ginger ale
Pour Vodka and Bitters into collins glass over ice. Fill with ginger ale and stir. Garnish with orange slice.

-- Nora

Once Were Drag Queens

Kiwi filmmaker Lee Tamahori has been arrested in a Hollywood prostitution sting while dressed in drag, it has been reported.

Tamahori's credits include the 007 movie Die Another Day.

As Bond fans, we are shaken. But not stirred.

-- Nick

The Wrath of God

Saudi ferry sinks.

In other related news, Muslims have officially declared war on the West.

The pictures speak a thousand words.

In New Zealand, they're still just threatening boycotts:

New Zealand Federation of Islamic Associations president Javed Khan said the decision by The Dominion Post to publish the cartoons could have "serious repercussions" for New Zealand's economy... We won't call for a boycott, and we don't want to see one, but news gets around the world pretty quickly. Muslims will make their own decisions and as you know, they've taken drastic action against Denmark."

Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst does an excellent impression of a man standing on his hind legs with his response:

"We do not wish to be deliberately provocative but neither should we allow ourselves to be intimidated. If we allow Christianity and more particularly the Catholic Church and the Pope to be satirised, and we do, should Islam be treated differently?" he asked.

News.com appeared to be inviting a fatwa against it with a link in the above article to another site carrying the cartoons.

But lo and behold, click on the link to www.cryptome.com/muhammed.htm and you get the following message and link:

2 February 2006
These cartoons are from a site which has gone down since January 31, 2006:
http://www.newspaperindex.com/blog/2005/12/10/un-to-investigate-jyllands-posten-racism/

You can find the cartoons for real here.

-- Nick

UPDATE: An object lesson above in 'Always Check The Source'. The quotes from Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst were those included in the News.com article. But on later reading the full piece in Dominion Post, one found that, shortly after struggling to his feet, Pankhurst dropped back on all fours:

"In its pure form Islam is a religion based on peace and tolerance. This is a test of that tolerance."

Sorry old chum, in it's pure form, Islam is a religion of hate and oppression. And it's failed the tolerance test:

UPDATE 2: An excellent round-up of the full story of the Mohammed cartoons TCS Daily contributing writer Val MacQueen.
.

The Sequel

It's amazing how particular posts take on a life all of their own, even after everyone else has moved on.

On November 20, Nicky wrote a post called A Tragedy In Three Acts pointing out the inappropriate overreaction to the death of a child, killed after running out into the middle of the road which resulted in the mob violence and an innocent driver being beaten.

Those involved in the beating were Bosnian Muslims, friends and relatives of the child.

Witness the reaction in the comments. The most recent of which is Danniela posted yesterday, January 31.

Now with all the ususal disclaimers that the death of the four-year-old girl was an tragic event, Nicky's comments about inappropriate reactions are well proven.

-- Nora

UPDATE: Nicky sets the record straight:

...That's the thing about this country - you never know where the person you're talking to came from. It could be the old man who wet himself with fear as an 18 year old Polish resistance fighter during a Nazi house search; it could be a South American teenager whose view from her apartment window was the bodies of death squad victims on the street below; it could be a Christian who fled violent oppression by Muslims in Lebanon...

An outstanding response from my husband.

Read all of it.

Back To The Future

TEACHERS unions have signalled they will oppose a back-to-basics literacy push if it involves the return of "school curriculums to the 1950s".

I'm sure that would be a welcom move...

-- Nora

Giving Birth To A New Perspective

Again evidence of the informative and egalitarian nature of blogging comes to the fore in the most interesting ways.

The Courier Mail's blogspot blog, The Vital Interest is currently taking a look at the issue of abortion and specifically whether the drug RU486 should be made available to women as an option over surgical abortion.

While the issue should be one for robust debate, a side observation is the fascinating opportunity for direct reader-journalist interaction.

Moreover it strong identifies the particular biases of the reporters contributing to the blog as well as visceral reaction of those who consider abortion a moral right (oh the irony).

No one would argue that journalists aren't allowed to have their opinions, but it is clear that those beliefs impact on the way they report stories. A quick google search on a few by-lines will give you a fair idea of where those baseline biases lay.

Journalists are amongst the privileged professions that help shape public opinion. They also get to champion causes dear to their heart in a public forum. What the Internet has done is make it easier to see who has what agenda.

The next time a journalist tells you they are completely unbiased in their work, you may quite correctly laugh. There is no such thing as unbiased, just degrees of how much it shows through the veneer.

-- Nora