Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1896

But Hu-know-who wasn't there

Ann Althouse:

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner hosted a dinner for the guy holding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Winner in prison… and the media does not get the irony of this at all.

(Via Instapundit.)

Labor forgot to keep some cash for this rainy day

Economist Julie Novak says Julie Gillard is considering a levy to pay for the flood damage only because Labor has recklessly squandered the surplus:

That the Gillard government appears so eager to float speculation about a new tax is a direct product of the rather irrational policy response to the 2008 global financial crisis, which left insufficient carryover funds for an emergency of the proportion posed by the 2011 floods.

As a result of fiscal panics in the form of $900 cheques, the infamous local government community grants program, the tragic home insulation program and over-costed school halls program, the commonwealth government budget is expected to remain in deficit this fiscal year to the tune of some $42 billion combined with a trail of public sector debt that will not be paid off until mid-decade.

The Queensland government, managed by formerly the biggest-spending Treasurer in the state's history and now led by the biggest-spending Premier, is also facing a structural budget deficit and significant public sector debt. Even NSW now puts Queensland to shame in terms of headline fiscal results. The longstanding policy trilogy of low taxes, budget surpluses and no (or low) debt, which would have averted the worst fiscal effects of a natural disaster, was well and truly trashed by the time that floodwaters raged down the Brisbane River.

That governments engaged in a massive spending binge during the latter years of the previous decade, leaving them to now propose little more than a new tax not only on communities already suffering but on other communities that have already generously, and without government edict, donated their own money and time to assist, deserves nothing but the highest level of condemnation.

UPDATE


Jennifer Hewett says Gillard's suggestion of a flood levy is just the latest sign - and test - of a Prime Minister who is floundering:

What she is actually trying to do is prepare the political ground for adding a surcharge on taxpayers to allow her to keep to her mantra of a budget surplus by 2013. Saying that "there may be a levy" is code for trying to assess public reaction before firmly committing.

Her nervous colleagues are desperately hoping she can negotiate this treacherous terrain in the face of immediate attacks from Tony Abbott about more unnecessary new taxes. But their confidence, based on the experience of the past six months, is not high…

Even before the Prime Minister's stilted personal style during the floods crisis attracted so many unflattering comparisons with the Queensland Premier, the mood within the party was one of sullen dismay at Labor's persistent inability to get traction in selling its messages…

"We don't seem to have anyone in the leadership who can clearly sell a coherent story of what we are doing and what we want to do," grumbles one Labor MP....

Voters certainly won't be fooled by the nomenclature of a levy not equalling higher tax… The underlying issue will be whether the Gillard government will use an increase in taxes to avoid making spending cuts it could and should make if it is serious about reform and change....

Gillard understands that the can-do image she brought to the prime ministership when she ousted Kevin Rudd vanished quickly under the weight of an ill-conceived and badly managed election campaign.

But what has been more significant since the election has been her inability to recover any sense of political or policy momentum....

It is not just that the three issues the Prime Minister initially pledged to fix - the mining tax, Australia's policy on climate change and border control - remain major dilemmas… But the way the Gillard government has gone about dealing with this reality demonstrates so many glaring policy contradictions, that there's no sense Canberra knows how to extricate itself with minimum pain.

If Julia Gillard wraps it in a flag, will you buy it? From her speech in Adelaide yesterday:

As we prepare for Australia Day my message to you here and to Australians all, is simple - don't let go. We will hang on to each other in the worst times and in the best. We will hang on to our Aussie mateship and our Aussie fair go in the worst times and in the best.

The Herald Sun passes on what Gillard's office seems keen to make known about the re-emergence of the "real Julia:":

It is believed the highly personalised speech was written entirely by Ms Gillard rather than her usual speechwriter.

MTR today, January 21

On our MTR 1377 show today:

- A government meeting to "save" the Murray from running dry is cancelled because of the floods.

- We talk to the Australian's Hedley Thomas about the mistakes which seem to have caused most of the flooding of Brisbane. Sort out the Wivenhoe dam now or face more flooding as early as next month.

- The three rural independents embarrass themselves.

- Todd Woodbridge joins the Shane Warne club.

- Why is the AFL sending Andrew McLeod to Geneva?

I'm also concerned by government attempts to support the uninsured against flood losses, and by demands that insurance companies cough up flood damage costs for which policy holders didn't insure against. This is rewarding imprudence and discouraging responsibility, as well shifting costs onto those who didn't take the risks themselves. Henry Ergas seems to share my concerns.

Listen here.

(No comments during break.)

Wivenhoe dam's operators feared warming would leave them short

Was Wivenhoe dam left too full to protect Brisbane because its operators trusted the predictions of global warmists that rains would decline?

From the Queensland Water Commission's 2010 South East Queensland Water Strategy:

Research on the impact of climate change on inflows has been undertaken for the catchment areas in the western parts of SEQ, including Wivenhoe and Somerset dams. Case studies involving a number of global climate models and higher resolution regional climate models indicate a range of possible climate change outcomes by 2030. Mean temperatures in the western parts of SEQ could increase by between 0.8°C and 1.2°C, evaporation could increase by 2 per cent to 8 per cent, and annual rainfall could reduce by 5 per cent or increase by 20 per cent.... Even small changes in climate could have significant impacts for water security…

Climate change may have a significant impact on the supply from our dams. The majority of climate modelling done to date indicates that SEQ is likely to become hotter and drier, with reduced inflows to dams and increased demand for water.

If you thought that, you might well think twice before draining more of the drinking water in Wivenhoe to make room for the flood waters that eventually overwhelmed the dam and contributed to the drowning of parts of Brisbane.

(Thanks to reader Paul in Dublin.)

CSIRO: Queensland's drought wasn't "global warming", nor these floods, either

Remember all the warmists who once claimed that global warming caused the Queensland drought, which would go on and on?

Here's a few of them…

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, 2007:

Given the current uncertainty about the likely impact of climate change on rainfall patterns in (South Eastern Queensland) over coming years, it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower than usual rainfalls could eventuate.

Global warming activist Tim Flannery, 2007:

We're already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we're getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that's translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That's because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that's a real worry for the people in the bush.

Flannery again:

Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming....Desalination plants can provide insurance against drought. In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months.

Warmist scientist David Karolym 2003:

The Murray-Darling Basin… covers towns north to Toowoomba, west to Broken Hill and south to Victoria and South Australia… Drought severity in the Murray Darling is increasing with global warming… This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.

Queensland Conservation Council:

Reduced rainfall due to Global warming will lead to decreased overall water availability… In part, the SEQ water crisis has been caused by climate change

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, 2008:

We know the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said by 2050 that Australia should expect around about a 25 per cent reduction in rainfall in the southern part of the Australia… So there is a very, very sound body of evidence that indicates that climate change is and will have an impact on rainfall in the Murray-Darling Basin and in southern Australia.

Well, a report last year from the warmist CSIRO - yes, the CSIRO - concluded that perhaps global warming wasn't to blame after all, and the drought would now be followed by years of rain. It was perhaps easier to say that with the drought already broken, but let's be grateful that the global warming hype is crumbling after so many years of irrationality and opportunism, not to mention government waste:

The recent South-East Queensland (SEQ) drought was likely caused by shifts associated with climate variability over decades rather than climate change, according to the findings of a team of CSIRO researchers led by Dr Wenju Cai.


26 November 2010

"We found that, unlike in South-West Western Australia, climate change plays little part in the SEQ rainfall reduction, but cannot be ruled out," Dr Cai said.

The research team aimed to determine whether the SEQ's recent rainfall reductions were partly due to climate change and, if so, whether dry conditions will occur there more often in the future.

"At this stage, renewal of a rain-generating process with La Niña bringing higher rainfall to SEQ might be expected to last for 10 to 20 years," Dr Cai said.

By then, of course, the expensive desalination plant build for Brisbane in expectation of the permanent drought warmists predicted was about to be mothballed, thanks to the rain alarmists like Flannery swore would dry up.

But note now how the warmists turn on a dime, attributing the heavy rain the CSIRO said would be brought by a La Nina to man-made warming instead. Again, some examples…





Ian Lowe, head of the Australian Conservation Foundation:

The Queensland floods are another reminder of what climate science has been telling us for 25 years, like the recent long-running drought, the 2009 heatwaves and the dreadful Victorian bushfires. As well as a general warming, increasing sea levels and altered rainfall patterns, climate modellers confidently predicted more frequent extreme events: floods, droughts, heatwaves and severe bushfires.

Ellen Sandell, head of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition:

Scientists such as Professor Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at Britain's Met Office, and Dr Kevin Trenberth from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research have pointed to the evidence showing a warmer world is a wetter world, due to increased water vapour and energy in the atmosphere leading to more frequent and intense storms.

In The Age this week, Professor David Karoly from Melbourne University's school of earth sciences was quoted as saying that the wild weather extremes were in keeping with scientists' forecasts of more flooding and more droughts as a result of high temperatures and more evaporation.

What was that about needing to "listen to the scientists"?

I guess that when it comes to listening to a Karoly, it depends on whether you listen to him back when he was predicting droughts, or now when he says he predicted these floods:

Professor Karoly stressed individual events could not be attributed to climate change. However, he said the wild extremes being experienced on the continent were in keeping with scientists' forecasts of more flooding associated with increased heavy rain events and more droughts as a result of high temperatures and more evaporation.

(Thanks to reader Dominic.)

Stealing from little Peter to make big Paul smug

Jack Marx discovers the problem has gone beyond giving away someone else's present by smugly buying a goat for an African farmer instead:

Up and running as both a Facebook page and an online petition is a movement dedicated to pressuring the Government to cancel this year's Australia Day fireworks so as to "direct the allocated funds to victims of the 2011 floods". So now it's come to this; not content with having bullied and emotionally blackmailed each other out of our disposable cash, we are now flogging off the experiences of each other's children in an effort to make ourselves feel – and look – better. What junkies for conspicuous altruism we are! 

The Left turns on Brown

The moderate Left is belatedly gagging on Bob Brown and his Greens, with their mad climate catastrophism and sinister "anti Zionism".

Nick Dyrenfurth, co-editor of All That's Left: What Labor Should Stand For:

According to Brown, coal barons were responsible for the climate change-induced natural disaster and soon-to-materialise "severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in coming decades"…

One day we might discover that climate change indeed played a role, but Brown's ill-advised attempt to extract political capital out of a still-unfolding disaster is signal evidence that the Greens are simply another political party scoring cheap partisan points for electoral gain…

If further evidence were required to prove the Greens are themselves capable of political bastardry, then witness billionaire Wotif founder Graeme Wood's $1.6 million donation to party coffers, the largest single political donation by an individual in Australian history, despite Brown's previous denunciations of such largesse…

Particular attention should be directed towards the NSW Greens. At its December State Delegates Council, the party decided to officially support the anti-Israel boycott, sanctions and divestment movement.

The Greens-controlled Marrickville council, in Sydney's inner west, quickly moved to implement party policy by officially backing the counterproductive and potentially anti-Semitic boycott in its entirety.

Jack the Insider:

LAST year Labor patrician, Graham Richardson described Greens' leader, Bob Brown as the best politician in the country. Richardson's point was that Brown was able to put a kinder, gentler face on the Greens' loony policies and personalities.

If Brown's comments (on coal miners) are anything to go by that modicum of sanity appears to have left him. Indeed, it seems Brown has popped on an over-sized top hat with a 10/6 price tag in the hatband and dived headlong in to the lunatic fringe…

The flood crisis has exposed the Greens as bereft of political leadership, incapable of establishing a sound policy development process; preferring to impose themselves on the political landscape as a roving body of inquisition, quick to mete out blame and punishment according to their own narrow view of the world.

(Thanks to readers John and Bonnie. No comments during break.)

Plenty of flies on this art

Scoff, but I guarantee it would be one of the most attention grabbing exhibits of the show:

Damien Hirst's latest installation, on display at London's Royal Academy of Arts, may be his most skin-crawling to date.

Let's Eat Outdoors Today features a perspex box in which thousands of flies plague an abandoned barbecue. The piece is divided in two with one side featuring maggots lying in trays on a barbecue while they slowly develop in to flies.

In the other side, linked to the first by a small hole, four perspex chairs sit around a table laid for a roast chicken meal complete with beer and wine.

Ominously for the thousands of inhabitants of the sculpture, there is also a large fly-zapping machine that electrocutes them if they make contact…

Let's Eat Outdoors Today is follows on from Hirst's previous work A Thousand Years. This featured maggots hatching into flies that feed on a severed cow's head. The insects are then fried by another fly-killer.

It's sensation rather than explanation, thrill rather than insight, exploitation rather than elevation. But if people watch....

(Thanks to reader Albert.)

A stoned Loughner makes more sense than stoning Palin

Peter Hitchens on a link the Palin-stoning media seems happier to ignore:

There is another aspect of this case that the smug media seem to be avoiding. Look at the strange picture of the alleged killer Jared Loughner. He has just been arrested for a crime for which he could be put to death, if convicted. And he is smiling.

From this, and from many other things we already know about this man, it seems likely that he has lost his reason.

Why and how? The most likely cause is Loughner's daily cannabis-smoking habit. The link between this drug and serious mental illness grows clearer every day. Wickedly, the dope lobby still tries to deny this and seeks to legalise it.

Loughner has been, for much of his short life, a habitual smoker of this so-called 'soft' organic drug. This is not in doubt. Police records, the testimony of U.S. army recruiters who rejected him partly on these grounds, and the accounts of several friends confirm that Loughner is a marijuana victim.

Yes, I know. Not all cannabis-smokers lose their minds. And not all cigarette-smokers get cancer. But in both cases the risk is enough to cause concern.

When police caught him driving a car that stank of marijuana, Loughner was let off, as he would have been here. So much (as usual) for the non-existent 'war against drugs'.

Is there any reason that journalists of the Left would rather blame Sarah Palin than marijuana for Loughner going gun-wild?

(Via Instapundit. No comments during break.)

UPDATE

James Taranto on the origins of "Palinoia":

Professional jealousy and intellectual snobbery, however, only scratch the surface of the left's bizarre attitude toward Palin. They explain the intensity of the disdain, but not the outright hatred--not why some people whose grasp of reality is sufficient to function in society made the insane inference that she was to blame for a madman's attempt to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

This unhinged hatred of Palin comes mostly from women… For many liberal women, Palin threatens their sexual identity, which is bound up with their politics in a way that it is not for any other group (possibly excepting gays, though that is unrelated to today's topic)…

To the extent that "feminism" remains controversial, it is because of the position it takes on abortion: not just that a woman should have the "right to choose," but that this is a matter over which reasonable people cannot disagree--that to favor any limitations on the right to abortion, or even to acknowledge that abortion is morally problematic, is to deny the basic dignity of women.

To a woman who has internalized this point of view, Sarah Palin's opposition to abortion rights is a personal affront, and a deep one. It doesn't help that Palin lives by her beliefs. To the contrary, it intensifies the offense…

What about male Palin-hatred? It seems to us that it is of decidedly secondary importance. Liberal men put down Palin as a cheap way to score points with the women in their lives, or they use her as an outlet for more-general misogynistic impulses that would otherwise be socially unacceptable to express.

Liberal women are the active, driving force behind hatred of Sarah Palin, while liberal men's behavior is passive and manipulative. In this respect, feminism has succeeded in reversing the traditional sexual stereotypes. If this is the result, you have to wonder why anyone would have bothered.

From the kind of people who'd say Palin incited murder

Certain tell-tale signs hint that Melbourne is a Greens heartland, and that this heartland is the home of the closet totalitarian.

(Thanks to reader Alan.)