Nils-Axel Morner, one of the world’s greatest authorities on sea levels, writes in dismay to Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, who last week held a meeting of his Cabinet underwater to hype the risks he says his country faces from global warming.
Mr. President,
You have recently held an undersea Cabinet meeting to raise awareness of the idea that global sea level is rising and hence threatens to drown the Maldives. This proposition is not founded in observational facts and true scientific judgments…
Your people ought not to have to suffer a constant claim that there is no future for them on their own islands. This terrible message is deeply inappropriate, since it is founded not upon reality but upon an imported concept, which lacks scientific justification and is thus untenable. There is simply no rational basis for it.
Let me summarize a few facts.
(1) In the last 2000 years, sea level has oscillated with 5 peaks reaching 0.6 to 1.2 m above the present sea level.
(3) In the 1970s, sea level fell by about 20 cm to its present level
(4) Sea level has remained stable for the last 30 years, implying that there are no traces of any alarming on-going sea level rise.
(5) Therefore, we are able to free the Maldives (and the rest of low-lying coasts and island around the globe) from the condemnation of becoming flooded in the near future.
When I was president for the INQUA commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, we spent much effort on the question of present-to-future sea level changes. After intensive field studies, deliberation within the commission and discussions at five international meetings, we agreed on a “best estimate” for possible sea level changes by the year 2100. Our figure was +10 cm ±10 cm. This figure was later revised at +5 cm ±15cm (as given in Fig. 1). Such changes would imply small to negligible effects.
Such a small rise would pose no threat for the Maldives. Rather, it would be a natural return to the conditions existing from 1790 to 1970; i.e. to the position before the sea level fall in the 1970s.
So, Mr. President, when you ignore available observational facts, refuse a normal democratic dialogue, and continue to menace your people with the imaginary threat of a disastrous flooding already in progress, I think you are doing a serious mistake.
Andrew Bolt
Of course the facts from a real expert will not stop the stunts or the clamour for inefficient and costly "green" energy.
You've probably heard it said so many times that you think it's fact- the greenies regulalry tell us that Australia is the most polluting or the second most polluting nation in the world in terms of CO2 per capita.
Well here's the real state of CO2 production per head- and it makes you wonder why Greenpeace is not protesting more in Qatar.
LIST OF COUNTRIES RANKED BY 2006 TOTAL CO2 EMISSIONS FROM FOSSIL-FUEL DATA : Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J. Andres. 2008. Global, Regional, and National CO2 Emissions.
In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/overview.html
(UNIT : Tons of CO2 per capita)
COUNTRY TONS OF CO2 PER CAPITA Qatar 49.26 Kuwait 34.22 United-Arab-Emirates 32.94 Bahrain 28.62 Luxembourg 23.89 USA 18.95 Australia 17.93 Canada 16.65 Oman 16.03 Saudi-Arabia 16.03 Estonia 13.02 Finland 12.62 Kazakhstan 12.62 Singapore 12.51 Taiwan 11.93 Czech-Republic 11.16 Russia 10.94 Ireland 10.32 Netherlands 10.28 Japan 10.24 Belgium 10.17 Greenland 9.99 Israel 9.99 Denmark 9.91 South-Korea 9.8 Germany 9.77 Nor-ssb 9.59 United-Kingdom 9.04 South-Africa 8.74 Austria 8.67 Greece 8.63 Norway 8.6 Libya 8.27 Spain 7.97 Italy 7.72 New-Zealand 7.28 Iceland 7.24 Bosnia 7.13 Belarus 7.06 Malaysia 7.02 Slovakia 6.91 Ukraine 6.8 Iran 6.62 Venezuela 6.33 Bulgaria 6.22 France 6.18 Hungary 5.7 Portugal 5.67 Sweden 5.59 Switzerland 5.56 Croatia 5.3 Macedonia 5.3 China 4.64 Romania 4.53 Argentina 4.42 Uzbekistan 4.28 Lithuania 4.17 Thailand 4.17 Azerbaijan 4.13 Mexico 4.13 Lebanon 3.76 Jordan 3.69 Turkey 3.69 Chile 3.66 Mongolia 3.66 Syria 3.66 North-Korea 3.58 Latvia 3.25 Iraq 3.22 Botswana 2.78 Belize 2.67 Cuba 2.63 Egypt 2.26 Tunisia 2.26 Moldova 2.19 Uruguay 2.04 Brazil 1.86 Indonesia 1.5 Morocco 1.5 Namibia 1.39 Peru 1.39 Armenia 1.35 Columbia 1.35 India 1.35 Georgia 1.24 Vietnam 1.24 Bolivia 1.17 Kyrgyzstan 1.06 Yemen 1.02 Honduras 0.98 Guatemala 0.91 Pakistan 0.91 Angola 0.87 Swaziland 0.87 Western-Sahara 0.87 Zimbabwe 0.84 Palestine 0.76 Polen 0.76 Phillippines 0.76 Nigeria 0.69 Paraguay 0.65 Bhutan 0.58 Sri-Lanka 0.58 Congo 0.4 Ghana 0.4 Senegal 0.4 Benin 0.36 Kenya 0.32 Bangladesh 0.29 Cambodia 0.29 Sudan 0.29 Laos 0.25 Liberia 0.21 Zambia 0.21 Cameroon 0.18 Madagascar 0.14 Tanganyika 0.14 Tanzania 0.14 Eritrea 0.1 Mozambique 0.1 Nepal 0.1 Burkina-Faso 0.07 Ethiopia 0.07 Faroe-Islands 0.07 Rwanda 0.07 Burundi 0.03 Chad 0.03 Mali 0.03 (DATA : Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J. Andres. 2008. Global, Regional, and National CO2 Emissions. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/overview.html)
You know there are severe problems in the Opposition when the leader of the Liberal Party really wanted to be a Labor Party spokesman just a few years ago. Whose values is he promoting? Does he have any values other than the ambition to rule over us? Which reminds me, wasn't his predecessor once a member of the ALP?
Unless the Libs get their act together real soon, we will have at least a decade of unopposed Labor Party government.
From Andrew Bolt:
MALCOLM Turnbull wanted to become Kim Beazley’s shadow finance minister during the second term of the Howard government.
The Sunday Mail has confirmed Mr Turnbull approached at least six senior ALP figures, including former prime minister Bob Hawke, actively seeking their endorsement to join the ALP at the time of the republic referendum.
Speaking for the first time on the issue, Mr Hawke said Mr Turnbull approached him on November 6, 1999, at Sydney’s Marriott Hotel following the referendum’s defeat…
He said Mr Turnbull told him: “Bob, the only thing I can do now is join the Labor Party."…
Former senior ALP staffer David Britton, who founded the Labor lobbying firm Hawker Britton, said Mr Turnbull told him at the time of the referendum he was “deeply pissed off with Howard” and that he had a “very different social agenda” to the then prime minister.
Mr Turnbull told Mr Britton: “Don’t you think Kim Beazley would like somebody like me as his finance spokesman?”
The Sunday Mail has also confirmed that NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca was also approached by Mr Turnbull around the same time about securing an ALP NSW Senate seat.... Senior Labor figures said Mr Turnbull raised his interest in becoming a Labor MP with then ACTU secretary Bill Kelty as well.
Australian voters have a choice between a Labor leader in change of a united Labor party, or a Labor leader in charge of a naturally divided Liberal one. Which do you think they might think the safer bet?
And what does it say about the Liberals that their confusion over values and social policy should be so profound that even a man with Labor’s values could be chosen to lead it?
The result? The Liberals agree with Labor on the very policy that they should fight hardest - and the one that offered them their best chance of victory. An emissions trading scheme is a giant job-killing new tax that even Labor admits could not lower the world’s temperature by a flicker. Why on earth agree to something so stupid?
It amazes me that the ABC and other media organisations keep up the myth of generalised terrorism. In the article below, and in a 5 minute AM item broadcast this morning there was not one mention of Islam as the ideology underpinning terrorism and extremism.
We are not worried about radical Buddhists, extremist Anglicans or youthists. It is not extreme capitalist Chinese immigrants or radical suburbanist Korean imports we have to fear.
It is one sub-group of one religion, namely Islam.
That sub-group of that one religious group is spitting in our face, disrespecting our culture and plotting to destroy our nation.
And we are afraid to name them.
Not only does refusing to name Islam as the ideology that fosters and breeds extremism allow these people to hide behind a facade of religious respectability, it also deprives the ethnic communities of the tools they need to fight the extremists.
The Federal Government is considering ways to counter radicalism among young people in Australia.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland is examining community mentoring programs in Victoria and in prisons to find the best ways to stop violent extremism.
He told ABC Radio's AM program the aim is to stop young people joining terrorist organisations.
"These programs involve introducing a role model into their lives, working out what pressures they're confronting, working out what needs to be done to ensure they have every opportunity to succeed, preventing youths becoming vulnerable to extremist teachings, giving them a sense of belonging," he said.
Mr McClelland also says the Federal Government plans to unveil changes to the system for banning terrorist organisations in the coming weeks.
Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab is alleged to have been behind the foiled plot to target a Sydney army base.
"[We will be] specifically identifying the informal criteria that are applied by the security agencies," he said.
"There will also be ideas about a closer engagement of the relevant joint committee on intelligence and security, looking at the role it has in over-viewing these recommendations."
Amil Imani has written an impassioned piece about the way in which Obama is betraying Imani's fellow Iranians:
President Obama said, ‘The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations.’ But, Mr. President, the Iranian nation does not wish to be associated with this occupying regime, whatsoever. In fact, they want the Islamic Republic to be thrown into the dustbin of history as quickly as possible. Mr. President, today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the greatest threats to the stability of the civilized world and humanity at large. It continues to impose its horrendous ideology on the Iranian population.
It also looks like my people are going to be betrayed once again by a badly misguided American president. Jimmy Carter helped give birth to the virulent Shiite Islamism by forbidding the Shah of Iran to crush the bloodthirsty Ayatollah Khomeini and his band of rabid Islamists. Now, President Obama intends to confer legitimacy on the illegitimate child, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
... It is worse than appeasement to negotiate a ‘deal’ with the Islamists in Iran because any deal struck with these mullahs is only another ruse for them to further their plans... Misguided advocates of negotiation with the mullahs, beware. The mullahs are on an Allah-mandated mission. They are intoxicated with Petrodollars and aim to settle for nothing less than complete domination of the world under the Islamic Ummah. It is precisely for this reason that they consider America and the West as ‘Ofooli,’ setting-dying system, while they believe their Islamism as ‘Tolooi,’ rising-living order. They are in no mood for negotiating for anything less than the total surrender of democracy, the very anathema to Islamism.
Because of the way in which Iran is under-reported in the western media, few appreciate the terror under which the civilised Iranians, natural friends to the west, are being subjugated by the regime which runs their country. As Imani says, those Iranians have been systematically betrayed by ignorant, stupid, greedy and short-sighted American and western governments, with the result that even now the Iranian regime is playing them for suckers while moving its pieces on the geopolitical chessboard into the nuclear checkmate position. And now Obama has gone grovelling to that regime and even validated it, he has not only further weakened the free world against it but has also taken the ground from under the feet of the very people who so urgently need the world’s support to get rid of that regime.
Those Iranians are indeed the free world’s best hope of averting the coming cataclysm. Obama’s appeasement strategy is as suicidally stupid as it is unprincipled.
More from last week’s International Conference on Climate Change in New York (which I wrote about here)-- the one that was supposed to have ben attended by just a handful of cranks who don’t agree that it’s environmental apocalypse now:
Willie Soon, a Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist with scores of peer-reviewed papers and books to his credit, said he is ‘embarrassed and puzzled’ by the shallow science in papers that undergird the proposition that the Earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming. Soon told the second International Conference on Climate Change here, ‘We have a system (of peer reviewing scientific literature) that is truly, truly appalling.’
... [John]Sununu and Soon both said global warming alarmists, particularly the politicians and the few scientists who wrote the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, have captured the scientific paper process, and in Sununu's words, have been successful in ‘taking control of who gets funding, who gets published, who gets acclaimed, and who gets demonized.’
And in a keynote address Lord Monckton delivered this impassioned if despairing plea for reason:
Last summer, just as the President of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest taxpayer-funded pressure-group, was telling us, ‘Global warming is happening now,’ global temperatures had already been plunging for nearly seven years, at a rate equivalent to almost 4 Fahrenheit degrees per century. Has your favourite news medium reported that? Probably not. Maybe that’s why the President of the Royal Society didn’t know. He doesn’t get his science from the learned journals. He gets it from the media.
Just as Tony Bliar [sic] was announcing on his blog that ‘global warming is getting worse,’ just as Al Gore was testifying before the Senate--during an ice-storm--that we face a ‘climate crisis,’ global temperatures plummeted still more. They have been plummeting at a rate equivalent to 11 Fahrenheit degrees per century throughout the four years since Gore launched his mawkish, sci-fi comedy horror B-movie. At this rate, by mid-century we shall roasting in a new Ice Age.
... Thirty years ago, the soi-disant ‘Greens’ agitated for DDT to be banned. They killed 40 million people of malaria, most of them children. Eventually, after a third of a century, the WHO at last caved in to humanitarian pressure from me and others and reversed the ban. Dr. Arata Kochi, announcing the end of that murderous ban, said, ‘Usually in this field politics comes first and science second. Now we must take a stand on the science and the data.’
...Now the very same soi-disant ‘Greens’ are killing millions by starvation in a dozen of the world’s poorest regions. Their biofuel scam, a nasty by-product of their shoddy, senseless, failed, falsified, fraudulent ‘global warming’ bugaboo, has turned millions of acres of agricultural land from growing food for humans to growing fuel for automobiles. If we let them, they will carelessly kill tens of millions more by pursuing Osamabamarama’s stated ambition of shutting down nine-tenths of the economies of the West and flinging us back to the Stone Age without even the right to light fires in our caves. The prosperity of the West is not only our sustenance. It is also the very lifeblood of the struggling nations of the Third World. If our economies fail, we are inconvenienced, but they die.
Indeed; man-made global warming -- the indulgence of an intelligentsia for whom conscience is a fashion accessory – is not just an intellectual fraud but has consequences, already fatal, for the wretched of the earth.
Another thoughtful piece from Melanie Phillips regarding the move by some Isalmic countries to restrict freedom of speech in the name of "human rights."
Night closes in Thursday, 12th March 2009
I have written about this looming threat before, but the UN proposal to criminalise ‘defamation of religion’ is an unconscionable threat to freedom of speech. As UN Watch reports, a resolution circulated yesterday by Islamic states would define any questioning of Islamic dogma as a human rights violation, intimidate dissenting voices, and encourage the forced imposition of Sharia law:
While non-binding, the resolution constitutes a dangerous threat to free speech everywhere. It would ban any perceived offense to Islamic sensitivities as a ‘serious affront to human dignity’ and a violation of religious freedom, and would pressure U.N. member states -- at the ‘local, national, regional and international levels’ -- to erode free speech guarantees in their ‘legal and constitutional systems.’ It’s an Orwellian text that distorts the meaning of human rights, free speech, and religious freedom, and marks a giant step backwards for liberty and democracy worldwide.
The first to suffer will be moderate Muslims in the countries that are behind this resolution, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, who seek international legitimacy for state-sanctioned blasphemy laws that stifle religious freedom and outlaw conversions from Islam to other faiths. Next to suffer from this U.N.-sanctioned McCarthyism will be writers and journalists in the democratic West, with the resolution targeting the media for the ‘deliberate stereotyping of religions, their adherents and sacred persons.’
Ultimately, it is the very notion of individual human rights at stake, because the sponsors of this resolution seek not to protect individuals from harm, but rather to shield a specific set of beliefs from any question, debate, or critical inquiry.
Since the Islamic states dominate the UN Human Rights Council there is little chance that this resolution will not pass. Another demonstration of the fact that the UN, which to the progressive western mind is the custodian of human rights, is actually their nemesis.
Why would the British government be negotiating with one of the world's nastiest terrorist organisations?
Here is a snippet from Melanie Phillips' latest article
The British government is now talking to Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a terrorist military force funded, trained by and answerable to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah leads an Iranian jihadi army that exports terror round the world. Until September 11, 2001, Hezbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist organization. It is known or suspected to have been involved in the suicide truck bombings of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy annexe in Beirut in 1984 and the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome. And it is said by various intelligence agencies to have kidnapped over 30 Westerners between 1982 and 1992.
Now the Jerusalem Post reports:
Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, told the British Parliament on Wednesday that his government would hold discussions with Hizbullah’s political wing. Rammell said the decision was made ‘in the light of more positive developments in Lebanon, and the formation of the national unity government in which Hizbullah is participating. Our over-riding objective is to press Hizbullah to play a more constructive role and move away from violence,’ he said.
The result of this lethally misguided initiative is to abandon the Lebanese, undermine democrats and relatively moderate leaders throughout the Middle East, embolden not just Hezbollah but Hamas and the Taleban and all terrorist networks which can smell the weakness of the west, imperil Israel, strengthen Iran and increase the threat to the free world.
It is hard to believe politicians can be quite so stupid and craven and to have learned absolutely nothing from history. Alas, on both sides of the Atlantic the stupid and craven tendency now rules.
The United Nations is to hold a World Conference Against Racism. But in typical UN style, this conference against meanness is being run by some of the meanest:
A key Israeli objection is that the UN committee managing the conference is chaired by Libya, with vice-chairs from Iran, Pakistan, Cuba, Russia, Indonesia and Turkey.
Melanie Phillips has written a brilliant article exposing the media lies about the current war in Gaza. It is clear that Israel's military restraint in the face of tremendous provocation is being ignored by the world's media.
The worst thing is the moral inversion, in which the murderous victimisation of innocent Israelis is ignored while their murderers are described as ‘civilians’ when they are finally killed by the Israelis -- who are demonstrably taking care to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible. Tragically, civilians always die in wars; and unfortunately there will undoubtedly be more civilian casualties in Gaza – along with deaths among Israeli troops -- as the war goes on. But the frenzied misrepresentations, double standards and moral inversion fuelling a hysteria in the west which in turn can only incite more genocidal violence are simply depraved.
Discriminating against people because of their gender is now to be encouraged by law in mad Victoria:
DISCRIMINATION against dominant white males will soon be encouraged in a bid to boost the status of women, the disabled and cultural and religious minorities.
Such positive discrimination—treating people differently in order to obtain equality for marginalised groups - is set to be legalised under planned changes to the Equal Opportunity Act foreshadowed last week by state Attorney-General Rob Hulls…
Equal Opportunity Commission CEO Dr Helen Szoke said males ... “will have their position changed because they will be competing in a different way with these people who have been traditionally marginalised… Let’s open it up so everyone can have a fair go.”
Szoke’s demand for a “fair go” for “everyone” is a fraud. She actually wants some people not to get a fair go at all, if they are male. These people are not to be judged on their talents alone.
It is so typical of the Left to trample over individuals to achieve nirvana for the theoretical collective. Explain, please, Ms Szoke, how fighting against discrimination in theory justifies imposing discrimination in practice? In the end, some people wind up still getting hurt - and unfairly.
A Texas Procession for Life by Jennifer Svetlik 11-26-2008
In his 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II wrote, “Where life is involved, the service of charity must be profoundly consistent. It cannot tolerate bias and discrimination, for human life is sacred and inviolable at every stage and in every situation; it is an indivisible good.”
This week, 700 Catholics demonstrated their commitment to promoting the sacredness of all human life in a Pilgrimage of Life in Huntsville, Texas. The pilgrimage included Mass and a mile-long rosary procession. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and more than 10 other clergy led the procession, which began at an abortion referral center, marched through Sam Houston State University, and ended at Texas’ correctional facility, where the state carries out executions.
As a Catholic from Houston who is repentant for the thousands of abortions committed yearly in the state as well as Texas’ execution of more people than anywhere else in the U.S. (nearly 20 this year), I am proud of their public witness.
An article from the Catholic News Service quotes Cardinal DiNardo during the pilgrimage saying:
“We are not here today to demonstrate. We are here to pray. We are not here to make slogans. We are here to fall to our knees in intercession. We are not here today to show off. We are here today in a poverty of spirit.”
Addressing the death penalty as an important life issue, DiNardo shared with the crowd:
“For the last 25 or 30 years the bishops of Texas have quietly tried to persuade, argue and explain to the people of this state and beyond that in fact what is exercised as the death penalty is frequently unjust.”
I pray that Catholics around the nation continue to pray and advocate for greater respect for the dignity of all human life, from womb to tomb and all stages between.
Jennifer Svetlik is an organizing assistant for Sojourners.
UK blogger Peter Glover expresses well the fears of many in the U.S. about the future actions of the new President.
Well it seems the predicted (by me) Nightmare on Pennslyvania Avenue is already beginning to take shape. That is if this weekends' indications by John Podesta, Obama Kruger's 'transition chief', are anything to go by. Podesta has indicated that an Obama administration proposes to unpick some of George Bush's executive orders (that is acts not needign Congress backing) from Day 1. And here's what it will mean in practice: an onslaught on unborn children by increasing abortion on demand rights and providing federal funding for highly controversial stem cell research.
On top of this, he may allow illegal immigration become a festering sore and, idiocy of idiocy, unpicking moves to reduce US dependence on foreign energy reserverves.
Today George Bush meets Barack Obama to aid a 'smooth transition'. That always should be in the best interests of the country and its people of course. 'Smooth transition' or not, the best interests of the US are not about to be served by Barack Obama. And for those Secular Liberal Humanists who hated the notion of a practising Christian taking office, no worries, there will not be one in residence for the next four years.
There have been two elections recently, in case you missed the other one. Yes, the US also had an election, as well as the far more important NZ one
Anyway this bit of trivia comes from the SMH's Column 8, the source of all really important information.
"The United States and New Zealand have had elections resulting in changing government less than a week apart," writes Neil Jackson, of Barden Ridge. "What is even more remarkable is that the successful challengers, Barack Obama and John Key, were born less than a week apart. Obama was born on August 4, 1961, while Key was born on August 9, 1961."
Hey! They are both three and a half years younger than me and I haven't got to be PM or Prez yet- time to start buying votes for the next election
Next important question- where on earth is Barden Ridge?
When the NSW Government is rapidly going down the tubes, when hospitals and schools are falling apart, the most important thing on the mind of the Premier's Department would be lime coloured paper.
From the SMH:
NSW faces a $1 billion budget deficit but the Rees Government's best and brightest have put their faith in a lime-led recovery.
In a bureaucratic edict that would impress even Sir Humphrey Appleby, of Yes Minister fame, staffers have been ordered to use a new colour-coded system to order information for the Premier.
A startling email from Michael Petrie, chief of staff to the new head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC), John Lee, instructs staff to use lime green paper when requesting a briefing for Mr Rees.
"The lime will facilitate the Premier requesting a briefing from DPC on the issue specified on the lime," Mr Petrie wrote.
"Limes will then be given to the executive officer, DG's office and allocated to the relevant division by the DG's chief of staff.
"DPC officers are to respond to the requests in limes as a priority … When pinks are prepared in response to limes, the lime must be clipped to the front of the pink. The pink, with lime, should then be submitted as usual to the relevant DDG [deputy director-general].
It always amazes me how Americans get carried away with their election campaigns. What is worrying is that they actually seem to believe the advertising and the rhetoric.
In Australia we recognise that our politicians are human, that most of the time they are play-acting and that they will only ever achieve about a tenth of what they promise- and if they over-achieve we can always throw them out and put the other lot in to redress the balance. While we occasionally might have a beer to celebrate a political victory, I don't think we would ever take politics seriously enough to have mass hysteria or weeping on election night.
I think the U.S. needs to understand that it is not the Kingdom of God and that Obama is not the Messiah (or the anti-Christ if you are a Republican). George Bush is still in the White House until January and then Obama will have to start wrestling with problems that are greater then mere rhetoric.
After months of reading political blogs from the U.S. I'm still not clear about what his policies are except that he is in favour of Change, whatever that means. From the news reports I've seen most people voted for him because he was black/ young/ charismatic/ not George Bush/ attractive. Hell of a way to run a system of government.
Although Americans think they have the world's best democracy, I think that the system we inherited from Britain actually produces better government. We have a Prime Minister elected by the Parliament which means that every voter is really voting for a local representative, usually a member of a political party. The result is that we have to vote on issues more than on personality or appearance.
We also have a non-political public service. All of our officials are supposedly loyal to the crown not to a political patronage. The public servants traditionally gave independent and honest advice- although the Howard Government really destroyed that system by rewarding those who uncritically supported their policies. I hope that we can return to a system where the public service is again independent and free from political interference.
What is great about the election in the United States is this: the U.S. and the western democracies, together with a handful of countries such as India, have this robust system where the mass of people get to remove governments which fail to meet their expectations. It is remarkable when you think about it that those who hold enormous power willingly relinquish it- without bloodshed, without tantrums, without threats- handing the reins of power to those who have a very different agenda to their own.
I am so glad that Education Minister Julia Gillard is leading a charge to improve spelling standards in schools. No doubt she touched on that matter in this speech yesterday:
Opening address to the Australian Primary Principles
Alas, I can’t tell whether she actually did or not because the speech has since been removed from her website, for some reason that hasn’t been spelled out.
Just when you start to think that bureaucrats in this country couldn't get any sillier, a report on the continuing dry weather suggests we avoid one "d" word and substitute another to make farmers feel better about themselves-- yes that is our Government's latest brilliant innovation to build up agricultural production in this country.
From the ABC:
Federal Government-selected experts want people to start using the word "dryness" to describe Australia's worst drought in a century.
The word "drought" makes farmers feel bad, says the Government's hand-picked Drought Policy Review Expert Social Panel.
The politically-correct push also aims to make farmers accept that drier weather is here to stay, and is not a temporary crisis, the panel's newly released report said.
"Words like drought ... have negative connotations for farm families," the report said."There needs to be a new national approach to living with dryness, as we prefer to call it, rather than dealing with drought."
This interesting commentary on the unprecedented war of hate against Sarah Palin from "The Christian Post":
Palin: My Faith, God Have Been Mocked By Jennifer Riley Christian Post Reporter
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the political darling of many Christian conservative voters, said her faith and God have been mocked during the presidential campaign – and there isn’t much she can do about it.
“Faith and God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart,” said Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network.
"People would misconstrue and spin anything that has to do with my faith or anybody else's and turn it into something to be mocked. That's very sad," she said.
Just a few weeks after her nomination, a cartoon on The Washington Post Web site poked fun at Palin and her ties to Pentecostalism.
Palin is illustrated talking on the phone in an incomprehensible language, or in tongue – as the cartoonist meant it to be understood.
The next slide shows “God” in heaven holding a phone saying he can’t understand the gibberish spouted by “some dam’ right wing politician.”
In the wake of such attacks on Palin’s faith, the Republican vice presidential nominee realized there isn’t anything she can do about it. “So you know, I won’t … whine or complain about it,” she said.
But she quickly added that no one can convince her that her faith is not good for her and her family.
Prior to being on the Republican ticket, Palin was little known outside of the remote state of Alaska. The mother of five, including an infant with Down syndrome, has since taken the nation by storm becoming the most talked about vice presidential candidate in history.
The political left denigrate her as inexperienced, unqualified, and too divisive, while the right, for the most part but with exceptions, has seen her as a champion of values issues.
She has been outspoken on her opposition to abortion and gay marriage, and has led the attack on what she calls Obama’s extreme pro-choice views.
“It’s so, so far left that it’s way out of the mainstream,” she said. “I think he’s in some sense succeeded in trying to package up, and pretty-up some of his policies to make them look mainstream even on abortion.”
Showing her support for a federal marriage amendment, Palin said, "I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage."
Her position on marriage is a break with Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, who has said he believes states should be left to define what marriage is.
Despite strong support from key constituents of the Republican Party, Palin has not been able to save the GOP ticket against its Democratic rival.
The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking shows that Obama is leading McCain by 11 percentage points, 52 percent to 41 percent.
In response, the unflappable Palin said, "When they see numbers that show us a bit down in the polls, for John McCain and for me it's invigorating," she says. "It's inspiriting. It makes us work even harder."
Also responding to an earlier Washington Post story about angry supporters at a Palin rally in Florida, the Alaska governor said she would call them out on threatening comments against her opponent.
"What we have heard through some mainstream media is that folks have hollered out some atrocious and unacceptable things like 'kill him,'" Palin said. "If I ever were to hear that standing up there at the podium with the mike, I would call them out on that, and I would tell these people, no, that's unacceptable."
Currently, both campaigns are hitting the road and throwing successive rallies in the final stretch of election season with voting day two weeks away.
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