Down time
I’ll be absent for a week helping out at a school Geography excursion in the NSW/QLD Border ranges.
Argue amongst yourselves until I get back.
Month: May 2010
Gillard doesn’t make a point
Julia says nothing relevant in todays Australian
“If you look at the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister — at Kevin (Rudd) and I — education made us,” Ms Gillard said.
“We are examples of the social mobility that is possible when you get a good-quality education system. These are the things Tony Abbott’s now determined to destroy.”
So I guess what you are saying is that you and Kevin were educated under an already existing good quality education system. What then is your point?
Seriously, Julia’s logic escapes me.Tony is not looking to destroy conditions that existed when “Kevin and I” were educated. He is simply looking for ways to pay back the enormous deficit the ALP is going to leave us.
No one questions the value of education but some might question the cost. It may have been better to use some of the BER funds to pay teachers better salaries. They impact more on kids and their education than do canteens that cost more than ten times the going rate.
A CATHOLIC school has built a commercial-quality tuckshop and toilet block 10 times bigger than the cubby-house canteens public schools have received for the same price.
The Catholic canteen, costing $2500 per square metre, includes a commercial kitchen with stainless-steel benchtops, shelving and a separate coolroom.
The public school version, costing $25,000 a square metre, is not even big enough to fit a full-sized fridge, pie oven or meat slicer.
You can ignore the elephant in the room for only so long, Julia. You’d best be practicing your tortured logic on the BER rort as voters will want answers and you’d best hope that businesses that support the ALP haven’t banked the majority of the rip offs.
Good luck on that one!
Cronkite’s left wing bias confirmed
Writing about the Vietnam War in 2000
Regarded as a watershed, too, was press icon Walter Cronkite’s Feb. 27, 1968, broadcast saying the war was “mired in stalemate” and the “only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as honourable people . . . “.
During TET 68 the NVA and Viet Cong lost 45,000 soldiers, ten times that of the Allies. If that isn’t a victory then what the hell is? The planned ‘uprising of the people’ brought a few thousand people to the notice of the Republic of Vietnam. The nineteen communists who occupied the grounds of the US embassy in Saigon did so for minutes only before being killed. They never got inside the building
All doom and gloom for North Vietnam but Cronkite managed to turn it around and successfully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It was clearly an invasion by the North and the South wanted nothing to do with it. However let’s not ruin a good story with a few facts. The left still screamed ‘Civil War’ and the press agreed.
Cronkite’s shift into the enemy camp – followed in short order by the editors and opinion-makers at Time and Life magazines – made it acceptable and almost fashionable for journalists to oppose the war.
“For the first time in modern history,” wrote Robert Elegant of the Los Angeles Times, “the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen.”
Today in the US, journalists have used the FOI laws to catch up with my earlier assessment
Communist North Vietnam had launched an invasion of South Vietnam in 1960, creating the “National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,” or Viet Cong, as surrogates to wage war.
In the March-April 2010 issue of Military Review, in an article titled, “Lessons Learned from Vietnam,” Dr. William L. Stearman revisits the controversial period of 1968-1969, which was critical for the Vietnamese Communists because, despite Cronkite’s claims, they had actually been militarily defeated by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops during their Tet Offensive. Stearman notes that Cronkite’s hasty and faulty verdict on the war came after “a quick trip” to Vietnam in late February 1968.
The Tet Offensive “was a major North Vietnamese blunder,” notes Uwe Siemon-Netto, an international journalist who covered the war. At Tet, he writes, Hanoi lost 45,000 men and its entire infrastructure in the south. “Yet major United States media outlets portrayed Tet as a defeat for their own side,” he said, referring to Cronkite and others. “Following Tet, [President] Johnson announced that he would not stand for re-election. Though a military victory for the United States and its allies, Tet ultimately marked the beginning of their defeat.”
Stearman concluded, “…thanks to U.S. media, the enemy won the war where it most counted — in the United States.”
The Left wing of the US (and Australia for that matter) were always pushing for a unilateral freeze and disarmament of the US military – never their friends in the USSR.
A couple of teasers;
…Senator Ted Kennedy made an offer to the Soviets to help organise opposition to Reagan’s pro-defence policies
…a young Barack Obama wrote sympathetically about groups involved in the “nuclear freeze” campaign and the dangers of “militarism” but expressed the hope for total disarmament.
My own feeling is that it is a reflection of the views enunciated by Walter Cronkite that show a benign view of the Soviet Union.”
And just in case you believe that the Russians are now benign;
While the Soviet political system may not exist, the Russians have continued many of the old Soviet-style intelligence and influence operations. The book, Comrade J, based on the revelations of a Russian master spy, Sergei Tretyakov, identified former Clinton State Department official and now Brookings Institution head Strobe Talbott as a dupe of Russian intelligence.
Talbott had been a columnist for Time magazine, where he wrote about the need for world government, a cause also embraced by Walter Cronkite.
For those interested in the truth of history it is a good article to read. For those of the Left who have accidentally arrived on the site – go away before you learn something.
Very dangerous trend
Two polls have shown the Labor government is in trouble, while Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s popularity is rising as fast as support for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is plummeting.
If it’s starting to finally dawn on you that Rudd is shallow then wait until you find out how Left Julia is. She has tagged Jim Cairns as one of her heroes.
You remember him? He was the communist who supported the Viet Cong and took up collections to better enable them to kill Diggers. He organized the Moratoriums and went to Moscow every year to better coordinate his attacks on our society.
Oh yes, he was also our Deputy PM under the other “Great” ALP luminary – Gough Whitlam.
The day Julia was selected as Deputy I found and linked to a speech she had delivered to a Girls High School in Melbourne advocating they take to the streets to force change just like Cairns had done. The link was taken down the very next day.
Still, I recall a year or two ago a young man commenting on Communism – “It’s just another political party like the ALP or the Libs, isn’t it? so what chance the young ones heed my cry in the wilderness.
None, but never mind, like a long and hard route march – one day it ends and one day the ALP will be back where they belong.
Well done that girl!
Young Jessica Watson did well and her ability to ‘just do it! augers well for her life. I also like the fact that she knows she isn’t a hero and corrected our seemingly uneducated PM when he tagged her as one, whilst hanging around like a bad smell hoping to pick up some votes.
Heroes save lives at the risk of their own and they are male. Heroines do the same and they are female.
She has done something that takes courage and that by itself is good. The problem we now have is that certain media groups need to recoup their outlays and we will most probably be flogged to death with images of Jessica.
I can flick channels but Jessica won’t be able to do that so I hope she weathers the storm and keeps her ‘sea legs’ planted firmly on the deck.
Please explain
Two men face charges and fines of more than $27,000 after allegedly collecting bones from a dead whale on a Mornington Peninsula beach.
Wildlife officers have recovered about 10 bones believed to have been removed from a dead blue whale that washed up near Cyril’s Beach at Flinders in the Mornington Peninsula National Park.
I understand the law that stops people interfering with human remains but whales?
Why whales?
Can anyone educate me?
Asylum seekers in 4 Star motel
The Courier Mail reports the Rudd Government have placed 79 illegal boat people in a four star motel in Brisbane. The motel is just down the road from me and it’s not my first choice in accommodation as it’s too expensive.
The Palms Motel in suburban Brisbane reportedly has been awarded a $1.2 million government contract for at least six months to accommodate the group.
$50,000 a week is good money if you can get it but I can’t help feeling that this news will go very well overseas. Just catch a boat, throw away all your papers and the idiotic Aussie will put you up in a four star motel.
Of course, they have all been security cleared – haven’t they?
Mamma Mia
The day after their wedding - 2 May, 1939
She Left school by 1931 and helped on the farm milking cows, by hand, morning and night. Other duties including looking after younger siblings (10 kids altogether) and helping her father in the vegetable garden. In the mid 30s, at only 16 years of age, she went to the Gold fields in Kalgoorlie looking for work. Employed as a waitress in a boarding house she met and married Leslie Albert Gillett, a miner, on 1 May 1939.
Dad was a Naval Reserve Rating and in the same year he was married he answered the bugle call leaving Mum at home with first one daughter born in 1940 and then another in 1942 while he served in the Royal Australian Navy. He was drafted to HMAS Sydney and in November 1941 was sent to the Flinders Naval Hospital for treatment from problems associated with his last voyage to Singapore on convoy protection duties. The next day the Sydney sailed without him and sunk with all hands.
The memories of that lucky escape and the tragic loss of all of his mates stayed with him for life as did his medical problems. After years of fighting the Repatriation Department he was granted a TPI pension in 1959. At one stage he was denied a pension because he actually owned a car. I remember it well as I played on it as a boy while it was up on blocks at the farm. A 1927 Chevy from memory, it only worked until it needed repair and as there wasn’t enough money to feed the family, there certainly wasn’t enough for car repairs. It did serve some purpose though as the goats fed on the seats and canvas.
Trips to Hollywood Repat Hospital to try and treat his medical problems and regular fights with the bureacrats formed the basis of Mum and Dad’s struggle for survival and it was here that her strengths came to the fore. Left alone on a farm for months on end with now three children to feed, Mum opened a shop to try and bring money for food into the family. Working long hours under a Tilley lantern on the farm to have stock for the shop impacted on her health and subsequently ours as well.
Fights with Repat took up a lot of her time as she fought for her man and his rights as a veteran. I would imagine that eventually Repat simply folded under her relentless attacks, although they did refuse the full pension for a long thirteen years.
We moved to Albany to be nearer to doctors in 1959 and Mum’s fighting abilities came to fore again as she drove us to finish our education. Both Mum and Dad, although largely uneducated themselves, were both smart enough to recognize that a good education made all the difference. Looking after an increasingly sick husband and the demands of three kids to educate with limited funds brought out the “tight money manager” Mum.
The move to Albany also produced another daughter, much loved and welcomed by us other siblings she brought some light into an otherwise difficult life.
Being a child of the depression Mum had grown up in a virtually cashless society, not because of computers like today, but simply because there was hardly any spare cash around.
When I sold her home about ten years ago all the light bulbs were 20 watts and the gas heater hadn’t been used since Dad had passed away. The year before I went to pay her electricity bill and the guy behind the counter said “Pay for three months – don’t be mean! On her average usage it’ll only cost you $60!”
She is a prolific writer, intelligent but condemned to leave school early during the Depression, she nonetheless could communicate beautifully. She wrote mostly about the Karri forests where she grew up, her early life on the farm, her childhood and her children. Her books, mostly poetry, are in all the libraries and schools in the South West of Western Australia.
She still gathers like minded people about her in her mature years. You would be amazed at the backgrounds of the elderly in the Nursing Home where she now lives.
Afternoon teas at the home produce a bevy of the enlightened and professional. Published and/or successful Artists, Painters, Marine Engineers, Businessmen, successful farmers and Marine Captains to mention a few of her friends I’ve met over the years. As an aside, if you visit an “old Folks” home be careful of expressing your own perceived self importance. The old guy in the wheelchair may have a PHD in your field and the old woman in a Zimmer frame may be an accomplished author.
I spoke to Mum this morning. “Had an angina attack last week but feeling better now – in fact for a woman 90 years and six months old I feel pretty good.”
Well, in that case, so do I.
Rudd loses more ground
One of these is the PM
Polls aren’t good for Kevin Rudd but many are quick to point out that the percentage point loss to Kevin hasn’t gone to the Libs. Fair enough but Abbot hasn’t had a chance to get a word in edge ways nor does he need to as Rudd bounces from bad press to bad news at a such a fast pace that you can almost hear the ALP Caucus muttering mutiny.
If I was a stuck-on ALP supporter I wouldn’t take much comfort from the fact that all of the poll swing hasn’t gone to Abbott – he is simply keeping his powder dry for the real election campaign. I read somewhere this morning that some Libs are planning to hand out cut-up pink bats at the election booths with a suitable reminder of the ALP’s incompetence – good idea!
With the ETS backdown now sitting in the Lib ‘get elected bin of facts’, already overflowing with Rudd’s broken promises, the Henry Review has taken the limelight. Adopting only a few of the 100 odd recommendations indicates to me that it more about being re elected and less about a revolution with a bit of politics of envy thrown in for good measure.
Reading the press over the last couple of days you could be forgiven for thinking that the new tax on mining is intended to pay for the rise in superannuation but it isn’t. The increase in superannuation is to be borne by small business. Small business traditionally passes on these costs, as they should, so either we pay more for the goods they produce or the business pays their workers less or, pays less workers.
I don’t think anyone could mount a good solid case for miners not to be taxed but 40%? So, if they do well they pay a huge tax but if the development fails, or commodity prices plummet then what do the government say then – “Piss of – we only want you when you are making billions so you can give almost half of it to us”. Seems to run contrary to exploration and the gamble that mining sometimes is.
And we can make the first debit entry on Rudd’s scheme – already he owes the economy $9 billion.
AT least $9 billion was wiped off the sharemarket value of the nation’s resources companies yesterday amid investor fears of a severe downturn in earnings sparked by Kevin Rudd’s planned 40 per cent super tax on profits.
And check out this “he said – she said” routine.
Mr Rudd said BHP Billiton was 40 per cent foreign owned and Rio Tinto more than 70 per cent, which meant ”these massively increased profits … built on Australian resources are mostly in fact going overseas”
A spokeswoman for BHP hit back at Mr Rudd, pointing out the company was listed on both the Australian and London stock exchanges, had its headquarters in Melbourne, and was one of the country’s largest employers.
”We have 16,000 Australian employees and 24,500 Australian contractors working for us,” the spokeswoman said. The largest single proportion of the company’s shares was held in Australia. ”We’ve been in this country since the 1880s – we’re not exactly newcomers,” she said.
I wonder what happens to the size of that workforce when the company has to pay another large tax. Will there still be 16,000 workers and 25,000 contractors?
Don’t think so.
It’s no good saying that the mining companies will fight against it. Of course they will, but they will also cut costs to try and minimize their bottom line plummeting.
Oh, as an aside, I did notice one of the Henry Tax Review recommendations was to lower the remuneration to the military. I can’t find any reference to it now but it was online over the weekend. It didn’t eventuate but is still on the books and backs up my claim that ALP types simply don’t like us.
If any reader has the link please point me to it. Our current serving men and women need to know what Henry had in mind.
UPDATE: Reader bh has provided the link to the final report for those interested. I can find little reference to the ADF other than this recommendation:
Defence and disciplined forces payments should be taxable and direct remuneration increased for affected personnel.
Thus my aside above seems to have been sourced on some reporter’s interpretation and could therefore be null and void.
UPDATE2: Miners dump another $7 bn. Total now $16 bn lost from the mining sector subsequent to Rudd’s announcement.