Right Pulse

Red State has a nice cheat sheet comparing the two candidates – their qualifications and experience (or lack thereof). Of special note is the prima facie evidence that Obama is corrupt. Firstly Obama started his campaign in the home of a convicted and unrepentant terrorist and bought his home with the assistance of a political fundraiser and convicted felon. After being elected to the Illinois Senate, Obama’s wife received a 160 per cent pay rise from her employer, a state hospital, while afterward Obama organised a $1m government grant for her employer. There is also extensive evidence of Obama using grants to curry favour with people. For instance:

In 2006, Sen. Obama requested an earmark $300,000 to replace and update the projector system at the Adler Planetarium. In 2008, he requested $3,000,000 for replacement of the projector system and other equipment in the Sky Theater. For reference, this is three times the amount he earmarked for the HIV/AIDS Policy and Research Institute at Chicago State University.

While the Adler Planetarium earmarks look normal on the surface, there is a catch. The Chairman and two of the Vice Chairman of the Adler Planetarium Board of Trustees raised a total of almost $250,000 for Sen. Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign. The Adler Planetarium was probably pleasantly surprised when they found that their earmark increased by $2.7 million dollars, in other words, by a factor of ten.

A perceived conflict of interest should be all that is required for a fraud investigation to be launched. With the prima facie evidence against him, it is astounding that he is even in contention for the Presidency.

From Nelson himself on the issue:

“Peter’s made his decision that he did not seek the leadership of the party,” Dr Nelson said in Sydney today.

“As I’ve said before, I’d be very happy if he changes his mind – that’s his business.”

The comment came after The Australian revealed this morning that former health minister Tony Abbott, a key supporter of former prime minister John Howard, had declared Mr Costello was his party’s “”best political asset”, indicating former Howard supporters are prepared to back a Costello leadership bid in the wake of a succession of poor polling results under the leadership of Dr Nelson, the former defence minister.

Yippie I say:

JOURNALISTS at Fairfax newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have voted to strike until Monday.

I told you so.

THE political day together for Brendan Nelson and Peter Costello began yesterday as they strolled across Parliament House to see their new Liberal colleagues being sworn in.

After the Coalition partyroom meeting finished, the Opposition Leader and the man who could be Opposition leader casually wandered together to the Senate chamber.

As they sat in the visitors’ gallery on the floor of the Senate they exchanged jokes, comments, wry smiles, funny faces and moments of meditation as the focus in the Senate switched from the ceremony to the two who control the fate of the Liberal leadership.

A deal has been done. They are both reasonable and mature men. Nelson has been doing the hard yards after the defeat, as planned, while Costello will step in to finish the Government off. Winning is a team effort and Nelson is a team player, which means not handing the leadership over to the small L liberal Turnbull (who would rip the party apart) but instead to Costello. It is very simple, something that the media can’t grasp because they are so used to the bloody and uncivilized battles of the ALP.

Apparently they are after Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop went on Four Corners praising Turnbull. Four Corners is the pin up show for every hard left leaning person in the country. The primary objective of this piece is too cause chaos in opposition ranks and distract attention away from Rudd’s many failures towards some invented story over leadership. By going on the TV programme Abbott and Bishop are like two half-witted fish following power bait onto a hook. And the ALP are dining on fish tonight.

In the USA there is a long running debate about lifting restrictions on oil exploration to bring down oil prices. Here in Australia we have never had this debate because common sense has always prevailed, until now:

That’s 1.6 billion barrels in oil foregone, at a time of increasing concerns of high oil prices and the growth of oil imports into Australia. It also comes with a 20 year ban on any shale oil project in Queensland. This decision comes on the back of a total ban on uranium mining in Qld and Greenpeace, who have hijacked the public good in Qld, want more:

“This proposal should never have been given serious consideration,” Greenpeace climate campaigner John Hepburn said.

“Ms Bligh has made the right decision to prevent any new shale oil projects from taking place in the state, but it is an easy decision – the next step is to announce a stop the expansion of the coal industry in Queensland,” Mr Hepburn said.

So is it now ALP policy to restrict oil exploration along with uranium and coal mining? I wonder what their union members have to say on this decision? Certainly it would provide less employment opportunities for miners and their families. And the final outcome:

Queensland Resources Council Chief Executive Michael Roche, said today.

‘Global exploration managers already rank Queensland as the least attractive jurisdiction in Australia and this decision is only going to reinforce that perception,’

Just imagine the qld economy without a vibrant mining sector.

The Poll Bludger is reporting that internal ALP polling has them trailing the Coalition in the upcoming WA election:

Call it expectations management if you will, but Labor is sending out strong signals that it is in big trouble despite what the betting markets think. Yesterday Alan Carpenter spoke of his party being in a “knife-edge political situation”. Geof Parry of Seven News has today been told internal polling shows Labor headed for defeat on the back of a 7 per cent swing, although two-thirds expect them to win. The ABC was told the party had given up on its most marginal seat of Kingsley (although local resident Bogart writes in comments that he has “received calls and stuff in letter box last night”), and is “concerned” about Riverton and Swan Hills (with respective post-redistribution margins of 2.1 per cent and 3.6 per cent, and a prematurely outgoing sitting member in the latter case), as well as the new seats of Ocean Reef (notional margin of 1.6 per cent) and Jandakot (3.6 per cent). The latter comes as a surprise, as Labor was earlier trumpeting polling showing it ahead 56-44, and should presumably have cause for optimism due to the Fiona Stanley Hospital and Perth to Mandurah rail line.

A possible backlash from calling an early election and following on from the trend in NT? Maybe.

A New Zealand man is taking NZ Labour Party politicians to the NZ High Court to prevent the introduction of an emissions trading scheme:

Former property developer Basil Walker is seeking an injuction against all Labour Party MPs preventing the scheme being passed into law before this year’s election.

Mr Walker said he was acting in the interests of the people of New Zealand.

“I’ve taken the action because someone had to. This Government is trying to force this on the people and someone had to stand up and say that there is no evidence to support it,” he said yesterday.

It’s not clear on what legal basis this court case could be successful, but nevertheless it might give publicity to the cause. Here in Australia, I know of no constitutional power which gives the Commonwealth government the right to regulate air (carbon). It is interesting that in the Australian government advertising for the future emissions trading scheme, carbon is referred to as a pollutant – which given that carbon is one of the building blocks for life on earth, to claim it is a pollutant is nonsense.

The Australian constitution does not give the Commonwealth any direct power to regulate environmental affairs. It can only do so via commercial and/or external laws, or the like, under the Constitution. This means that challenging environmental issues on legal grounds is difficult. A government only need prove that it has signed an international treaty for instance, which happens to deal with an environmental issue, for it to be constitutional.

When it comes to environmental affairs, the Commonwealth has few legal checks and balances in place to regulate and challenge what it does. One may though challenge the Commonwealth’s assertion that carbon is a pollutant, through various truth in advertising regulations. But when it comes to the Constitution, there are few avenues that will likely lead to success.

On the other hand though, there may be a basis for someone taking legal action against an organisation for supposedly inducing climate change. Of course the link between carbon and the changing climate would have to be established in court and this may very well work in skeptics favour.

Legal researcher Dr Joseph Smith has been analysing scientific evidence for the effects of global warming and the legal basis for court action.

The work has been sponsored by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Dr Smith believes scientific evidence linking climate change to pollution is now sound enough to make a civil case against businesses and governments.

If it was shown in court that business had no impact on the climate from their carbon emissions, then they may have a legal basis challenging a Commonwealth carbon tax and any associated regulation that increases liability costs or results in bankruptcy.

Interesting article from The Guardian. Probably the first and likely the last time I link to that newspaper, although this article does highlight the sterile nature of national sporting rivalry:

Patriotism is undeniably part of the Olympics, and I’d never want it to be otherwise. But the nation for which the athlete is competing should never overwhelm the individual. There is a point at which sporting nationalism becomes odious, a point never better captured than by John Stockton when he was in Barcelona with the USA’s basketball ‘dream team’. Asked why the team were staying outside of the athlete’s village, Stockton famously replied: “The Olympic spirit is about beating people, not about living with them.”

The spirit, of course, is about both those things. The majority of United States athletes, indeed all athletes, tend to rebuff the media’s invitations to indulge in international slanging matches. Australia’s Rob Bell, who won bronze in the C1 slalom behind Britain’s David Florence, knocked back a question about what this meant for the rivalry between the two countries by saying simply “What rivalry?” Five minutes later, vaguely repelled by the press pack’s attempts to stir things up, he whispered to his two fellow medallists, “Let’s get the hell out of here”.

Spot the diplomat. I get the feeling, now the British are winning Olympic medals, that this British attitude might change over time. I think the author may have alluded to this very possibility:

In part, the top nations’ obsession with their position in the table can be justified as a means of processing the sheer number of medals they win. But the necessary emphasis on quantity seems to rob the Games of much of what makes them so enjoyable. Britain, like most other countries, has never had to deal with the prospect of winning 20 or more golds, and so it has the luxury of making individual heroes of the winners it does have.

Ah yes only a few countries lack the luxuries that losing affords.

From the London Times on the Olympics. First the empty seats:

The mystery of the half-filled stands at many events at the 2008 Olympic Games has been solved, according to Chinese internet users, who say it is the result of a policy to prevent the gathering of large and possibly uncontrollable crowds.

Then the rent-a-crowds. Anyone who watched the triathlon would have seen them in their droves waving Chinese flags. Do Chinese leaders really think the world is so gullable?

Lower-ranking Chinese officials hastily bused in paid “volunteers” to populate the stands in Beijing, appreciating the embarrassment caused by leaving them half-empty, but public relations remain a matter of indifference to most guardians of public order.

Then there is the cost – over $40 billion spent on the Olympics, for a country where half the people do not have access to clean drinking water.

For all its export might, China is still a poor, largely agrarian country with perhaps 700m farmers and 150m migrant workers. The size of its economy is huge but, measured by wealth per head, it ranks 109th in the world, comparable with Swaziland or Morocco.

It appears the whole Chinese Olympic propaganda message is coming undone, not that NBC or Channel 7 are going to mention the problems of course.