‘Herod to investigate deaths of first-born

A report on the flood disaster and climate change will be undertaken by an expert on the federal government’s multi-party committee which is investigating ways to price carbon. Professor Will Steffen, a member of the climate change committee set up by the Gillard government in September last year, told AAP he was working on a report covering the floods.

This is the man who already believes that “climate change” made the floods worse. Just the man to do a nice, impartial report.’                       source

Just what Oswald Bastable needs to survive the drivers down his way. A 1942 Diamond T

Morepork owls.

‘The UN has expressed concern over shortfalls in the rights of New Zealand children, including “staggering” infant and child mortality rates.’      source

besides which…who gives a flying fuck what the U.N. thinks?
Update: MacDoctor has just put up fine, thorough and carefully reasoned post on this.

‘Two mothers and their toddler children banned from council-funded playgroup –
for being BRITISH
Two mothers who were kicked out of a council-funded playgroup spoke of their humiliation today after being told the group was for immigrant families only. Emma Knightley, 25, and Kimberley Wildman, 27, turned up at the ‘Making Links’ playgroup with their children Imogen, 21 months, and Olivia, 18 months. But they were stunned when organisers at the centre in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, ordered them to leave after demanding to know ‘what country are you from?’ The best friends were told that only foreign mothers and their children are welcome at the council-funded playgroup – which they have accused of discrimination…’    source

You decide. These are the finalists for ‘Australian of the year 2011’
– Professor Larissa Behrendt, indigenous rights lawyer (NSW)
– Simon McKeon, businessman and former director of World Vision (Victoria)
– Associate professor Noel Hayman, indigenous doctor (Queensland)
– Malcolm McCusker QC, philanthropic barrister (WA)
– Professor Tanya Monro, physicist (SA)
– Deborah De Williams, breast cancer campaigner (Tas)
– Professor Ian Chubb, vice-chancellor of the Australian National University (ACT)
– Professor Michael Christie, indigenous language expert (NT)

One businessmen, there because of the World Vision connection. The only scientist is–of course–female. No soldiers. Not one of the vast numbers of people who go beyond what’s required of them to keep essential services running. Not one ordinary Aussie, doing great things, in other words. And God knows there are plenty to choose from.  Like this bloke, for example.

‘Unelected Maori to get votes on council

Unelected members of the Auckland Council’s Maori advisory board will be able to vote on council committees.
The Aucklander newspaper reported that as many as 20 of the council’s committees, panels and forums will have two Maori Statutory Board members at meetings.
They will effectively act as two other councillors, as they will be able to vote.’         source

And Not PC has a good post up on what is now a myth in NZ–one law for all.

‘FBI: Bomb Found on MLK Parade Route ‘Domestic Terrorism‘
SPOKANE, Wash. — The FBI offered a reward Tuesday for information about a potentially lethal bomb found in a backpack along the downtown route of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade.
The discovery before Monday’s parade for the slain civil rights leader raised the possibility of a racial motive in a region that has been home to the white supremacist Aryan Nations.
“The confluence of the holiday, the march and the device is inescapable,” said Frank Harrill, special agent in charge of the Spokane FBI office. “But we are not at the point where we can draw any particular motive.”
He called the planting of the bomb an act of domestic terrorism that was clearly designed to advance a political or social agenda.’

So he just did “draw a motive”. This story stinks to high heaven. 3 “city employees” found the backpack and just happened to look inside and see wires? What were they, SEIU members? And wouldn’t a backpack bomb have been well hidden, especially since it was allegedly placed so long before the parade?  This has more the flavour of Alinksy than white skinheads.   Perhaps it’s just coincidental that this release  comes just a few days after the media’s spectacular failure to pin the Tucson atrocity on the right?  Wabbits have finely-tuned bullshit detectors and this one’s twitching like a head-shot speed freak.

I’ve been to Nashville five times only because I had a Rebel great grandfather who surrendered there near the end of the Civil War, my Daddy called it the Confederate War. I don’t really go to Nashville except to honky tonk. But I go to Franklin, which is just south of Nashville, for the War and the site of a battle bigger and worse than Gettysburg, the Battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864. I feel it, the War, there. Let’s let Thomas Cartwright tell us about it  so that is why after 140 years I still wake up in the morning wanting to go to Franklin. Can’t explain it. I could get into a lot of details but our Current War is even more desperate that this old War. One time on a Civil War trip following the Army of Tennessee from Alabama to Tennessee, a friend of mine whose great uncle, Gen’l John Adams who was killed at the battle, got Thomas to give us a staff ride around the battlefield which has been built over with houses and businesses years ago. After you do the Franklin battlefield, stand on Confederate Gen’l John Bell Hood’s headquarters at Winstead Hill and yell cuss words at Yankees across the valley and cuss Hood for his waste of Southern boys’ lives, you get thirsty. So you go up to Nashville to Broad Street and visit Tootsie’s Purple Orchid Lounge. Let’s do that. Want to? Good. Continue reading →

Mark Steyn on the erosion of personal liberty. And much more.

‘Permanence is the illusion of every age. But you cannot wage a sustained ideological assault on your own civilization without profound consequence. Without serious course correction, we will see the end of the Anglo-American era, and the eclipse of the powers that built the modern world. Even as America’s spendaholic government outspends not only America’s ability to pay for itself but, by some measures, the world’s; even as it follows Britain into the dank pit of transgenerational dependency, a failed education system, and unsustainable entitlements; even as it makes less and less and mortgages its future to its rivals for cheap Chinese trinkets, most Americans assume that simply because they’re American they will be insulated from the consequences…’