Slattsnews

Julia Gillard’s ALP leadership win has left many Herald Sun readers underwhelmed. Commenter Alf of Echuca reflects a common attitude:

One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you; I’m doing community service this week.’ The florist was pleased and left the shop. When the barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door. Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you; I’m doing community service this week.’ The cop was happy and left the shop. The next morning when the barber went to open up, there was a ‘thank you’ card and a dozen doughnuts waiting for him at his door. Then an MP came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill, the barber again replied, ‘I cannot accept money from you. I’m doing community service this week.’ The MP was very happy and left the shop. The next morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen MPs lined up waiting for a free haircut. And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the politicians who run it.

Comment 124 of 252

This can’t be bottled up forever and it can’t do Obama’s re-election chances much good:

These reports reveal the depth of the below-the-surface coordination between the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya and Jordan. This bloc of regimes and organizations is now becoming the greatest Islamist radical lobby ever to penetrate and infiltrate the White House, Congress, the State Department and the main decision making centers of the US government. All of this is happening at a time when the US government is going through its most strategically dangerous period in modern times because of its need to confront the Iranian Mullahs regime, which is expanding in the Middle East, as well as penetrating the United States, via powerful and influential allies.

Beaut quip from Julie Bishop on Q&A the other night when she described our hapless local MP, Darren Cheeseman, as “an unhappy little Corangamite”.

Phil Mickelson’s shorts game has let him down.

By golly, interesting times ahead for political buffs.

JULIA Gillard is being urged to take on Kevin Rudd in a ballot as early as next week to prevent Labor’s leadership wrangling smashing the party’s chances in the March 24 Queensland election.

Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse for Labor, another catastrophe looms. One can only hope that when the dust settles, Abbott et al have the courage to slash government, abolish nanny state instrumentalities, depoliticise the judiciary, restore rigour and discipline to education systems and demand individual responsibility from
welfare bludgers and their agents.

This government seems determined to go down as the most hopeless mob of dummies to ever hold power. That includes future administrations, because surely no one will ever wish to be compared with Gillard’s geese.

ASYLUM seekers are receiving welcome packs of furnishings worth up to $10,000 and food hampers as they wait for their refugee claims to be processed.
Beds, fridges, mattresses, couches and items such as alarm clock radios, clothes hangers and containers for biscuits are being bought in a “household goods formation package” that contains more than 60 items.
The package includes a television with a minimum screen size of 53cm.
A family of five in community detention is eligible for goods valued at $7100.
Families of more than nine can receive up to $9850 in furnishings, the federal Opposition said after Senate hearings this week.

I’d like to hear from a leftie defending this gross incompetence.

It’s not as if their bumbling and blatant waste of taxpayer funds is restricted to isolated incidents.

Figures tendered to a Senate hearing in October uphold a report in The Australian on Wednesday that set-top boxes delivered under Labor’s Household Assistance Scheme, part of its digital TV rollout, could be costing taxpayers an average of $698 each . . . A basic set-top box sells for $19 at Kmart, and a new digital TV for less than $200. The $698 figure includes the administrative fees, warranty and telephone support.

So how did this reign of constant blunders eventuate? Well, it must be considered that emerging ministerial advisers are from the generation that saw the alphabet removed from the top of the blackboard.

AUSTRALIA is focusing on education reforms that have limited value, such as school funding, teacher pay and principal autonomy, while successful Asian countries are forging further ahead with their singular focus on improving how students learn . . . OECD figures show that Australian students are not only well behind their Asian counterparts in reading, maths and science but on some measures have also gone backwards. The average 15-year-old in Canberra in 2009, for example, was reading at a level six months below the average 15-year-old in 2000, despite increased spending of 48 per cent. The top 10 per cent of 15-year-old maths students in Australia are more than two years behind their peers in Shanghai.

Also, Gillard et al wouldn’t know the truth if it took them to bed and tucked them in:

Don Farrell, the right-wing union powerbroker from South Australia told us Gillard is “campaigning for the leadership” and at this point is the front-runner to succeed Rudd, conceding that the Right did not yet have an alternative.

Just heard someone on radio describe Gillard as “the princess of porkies”. Shot, sir!

Nice one, Sean Penn. Getting all of Prince William’s supporters to hate you. Should do wonders at the box office.

But the left-leaning actor showed he cannot keep his mouth shut over the islands by accusing the UK of ‘insensitivity’ for posting William to the disputed South Atlantic territory and labelling Britain a colonial dinosaur for the second day running.
The double Oscar winner went on the attack again after a meeting with Uruguayan president Jose Mujica in Montevideo – less than 24 hours after he savaged Britain over the Falklands during his visit to Buenos Aires to see the Argentine president Cristina Kirchner.

Embattled General Motors shows some responsibility in the US after a government bail-out.

General Motors Co. is freezing the pay of its 26,000 U.S. salaried employees and will eliminate its traditional pension contribution for those salaried workers who still receive them in moves to reduce financial risks and cut costs.

Quite the opposite in the company’s Australian operations which receive massive injections of taxpayer dollars.

Holden has put a deal to its workers, offering them basic nine per cent pay rise over three years, as well as performance-based bonuses.

Is there no end to what socialists believe big government can do. Like making tuckshop food taste better?

UPDATE:
And here’s the upshot:

As reported in the Carolina Journal Online, the girl’s mother packed her a ” turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice.” However, this meal “did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.”

This encapsulates the incompetence, politicisation and evasiveness of Fair Work Australia’s pathetic non-efforts to get to the heart of the Craig Thomson affair.

When O’Neill was asked why Lee had refused to speak with a senior NSW police officer who was investigating allegations against Thomson, she said she was not aware of any obligation on the part of public servants to alert authorities to suspected criminal wrongdoing.

There you go, toe-rags: March into your local Centrelink office and clean out the petty cash. No one will dob you in.

Where’s all that global warming gone? Well, in Europe it may be buried under 20 feet of snow. Great pix.

You would be forgiven for thinking these stunning vistas lay deep in the heart of Antarctica.
But they are, in fact, what has become of the European landscape as temperatures plummet to nearly -40C – the coldest snap in decades.
Rivers, lakes, beaches and even seas have been iced over by a Siberian freeze, creating some incredible sights, but also more tales of tragedy.

The Greeks have lost the argument.

Most shockingly, a rightwing Greek newspaper depicts Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, in a Nazi uniform above the headline “Memorandum macht frei” – an allusion to the memorandum in which Greece’s foreign creditors demand more austerity measures and to the Auschwitz slogan.

Strange things happening at blog headquarters with all posts from the past week mysteriously disappearing.
I’ve resurrected this one which appeared last week in comments at Bolt’s blog. Some have heard it before, but it’s new to me and had me guffawing at my desk.

A woman walked into a bar and asked the barman for a double entendre. So he gave her one.

The lid’s closed, the hole is dug and the coffin is being lowered.

Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).
Germany has now plunged into raucus discord on the heated topic of climate change
What has set it all off? One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

Be told, Europeans. Hope they realise he has about as much credibility here as Louie the fly.

Mr Rudd told the annual meeting of world leaders that Europe had become sidelined from the debate about the growing economic and political influence of China and Asia, the AFP news agency reports.
“Here in Europe, this continent has largely been missing in this debate, this should no longer be the case,” Mr Rudd said.

Some folk are thoroughly shameless if there’s an opportunity for profitable litigation.

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (CN) – A college student claims he was injured when a fraternity member in a “drunken stupor” decided “that it would be a good idea to shoot bottle rockets out of his anus,” and did so, “but instead of launching, the bottle rocket blew up in the defendant’s rectum, and this startled the plaintiff and caused him to jump back,” and fall off the fraternity’s deck. Louis Helmburg III sued The Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity Inc., of Huntington, West Virginia, and Travis Hughes, a fraternity member, in Cabell County Court.

Mark Steyn’s new book, After America, is the most compelling read I’ve enjoyed in a while. He manages a plausible prophecy of doom by creating an entertaining, thought-provoking and at times, downright funny, illumination of all that’s wrong in what was once the world’s greatest nation.
Under $10 from Kindle, too.
This review wraps it up pretty well.