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The bride and I returned this week from a delightfully relaxing week on Lake Macquarie in the Hunter region. Now this is an area that mines coal, operates power stations and votes Labor. Judging from attitudes expressed by blue collar types in a couple of clubs visited during our stay, that last definition will not apply if Rudd’s ridiculous carbon emissions tax becomes reality. The average Australian worker has a highly refined bulldust detection system. And nothing gets its antennae quivering like talk of manmade global warming. We also discovered many Tim Blair fans during our travels who’ll no doubt enjoy a chuckle and a few nods of agreement at this splendid piece of commentary.
Oh, and weren’t all the Kevvie luvvers from the media in a stink on Insiders this morning? They realise the Opposition has finally found the nads to enunciate climate change policy that takes into account minor concerns like the national economy and honest appraisal of meteorological theory.
Paul Toohey, in particular, was pathetic as he whinged about oppositions elsewhere going along with MGW bulldust. He wasn’t specific, but I’m pretty sure oppositions in the industrialising states north of here aren’t suggesting policies that would ruin their economies.
And sceptics, take heart. We’re attracting some very well credentialled company. Such as Art Raiche, former Chief Research Scientist of the CSIRO who tips a huge bucket on the once-great organisation.

Son and heir is developing a useful knack of finding a shekel here and there where others would not consider
He mentioned something a while back about earning a few bucks playing a once-lovelorn loser in a TV ad promoting a mobile phone dating service. His understanding was that if it ever appeared on the national airwaves it would be on one of those crappy post-midnight advertorial programs.
Imagine the surprise, hilarity and yes, a little pride, when while watching the Geelong-Western Bulldogs match last Saturday while holidaying on Lake Macquarie, I was presented with Tim’s ad twice in half and hour on Newcastle regional TV.
Watch out Russell Crowe!

Barack Obama — just a windbag? You decide.
Obama is reminiscent of many Paul McCartney songs with The Beatles: sounds nice but doesn’t say much that makes sense.
And in public utterances he seems as gaffe-prone as Quayle and Bush:
It was Obama — and not a too-old-to-serve John McCain or a too-dopey-to-take-serious George W. Bush — who once said he’d visited 57 states, not including Alaska and Hawaii, and still had “one left to go.”

He’s certainly obsessed with racial matters. So much so, you question whether his “change” would be just the past revisited and inverted.

Debbie Schlussel finds a celebrity mag that is prepared to bag stars for their eco-hypocrisy.
Us Magazine points out the average American produces 24 tons of carbon dioxide annually compared with the average celeb’s output of 170 tonnes.
John Travolta, Sting and “Grey’s Anatomy” actress Kate Walsh come under fire.

How’s this for courage? And quick thinking.
A Royal Marine who threw himself on to an exploding grenade to save the lives of his comrades is to receive the George Cross.

A dazzling exposition of the criminal mind at work:

Burnsville police said Clevenger answered his cell phone at one point during the chase, telling a detective he couldn’t talk because he was being chased by the police.

Looks like Barack Obama has taken a leaf out of Kevin Rudd’s book of big-noting bulldust:
No doubt the ever-loving US media will let him get away with it.

Those who attack Christians offensively are usually bigots lacking the guts to take on other religions.
But as long as their attacks aren’t physical, obscene or otherwise illegal, they should be free to display their ugly hatred.
A civil rights watchdog in Spain doesn’t agree.

Madrid, Jul 23, 2008 / 12:29 pm (CNA).- The civil rights watchdog organization Hazteoir.org filed a complaint with Spain’s Attorney General this week against the organizers of a July 5 “gay pride” parade for inciting religious hatred.
The gay pride parade, which took place in Madrid, is renowned not only for its graphic and violent displays of homosexual sex, but also for its open aggression against the Catholic faith. Many participants dress up in clerical or religious garb combined with sexual objects, and others carry signs that insult the Pope, the bishops and Catholics in general.

David Evans, once a committed believer who produced scientific evidence for the Australian Greenhouse Office, has rejected the manmade global warming theory. With vigour:

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Surely, it’s time one of our national editors had the courage to convene a high-level debate on global warming, given that the Rudd government’s emissions trading frolic will wreak economic catastrophe.
First, we had the ABC’s political editor Chris Uhlmann lining up with the doubters:
Now, I am willing to sign up for that, but this is a very long caravan and there are a lot of lunatics that are attached to the end of it. I do not believe every proposition that’s been put.
When the weather department can tell me what the weather is going to be like next Friday with any certainty and Treasury can get within a million dollars of what the surplus is going to be next year, I’ll believe an economic model that marries those two things and casts them out over 100 years.
I’ll make one prediction – that whatever number Garnaut puts on where we’ll be in 2100, it will be at least a trillion dollars, either way, wrong.

Today, the doyen of political commentators, The Australian’s Paul Kelly, has indicated he doesn’t go along with all the tenets of Gaia faith:

This is a lethal risk for Rudd. His Government is a believer in multilateral idealism and the moral cause of mitigation. The truth, however, is that multilateralism is in serious retreat and idealism in climate change is the fraud of our age. Many senior Australian officials discount the hope of a genuine global agreement. This is the view of prominent economic adviser to the UN Jeffrey Sachs, who says there will never be a global agreement on emissions trading and the concept is disliked by China.

Important, knowledgeable people have serious doubts, along with a sizeable section of the mainstream population. Why do global warming proponents fear discussion?

Here’s a page from the best dunny read going around.
Titled Hold Ye Front Page, it was published around millenium turnover time and presents 2000 years of history in the whip-smart style of The Sun.
I’d read about it a few years ago and how British schools were using it as a valuable history teaching aid. Although the front pages present the story of the era in hysterical tabloid style, succeeding pages follow up with useful timeline facts.
I was discussing the book with an English sub-editing colleague a few weeks ago and we decided to see if Amazon had any copies. Sure enough, they did and at the comical price (it is when you check out the price line on Hold Ye’s front pages) of one penny. Shipping was seven pounds, however.

Leave the closet? Now that’s an offer you can safely refuse.

Oh glorious Gaia, is there no evil we will be spared in punishment for our diabolical deeds?
Global warming is likely to increase the proportion of the population affected by kidney stones . . .

Opponents of the Victorian Government’s proposed $3 billion desalination plant have an unused weapon that would embarrass the government and reveal either massive hypocrisy, damning incompetence or blatant untruths behind the wasteful scheme.
The proposed plant would be built on low-lying, flood-prone river flats on the south Gippsland coast.

Here’s what the Victorian government’s climate change website predicts for the state’s coastal areas:
Coastal areas
Climate change will impact on Victoria’s coastal areas through sea-level rise, increased temperatures and changing storm patterns.

Like fooling the people, perhaps the sea will rise on only some of the coast, some of the time.

The wondrous thing about embracing bulldust is that after a while, you can believe anything.

From CBC News:

The glaciers on Mount Shasta in California are growing because of global warming, experts say.
“When people look at glaciers around the world, the majority of them are shrinking,” said Slawek Tulaczyk, a University of California, Santa Cruz, professor who studied the glaciers.

Heads up to Tim Blair

Here’s some coverage a publicity-chaser will regret getting:
THE father of the naked girl depicted on the cover of Art Monthly magazine has written of the “diabolically sexual” potential in child images.

Don’t expect to hear the weasel word “inappropriate” from British Opposition Leader David Cameron. I’d love to hear some of our Liberal politicians comment along these lines. It certainly would be overdue. From The Australian today:

WE have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification.
Instead, we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour.
Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more.
We talk about people being “at risk of obesity” instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise.
We talk about people being at risk of poverty or social exclusion: it’s as if these things – obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction – are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.
There is a danger of becoming quite literally a demoralised society, where nobody will tell the truth any more about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries, thinking they can do as they please, and why no adult will intervene to stop them, including, often, their parents. If we are going to get anywhere near solving some of these problems, that has to stop.
Imagine if there was a government that understood, really understood, that encouraging personal and social responsibility must be the cornerstone of everything that it did and that every move it took reinforced that view.
It is the responsibility agenda and it will be the defining thread of any government I lead.

The last (and most eloquent) words this weekend on global warming lunacy belong to the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.

With commentators like Stephens and Chris Uhlmann joining Bolt and Blair at the vanguard of the sceptics’ charge, the Geobels Warning crowd must be getting a tad nervous.

More depressing appeasement news from Pommiestan.

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and ‘pray to Allah’ during a religious education lesson.
Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

Ironic isn’t it, that when the old dart finally comes under sharia law, the first heads to roll will be those of politically correct public servants such as teachers and cops.

Another ratbag off on an incredible journey:

It must be the season for airborne nutters.